Hasta La Gadget!

ATLANTA (AP) — The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s traveling Bible hasn’t gone on regular display since President Barack Obama used it while taking his second oath of office two years ago. The public hasn’t seen the slain civil rights icon’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize medal in recent years, either.

Both relics reside in a safe deposit box, the keys held since March by an Atlanta judge presiding over the latest — and in many eyes, the ugliest — fight between King’s heirs. The Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Inc., which is controlled by Martin Luther King III and his younger brother, Dexter Scott King, asked a judge a year ago to order their sister Bernice to turn over their father’s Nobel medal and traveling Bible. The brothers want to sell them to a private buyer.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney could decide the case at a hearing Tuesday or let it go to trial. He said when he ordered Bernice to hand over the Bible and medal to the court’s custody that it appeared likely the estate will win the case.

This is at least the fifth lawsuit between the siblings in the past decade, but this one crosses the line, Bernice argued in February from the pulpit of historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where her father and grandfather preached. Her father cherished these two items, which speak to the very core of who he was, she said.

The Rev. Timothy McDonald, who served as assistant pastor at Ebenezer from 1978 to 1984 and sides with Bernice but describes himself as a friend of the whole family, told The Associated Press: “You don’t sell Bibles and you don’t get but one Nobel Peace Prize. There are some items that you just don’t put a price on.”

The estate’s lawyers have not responded to requests for comment from the King brothers. At a hearing last year, a lawyer who represented the estate at the time said they want to sell the two items because the estate needs the money.

Paying lawyers to enforce the rights to King’s words and image is expensive, attorney William Hill reminded the judge, drawing chuckles.

The estate is a private entity, so its finances aren’t public, and court records don’t elaborate on the estate’s need for cash.

Whether to sell the Bible and the medal is not up to the judge, or even part of the lawsuit, which is purely an ownership dispute.

Lawyers for Bernice have argued, among other things, that King gave the Nobel medal to his wife as a gift, meaning that it is part of Coretta Scott King’s estate. Bernice is the administrator of her mother’s estate.

King’s heirs have previously parted with parts of his legacy. They sold a collection of more than 10,000 of his personal papers and books in 2006 for $32 million, a collection now housed at Morehouse College, King’s alma mater.

Two separate appraisers, Leila Dunbar and Clive Howe, told the AP they would expect the medal to sell for about $5 million to $10 million, and possibly more, based on what other Nobel medals have gone for and King’s place in history.

Dunbar said she would expect the Bible to sell for at least $200,000 and possibly more than $400,000. Howe said it would probably go for about $1 million.

If they are sold through a private sale, which can bring substantially higher sums from buyers who want to secure items before they get to auction, the medal alone could fetch $15 million to $20 million, Howe said.

Both items have enormous societal value and should be on public display, said Barbara Andrews, director of education and interpretation at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. The Bible is important because of who King was, and the Nobel Peace Prize because of what it signified — that the fight for civil rights was being recognized on a world stage, she said.

While museums and books can talk about the medal, being able to see it renders it tangible, “more than a photograph, more than us just talking or writing about it,” Andrews said.

“We like to own things. We like to touch things. We like to see them with our eyes. It satisfies that need in us to see the physical manifestation of the award.”

Even in the hands of Bernice, though, neither item has regularly been available to the public. Both “are in the same places they have been for years. The Peace Prize medal is located in a safe deposit box in possession of the King family, and the King Bible is in a safe and secure location” known to Bernice and her brothers, her lawyers wrote in response to the lawsuit.

A replica of the medal has been on display at the King Center for about 17 years, but it’s unclear when the medal itself was last shown, King Center spokesman Steve Klein said.

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. Among his children, Martin III got his father’s name, while Dexter got his looks. Bernice followed her father into the ministry and shares his gift for public speaking. And the firstborn, Yolanda, was known as a peacekeeper.

Even before she died in 2007, though, the siblings had taken their quarrels public and gone through periods where they didn’t speak to each other.

In December 2005, Bernice and Martin successfully fought a push by Yolanda and Dexter, who along with other trustees of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change wanted to sell it to the National Park Service. In 2008, two years after the death of their mother and a year after Yolanda died, a long-simmering dispute between the surviving siblings boiled over, with three lawsuits filed between them in as many months.

In August 2013 — on the 50th anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech — the estate asked a judge to stop the King Center, where Bernice is the CEO, from using his image, likeness and memorabilia, arguing that the center wasn’t caring for King artifacts properly.

That case is pending.

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Follow Brumback at http://twitter.com/katebrumback

It is frustrating to many, regardless of faith tradition, that Muslims across the world are required to condemn acts of terrorism committed by extremists in the name of Islam each time such an act occurs. By now it should be clear to anyone paying attention (and we can be sure FOX News is purposely not paying attention for their own reasons) that most Islamic leaders condemn terrorism. Many Islamic scholars have even recently taken ISIL to task point-by-point in a long theological letter that undermines any so-called legitimate claims to the use of violence in most insistences.

Still, we demand public acts of condemnation that other religions are allowed to escape. The reality is that both Christianity and Judaism, just two examples, have long histories of violence that sadly continue to play out on the world stage today (see the Central African Republic where Christian militias are hunting Muslims and Palestine where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is playing politics with religion in a way that is undermining the peace process).

What if Christians were held accountable for their words and acts in the United States? What if every time Pat Robertson uttered another nonsensical comment about gays causing hurricanes the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals and the U.S. Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops were forced to parade in front of the cameras and issue apologetic statements because a Christian pastor had once again dehumanized children of God, who are still victims of hate crimes in this nation?

We are also a nation of gun violence. Young Americans will soon be more likely to die from a gun related injury then in a car accident. That’s a fact (though I recognize we live in an age where facts are less important than “feelings” and “individual rights.”).

Holly Fisher is a Christian Twitter activist with over 56,000 followers. She is a provocative voice who doesn’t like liberals, college graduates, President Obama, Speaker Boehner, and certainly not Islam which she states is more evil and violent then fascism and Hitler’s holocaust. And she posts provocative images on Twitter. One, as Boston.com noted this summer, caused some trouble:

On July 4, she posted a picture of herself holding a bible and a gun, standing before an American flag, because of course, nothing screams America more than guns and religion (duh)… As Slate points out, the photo bears some resemblance to an image of Muslim suicide bomber Reem Riyashi. Riyashi was also a mother, but a mom who killed four people and then herself by setting off a suicide bomb on the Gaza Strip during 2004. For the record, Fisher is not a suicide bomber, but the comparison is just one example of the outrage prompted by her photo.

The photo promoted outrage from liberals and praise from conservatives. It made the rounds of Twitter again this week as Fisher tweeted out that France could have used her help in the last week as they suffered a tragic episode of terrorism.

This all embarrassed me as a Christian and I tweeted out what I felt:

As a Christian minister, I apologize for @HollyRFisher and all those who use Jesus’ teachings to promote violence. http://t.co/ylHFfEemfW

— Rev. Chuck Currie (@RevChuckCurrie) January 10, 2015

My Twitter following isn’t very large. I hoped Ms. Fisher might read the tweet and reflect and how and why Christians respond to issues of terrorism and gun violence (generally the rule is that we try to play the role of peacemakers), but she called in her posse for reinforcements by re-tweeting this to her 56,000 followers. They had a lot to say in response:

@RevChuckCurrie Joining the #fucktard wagon a little late there douchebag. @HollyRFisher

— Wesley Koenig (@Molon_Labe38) January 10, 2015

@RevChuckCurrie @HollyRFisher

Why don’t U clean the disingenuous crap out of your panties b4 making your own “Christian Attack” on someone

— Holmes Simons (@HolmesSimons) January 10, 2015

@mattlast84 @RevChuckCurrie @HollyRFisher The #Quran is toilet paper & should only be used for wiping butts or bedding pigs around the world

— DemoRats DemoCraps (@DEMAGOGSSUCK) January 10, 2015

@RevChuckCurrie @HollyRFisher As a Christian I apologize for Christian ministers who see a picture of a gun & think it represents violence

— Dark Stormy Knight (@detective27) January 10, 2015

@ConservativeDoc To be fair, @RevChuckCurrie knows @HollyRFisher won’t cut his head off. Might as well mock & ridicule her for a few hours.

— jon gabriel (@exjon) January 10, 2015

Jesus preached non-violence. We are to love our enemies. That gets complicated in times of war. Still, mocking people of other faith traditions is not Christian. Neither is it Christian to worship the gun culture in America that has done so much damage to our society.

It is said in the Boston.com article that Ms. Fisher has received threats for her comments. Such threats should not be tolerated in a free society. She has a right to her views, as seemingly bigoted and hateful as they might be.

Still, I stand by my apology. I don’t want anyone to ever believe that just because this individual has access to a Twitter account it means that she is a spokesperson for the Christian faith. We have enough institutional spokespeople using faith to divide us along religious lines already. I’m sorry about that and hope that we can do more to bring people together. We clearly have more work to do.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — After three weeks atop the box office, “The Hobbit” has been taken down by Liam Neeson.

“Taken 3” nabbed the top spot at the weekend box office in North America with $40.4 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. The third installment of the 20th Century Fox thriller series stars Neeson as a vengeance-seeking retired CIA operative with “a very particular set of skills.” The original “Taken,” which also features Maggie Grace and Famke Janssen, debuted in 2009 with $24.7 million, while “Taken 2” launched in 2012 with $49.5 million. “Taken 3” also earned $41 million in 36 international territories this weekend.

“For Neeson to be at this stage in his career and be considered one of the premier action heroes is certainly unexpected, but it’s really cool and lucrative,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at box-office tracker Rentrak. “I don’t think Neeson expected back in ’09 that ‘Taken’ would take off the way it has. It’s really enhanced his box-office appeal.”

“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” slid to fourth place with $9.4 million following three straight weeks in first place. The total domestic take for filmmaker Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth finale now stands at $236.5 million. “The Hobbit” also earned $21.8 million internationally this weekend, pushing the worldwide total to $545.3 million.

“Into the Woods” milked $9.7 million in third place in its third week at the box office, bringing the total haul of Disney’s Broadway musical adaptation to $105.3 million.

With the Golden Globes kicking off Sunday night and Academy Awards nominations looming Thursday morning, several trophy seekers expanded into more theaters this weekend.

Paramount’s civil rights drama “Selma” moved from 22 to 2,179 theaters, arriving in second place behind “Taken 3” with $11.2 million. The film chronicles the historic 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and stars David Oyelowo as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“With the Globes tonight, no matter what happens, there’s nothing better than having your clips running and people having conversations about your movie because it creates a big awareness,” said Megan Colligan, Paramount’s president of worldwide distribution. “Then, we have Martin Luther King weekend next weekend. I think we’re in great shape to just play and play and play.”

Other possible awards-season hopefuls that moved into more theaters this weekend included the Louis Zamperini biopic “Unbroken,” the Alan Turing biopic “The Imitation Game” and filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson’s trippy mystery “Inherent Vice.”

“There are a lot of titles out there in the mix,” Dergarabedian said. “It’s all about timing with these awards-season contenders. With the Globes tonight and the Academy Award nominations Thursday, it’s no accident they’re expanding. It’s completely calculated, but it’s sort of anyone’s game to win because there are so many great contenders.”

“American Sniper,” which stars Bradley Cooper as Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, bagged $555,000 from just four theaters. Warner Bros. plans to greatly expand the war drama’s scope on Friday.

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Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Rentrak. Where available, the latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Taken 3,” $40.4 million ($41 million international).

2. “Selma,” $11.2 million.

3. “Into the Woods,” $9.7 million ($7.6. million international).

4. “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” $9.4 million ($21.8 million international).

5. “Unbroken,” $8.7 million ($5.7 million international).

6. “The Imitation Game,” $7.6 million ($5.5 international).

7. “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb,” $6.7 million ($46.2 million international).

8. “Annie,” $4.9 million ($14 million international).

9. “The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death,” $4.8 million ($1.5 million international).

10. “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1,” $3.7 million.

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Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada), according to Rentrak:

1. “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb,” $46.2 million.

2. “Taken 3,” $41 million.

3. “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” $21.8 million.

4 (tie). “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” $15 million.

4 (tie). “Miss Granny,” $15 million.

5. “Big Hero 6,” $12.6 million.

6. “Ode to My Father,” $9.5 million.

7. “Penguins of Madagascar,” $9 million.

8. “Seventh Son,” $8.1 million.

9. “Into the Woods,” $7.6 million.

10. “The Taking of Tiger Mountain,” $7.5 million.

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by 21st Century Fox; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang.

I don’t think smartwatches are as useful as they’re cracked up to be, but I also didn’t expect that they could be another way to express one’s geekiness. That’s all thanks to user made skins for Android watches, like njdom24’s sweet Codec skin. Here’s the skin on Skittleguy’s Moto 360.

I miss the Select button. Call Otacon and download the skin on FaceRepo.

[via Skittleguy via Destructoid]

Umbrellas are one of those things that many of us don’t think about needing until it’s pouring outside and you have to run from the car to the office. Naturally, this happens most often when you are in something that doesn’t dry for about 17 hours after getting wet. What you need to do is just buy an umbrella, and while you’re at it, make it an awesome umbrella.

Yes, you can own the Seventh Doctor’s umbrella. It has a handle that looks like a question mark and has question marks on the cover as well. Apparently it was modeled after an original umbrella created by T. Fox & Co.

That original umbrella was carried by Sylvester McCoy, the Seventh Doctor on Doctor Who. You can pick up the anti-rain water apparatus for $34.99(USD) at ThinkGeek right now. That’s not a bad price for a 38-inch diameter umbrella.