The Passion of the Christ

2007-11-13T21:09:22Z

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[[Image:The-passion-of-the-christ.jpg|right|thumb|200px|The Passion of the Christ theatrical poster.]]
'''The Passion of the Christ''' was a movie produced by [[Mel Gibson]] and bankrolled with his own money. The film is based on the last 12 hours of the life of [[Jesus]], as read in the [[Gospels]]. Gibson felt that God wished him to make this movie as a "repayment" for his past sins.

Gibson was not even able to find a major distributor for his film. For a year before the movie was even released, and well before it was first previewed or seen, attacks on the movie began starting with a New York Times story attacking Mel's father in March 2003. This turned out to be coupled with personal attacks on Mel Gibson with such titles as "Krazy Mel" and more attacks on his father and Mel's choice of church to worship. Calls to Mel to denounce his father for his views, most famously in the Diane Sawyer television interview, were ignored by Mel. The New York Times continued with an ongoing campaign against Mel Gibson and his family.

Nevertheless, the movie went on to be a blockbuster grossing over 370 million in the U.S. and over 600 million world wide<ref>http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=passionofthechrist.htm</ref>, an especially unheard of showing for the time of the year it was released. Cries of [[anti-Semitism]] were largely silenced as people saw the movie. With so many critics denouncing the movie without having seen it, Mel did an end around and went directly to church pastors, who were almost unanimously supportive and told their congregations.<ref>http://www.sharethepassionofthechrist.com/links/Endorsements.pdf</ref>. The movie had more pre-ticket sales than any film in history.<ref>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335345/trivia</ref> Monetarily, it was the most successful Christian film ever.<ref>http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=passionofthechrist.htm</ref>

For Mel Gibson it was a personal affair. Thick skinned by the nature of the business, he still did not expect the virulent attacks. For the star Jim Caviezel, it meant being blackballed. While blockbusters usually make people's careers, for Jim it has been hard to find anything more than minor roles.

==References==

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[[Category:Movies]]

Internet

2007-11-13T21:07:14Z

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The '''Internet''' is a global network of interconnected smaller [[computer]] networks. Data is transmitted between computers and networks in small packets using the Internet Protocol (IP); they are reassembled at their destination. It originated in the work of DARPA, a research division of the US Army.

The conceptual foundation for the internet's creation was significantly developed by three individuals and a research conference, each of which changed the way we thought about communication, business and the exchange of technology:

*Vannevar Bush wrote the first description of the potential uses for information technology with his description of the "memex" automated library system.
*Norbert Wiener invented the field of Cybernetics, encouraging future researchers to focus on the use of technology to extend human capabilities.
*The 1956 Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence conference defined the concept that technology was improving at an exponential rate, and provided the first serious consideration of the consequences, the benefits and advantages or such a network.
*Marshall McLuhan made the idea of a global village interconnected by an electronic nervous system part of our popular culture. <ref>http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii.htm </ref>

The Internet is sometimes also known as "[[cyberspace]]." Sometimes it is inaccurately referred to as the Web or the [[World Wide Web]], because the Web is only one of numerous protocols that operate on the Internet.

The common protocol used to access websites (including this one) is the Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The creator of this is [[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]], who recently in an online magazine article claimed that given the opportunity, he wouldn't use the HTTP format for websites. Berners-Lee is currently the director of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

[[Ted Stevens]] famously referred to the internet as "a series of tubes" during a panel on [[network neutrality]]. While the statement was technically inaccurate, it is a reasonable depiction of the internet as an interconnected system to a lay person. The internet is formed from two basic elements, routers and connections. A router is basically a small computer that acts like a switching station, similar to the pumping stations of public water utilities. The connections are the pipes themselves, acting as a means to move packets from one router to another, and eventually from server to client.

==Controversies==

Although the Internet has been shown to contain valuable information, its popularity has spread largely through hosting of pornographic or otherwise vulgar material. Therefore, some conservatives would like to see tighter controls on the Internet which would limit what can be hosted and what can be downloaded so that the internet only expresses Christian, pro-American values and not pornography, terrorists and rock and roll bands.

In 1999, [[Democratic]] presidential candidate [[Al Gore]] embarrassed himself by attempting to take credit for the development of the internet:<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/</ref>

:CNN's WOLF BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now.

:Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?

:AL GORE: Well, I will be offering -- I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be.

:But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. '''During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.''' I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

==See Also==
*[[Digital Philosophy]]

== References ==
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[[Category:Information technology]]
[[Category:Internet]]

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The Passion of the Christ

Internet