- I saw Batman Begins Wednesday afternoon. I must admit that the movie left me slightly disappointed. I thought the action sequences were poorly done. I didnt care for the music, which is a must in a comic-book hero movie. I was annoyed by some huge plot holes (for example, is there anyone in Gotham who doesnt know that Bruce Wayne is Batman?), and I found Christian Bale's version of Bruce Wayne to be rather boring, and un-intellectual.

However, there certainly were things that I liked about Batman Begins. I liked the look of Gotham. I thought Christian Bale was quite good when he was in the Batman costume. He is ferocious, even bordering on feral. Most of the minor characters were good, especially Morgan Freeman. My favorite part of the film was the very end. It makes me believe that the sequel will be better than Batman Begins. The very end of Batman Begins is pure Batman-magic.

I am guessing that Batman Begins will make between 240 to 270 million in North America. If it makes less than 200 million, there wont be a sequel (even though the end of the movie clearly sets up a sequel.) If it makes more than 300 million, then it will be considered a major blockbuster, and we will get a whole slew of new Batman movies.

On a scale of 1 to 100, I give Batman Begins a 74. Its the second best Batman movie (the 1989 movie is the best.) I want to see Batman Begins again. I think it deserves a second look. Here is an article from a columnist at the National Review, expressing the idea that Batman is a conservative, who fights crime using Republican idealism. I got a kick out of this article:
http://www.nationalreview.com/hibbs/hibbs200506150751.asp

- In the late 1930s Jacques Coustea, the famed ocean naturalist, invented the SCUBA gear. Underwater breathing devices have remained roughly the same for the past 65 years, but that is about to change. An Israeli inventor has created a device that allows humans to breathe underwater, just like fish! Here is a link to the article:
http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/050606_breathe_underwater.html?fark

- Here are 30 things you can do on the internet, that you probably didnt know you could do:
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,120784,00.asp

- Revenge of the Sith made 158.8 million during its first four days. It made 50 million during its first day. ROTS has the following records:

1. Biggest opening day
2. Biggest day ever (Thursday, May 19th)
3. Biggest initial 3 days
4. Biggest initial 4 days
5. Largest non-holiday Monday.

However, ROTS did not get the biggest weekend haul (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). During its actual weekend, ROTS made 108 million. Spider-man made 114 million during its initial 3-day weekend opening.

Even with all this information, its still difficult to determine exactly how much money ROTS will make. It could be a very "front-loaded" movie, like Matrix Reloaded, or it might have good legs, like Phantom Menace or Titanic. This Memorial Day weekend will be crucial. ROTS is guaranteed to make more money than Attack of the Clones (AOTC made 312 million), but will ROTS make over 400 million? We wont know until Tuesday.

Revenge of the Sith finished with 83% at Rotten Tomatoes. In an earlier posting, I predicted from 70 to 75% freshness. I am glad I was wrong. Here is how each Star Wars movie fared at Rotten Tomatoes.com:
The Empire Strikes Back: 98%
A New Hope: 93%
Revenge of the Sith: 83%
Return of the Jedi: 81%
Attack of the Clones: 65%
The Phantom Menace: 62%

I have seen the movie twice, and I plan on seeing it at least twice more. Its the best of the prequel movies, but still not quite as strong as the original trilogy. On a scale of 1 to 100, I give the movie an 85. I enjoyed it more on my second viewing.

Lets poke the hornet's nest...the combined box-office from the three prequel movies will be greater than the combined box-office from the three Lord of the Rings movies. Does that mean that the prequel movies are better than the Lord of the Rings movies? Of course not. I think the LOTR movies are better, but if someone wants to argue that the prequel movies are better, at least they have some kind of statistics to back-up such a claim. Here is how much each LOTR movie made, and how much each prequel movie made (ROTS obviously isnt done yet, but it certainly will make more than 300 million.)

The Fellowship of the Ring: 314 million
The Two Towers: 340 million
The Return of the King: 377 million
Total: 1.031 billion

The Phantom Menace: 431 million
Attack of the Clones: 312 million
Revenge of the Sith: 300+ million?
Total: 1.043 billion?

If we want to compare these two trilogies to the grand-daddy of all trilogies (the original Star Wars movies) we should adjust for inflation. After all, ticket prices were only 2 to 4 dollars in the late 70s and early 80s. Here are the adjusted numbers for the original Star Wars movies:

A New Hope: 1.139 billion
The Empire Strikes Back: 628 million
Return of the Jedi: 601 million

It really isnt a fair comparison though. Times were quite different 25 years ago. Nowadays, people have many more ways to entertain themselves than they did back then (cable TV, computers, Nintendo, etc..) Disposable income also stretched farther, so families could see a movie over, and over again. During the 1970s, 40% of all Americans went to the movie theater at least once a week. Now its down to 10%. Its estimated that 88 million people saw A New Hope during its initial release. Only 44 million people saw The Phantom Menace when it was released in 1999. Check out the forums at boxofficemojo.com. That's where I am getting all this information.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/forums/viewforum.htm?f=2&sid=c44f789c05a9f1f2c128c2fcbcf18649

- Here are the top ten ways (according to one scientist) of destroying the earth. I am not talking about just destroying humanity, or destroying all life on earth, I mean physically destroying our shiny blue home:
http://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp.html

- I bought a cell-phone a few days ago. I want it to work in Las Vegas, but I have to pay extra for that feature, which got me to thinking...why doesnt my cell-phone work in Las Vegas? That line of thought brought me to an even more fundamental question...how does my cell-phone work anyhow? The website HowStuffWorks.com can explain how a cell-phone works. In fact that website can explain just about anything. Here a link:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/

A few years ago, the TV quiz show Jeopardy changed its rules. The show normally allowed a person to only win 5 times in a row, and then the champion must leave the show. Now on Jeopardy, you can keep playing as long as you keep winning. Last year Ken Jennings won 74 shows in a row, and won over 2 million dollars in prize money (a record for game-shows.) Ken Jennings was the best trivia player I had ever seen. Let me repeat that. Ken Jennings WAS the best player I had ever seen. Two months ago, Jeopardy started the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, which pitted their greatest players from the past 25 years against each other. The two players who emerged from this tournament would play Ken Jennings in a three-day tournament for 2 million dollars. The three day tournament started last Monday, and ended on Wednesday. Ken Jennings got crushed! Brad Rutter, a native of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, stomped on Jennings. He beat Jennings each day of the three day tournament, and finished with twice as much money as Jennings. Brad Rutter is the BEST trivia player I have ever seen. He knew every question that Jennings knew, but he was quicker on the buzzer, and made less mistakes than Jennings. Here is an article about Rutter from his home-town newspaper:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05147/511399.stm

- Reviews for Revenge of the Sith are starting to hit the internet. It's getting better reviews than I thought it would. I have read about 40 reviews so far, and only three of them were negative. Rotten Tomatoes (the best website on the internet for tracking movie reviews), as of this writing, has posted 28 reviews...26 of them positive, 2 negative, for a 93% freshness rating. The number of reviews posted on RT will skyrocket to over 150 reviews by the time Revenge of the Sith is released world-wide. If Revenge of the Sith keeps above 90% freshness, its going to make an insane amount of money. I predict Revenge of the Sith will finish between 70 to 80% freshness. Media companies hold negative reviews of movies until the movie is released or just after it is released. This is especially true of big movies like Revenge of the Sith. Magazines and newspapers want to avoid effecting the movie's box office and thus upsetting the company that made the movie. Here is a link to Revenge of the Sith at Rotten Tomatoes. You wont see any spoilers, but if you click on any of the review links at Rotten Tomatoes, you will be inundated with spoilers:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_3/

- I dont have an anti-virus program on my machine. Considering all the websites I read each day, I should install one. The following website has delayed my purchase of anti-virus software. Trend-Micro has the ability to scan your computer for viruses, and remove those viruses. Best of all, this website is completely free!
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

Despite its silly name, I read the website Lifehacker almost everyday. Its choked full of great information for getting the most out of your modern electronics. Want to know how to maximize the potential of you cell-phone, make your computer run faster, or how to get the most out of the internet? Then this website is for you:
http://www.lifehacker.com/

- I have Star Wars fever! I have it bad...real bad. It's deep in my bones, and I can't shake it. I don't think I want to shake it. It's more painful than Marburg fever, and twice as contagious. I have been debating on various SW-related messageboards about how much money Revenge of the Sith will make. I won't frighten you with an endless, manic diatribe. I will simply say that if ROTS is better than the first two prequels, I think it will make around 370 million. If it's the same quality as the first two prequels, it will make around 310 million. Here are links to websites that keep track of box-office totals. These websites will be fun to read during the summer blockbuster season:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/
http://www.boxofficeguru.com/

- Remember the scene in Blade Runner, where Harrison Ford tests a person to find out if it is a replicant? For over fifty years, human beings have been devising tests that hopefully can determine whether something is a computer or an actual human. Here is an example of one such test. Some web-servers use this test to keep automated computer programs from registering with their websites:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050416/mathtrek.asp

- A few nights ago, I was watching an interesting program on the Discovery Science channel about future evolution on earth. The program showed clips of earth and it's animal life 5 million, 100 million, and 200 million years in the future. Obviously, such conjecture is pure guess-work, but nevertheless, it's fun to speculate. What fascinated me the most was the depiction of future tectonic shifts in the earth's crust. After watching this show, I decided to cruise the net looking for animations which show how earth's prehistoric crust (also known as Pangea), transformed into the current continents. This link is the best animation I could find. It's amazing how the continents kind of fit together like a jigsaw puzzle:
http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/docs/parks/pltec/pangea.html

- I want to make a formal apology to anyone who is reading this blog. During my entries two weeks ago, I made a link to an online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. It's quite an exhaustive encyclopedia, and anyone can add or edit articles on that website. I thought the website had an editorial process, but I was wrong. Many of the articles, especially the ones dealing with politics or religion, are extremely biased. As with most websites on the internet, the people who hate something are much louder than the people who love something, so the articles tend to be very negative about the topics they explain. The article about George W. Bush, for example, reads like a pamphlet Michael Moore would hand to college students. I will keep the link to that encyclopedia on my web-blog, but if you visit it, take the encyclopedia with an extra-large grain of salt.

- Ever heard of Moore's law? Its not about physics, chemistry, or any other physical science. It's a law regarding computers. In 1965 the co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, hypothesized that the speed of a micro-processor (your computer) would double every 24 months. This hypothesis, even forty years later, turned out to be correct (thus becoming a law.) Some computer-scientists feel that Moore's law may be coming to an end in the next ten years. These scientists believe that unless some brand-new, and completely radical way of building a computer is discovered, the acceleration of the computer's processing speed will dwindle, and eventually we will hit a wall regarding how fast a computer can function. Others feel that Moore's law will stay true for a quite a while. Here is an article about Moore' law, and what might happen to computers in the future:
http://msn.com.com/2100-9584_22-5647824.html?part=msn&subj=ns_2543&tag=mymsn

- I am always looking for free online encyclopedias, and I finally found a really good one. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, that is also considered open-source. That means anyone can write an article for the encyclopedia, and even edit articles. The website does have an editorial process, and it seems rather professional. Here is a link to the encyclopedia. I was astounded at the number of the articles contained in Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

- Not all search-engines are created equal. The term "google" has entered our daily vernacular as a way of asking someone to search for something. I use google several times a day, but Google isnt always the best search-engine to use. There are many search engines on the internet, and some are better at finding certain types of information that others. For example, if you want to find a picture of a particular place or thing, you have a better chance of finding it using Yahoo's image search, than Google's image search. Here is a webpage that tells you which search-engine you should use when looking for certain topics:
http://www.philb.com/whichengine.htm

- Speaking of Google, the popular search-engine now offers the ability to search for locations using satellite pictures. I tried it last night, and found a picture of my home from outer space! When you visit the webpage, you will notice a link in the upper-right hand corner called "Satellite." This changes the webpage from a regular map viewer, to a satellite picture viewer. Try to find your home. It's fun to view your neighborhood from a top-down perspective. Here is the link:
http://maps.google.com/

- On April 29th, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will hit the big-screens. This movie is based off the wildly popular book written in the late 70s by Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker's guide is a combination of science-fiction and humor. I can easily say that it is the funniest book I have ever read. I highly recommend it. Adams wrote five books chronicling his Hitchhiker universe. The first book is a classic, but the other books degrade in quality with each new book. Regardess, all five books are worth reading. Douglas Adams spent over 20 years trying to get the Hitchhiker's Guide made into a movie. He died of a heart-attack in 2001, but plans for the movie were already in motion. Here is a website devoted to Douglas Adams, and his wonderful books:
http://www.floor42.com/

- There are lots of websites on the internet for testing your typing speed. Try this one. I like it better than most. Use the comments section to let us know how you did:
http://www.typingtest.com/contents/java/typetest/default.htm

- The progress of technology and medicine increases on an exponential curve. There is a good chance that new drugs and surgical techniques will let our generation significantly extend our lives. Get use to this idea. It's a virtual certainty that our children will have life-spans many times greater than our parents. There is even a chance that our children wont die from "natural causes" like disease, heart-conditions, or old-age. Perhaps only accidents and war will end their lives. Here is a detailed article explaining what could lie ahead:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1522606,00.html

- My goodness blogging is becoming popular! How do I know this? Well, there are many indicators, but my best indicator is that Microsoft is getting into the blogging business. They have started a beta-site for blogging called MSN Spaces. If you are interested in starting your own blog, or know someone who does, here is a link to MSN Spaces, and two other websites that have started offering blogging services:
http://spaces.msn.com/HomePage.aspx
http://360.yahoo.com/reg/whatis.html
http://www.bloglines.com/

- One in ten people are left-handed. I believe out of all the people who read this website, I am the only person who is left-handed (if I am wrong, send me an email.) I take great pride in being left-handed, and feel lucky that I was born in a time when parents and educators wouldn't try to teach a child to be right-handed. Here is a website dedicated to left-handed people. Drill through the website and take a look at the incredible number of famous athletes and actors who are left-handed. It's not a coincidence. There is a science to it. Send the link to your left-handed friends and family members. They will get a kick out of it:
http://www.left-handersday.com/index.html

- "No ship that small has a cloaking device, track it!" - Captain Needa, The Empire Strikes Back. Needa didnt permanently disable the hyperdrive on the Falcon, and he didnt know that human-beings on a little blue planet called earth would be very close to creating cloaking devices for their vehicles. I cant believe Vader didnt whack this chump. Here is a link to an article about how real-life scientists are close to realizing this sci-fi staple:
http://www.livescience.com/technology/050228_invisible_shield.html

- When I was a child, I loved to read the Guiness Book of World Records. I would buy each new edition, and spend countless hours memorizing all the facts and figures. The Guinness Book has its own web-site, and its better than I thought it would be. I assumed it would simply be one large advertisement for its print version, but instead the website has many of the records you would find in the book. Here is a link:
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/

- I have been searching for a way to send large files to my friends, and I may have found it. The website, YouSendIt.com, allows you to send files up to 1 gigabyte (1 billion bytes) to anyone with an email address. The website stores the file on their servers for 7 days, and you download the file from a link they send you. The file is never actually sent to your email address. I havent tried it yet. The service appears to be free, but I wonder if there is some kind of spam-mail involved. Here is a link to the website. Give it a try, and let me know what you think of it:
http://s10.yousendit.com/

- Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide today. I was a fan of his writing, despite him being a drug addict, alcoholic, and proponent of the most vile left-wing politics. He invented a style of writing called "gonzo journalism", which involves over the top descriptions of actual events with the author including himself in the affair. He was portrayed by Bill Murray in the movie Where the Buffalo Roam, and by Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (both dreadful movies.) I first discovered his writings while reading ESPN.com, where he did a semi-regular column (getting Hunter to do anything on a regular schedule was a monumental task.) Here is a link to his articles at ESPN.com, and a link to his article about the 2001 Kentucky Derby. His description of the derby is legendary:

UPDATE...ESPN (owned by Disney) has decided to cash in on the death of Mr.Thompson. They have turned these articles into subscriber articles, which means you now have to pay money to view them. When I wrote this Sunday night (2/20), these articles were free. Gee, I wonder how Hunter would have felt knowing that ESPN is cashing in on his death.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/archive?columnist=hunter_s._thompson&root=page2

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/thompson/010507.html

- I truly love the internet. I cant imagine life without it. Not for its practical uses, like checking your bank account, buying airline tickets, or looking up sport scores. No, I love the internet for all of the little things I find on it. Here is a webpage that will show you how common a person's first name is. Simply type in the name, and you will get a graph showing how many people were given that name during each decade of the 20th century. My first name was fairly popular during the 60's and 70's, but has fallen dramatically since then. I have only myself to blame.
http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

- Some day, in the not so distant future, we wont worry about the number of soldiers who die in Iraq. We will worry about how much money we are wasting on robots who are doing the fighting for us. The American military is already working on using robots, instead of humans, to fight our future wars. Here is an article with more information:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-asecrobosoldier20022005feb20,1,1160052.story?coll=orl-home-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true

Big update today. Lots of good stuff...

- The Oscar nominations have been announced. If there is an awards presentation in this country, that is needlessly affected by politics, it's the Oscars. I am happy to announce, however, that this year's nominations seem to be free of politics and political-correctness. I think the nominations this year are rather good. Michael Moore, thankfully was shut-out of the nominations. There is even a rumor floating around Hollywood that the big-wigs who run the movie studios are sick of making movies that only appeal to the "blue states" and want to start making movies that appeal to everyone. Apparently there are a few people in La-la land who prefer to make money. I will believe it when I see it. Anyways, here are my picks for the winners of each major category, and a link to the nominees for all the categories for 2005. This is a tough year to pick. If you scroll down, you will notice that my picks from last year were all correct. There is little chance of that happening this year:

Best Picture: The Aviator
Best Director: Martin Scorsese
Best Actor: Jamie Foxx
Best Actress: Anette Bening
Best Supporting actor: Morgan Freeman
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/awards/oscars/2005list.jsp

- Holograms are tough to create in a real-world setting, but a company recently created a machine no bigger than a computer, which creates wonderful holograms. Here is a link explaining how the machine works:
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech/200501/kt2005013117582612350.htm

- Can you beat a polygraph? Here is an article from someone who tried several tips for beating the machine. Perhaps the most interesting information from this article is that the person who invented the lie-detector also created the comic-book character Wonder Woman! Now I know where the golden lasso comes from.
http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2112734

- Certain people who read this website (and they shall remain nameless) will love the beginning of this next article. In many parts of the developed world, populations are dwindling. The reasons are numerous, and important to all of us. An ancient prophet once wrote that in order for man to ascend to true greatness, he must become extinct. Well, some countries are accidentally fulfilling this prophecy. Their economic and political models are causing their populations to decrease, instead of increase. If a country's laws help its citizens, then naturally a country's population should increase, since its citizens are well-off, and have the necessary resources to bear and care for children. I wrote about this topic several months ago, but this article does a much better job of explaining the situation than the last article I linked.
http://techcentralstation.com/012705D.html

- Happy Groundhog's day! Read the following article to learn more about Groundhog's day, and then read the 2nd article explaining why the movie Groundhog's day is a true gift to humanity (this article completely over-analyzes the Bill Murray classic. I like the movie, but geesh!) By the way, my family has a tradition very similar to Groundhog's day. During the first phone call I receive from my parents on February 2nd, if either my mother or father tells me how "dreadfully disappointed" they are in me, then I know there will be six more weeks of winter.
http://wilstar.net/holidays/grndhog.htm
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200502010801.asp

- Enrico Fermi was a famous physicist who helped split the atom, and helped develop the first atomic weapon. He is mostly known for his accomplishments in physics, but he was also a amateur UFO investigator. Fermi proposed the following question..."if there are so many planets and galaxies, then why havent we bumped into any aliens?" This simple question is rather complicated to answer, and is now referred to as The Fermi Paradox. Here is a link explaining the paradox:
http://www.space.com./searchforlife/shostak_paradox_011024.html

- The tsunami in south-east asia last month didnt quite hit my psyche until I read the following article. The earthquake not only increased the speed of rotation for the earth, it also made the earth slightly more round. It was the most powerful earthquake recorded in the past 40 years. That sounds like a big deal to us, but if the earth has been around for over 5 billion years, then how many more powerful earthquakes have occurred, or will occur? The tsunami helped remind me that we live on a spinning globe made of rock and magma that can change unexpectly, just like all things in this universe.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9596_22-5536983.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnet

I use hotmail for my personal e-mail account that I share with my friends. By only giving my hotmail e-mail address to friends, it helps avoid spam. I also have a yahoo e-mail address that I use for business transactions, or when I need to give an e-mail address to someone outside my circle of friends. My yahoo e-mail address receives over 100 spam e-mails a day. I am a beta-tester for a new e-mail service created by Google. It is called Gmail, and it can store 1 gigabyte (1 billion bytes) of e-mail. If you want to try Google e-mail, send an e-mail to my hotmail account, and I will invite you. People who are already testing the service can invite others to join. It's completely free, and this is the only way that you can participate in the service right now. Whatever e-mail address you pick during the beta-phase of Gmail you can keep during the full-release. Here is a link to the Gmail website:
http://gmail.google.com/