Random Thoughts 11/28/08

• The Jayhawks, even in their loss to Syracuse, look really good for a team starting three freshmen and a sophomore. If they look this good and even make the NCAA tournament, that's not bad for an "off year" where we lost 83% of last year's points and rebounds to the NBA.
  
• We saw Disney's Bolt at the movie theater this morning; it was really good. Not Pixar good, mind you, but almost. The cost of taking a family of six to the theater, even at 10am, is horrible (about $40). It's almost demoralizing, it's so expensive. Thank goodness the movie was good and the kids liked it.
• In contrast to a $25 per hour movie experience, video games at home are mere pennies per hour of entertainment. My kids and I play the Wii for hours and hours every week and the whole family really enjoys it. But someday (another 3-5 years?) this amazing little game console will begin to show its age and need to be replaced. What will that new Nintendo look like? Here's a nice collection of improvements for the Wii 2.
• The Legends was not too crowded at all this morning at 9:30am when we went to our movie. Target on the other hand looked like a sea of cars and minivans.
• If you want to know more about the terrorist attacks in India, you can find good analysis here.
• If you want to know which ships are being held by Somali pirates, look here. Interestingly, it may fall on the Indians and Chinese to do the heavy lifting with this problem because of political considerations. In some circles, it's perceived that "Easterners" could eradicate the Somali trouble makers without too much fuss where "Westerners" doing the same thing would smack of colonialism and racism.
• K-State is bringing ugly back. The Wildcats are wearing the retro faded-lavender jerseys mismatched to dark purple shorts. They've had this combo in the past. It was ugly then; it's ugly now. It screams, "our equipment manager didn't use color-safe bleach!"