One of my all-time favorite films! I especially love how all the things the young Amelie is doing are related to the credits - playing the glasses for the composer's credit, cutting out paper dolls for the editor.

According to one study, on some transportation systems, the cost of collecting the fares equals the amount collected. The only reason the fares are collected is to keep the public transportation system from becoming a defacto homeless shelter.

But the Wright Brothers DIDN'T invent the modern airplane. Virtually none of their inventions are used in modern airplanes. Their concepts like "wing warping" were unstable and one of the main reasons the Wrights were responsible for the first passenger fatality. The more I learn about the Wrights, the less respect I have for them. They built a glider, stuck an engine on it, launched it with a catapult, published the resulting "powered flight" in a beekeeping magazine then spent the next five years suing everyone else who was actually building real airplanes that could take off from the ground on their own power, had ailerons and a rudder and were controllable and safe to fly.

Read about the REAL father of flight, Glenn Hammond Curtiss, a man so far ahead of the Wrights technically that he built a 8 cylinder motorcycle and set a land speed record of 137 mph...in 1907.

Impossible to watch this without remembering the MST3K dialog.

Nah, I suspect he's entirely computer based, with only one really nice MIDI keyboard. But Herbie is always on the cutting edge. 5 years ago, I attended a demo of the future of surround music, and the main piece was by Herbie Hancock...in 10.2 channel surround.

The movie showed that different people respond to a total loss of hope in the future in different ways. Clive Owen's character started as the kind who just wanted to continue working, pretend things are OK. Julianne Moore's character thought the world could still be saved. Danny Huston'a character didn't care about people, just trying to save art. And, Chiwetel Ejiofor's character was a "true believer" who didn't are who got hurt.

You and I might not kill ourselves or anyone else when faced with the end of the human race. But other would, and it doesn't take a huge number of those people to make the world a horrible place for the rest of us.

As they say in Washington, it's not the crime that they get you for, it's the cover-up.

Back in the good old days of Napster (AKA the best single year in the history of recorded music sales), the end came when users could get banned based on having particular artists in their shared collections. My wife had 13,000+ mp3s in her collection, and got a message one morning "You have been banned by Googoosh".

It's a film camera, it is just a very small Arriflex camera with a 400' load of film, the smallest 1-piece 35mm film camera made.

I hope those guys who got soaked have kept up with their shots. My brother is a plumber, and he had to have a whole spectrum of inoculations because the job involves contact with sewage.

"It's DOCTOR Evil. I didn't spend four years in Evil Medical School to be called 'Mister'!"

I've attended the Adult Expo, and most of these actresses don't bear close examination in real life, especially Jenna. All this means is that they'll have to do the same quality of makeup as Hollywood films have used for years. There are successful actresses who have bad skin - Cameron Diaz's face is covered with acne scars. When the Tonight Show went HD, the make-up person had to invent a new type of make-up, and won an Emmy for it - liquid make-up applied with an airbrush.

Rest in peace, Don Ho.

The Daily Show had a report on this many years ago, interviewing a guy who had to massage the elephant's prostate.

I find this a very inspiring clip...no matter how bad your job is, at least you aren't shoulder deep in an elephant's rectum.

Looks pretty good, but I've had a few too many experiences having to configure Linux systems by editing text files. On the other hand, virtually none of my existing home theater equipment - my HD card, my NTSC tuner/S-Video input card - are "Windows MCE compatible". Hopefully, this uses the dScaler software, which does a far, far better job of scaling low resolution source. Hey, I might as well put it on...it's not like it costs anything.