Recent news items

Batman... Begins Again?

The new Joker for the sequel to last year's well-made "Batman Begins" movie has been cast:

Heath Ledger.

Did you do a double-take? I know I did. I haven't really watched much of anything with him in it, but the fan reaction appears to be either really excited or really scared. Well, Christian Bale worked out better than expected, and the guy did just star in one of the most critically-well-received movies of last year, so maybe there's some hope. I'm also hoping that the supporting cast - Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, et al make their way back too.

Full-body DDR

Some folks at National Taiwan University have come up with a next-generation Dance Dance Revolution, simply titled Dance Dance Dance (DDD), where instead of tapping on panels in rhythm to the music, you actually have to mimic the body positions that flash across the screen in rhythm. Check out this video - would you play this?



Email is like so yesterday, man
Back when I was in high school, email was still a novelty item. Started off doing everything from the command line, and then pine became a godsend. IRC became popular, and my first use of the WWW (NCSA Mosaic!) was to log on to some NBA sites and Star Wars sites. My HS was the first one to offer an Internet class, which gained enough notoriety that VP Al Gore (the father of the internets!) came to visit us - we were trapped inside our rooms while snipers patrolled the roof, as he sat and talked with students about email before the television cameras.

I bring this up because according to MSNBC, email is now pretty much obsolete in the minds of today's youth (no wonder it's so hard getting the HS kids to respond to email!), having been overtaken by less formal, shorter forms of communication such as IM and text messaging. Well, they'll have to learn proper email formatting, punctuation, etc. before long since the academic and business worlds probably won't be changing any time soon...

Ode to the F-14 Tomcat
Finally, I read a few news items saying that the venerable Grumman F-14 Tomcat, perhaps best known as Maverick's plane in the 1986 movie "Top Gun", is being retired this year after over 30 years of Navy service. It's being replaced by an advanced version of the F-18, the Super Hornet. In its day, the advanced targeting radar and fire-and-forget Phoenix missiles made the F-14 the superior naval interceptor in the world, but age and cost combined to mothball it.

I've been a fan of fighter planes for many years, particularly the F-teen series that has served America well for an abnormally long time - most of them were designed in the 60s/70s and are still in use (F-14, -15, -16, -18). The F-14 was probably my favorite though, with the variable swing wings that could sweep backwards for high speed or forwards for greater maneuverability. It was the inspiration for the G.I. Joe figher plane, as well as the Robotech Veritech. From a purely aesthetic point of view, the plane looked more like a bird of prey than a simple missile.


You will be missed.

Incidentally, if you're a fighter buff... the Air Force is slowly introducing an expensive, but superior new fighter with stealth technology and advanced missiles - read up on the F-22 here. In a few mock battles, the Raptor achieved a 10-to-1 kill ratio. Pretty impressive.