A few questions for the Terminator Salvation robots

Warning, some spoilers are below.

1. If you are a robot and your job is to kill the most important human target in the world, why would you spend all of your time throwing the human around a lab, rather than shooting the human with a gun, or simply crushing the human with your hands?
2. If you capture the father of a past/future resistance leader, why would you hold him in a cell, instead of just killing him?
3. Why go through the trouble of building a human interface in your super secret control room? Since you are a robot, why couldn’t you just download all the information to your half-robot/half-human henchman via a USB port, or even wireless technology, which will presumably still be available in the future?
4. For that matter, why would you tell your half-human/half-robot deep informant henchman that he is an informant at all? This can only lead to confusion and bad things happening.
5. If you are smart enough to send a robot into the past, why aren’t you smart enough to store plans for all the cool new technology you’ve developed, so it can be available earlier in history when you start fighting the humans? To be fair, humans are also not smart enough to do this either, so I suppose that makes it a fair fight.

All in all, I’m not sure why we should be so worried about robots taking over. They appear to be a bunch of morons.

Christians vs the gays

This week's Smile Politely column is up, and has an unnecessarily inflammatory title: "Why gays are morally superior to Christians."

It's actually just a recounting of Stanley Hauerwas' 1993 essay of the same name. Despite its age, it's still both funny and relevant.

The Writing Life Update

I've had some good news lately about some articles I packed up and sent off to seek their fortune in the big, wide world:

1. Dreamseeker Magazine accepted "A Brief History of Love and Suffering," an essay about Christian love gone bad. It should be published sometime this summer.

2. I'm one of six finalists in Geez Magazine's "Daringly Awkward Sermon Contest" with "The Bliss of Ignorance," which describes how useful ignorance can be when visiting a foreign country. I may not be terribly daring, but I make up for it in awkwardness. It's due out this month.

3. I got an email from The Mennonite magazine yesterday, telling me that "My Ensemble Experience," published last year, got 3rd place in the Associated Church Press "Best of the Christian Press" awards in the humor category. It's always nice to place in a contest that I didn't even know I was enrolled in.

However, I would be failing in my Mennonite humility if I did not also mention that my 3rd place finish was a tie, and there were 11 total entries, meaning I'm only in the top 36% of the funniest Christian writers of 2008. To what extent that is like saying I'm in the top 36% of the most fashionable farmers, I dare not judge.

Maybe I should have a new tag line: "Dan Schreiber: Funnier than 64% of other Christian writers in 2008."

Nonetheless, I'm going to wear a tux around the house for the rest of the day and demand that all my beverages be served in champagne glasses.

I like my neighbors

After weeks of doing other things for Smile Politely, my regular column returns this week: Walking and Waving in C-U, where I give some love to my city and neighbors.

But again, not in a weird way.

Who would Jesus Torture?

So, basically, I'm just stealing urbanmenno's content at this point. This will make 2 in 2 days. I will offer her 100% of the money I make from this blog.

In my defense, my friend John emailed me this morning with the same story, begging me to post it on my blog so he can rant about it in public. And he's Catholic, only the 2nd most blood-thirsty group of Christians studied.

The chart says it all:



So, almost half of Americans justify torture. That's depressing. On the bright side, though, if you take out all the religious folks, only 40% justify torture.

I never thought I'd say this, but I think we need more "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelets in the world. Unfortunately, it's the Christians that need them the most.