Christ, they’re doing it again

It’s a sequel, God’s Not Dead 2 (but Professor Jeffery Radisson is).

Like the first one, the heart of this already terribad movie is a ginned-up controversy. Philosophy professors do not force students to sign pledges of belief, and there is no prohibition against citing the Bible as a literary and sociologically-relevant text. Even us noisy militant atheists don’t argue that you have no right to believe as you want.

The movie is going to be more invented oppression to fit the persecution complex of Christians. It’ll probably make a bucket of money, while getting abysmal reviews and making the rational, honest part of society puke into buckets.

Those are mighty modest goals

Luxander, one of our awesome bloggers at FtB, is trying to raise a few dollars to start a video gaming channel (in case you don’t recall where Lux is blogging, they are a co-blogger with Zinnia Jones.) They’re requesting a pittance for what should be a unique startup.

I chipped in a bit, although to be honest, I’m just hoping Lux will remember me when they’re rolling in all that PewDiePie money.

I thought science fiction was supposed to be a creative, imaginative genre

Star-trek-logo

All day long, my social media have been pinging with jubilant people repeating the message that a new Star Trek series is coming out in 2017. Now don’t get me wrong — I was once a 9 year old boy who begged his parents to let him stay up late to watch Star Trek — but I felt a despairing groan deep inside me.

Let it die.

The series came out 51 years ago. We don’t need another rehash, reboot, repeat, whatever of the same stories. It’s not as if this is the only science fiction future we can imagine, it’s not even as if this was the best framework for telling stories ever. Inspire me with something new. Do something brash and wild and surprising.

I know, this is commercial television, which lives for the predictable and bland, the lowest common denominator that will draw in the largest audience. I will point out two things: 1) in its time, Star Trek was that weird wild card that network executives didn’t understand, and 2) now its virtue to television producers is that it is an entirely known quantity with a built in audience, and is therefore the precise opposite of what good science fiction ought to be.