The Kingdom

One of the great parts about being a college student is that we are Hollywood's biggest target. As such, they send do free sneak previews of movies on campus quite often. I was lucky enough to get in and see The Kingdom on Tuesday night. And while they spent most of the time before the movie trying to shove commercialism down our throats (they asked one trivia question: What movie was being released on DVD that day? Answer: Knocked Up. Correct! Come over to the release party at one of the local bars. The unspoken message to everyone under 21: Don't forget your fakes), the movie itself was pretty good.

Most movies of this nature normally send one of two messages: "We're going to kill all of the towel-heads!" or "The US is a horrible, imperialistic nation and should stay away from the Middle East!". The Kingdom did neither. Instead, it starts with a very concise, yet detailed, history of the struggle between fundamentalists within Islam and the West. For the first time ever in a major Hollywood movie, wahhabism was mentioned and emphasized.

Over the course of the movie, Western views of Islam and Arabian culture are confronted as the Arabian characters are developed - religious devotion is demonstrated as some of the main characters go home to say the evening prayers with their families; there is a conversation with a former terrorist who discusses why he left the path of violence; a Saudi prince figures prominently into the story line, and his extravagant life style is well noted; the methods and beliefs of extremism within Islam are explored with disturbing detail.

The movie is very violent - there is no doubt about that. But not in the modern style of violence where you get shot and don't bleed. The fight scenes are very intense, rough, and bloody (it was odd to see Jennifer Garner in an action scene so far removed from those of Alias). For those who didn't deal well with Black Hawk Down or Saving Private Ryan (the content of The Kingdom is somewhere in between the two), keep that in mind when deciding whether or not to see this movie. For those hoping for a typical action movie with constant explosions, chase scenes, and gun fights, don't hold your breath. The film spends a lot of time on character development, investigations, and cutting through red tape. The "R" rating for intense, sustained violence doesn't come in until the last half-hour or so of the movie.

Spoiler Warning: The last words of the movie are going to be disclosed below; don't highlight if you don't want to know. You have been warned.
The main point of the movie is delivered in the last lines. When asked, what two characters said (an FBI agent comforting a colleague over the loss of a friend, and a dying militant comforting his grandson), the answer is eerily similar: Don't worry, we will kill them all. With that in mind, you leave the theatre wondering about both sides' approach to the other. What hope is there for us as a civilization if our answer to the problem is to kill people? For my thoughts on the subject, see an old post (Emergent Qaeda).

In short, this movie is continuing the recent trend of action movies for the thinking man. Like Blood Diamond before it, and a large number of movies to be released in coming months, it brings some hope, but leaves you with more questions than answers, and above all, a feeling of urgency to do something. However, unlike Blood Diamond, the "what to do" is left up to the viewer.
End spoiler warning.


Rock on.

Turns out they were right back in the 1950s...

I first came across this on Wikipedia and thought it was a joke. Nope. What seems like a set up for a 1950s sci-fi double feature is actually news...at least, on Al Jazeera.

Watch the video here.

Common Sense Upside Down is Football Season

Athens is a very odd town. A true college town - erm, city - we have an amazing music scene, cheap college eats, and an eclectic make-up. But for some reason, Athens is upside down. Pay differences between faculty, admin, and those who actually work (IT, groundskeepers, food services, and grad students) aside, UGA is above all things, a football town. The Bulldogs are known for having great gymnastics and tennis teams, but football is what brings in the real money. And it's this fact that is the start of our problems.

The first major problem is tickets - UGA is a big school, with about 35,000 students total - including part time, "super seniors" , and grad students. And we have a stadium to match - Sanford Stadium holds more than 90,000 spectators. And yet not every student gets season tickets. Even giving every student season home tickets and allotting 5,000 for away students (and with the exception of major games such as USC, Auburn, and Tech, that's more than enough - I don't know of many people who'll make the trip out from Oklahoma to watch OSU take on UGA), there would still be enough room for more than 50,000 alumni and other fans. I understand that alumni tickets are a great way to bring in support. But the alumni had their chance to be in the sea of red during their four (or five or ten) years at UGA. And what better way to encourage alumni support than to treat the alumni well while they're still students? But instead, part time and fifth year students are on the bottom of the totem pole, my grad student friends only get three or four games, and not even full-time juniors get full season tickets.

Many students buy parking spaces on campus to keep from having to walk to class. Others buy parking spaces on campus because they live on campus. The lot you get assigned isn't determined by where you live. On game days, parking is a premium. It can cost anywhere between $10 to $25 - and that's parking a mile from the stadium. For a very select few (aka the big donors to UGA), parking is a gift from the university and is located on campus. However, this "gift" is actually just a student's parking space. Students who pay sever hundred dollars to park on campus, even those who live on campus, are forced to move their cars to parking lots a few miles from the main campus.

I live in a very nice condo. It's in a gated complex with a pool, a club house available for rent, courtyards in every building, and a laundry/tv/fitness center in the basement of my building. And plenty of parking. But many of the parking spaces cost $10,000. Yes, $10,000. They're "tailgating" spaces. That means that the people who buy them use them, on average, once a week...during the fall. Less than half a mile away is another tailgating lot. The spaces there cost $20,000. This doesn't include an overhang or a grill. Just the parking space. And it's about a mile to the stadium (though the spaces here do come with a shuttle to campus and a tailgate party where you can watch the game if you, like most people in town for the event, don't have tickets). I also go to a very nice church. It's a two minute walk from my place, small congregation, and home to Our Daily Bread, a ministry that provides meals to the poor and homeless. Some mornings I walk by on my way to work and see them asleep in the area around the church. $10,000 for a piece of asphalt - two minutes away from those who need all the help they can get just to get a warm meal.

On the note of tailgating, as you can tell from the real estate, it's very big business around here. I drove around tonight, nineteen hours before kickoff, and people were already setting up their tents and grills. Athens turns into a zoo. Historic North Campus gets trashed. As does the rest of Athens. You can walk around after a game and find the abandon food - much of it unopened - along with all of the trash from the day. Imagine a dump, add some beautiful old buildings, and you have campus on game night. Between the cost of food, clean up, and replacing the grass (which had to be done every spring because the lawn can't stand up to that type of a beating), the amount of money that gets spent every season is absurd. Especially when you figure in how much students pay just to take a semester's worth of classes.

I'm not a football fan, so maybe I just don't get it. I would appreciate a good season this year, but I'm not prepared to spend a ton of money just to be on the same campus as the game. But even if I were a fan of the sport and not just the team, I would hope I would have the good sense to find a better use for my money. Perhaps giving it to Our Daily Bread instead of Tailgate Station. As a student who didn't bother to spend the time or money to get tickets this year, I plan on listening to Larry Munson call the home games and maybe enjoy the USC and Auburn games from the bridge in front of the stadium. The best parts of the season are, apparently, free.

I wonder how long it will take UGA to start selling tickets to stand on the bridge...

Rock on.

It's That Time Again...

The time when hundreds of dollars are being spent on textbooks; the time when new freshmen are wetting themselves out of fear; the time when all of the frats start doing massive damage to their livers and to the campus.

Yes, another school year is here. And I have a brand new sixteen hours to take care of. With courses in comparative lit, biology (complete with lab), poli sci, international affairs, and German, plus working thirteen hours (and looking for a less soul-crushing job), either my GPA or my blog will go down hill. And as much as I love my four dedicated readers, I'd rather keep my scholarship. Hopefully, I'll find time to post on the weekends or from my biology class (just kidding mom...sort of).

As for the last few weeks, I haven't updated because all of my friends are back in town. Yea!

Shalom,
Drew

Confession of the Modern Church

All of the flair, this pomp, this flash - in the end, it is worth less than a pile of ashes. Our attempts to modernize, to make God "accessible" and like us, to make worship casual have cheapened it horribly. We forsake the meaningful words of the liturgy in the name of avoiding vain repetition. In its stead we put mass-produced pop songs with no more spiritual significance than Green Eggs and Ham. Those that maintain the liturgy do so not for the meaning, but for the fear of change. So-called traditional worship is maintained for us to feel secure and we utter the words in conformance rather than praise. Denominations are now points of pride rather than belief, and we take solace not in the Blood of Christ, but our own assurance that our group is right.

We flee the old ways of the Church and into the discriminating arms of modernism. Worship is now to be consumed like an hour-long television program. We convince ourselves that Christianity can be popular, cool, consumed, and marketed. We long to show the world that we are different, but the same - that we can walk with Christ without going anywhere at all. No longer do we care for the poor unless it advances our own reputation. Instead, our attention is turned inward. Our outreach comes in the form of a rock concert and our renovation goes to our own buildings. Our service projects serve us, not others. We raise funds for sound systems, not our down-trodden neighbors. We as the Church of Christ have joined the mainstream and look to money and numbers for salvation.

May the Lord forgive us and bring us back to him.
Amen.

Rock on.

Emergent Qaeda; or Why the Christian Right Is al Qaeda's Ally and Enemy

According to Frank Pastore, al Qaeda supports the Emergent Church - I read it on the internet, so it must be true!

I love sarcasm, so when I came upon Jordan Green's response, I giggled like a schoolgirl for nearly ten minutes. Especially this little tidbit on fundamentalist Christianity and Islam: "They both think Jesus was alright, but he didn’t kick enough ass."

For those with neither the time nor attention span to read either of the articles, I will attempt to summarize: Frank Pastore claims that radical Islam is bent on converting the world (caution: those who are allergic to BS may want to stop reading here) and that only America can stop it. And out of the Americans, only the conservatives, and more specifically, the Conservative Christians, are capable of stopping this threat (I get the feeling that radical Muslims believe they are the only ones who can save the world from conservative Christians). Pastore goes on to claim that Christianity is the driving force of the world, from Constantine to Bush, and that all art and philosophy owe Christianity (which, in turn, owes the ancient Greeks, especially the Athenians, namely Plato; this is, of course, excepting Aquinas, who owes Muslims, who in turn owe Aristotle, who owes Plato - longer train, same destination). Of course, what Pastore is really saying is that the gun is the only way to solve anything, and conservative Christians are the only people with the balls to pull the trigger. Accordingly, he claims that the Emergent, post-modern Christians would rather sit around and talk over coffee, and is therefore willing to let al Qaeda take over the world.

He's right. I would much rather sit around over coffee and talk rather than fight, though I would not nod "in agreement that America probably deserved to die". And while I disagree with some of the more liberal leaders of post-modern Christianity over just war theory, even I would rather feed the hungry than kill the warlord who's starving them. But I doubt that this is what al Qaeda wants, for a group of the supposed enemy to do good deeds. To build up an army of angry youth, you need one thing - angry youth. And it's hard to be pissed at the person who just taught you better farming techniques, dug a well in your town, and is now treating you to coffee (an amazing similarity between the Middle East and the US).

Pastore claims that post-modern Christianity dislikes truth, knowledge, science, authority, doctrine, institutions, and religion. That's an out-right lie. Anybody who's ever spoken with a post-modern Christian will know that they are searching for truth and knowledge, depend on science, respect the authority of God, and even hold their own doctrines (though they don't force them on others as a means of salvation). Granted, I don't much care for institutionalized religion, but neither did Jesus.

In the essay, the Emergent Church is summarized this way: "Bottom line, it's feelings over thoughts, the heart over the head, experience over truth, deeds over creeds, narratives over propositions, the corporate over the individualistic, being inclusive rather than exclusive, with none of that offensive 'in versus out' language, such as those who are “saved” and those who are 'not saved,' or even the most divisive of all referents–'Christian' and 'non-Christian.'" I'm still waiting for the bad part.

No, post-modern Christianity is probably actually a pretty big threat to Wahabi Islam. Instead, the abuses of the Christian Right provide al Qaeda with all of the pissed-off youth the could ever need. It's easy to be mad at the person who calls for war instead of peace, the person who doesn't respect your point of view and brands your faith as evil, the person who, even accidentally, bombs your village. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should just throw down our weapons and leave Iraq and Afghanistan. But I do think if we focus more on humanitarian missions instead of detaining prisoners, we would notice a lot less angry teens. As both fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity compete for the control of governments and corporations, it will become a war of attrition - and the Islamic side has a lot more kids to anger.

Rock on.

School, Work, and Little Time

It seems like just a few months ago that I was taking a break from posting because of the end of the semester's strenuous work load.

Wait, it was only a few months ago! Which is why it sucks that the time has come around again. Summer session is ending, and I will soon have another thirteen hours under my belt, and a new job to boot. So, I must jump ship for the next week and a half or so and devote myself to studying German, revising essays, and working at the worst dinning hall on campus (which is actually about equal to the best on most other campuses, but still...)

I'll be back. In the meantime, check out this horrible video my friends and I did - conceived, filmed, and edited in less than ten hours and at no cost except our dignity. And when you're done with that, watch an entire IT infrastructure go into a BlendTec Total Blender, courtesy of Will It Blend?

Shalom.

UGA Episode IV: A New HOPE

For those who don't know, Georgia has an amazing scholarship that I alluded to in my last post. It's for all Georgia residents who are attending a Georgia college and maintain above a 3.0.

What's so amazing about this is that it covers your tuition for up to 127 credit hours as long as you take a full schedule, which is 12 hours during Fall and Spring semesters. I think some of the exact requirements for hours vary from school to school, but the important thing is that this is a bloody amazing scholarship.

But it's called HOPE. So, especially at Georgia Tech, you will, most likely, lose HOPE during your four years. Many students around the state lose HOPE after just one year in school. While you can earn HOPE back, to do so is almost as soul-crushing as losing HOPE in the first place.

And while HOPE stands for Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally, nobody ever says the full name. No, you're not losing the Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally Scholarship, you're losing HOPE. And once you've lost HOPE, life has no meaning. It's almost as bad as losing coffee. College just isn't possible without it.

So I propose that we change the name of the HOPE. Let's call it Tuition Elimination Exemplified To Battle Overpriced Official Kolleges For Everybody Everywhere Scholarship, or TEXTBOOK FEES for short. In keeping with government tradition, the title has been sacrificed to make for a better acronym. I think that generally speaking, a student could make it through college without TEXTBOOK FEES. Heck, it might even make it more enjoyable. Without TEXTBOOK FEES, college could become a place of sunshine, puppies, and professors who know your name.

Here's hoping.
Shalom.

Thank God Pastors Can't Be Outsourced

It means I'll always have a job to look forward to. Though satellite churches suggest that the preaching side could possibly be shipped overseas...

I have finally had a chance to start on Friedman's The World Is Flat, and I'm slightly frightened. While I applaud the ability to take jobs to middle class Asian youth (though I still have my doubts as to whether or not globalization can do anything but harm the Asian poor and under-developed nations, and the moving of jobs to Mexico and other third-world countries is a topic entirely undiscussed in - expect a post on how the flattened world crushed South American and Africa), I cannot find any benefit to working class Americans. Mr. Friedman argues that while outsourcing may cut phone service jobs, it is good for American business because these Indian agencies are using American products - from software to bottled water. Yet on the very next page, he talks about how R&D is being outsourced. And anyone who's ever bought an electronic device in the past ten years knows that production has been moved overseas as well. So if research, production, and service have all been sent to southeast Asia, which Americans are seeing the benefits? Stockholders and the upper class business owners. While prices are theoretically falling (and I cannot stress the "theoretically" enough), what good does that do if the working class has no source of income in the first place?

It seems amazing what is being outsourced these days. The book starts by discussing the use of Indian firms for accounting. Yup, your CPA may very well be sending your taxes to Bangalore. By extension, to all my friends are accounting majors, I suggest you either get really good at what you do or find a job that must be done in person). As it turns out, your CAT scan may also be read by a tech in Bangalore. And most surprisingly, research assistantships, the bread and butter of many college students, are being sent to Bangalore (described as the Silicon Valley of India). For about $2000 a month, you can have all of your research done and summarized for you (sadly, this falls out of the price range of college and grad students).

I don't like to think of things as American v. non-American, but in this case, it's hard not to. Most recipients of these outsourced tele-service jobs are earning $200-$500 a month - a living wage in India. Including insurance and housing pushes the wage up to perhaps $700 a month. And this is to employ a college graduate, a professional. No American, especially one with a family, can compete with that. My friend, a college graduate, was offered a $10/hour full time job in Seattle and still may not be able to afford to live there. My $6.25/hour job on campus* is pushing it for most students, and that's in a college town, land of cheap food (for all who are curious, Ramen is 14 cents a pack now) and $1 movies.
*The most Food Service allows a student to work is 40 hrs/wk, meaning the most a student could could make is $1000 a month, before taxes. That 40 hours is on top of at least a 12 hour schedule.

This outsourcing is, of course, helping India's economy. Eventually, inflation will catch up, and the economy will grow to where $700/month will not be a living wage. The same is true of other outsourcing centers, such as Thailand. So at best, the cheap labor pool is temporary. Unfortunately, "temporary" can be a long time.

Rock on.

iBlend

The iPhone blends!

Check out the video at what can only be described as the single greatest commercial site ever: Will It Blend?

Ro...erm...Blend on.