Kids and the Lama

It somehow slipped my mind yesterday to mention that I now hold a ticket to the Dalai Lama speech here in Austin, for which tickets were distributed yesterday morning at 7:00 AM. My room mate happened to be on campus around 1:00 AM when a friend called him and told him to come stand in line, which was already at WC Hogg (it started at the Union). For non-UT students this means that about 1,000 people were in line. By 7:00 AM the line was over 2,000 people long and went to Jester. Someone else actually posted pictures. It moved fast and through him I got my ticket as well as our tickets to the Rice football game since I waited at the draw line simultaneously (which didn't matter since I still got crappy seats). Anyway, I'm pretty pumped about seeing one of the holiest men in the world in person. The other part of my confusing title is regarding this interview with Tim Berners-Lee, the man behind the Internet, in which he mentions that the creativity of our children will power the Web in years to come. I think it's an amazingly true statement given how much exposure kids have to computers in today's day and age. Back when I was small it was just learning BASIC or trying to use Telnet or learning DOS commands, and now it must be totally advanced for them. I think despite their laziness that they can come up with some great stuff.

I'm going to start out the tech news with byfar the geekiest item today: the first episode in the completely online show NerdTV. It's like Charlie Rose but for major figures in computing and this first one features veteran Mac systems programmer Andy Hertzfeld. It's a little dry but quite informative. Microsoft has finally lost its mind and has decided to sue the EU for sanctions imposed against the company, and I think they're really taking things too far. It can't possibly be worth all this trouble. Lastly, ZDNet has put up a pretty good article about responsibility disclosure with regard to flaws in companies' software. The specific incident they address is at Microsoft, but I'm sure it's an issue at many other big companies as well and is a bigger deal as identity theft becomes more and more serious.

What you are looking at is actually the first official shot of Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) from Superman Returns. You can see more new pictures from the movie at Latino Review and join in the mounting excitement for the movie. If you can't get enough of pictures though there are some new ones from Corpse Bride over at IGN. What's more important though is that we finally have a couple of new pictures from Ghost Rider for your viewing pleasure and the race for everyone to make a comic book movie continues. Lastly, we now know that the next Hannibal Lecter movie will be called The Lecter Variation based on the upcoming book from Thomas Harris Behind the Mask and filming should begin very very soon. As you can surmise from the book title, this is all about the background behind the good doctor and what made him what he is in the movies you've come to know and love.

Given that Friday (of Wednesday Mind Hump fame) is still recovering from Katrina I'm going to do the Question of the Day II again:

If you could be anyone's mojo, whose would you want to be, and why?
Besides Austin Powers? Probably Brad Pitt because it must work pretty well given how many women are automatically attracted to him. To have that kind of power would be surreal.