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In my mind they are inextricably linked to two imaginative stories, one penned by the legendary H.L. Mencken and the other tale by Wallace Reyburn.

Both are witty and informative, along the lines of a jocular story from The Onion.

Over the past week I had the chance to watch every episode of the Star Wars series. It’s not that Korea wasn’t cool enough to garner my attention, I just wondered what it would be like to see them in sequential order.

After watching all of them I am faced with a dilemma as to what order people should see them in.

For instance, if you watch the original trilogy, all of your focus is on the protagonist Luke Skywalker — the viewer is left without the colorful and all important backstory/history of why The Powers That Be existed.

However, if watch them starting from The Phantom Menace your appreciation and attention is exclusively focused on the life and times of Obi Wan and Anakin Skywalker — and how they react to the geopolitical rigmarole and manipulation by Palpatine.

In fact, I think I appreciate the saga more, having watched the original first, because there are some page-turning mysteries that are left to the imagination of all viewers. I mean, if you watch Revenge of the Sith, you already know that Luke and Leia are siblings whose father is Vader. And that would be lame to know beforehand.

Some other thoughts:

- The action scenes, specifically those involving lightsaber battles, are much more intense and believable in the prequel trilogy. I was fairly bored watching Luke trying to parry with Vader because he did not have the finesse of other Jedi’s his age from the prequels.

- Somehow the clone troopers lose their ability to effectively shoot bad guys between Episode III and IV. For instance, they do a great job eradicating massive droid armies and other misbegottens - like Jedi Masters - but are horrific when fighting against the Rebel Alliance. Perhaps the emperor changed out their Koolaid or added fluoride to their water supply. See also: Stormtrooper effect

- I’m not sure which thing I despised the most: the obvious CGI characters in the prequels, or the stupid puppets used throughout the original trilogy (like the rat thing that hung out next to Jabba the Hut). That galaxy was filled with some of the most retarded looking characters this side of the Oort Cloud.

- Yoda is completely over-rated. Sure he is old, but you would think he could do a little better against Sidious (Mace Windu even did a better job).

- The notion of Midichlorians ruined the supernatural, magical overtones of the original trilogy

- As much as I disliked like Jar Jar Binks, if the original series was released for the first time today, I would probably chastise Lucas for his inclusion of two childish androids

- When the graphical capabilities of machinima become impossible to distinguish it from “real” live-action it would be nice to remove the boy who plays Anakin in Episode 1, modifying it to suck less (the word “yipee” should never be uttered by a slave). A young Anakin should have been slightly less jovial and more macabre, like Boba Fett.

+ Overall, I liked Han Solo’s character the most (though Obi-Wan was pretty good in the prequel) and Episode V will continue to be my favorite chapter (I’m a fan of AT-ATs and Super Star Destroyers). And I’d give the prequels a D- overall, largely because it didn’t adequately explain why Vader went bad; his “turning” was difficult to swallow.

Picking up the pieces

So, the question is, what episode would you want your friends or family members to begin the series with?

And, would you prefer to see the prequels eventually remade without CGI, or rather, with “perfect” CGI? (The battle of Naboo was the most blatant offender)

See also, How Episode IV Should Have Ended; be sure to also read the best revisionist history of the Star Wars canon.

So I was about 50-50 predicting the outcome bowl games this past season and as Warren Meyer pointed out, the most important poll of the season was just released.

I have criticized the BCS poll in the past and still think it has the same problems despite the cosmetic makeovers each year.

For instance, the initial vote for the bowl “chaos” system is stacked against everyone outside the top 25. Look no further than the mid-majors that always have an uphill fight moving up onto the list and then are completely dropped after a single loss (TCU in 2003 comes to mind).

With that said here is my top 20 list of teams that I think will stay in the final top 20 (probably not in this order):

USC
Michigan
West Virginia
Florida
Ohio State
Georgia
Auburn
California
Texas
Arkansas
Oklahoma
Boise State
LSU
Tennessee
Louisville
Wisconsin
Nebraska
Notre Dame
Georgia Tech
Penn State

I’d like to put my alma mater, but I am not convinced that they will have a season much better than last year.

My latest Mises piece is up today and it gives a fairly detailed account of Korean economic policies that have created various technologies: Asian Tiger or Asian Kitten?

A few thoughts:

The piece was basically a rejoinder to the pie-in-the-sky posts over at Wired magazine, Slashdot, Ars, Engadget, and Cringely… basically anyone who has a hard-on for fat pipes at any cost.

PC bangs aren’t that cool, or rather, the “wow” factor quickly fades after a couple weeks. There are a couple of big reasons why they are so popular:

- it gets kids out of the house and away from parents (whom most will live with even when they are married)
- in some ways it is cheaper to join the local PC bang like Westerners join big gyms, because it easier to have someone else manage the weights, or in this case, the plethora of software packages/licenses. After all, there is a reason why millions of Bowflexes, ab crunchers, thigh masters go unused each year…
- hang out with your friends in a neutral area. Considering that Korean’s (like the Japanese) have no childhoods because they spend every breathing minute in school for 12+ years, PC bangs are basically a sanctuary for many of them

I’ll discuss more on that particular issue at another time.

So, yes, technologically speaking this place is over-rated, over-hyped (dare I even discuss useful webservices?).

That is not to say that it is a bad, place — quite the contrary. Just not a fairytale world with unicorns, pink dragons, and HAL.

I’d also like to thank DJC for the WSJ link about stiff regulation and Joe for the link on foreign investment numbers. And a big high five to Burger King Marcus for editing it up all nicely.

Hans Moravec, robotologist and engineer extraordinaire made the following prediction during an interview with Wired magazine back in 1995:

By 2000, he foresees that this type of machine will find its own way around complex, cluttered places without using markers and without needing to be installed by experts. At first these robots will be expensive and specialized, but Moravec predicts they will become smaller, cheaper, and more user-friendly in just the same way that microcomputers evolved from mainframes. “Once we have a robot that customers can take out of the box, show it a job, and trust it to work without doing silly things - then the market will grow easily to hundreds of thousands and beyond. Any institution that does regular cleaning will find that it’s cheaper to use a robot than a person. The same goes for delivery jobs.”

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of industrial robots that are used to assemble cars, planes, and other machines, Moravec’s divination seems to have come true, in the form of the Roomba.

For those unfamiliar with the toy-like device, it looks like a bloated Frisbee with several wheels attached to its underbelly.

Not only is it programmable, but it is designed specifically to vacuum household floors (you can schedule the cleaning times); and after it is done with business, it sits back on the charger and awaits for your command.

Oh, and because it is so user friendly, more than 2 million units have been sold. Automation for the rest of us.

See also: Seth Lloyd and the Million Megahertz CPU (which incidentally, was also written in ‘95) as well as an interesting op-ed in Scientific America by Bill Gates which discusses Microsoft’s Robotics Studio.

I’d pay to see that because I think it’d be much better than the de la Hoya - Mayweather slap fest.

Like usual, Bill Simmons over at ESPN has some odd stories and anecdotes that place his mail bag at the top of the pack (the demise of two has-been primadonnas is just one of many gold nuggets).

If nothing else, he has a gratifying list of the most manliness acts at an athletic event, including the Jonathan-Bouchard hockey fight:

Other family-friendly hockey fights: 1 2 3

What do Little House on the Prairie and Tops Drop have in common?

They were both filmed on location.

Seriously, South Dakota has not changed since 1866 — it is a window into the past: theme song and all.

[And in a weird unintentional kind of way, East Germany is a good example of stagnant growth. Located around the same latitude, it is the site of the infamous Plattenbau, which were erected en masse; standing as useless and unwanted public housing complexes that years later would ironically show Westerners "how the other half lived."]

Similarly, the classic rap video by the now dead Fat Pat must have been filmed during a Sunday lunch at the park (if you’ve ever been to Houston or Dallas on a sunny weekend afternoon, this can be a stereotypical sight). Good tune.

Bonus: Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder) and I would have probably hit it off 50 years ago, just like couples do in the above music video…

Cooking, painting, jogging and playing chess all at the same time.

Reminds me of that mash-up of instruments Dick Van Dyke banged together in Mary Poppins.

I know I am probably not the first or last person to make this observation, but love her or hate her, JK Rowling has done one helluva job increasing the English literacy rate throughout much of the industrialized world.

While I can’t give you any hard numbers for the East Asian region (aside from the 11 million as a whole for the latest installment) nearly all of my students bought and devoured the newest book within a week of its commercial availability.

Who cares, right? Well, it has not been translated into Korean yet and as much as I would like to brag about how good their instructors are (we do kick ass), very few are fluent in English.

Yet, whatever linguistic hurdles they face throughout Rowling’s magical hocus-pocus prose, they are every bit the bonified page turner as their Western counterparts.

Paper cuts

During the summer of 2000 I briefly worked as a clerk at a large bookstore chain called Walden Books (the parent company is Borders).

At the time I didn’t think much of it, but my manager - the definition of bibliophile - waxed on and on about how Rowling had single handedly created a generation of children who actually enjoyed reading.

While it may be too early to conduct longitudinal studies on the matter at hand, it does appear that fans enjoy it enough to risk prison time to manually translate it: French police recently arrested a 16-year-old schoolboy for posting his own translation online.

One last note: I wonder as to the kind of stance anti-globalists would have on the issue of cultural education in the form of fictional literature. Or is this somehow another example of Western culture being foisted upon the developing world?

Zoolander jokes aside, here are a couple of funny epitaphs found in England:

“Donald Robertson, born 14th January 1785. Died 14th June aged 63. He was a peaceable, quiet man, and to all appearances a sincere Christian. His death was much regretted which was caused by the stupidity of Laurence Tulloch of Clothister (Sullom) who sold him nitre instead of Epsom Salts by which he was killed in the space of five hours after taking a dose of it.”

Another from All Saints Church, Darfield, Barnsley, states simply: “The mortal remains of Robert Millthorp who died September 13th 1826 aged 19 years. He lost his life by inadvertently throwing this stone upon himself whilst in the service of James Raywood or Ardsley, who erected it in his memory”.

See also the Darwin Awards.

Study: Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful To Monkeys

Reminds me of the classic quote:

Smithers: [To frozen Burns] Oh, Mr. Burns, we’ll thaw you out the second they discover the cure for seventeen stab wounds in the back.