The Day After Tomorrow? - By Tom Roe

"The Day After Tomorrow" was fun to watch. I enjoyed the effects especially. You don't have to watch long to feel uncomfortable about how far they've reached into the implausible to shore up the premise for this movie. I'm a 3D artist and animator, so I was very excited to see the movie, but I shuddered inside each time they took a jab at modern politics like there is something we could do to stop or start such a catastrophe. First of all the movie says that we could enter into a similar climate change like the one that happened, according to their science, 10,000 years ago. They then proceed to imply that humanities use of fossil fuels and combustion engines is the cause of this change. This is really weird for a premise because it disproves itself. We can not effect the global climate with anything less than a nuclear holocaust. The fact that it supposedly happened 10,000 years ago without our help demonstrates that in massive catastrophic earth-wide disasters happen when they happen, not when we make them happen. So it's not us. That doesn't mean we can't hurt things. Desserts now exist in places where there were once forests. The dust bowl happened long ago because of over-farming the land and some days in big cities like LA you can't go out of the house because of smog. We have moved from a mostly industrial planet to a more and more technological planet and this is changing the amount of hazardous waste we pump into the air. We can do better and we are doing dramatically better than we were 50 years ago, but you have to keep things in perspective. Did you know that a single volcanic eruption spews more greenhouse gas into the earth's atmosphere in one moment at one location than mankind has created in many years. LINKS

• National Review weighs in http://www.nationalreview.com/hibbs/hibbs200406010819.asp
• Bad emissions are trending down rapidly - We must be doing something right eh? http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/enviro/04_enviroindex/09_air.html
• Junk Science (Where science gets it wrong) http://www.junkscience.com/news/prma2.html
• Volcanoes destroy ozone more than humans http://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/self/index.html

After reading some of the material at the above links, I'm really starting to get annoyed at the rhetoric of the liberal loons. Would you people just shut your cake holes! We no more can control the destiny of this planet's global climate than we can stop the earth from spinning on its axis.

It is by the grace of God that we are spared from the catastrophes depicted in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow". The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom! It is by God's own hand that the universe and our solar system remains balanced in perfect harmony. Should God remove His influence for a moment, we would all perish. Realize from where you receive grace! Thank God for the grace he has shown you.

Tom Roe - October 15th, 2004

Questionable Art? - Copyright 2004 - By Tom Roe

An Internet acquaintance and fellow 3D artist, who is preparing to go to an art school recently wrote me about some concerns he and his dad had. He described one school tour and explained how great the work was that they were doing there, then he wrote the following..

"...We got to the end of the tour, and when we heard that all students must take a full year of the fundamentals, including a year of life drawing, my dad asked the important question. He wanted to know if there was anyway to avoid that certain objectionable part of life drawing. The answer was an absolute no. They would not budge."

This attitude among Christians concerning traditional art is very disconcerting. I felt it was important to help this young man understand the difference between pornography and art. There is no fuzzy line here as far as I'm concerned. When it is pornography your spirit will feel very uncomfortable in its presence. When it is simply an expression or human observation of the beauty God made then your spirit will recognize that. This is no "I'm ok, your ok" type justification, it is simply separating the kind of conviction God's Spirit can give you, and the kind of guilt Satan will give you to interfere in the plans God has for your talents.

What follows is my responce which I believe may help others...

I presume that by "objectionable part" of life drawing you mean nudes. While I do understand that the thought of staring intimately at a nude human form while studying it and putting your version of what you see on paper can lead to some initial embarrassment, I'm a bit puzzled by your response to the idea. You seem to imply that drawing a nude is a type of pornography. That couldn't be further from the truth. God made us all so wonderfully that it is difficult to truly appreciate the work of the greatest artist unless you get a chance to study the human form. This has been true as far back as art has been a form of expression. This is a non-sexual forum, and other than some initial embarrassment which quickly passed, I found nude drawing to be one of the best opportunities I had in college to further my abilities as an artist.

It is true that we are suppose to be modest in how we present ourselves to the world, but you also have to consider the context of the presentation. To look on the human body and see sin is not what God had in mind, and having read the Bible through a couple of times, I can assure you there is no biblical support for that position.

The context of which I speak is of course the life drawing forum. Many students are gathered around a nude in an attempt to understand why [and how] the human form is so complex and wonderfully made. I see this as an opportunity to study God's work in a non-sexual forum. It is akin to studying a nude to determine what is wrong with the body so you can fix it, like a doctor. You wouldn't presume that a doctor studying a nude is involved in a pornographic endeavor, and the same is true for an artist.

Of course it is also possible to take what God intended for good and turn it into something bad, like using pornographic materials, available freely on the web, to further your artistic abilities, but at the same time wading through tons of images which are an abomination to what God made - sex, and the human form. This is wrong, and the spirit behind it is evil.

If you let Satan convince you that a nude human is something that should offend you, then Satan has won a pretty major battle in your mind. You must be able to separate the truth from the deception. If you can't look upon a nude without wallowing in sexual imaginings then you probably shouldn't draw nudes, but if you can ask God to control your mind, and help you to understand his creation better without giving Satan the upper hand then I think, for an artist, it is imperative that you take lessons from the greatest artist, God Himself.

I've been amazed to watch the polls as they bounce all over the place between the two candidates, President George W. Bush and John F. Kerry. In spite of this I believe that this race is over now. I watched the second debate and like many people of similar beliefs I was relieved to see Bush pull it together - his first debate was way less than adequate, there were a lot of missed opportunities. He was interesting to watch. This doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. He is passionate about what he believes. He generally is, but it was more apparent this time. It's easier to be passionate about your beliefs when you keep the same ones for most of your adult life. You become very adept at telling people about them and you don't have to remember where you stood last week or yesterday because they're always the same. I'm blessed that he did so well. Kerry on the other hand, did well also for his point of view, and I'm glad because it draws an obvious line in the sand about who stands for what. Kerry still vacillated between positions several times on several issues, but for the most part he came out on the other side of many important things. He is against the war and will bail as soon as he can do it with any of his dignity intact. He is for a woman's choice in that he believes she should be allowed to kill her unborn child on a whim. He is for raising taxes on as many people as he can get away with.

There is definitely a clear choice here.

Now you can probably guess whom I will be voting for. You should understand that the first and most important issue for me is an unborn child's right to life. I believe it is the foundation of a civilized society that we protect the innocent. There is nothing more innocent than an unborn child in its mother's womb. God is on my side here. If you don't believe me you should read about Manasseh in 2nd Chronicles and 2nd Kings. This is a scripture that caused me to do a double take. God rarely responded to man's obscenities to this degree. God was so angered at Judah, that He said He would forsake the promises He had made and allow their enemies to wipe them from the face of the earth. God is not amused by our justifications for the slaughtering of the innocent. Once I've determined that not only does the candidate believe that that is a life worth protecting, but also he or she is willing to put his or her job and future on the line for that belief. In the end we're all responsible for our own salvation, which must be worked out with the Lord. I can easily judge a person's character at the moment I determine how they feel about that life growing in its mother's womb. Everything else is important also, but this is the most important thing to me. We have to stop the hemorrhaging of our nation's morality. It is flowing so freely into the pit of political correctness and apathy that it almost seems impossible to stop. Those of you who believe in saving the unborn, and stopping the disintegration of important institutions like the Supreme Court and marriage. Those of you who believe that America is in the middle of an important war against terror. Those who believe that our cause is just and millions of people have been given the precious gift of freedom. You need to register and you need to vote. You need to make it count toward the values you believe in.