I have to say that this is a sad start to my day.

Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

The next transformers movie has a name and guess where it’s filming?

ALAMOGORDO, New Mexico -DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Pictures and director Michael Bay will return to New Mexico to film major sequences for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Governor Richardson announced Monday. The next installment of the box office hit Transformers is expected to hit theaters next summer.

Some details of the next film are apparently known, check out slashfilm for spoilers.

Stargate The Ark Of Truth is the direct to DVD movie follow up of the Stargate SG1 series. It’s on iTunes for purchase or rent and can be rented on the AppleTV in HD. I plan to marry HD and Stargate.

A few weeks ago I was watching my Sony 60 inch rear projection TV (model KDF-E60A20) when the screen turned blank and the normally green power-on indicator started blinking red. I thought, this has to be a bad thing. My first assumption was the bulb died.

The bulb did not die, there is a whole other indicator light for a dead bulb. What was actually happening is the power-on indicator light was blinking 6 times. Some googling on this subject indicated that the thermal fuse had blown and it needed to be replaced.

Sony apparently has a service bulletin (E29102171) that covers the replacement. In order to access this information you have to be some sort of authorized service personnel. I did find a website where you could obtain the service bulletin but they wanted $12 to join the site first. Let me go on for a moment and say why I think this is a total scam. It seems the damaged thermal fuse situation is a design flaw and Sony’s replacement part is totally different from the original. This website is profiting off the situation by providing information was created by Sony. I won’t link to the site here, but if you search google for this issue you will surely find the site in question.

This is something that Sony should be fixing for free. I’m reading people are paying around $400 to get this issue repaired. I repaired mine for $17.91. The part itself was only $4.80. I ordered part 191002393 from Sony’s service site. Here’s how I replaced mine.

First, the thermal fuse is simply a small electronics part on the end of two wires that connects to the harness in the TV. The wire comes wrapped up in a small package about the size of two dimes. Shipping costs $11.95 to ship it in a giant box full of bubble wrap. Thanks Sony for wasting resources getting this to me.

The thermal fuse is located under the lamp housing in my TV. It’s a dime sized device mounted to the bottom of the TV with two wires coming out of it. It took me a while to figure out that this monstrosity is the thermal fuse considering how tiny the replacement is.

In order to get to the wiring harness I had to remove the rear panel of the TV. There’s about 10 screws that hold that on. Then I removed the fan housing to gain access to the original thermal fuse. I followed the wires back up to where they connected to the wiring harness. I unplugged the original fuse and plugged in the new one and ran the wires to where the original fuse is.

I did not remove the original fuse. It’s somewhat difficult to get to and doesn’t hurt to keep it on. I wrapped the new fuse wiring around the old one. There may be a actual place to mount the new fuse but i didn not see the service bulliten so I cannot say for sure. Now my TV works.

Warning: This is meant to give a basic guide on how the thermal fuse is replaced. It doesn't cover everything thing and could vary on other TVs. If you decide to replace your own thermal fuse based on this information you do so at your OWN RISK.

Knockouts has a website and a MySpace page. I also think they give haircuts.

They just opened a shop in Albuquerque, conveniently really close to Hooters and next to Jason's Deli. It looks like they have some nick packages... I mean services... I mean haircuts and massages... oh never mind. I still can't figure out what their prices are. Probably more than I am willing to pay.

I've got a pretty good reputation on being on top of the latest technology. I'm usually considered a early adopter. I spent $1000 on a DVD player back in the mid nineties (which by the way that Sony 5 Disc player still works). Yet I don't have a iPhone, I don't like ebook readers and here I am about to say why I don't recommend HD discs of either flavor. Perhaps I'm getting older and smarter, perhaps technology sucks more than it used to.

Movie studio fragmentation is the problem with Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Half the studios are on one format and the other half are on the other format. You need a Blu-ray player to see Spiderman, you need a HD DVD player to see Transformers. Thus, I haven't purchased either and haven't recommended either. The situation is improving and it looks like one format could be a winner.

Up until last week a 60% of the studios made Blu-ray discs, now Warner has announced it is switching to Blu-ray and it looks like Paramount may be making the switch as well. This just leaves Universal and a few small studios to make HD DVD disc.

I still say wait and see until one or the other format is declared dead by the sponsoring forums. Microsoft is a backer of HD DVD, for example, and won't let it die so easily.

From the department of "one thing inevitably leads to another," we present Laboratory Conditions, a film we made on the way to making another film. Scouting for props and locations for our current film project, 72° led us to Los Alamos, New Mexico. We found a lot more there than we bargained for.

Laboratory Conditions

Maguire, WB attack the big screen with 'Robotech'

The following is in Sony's FAQ on why they are closing their Connect online music store

Why is the store closing?
We are moving to the open Windows Media® platform in North America. In line with hat, Sony will phase out the CONNECT™ Music Service in the U.S. and Canada. Specific timing will depend on market demand, but will not be before March 2008. To be clear, the CONNECT eBook service for the Sony Reader will not be affected.

Uh what? Windows Media is open? I don't think so. It may be very much more popular than ATRAC (Sony's music format) and licensed by a lot more companies, but it isn't open.

Lisa Ayres, founder of Arid Solutions Inc., has been asked by Joe Lamp'l, host of "Fresh From the Garden" on the DIY Network to send some of her rain barrels to the set of the weekend edition of the Today Show for a segment he is doing on eco-friendly gardening. The segment is slated to run nationally on July 8. Programming information for the local NBC television affiliate, KOB-TV, Channel 4, indicates the broadcast of the Today Show in KOB's New Mexico markets might be pre-empted by coverage of the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

Link

Picture from Flickr of Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones 4 movie. It's being filmed in Deming, New Mexico. From the picture page:

FIrst glimpse of Indy since 1989.

Photo shot on set by Stephen Spielberg. uploaded to flicr for use in a danish langauge blog post :) More info about the shot here: indianajones.com/community/news/news20070621.html

A federal judge in New Mexico has put the brakes on the RIAA's lawsuit train, at least in the US District Court for New Mexico. The case in question is part of the RIAA's campaign against file-sharing on college campuses and names "Does 1-16," who allegedly engaged in copyright infringement using the University of New Mexico's network. In a ruling issued last month but disclosed today by file-sharing attorney Ray Beckerman, Judge Lorenzo F. Garcia denied the RIAA's motion to engage in discovery. This means that the RIAA will not be able to easily get subpoenas to obtain identifying information from the University.

Link to Ars Technica.

In 15 square miles of abandoned land, about 400 misfits—aging hippies, disillusioned veterans, teenage runaways—have built a community where no one cares if you smoke pot, fire your rifle all day, let your kids drive your car, or walk around naked in the desert heat. It's a landscape of beat-up old trailers, shacks jerry-rigged from recycled materials, solar panels, little farms, greenhouses, and at least one tipi. "Where I live is the last remaining land of America that is left," says Dreadie Jeff, another Mesa resident. "You can do what you fucking want there."

link

One of my favorite shows, Battlestar Galactica, will have it's fourth and last season coming up.

"This show was always meant to have a beginning, a middle and, finally, an end," Eick and Moore said in a statement on May 31. "Over the course of the last year, the story and the characters have been moving strongly toward that end, and we've decided to listen to those internal voices and conclude the show on our own terms. And while we know our fans will be saddened to know the end is coming, they should brace themselves for a wild ride getting there: We're going out with a bang."

Sure, I'm disappointed but I have to wonder how long they were going to have them out there in space. I'm certainly excited to see how it's going to end. Perhaps they can do some spin-offs.

Apparently, Maroon 5 is doing well. And so is iTunes

NEW YORK, May 30 /PRNewswire/ -- A&M/Octone recording act Maroon 5's sophomore album, "IT WON'T BE SOON BEFORE LONG," has broken an iTunes Store sales record amidst predictions of a chart-topping debut week (http://www.itunes.com). The Grammy-winning band sold over 101,000 albums via iTunes in one week including more than 50,000 digital pre-orders that provided fans with two exclusive tracks and a Ticketmaster pre-sale offer.

"Maroon 5 fans broke an iTunes record, making 'IT WON'T BE SOON BEFORE LONG' the #1 most popular album upon week of release," says James Diener, President of A&M/Octone Records. "The band's extensive fanbase has spoken: they clearly love the new album and special content exclusives available on iTunes."

Lindsay Lohan - You’re killing us
May 29th, 2007
Please bear with us as we address a number of issues related to server problems and lag. A huge surge in Lohan readership is pushing our servers capabilities. We will update here when we have additional details.

The Sitemeter Team

Sitemeter is a website tracking service. I have one of their free accounts. This is funny.

The best Transformers trailer yet is on the web. I nearly had a sexual experience when Optimus Prime made the "transformer noise" when he transformed.

Go now and watch it here.

Intel sponsored Conan OBrian when he was in San Francisco. He thanked them by visiting the Santa Clara site. Everything he says is funny and sadly true.

Update 7/8/07: Evil, money grubbing NBC forced YouTube to remove the clips.

The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film After the 1973 success of American Graffiti, filmmaker George Lucas made the fateful decision to pursue a longtime dream project: a space fantasy movie unlike any ever produced. Lucas envisioned a swashbuckling SF saga inspired by the Flash Gordon serials classic American westerns, the epic cinema of Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa, and mythological heroes. Its original title: The Star Wars. The rest is history, and how it was made is a story as entertaining and exciting as the movie that has enthralled millions for thirty years–a story that has never been told as it was meant to be. Until now.

I love the Geico Cavemen commercials. Maybe it's because I can relate to them, they get no respect. In a bizzare twist of events, ABC is going to make a reality TV style show around them.

"Cavemen" will revolve around three pre-historic men who must battle prejudice as they attempt to live as normal thirtysomethings in modern Atlanta.

It could be really good, hopefully they don't screw it up.

Live Free or Die Hard is movie 4 of the Die Hard series. The trailer is now available at Yahoo trailers.

What would have been really cool is to watch it on my AppleTV, but the trailer section is seriously lacking.

The biggest Lego set ever, the 5195 Piece Millennium Falcon. It's over 33" long, 22" wide and 8" tall. It's $499.99 and will ship by Oct 1st. Limit 5 per customer.

This is an appropate item to post as I just signed up for the Lego affiliate program. People who know me shouldn't be surprised, as I have been a lego geek since I was very small. I currently have the Slave I (Boba Fett's ship) in my living room.

As a kid, to have Lego and Star Wars together is something I could have only dreamed about. The next best thing would be to have Legos, Star Wars and Video Games that run on a Mac together.

My Advertising Policy

What a wonderfull time to be alive. Star Wars stamps will be Available May 25th from the US Postal Service.

Is my math right, because I want to be accurate here. 150 divided by 90,7000,000 is 6 decimal places, right? 150 is the number of complaints the FCC got about the last Superbowl. 90.7 Million is the number of viewers of the Superbowl.

Not only do these people complain to the FCC about the phallic guitar that Prince was playing, they complain to the FCC about the commentators. Then they threaten not to watch. Don't threaten it already, just stop watching.

I'm sure the FCC will issue fines due to the overwhelming complaints.

I could give a rats ass about "professional" wrestling, but if it involves Donald Trumps hair...

Trump and World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon will pick a wrestler to represent them in the ring April 1 at Wrestlemania 23 at Detroit's Ford Field, The Detroit News reported last week. If their pick is beaten in the "Battle of the Billionaires," the loser will get his head shaved after the match, the Detroit Free Press reported Monday.

I haven't been into the Harry Potter series much, but have enjoyed the movies when I finally saw them years after they came out. This is suppose to be the big one. Where, maybe, Harry Potter gets killed off. Can't imagine that will make a good movie.

The book is suppose to be out on 21 July, 2007. It can be pre-ordered now.

I'm not surprised by this. At least they are keeping Atlantis and there's always the movies to look forward too.

SCI FI Channel confirmed that it will not renew its record-breaking original series Stargate SG-1 for another season, but will pick up its spinoff series Stargate Atlantis for a fourth year. SG-1 aired its 200th episode on Aug. 18, and the SF series is the longest-running SF show on American television.

Ten years is a long time to try to keep the story line fresh and I'm sure the actors don't want to keep playing the same characters for another ten years.

Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler says he was just playing along with the joke when comedian Stephen Colbert prodded him in an interview to say: "I enjoy cocaine because it's a fun thing to do." The Florida congressman who is unchallenged for re-election appeared on Colbert's Comedy Central show and was asked to say a few things that would "really lose the election for you if you were contested." Colbert asked the congressman to complete this sentence: "I enjoy cocaine because ... " A bemused Wexler looked into the camera and said, "I enjoy cocaine because it's a fun thing to do."

I thought it was funny.

This is interesting, looks like they could make sequels to the original Stargate movie. It would be interesting to see how they make it work with the TV show. It would suck if they didn't follow the same story line.

Dean Devlin, co-writer and producer of the original Stargate movie, told SCI FI Wire that he has struck a production deal with MGM and is developing the long-delayed sequel feature films that will pick up the story from the 1994 original%u2014but not the mythology subsequently elaborated on in the SCI FI Channel original series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. Devlin added that he hopes to enlist original stars Kurt Russell (Jack O'Neill) and James Spader (Dr. Daniel Jackson), who have expressed an interest.

The season premiers of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis are tonight, and it's likely that you have already missed them. You can however catch the reruns.

I've become a bit obsessed with Stargate. Having missed the first few seasons that were on Showtime and the seasons after that, i've been catching up with DVDs from Netflix.

It's interesting how Stargate went from a show where 4 people explored other planets via the Stargate to a starship and space battle show, both season premiers were all about space battles. I still say that it's some of the best shows on TV now.

Yay! A movie of 24 will be made!

"The script is actually in development right now," Sutherland said excitedly Saturday, acknowledging plans for a movie version of his top-rated TV show. "It's something that we would shoot for doing next summer, during the next break."

A few of my favorite shows on TV include Battlestar Galactica, Boston Legal and Las Vegas. Reality isn't included in any of them and I don't get much excited about reality shows. However the Deadliest Catch is an exception.

The show is about Alaskan crabbers who literally risk their life so we can enjoy some tasty seafood. Last years show, which I caught by accident, was incredible. This year things have changed.

Unlike last season — the last derby style race to catch as many crabs as possible in a matter of days — fishermen must now abide by a new set of rules and regulations that were implemented to decelerate the already dangerous conditions in the Alaskan waters. New policy dictates that each ship is given its own quota instead of one fleet-wide quota, allowing captains months to trawl for crabs instead of days.

I wonder if it wont be as good this time without the derby but it should be considerable safer. It's certainly not worth anyone loosing their life's over so I welcome the change for that reason. There's some more background on the change from derby to quota from the Anchorage Daily News that's worth reading.

Veteran soul singer Isaac Hayes, voice of the libidinous character "Chef" on the satiric cable TV cartoon "South Park," said on Monday he was quitting the show, citing its "inappropriate ridicule" of religion."There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs ... begins," Hayes said in a statement.Hayes, 63, a devoted follower of the Church of Scientology, did not mention a "South Park" episode that aired last fall poking fun at Scientology and some of its celebrity adherents, including actor Tom Cruise.

It's funny till someone gets hurt. But in this case I think Issac Hayes is being a big baby. It's not like South Park is just picking on Scientologist, they pick on every religion, this keeps it in the well within the realm of satire.

I saw every episode of Gilligan's Island, at least 10 times. It was my favorite show as a kid. I made it a point to learn the lyrics, both versions, of the show. So it's quite sad to hear that Bob Denver (Willie Gilligan) has died today at the age of 70.

Unsurprisingly he died of cancer. Alan Hale Jr., known as Skipper, also died of cancer. Jim Backus (Thurston Howell III) and Natalie Schafer ("Lovey" Howell) have also died. The remaining cast including Tina Louise (Ginger Grant), Dawn Wells (Mary Ann Summers) and Russell Johnson (Roy Hinkley, The Professor) are still alive.

So long little buddy. If I had a flag pole, it would be at half mast just for you.

These guys, look like a cool, hip and happening bunch.

These guys scare the crap out of me!

So sad...

Joe Ranft, Pixar Animation Studios' head of story for more than a decade and a cornerstone of the company's creative team, died Tuesday when the car he was riding in plunged into the ocean after running off the road in Mendocino County, Calif. He was 45.

[Update 11/06/2006] Here's the Voltron website which doesn't have much more about the movie. the imdb says it's expected to come out about in the summer of 2008.

Holy crap! It wasn't good enough that The Transformers are going to be made into a live action feature film, but now Voltron is. Is it just me or is everything 70's and 80's becoming popular again?

The story being developed will be based on the series about five maverick explorer-pilots who must travel to the planet Arus to learn how to operate Voltron, a giant mechanical warrior formed by five smaller robots. The gargantuan robot is the last hope against the evil Drule Empire that has subjugated Earth and taken control of the universe.

Thanks Slashdot!

Surely you have heard the budweiser commercials honoring our "Real Men of Genius" ads on the radio? If not they are hilarious and worth listening to. You can download them all thanks to this guy collecting them all.

Thanks MeFi!

Actor James Doohan, best known as the feisty, Scottish-accented chief engineer on television's original "Star Trek" series -- a role immortalized by the catch phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" -- died on Wednesday at age 85, his manager said.

link

This story on women and men DVR usage is interesting enough. But I find this statement just to obvious.

“DVRs give them a mechanism to find commercials that are relevant, and that’s a big message,” Brooks said. “It’s not that people don’t want commercials, it’s irrelevant interruptions that turn them off.”

A live action Transformers movie is planned for release 4 July 2007. With Spielberg producing there's a good chance it wont suck!

Transformers, the long-planned, live-action movie based on the robot-morphing cartoon, comic and toy franchise, will roll into theaters July 4, 2007, DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures announced Wednesday. Michael Bay (The Island, The Rock) will direct; Steven Spielberg will executive produce.

Grand Theft Auto is getting a lot of attention because of the "Hot Coffee" modification that shows some sex scenes in the game. Essentially this mod causes the character in the game to be invited by his girlfriends for hot coffee. Hot coffee is not what they have in mind, and instead they have sex, which is shown in graphic scenes.

All kinds of "groups" are freaking out about this because kids play this game. Kids are playing this game? The same game where you play a gangster thug, brutally beat the crap out of people? In the previous version (Vice City) one would have sex with a hooker in the back seat of a car then beat her to death, the theme hasn't changed.

The creators of the game have said they had nothing to do with it.

"So far we have learned that the "hot coffee" modification is the work of a determined group of hackers who have gone to significant trouble to alter scenes in the official version of the game," reads Rockstar's official statement. "In violation of the software user agreement, hackers created the 'hot coffee' modification by disassembling and then combining, recompiling and altering the game's source code. Since the 'hot coffee' scenes cannot be created without intentional and significant technical modifications and reverse engineering of the game's source code, we are currently investigating ways that we can increase the security protection of the source code and prevent the game from being altered by the 'hot coffee' modification."

Blah blah blah, whatever. I'm under the belief that people can do whatever they want with the things they buy. But this game is played on the playstation, so getting this installed and working isn't going to be something the average person can do, since the game is on a CD. It's not like you can download it into your computer and install it.

I may be wrong on some of this, but it seems to me that this game isn't for kids in the first place and should have been rated that way. If your kids are smart enough to get this working and know what it is they they were probably already downloading porn off the internet. In either case, the parents should be knowing what's going on.

George Lucas has approved the latest version of the script. Hopefully Harrison Fords eye sight is good enough to read the script.

Nathanson's draft for Indiana Jones 4 has apparently met with the approval of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. But before Paramount can move forward, Harrison Ford still has to sign off on the script, and he hasn't yet read it.

For some reason, the fact that Darth Vader is trying to guess what I'm thinking makes this so much more entertaining. His insults were pretty good too.

At some point we must ask ourselfs if the marketing of Star Wars has gone too far...

There's a great article on starwars.com that goes through various easter eggs, like the Millennium Falcon!

It's tiny, but visible enough to send a warm fuzzy through the hearts of original trilogy fans. In the establishing shot of the expansive Senate docking bays, there's a tiny Millennium Falcon easing into frame. And it's not just a non-descript Corellian freighter; it's on good authority -- namely >George Lucas -- that this is the infamous hunk-of-junk before it came into the ownership of either Lando Calrissian or Han Solo. Also peculiar about that shot: there are no less than three gleaming Naboo star skiffs parked on the lot. Does Padmé have spares?

Slashdot has post about whether there will be 3 more episodes of Star Wars that takes place after the Return of the Jedi.

"According to the HoustonChronicle.com, with all the hype surrounding the recent release of ROTS, speculation abounds that someone may still take a stab at creating episodes VII - IX. Gary Kurtz, producer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, gives some insight into where the storyline may, or may not, go. On a related note, Roger Ebert, is also giving a thumbs up to a continuation of the storyline as well. Where does the line start?"

I've always heard that Lucas was going to make 3 more as well, but I suspect he just glad to be done with them all together for now. As the article says, never say never and I think if Lucas lives long enough he will eventually make them. After all we have to see the Republic recreated and the search for new Jedis.

Looks like Episode III is already showing up online.

Though the original rumors of screener copies of Star Wars Episode III spreading via BitTorrent turned out to be fakes, a new workprint of the film was leaked online yesterday. Watermarked with timecodes on every frame, the workprint was made available as a DVD-R by a pirate group named VISA by Wednesday afternoon.

I will be contributing to the "$627 million in lost productivity" in the nations workforce today. I have tickets to see Star Wars at 12:30 today.

Updated 5/20/05 9:12 am: After seeing Episode III yesterday, it's clear that Aniken was not thinking things out when he decided to join the dark side. I also understand why Darth Vader is so cranky.

Normally I don't pay attention to what this girl does, she has become a celebrity by doing nothing. Being a celebrity means being a target I guess and her sidekick was hacked, again. This time they put all the info on the net or everyone to see including some racy photos, her address book with lots of famous peoples phone numbers and notes. Engadget has the scoop and read the comments to see some mirrors, Drudge seems to confirm it.

If someone hacked my phone would the FBI investigate? Probably not.

Die Hard 4 is coming out.

"John McClane has retired as a cop, and that's all that Fox have allowed me to tell you about it."

I own the 3 DVD set. I can't wait.

For subscribers of DirecTV in the Albuquerque area (and perhaps elsewhere) local channels are out. Would it be too much to ask to put their outage information on their website? I had to call the 1800 number and all it said were the locals were out, no status or anything.

Actually they have been pretty reliable, this is the first real outage I can think of them ever having. Still, I pay them a lot of money every month so there should be no outages. At the very least the could give me more info on when it's coming back.

It's official, Star Trek: Enterprise has been canceled .

UPN and Paramount Network Television have jointly announced that this will be the final season of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE on UPN. The series finale will air on Friday, May 13, 2005.

I only got to start seeing it last season when DirectTV added local channels in Albuquerque (and I got to Tivo it). It's good, I think. But my weekly Sci-Fi is now up to 4 hours with Battlestar and two versions of Stargate (well, ok, less than 4 hours skipping the commercials).

Perhaps they can come out with a good movie.

A interview at National Review is worth reading for the Pixar fan. The interview is with Craig Good, a guy whose "first job was doing janitorial and security work. An in-house programming class led to an entry-level job with the Computer Division. One thing led to another, and here I am, a product of OJT (On the Job Training)." How cool is that? He explains why Pixar films are so good, a quality I believe that existed in the original Warner Brother films that I grew up watching.

NRO:The father of five, I'm something of an expert on animated feature films, if I do say so myself ? and Pixar productions are simply and incomparably the best. Your stuff delights my three-year old, my thirteen-year-old, the three kids in between, and their parents and grandparents. How do you guys do it?

Good: Simple. We don't make movies for kids. We make movies for adults, actually ourselves, and then just make sure there's nothing in them that the little ones shouldn't see. The local cineplex is littered with movies made by studios who want to second-guess what the audience wants. We find we get better results by making what we want, and then assuming that there are other people like us out there.

If audiences in general are underestimated, kids really get the patronizing treatment. Two things are often forgotten about kids. One: They have no taste. They will watch just about anything. This is normal and healthy. Taste comes later. Two: They are not stupid! Kids are born intelligent, and there's no good reason to make dumbed-down entertainment for them.

Pierce Brosnan is by far my favorite "James Bond" (I guess I could argue that with Connery). When I watched Remington Steel I thought, this guy should be James Bond. Having done 3 films it doesn't look like he will be doing it again.

It's not clear if he will be doing it again, if not there's a short list of who should.

A new web site is out to salute the Hummer H2, but not in a good way. I admit that I want a H2. If I had $50,000 to buy one I would be at the dealer right away. Except... I wouldn't. Because I wouldn't be able to afford the gas. I would however buy one if it ran on Hydrogen or Vegetable oil. Detroit, are you listing?