I seem to remember that one of the people who was being considered as adult Anakin was Leonardo di Caprio. I also seem to remember that the universal feeling about Leo as Anakin was that this would be the unmitigated "worst thing in the universe."
However, I get this feeling that Leo would have pulled through and done right by Anakin/Vader. For one thing, he's a way better actor than Hayden Christenson. We first saw that when he played Arnie Grape in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." We also saw it in his rendition of real-life poet/junkie Jim Carroll in "The Basketball Diaries." It was only after this that the concept of "Leo as Teen Idol" spoiled him for a whole generation of people who hate teen idols. Never mind that he's done great work since.
No, the roar was loud and long against Leo as Anakin from a billion billion geeks. I seem to remember I even got taken in by that. I forgot the transformation of another former teen idol who is now the best character actor of his generation, Johnny Depp. DiCaprio seems to be taking the same route Depp took out of teen idoldom, with a genuinely tour-de-force performance as Howard Hughes in "The Aviator" as renewed proof of his chops as an actor.
Would DiCaprio have done the dark anti-hero Anakin Skywalker justice? He certainly portrayed the dashing daredevil tycoon who turned into a tortured, sick shutin with a germ fetish quite well. And you have to admit that even at his nadir, as Jack Dawson in "Titanic," he wasn't all bad as the romantic ragamuffin hero. He could certainly have done more with Natalie Portman than Christenson did. And I suspect that he would have played the scene where he looks at himself as the masked Vader for the first time in a far more subtle way.
Perhaps in Universe B, Episodes II and III of the Star Wars saga don't suck. Perhaps in Universe B Lucas didn't bow to fan outrage and hired Leonardo DiCaprio as the adult Anakin. Perhaps this was also the universe where Lucas realized he wasn't so hot at directing as he was at producing and got other, more talented directors to direct the next two.
Bullshit. Excel was not the first spreadsheet, Visicalc was. Visicalc was the reason why Wall Street financial firms bought Apple IIe computers. Lotus 123 and Excel were Visicalc ripoffs. HTH HAND
The base of Lycoris is...wait for it now...CALDERA OPEN LINUX. As in The SCO Group.
This was something that had to happen after the SCO v. IBM blowup sometime or another. I stopped recommending Lycoris to friends and family after the SCO lawsuit, and I suspect I was not alone. Poor Joe Cheek was stuck in the middle of all this.
Mandriva is a good distro, and Joe Cheek is a really good developer. He created a version of Linux that was really good for retraining people with Windows on the brain. Maybe Mandriva will do a "Mandriva Switch" sub-distro geared to the same audience as Lycoris.
They could do worse than to have the Red vs. Blue guys write the script. There's never been a game-related intentional* comedy before. A Halo movie with humor would be great. Bungie has always been known for throwing inside jokes into their games. A comedic/dramatic Halo movie would rock.
* Many previous game-related movies have been unintentional laugh riots.
Apple: All-righty-then! We'll move all our users to iWork! After all, Pages and Keynote are better for the Mac than Office 2004 was anyway! And furthermore, here's "NumberCruncher" the spreadsheet for iWork, which incidentally spits out perfect.XLS files!
Microsoft: But they are addicted to Office OS X! They will never switch!
Apple: Not if we start giving iWork away for free-as-in-beer...BWAHAHAHAHA!
Microsoft: ^_^;;; (sweating profusely) Um uh um uh...
1.) Windows 2K made the crappy Gateway computers at LA Valley College's computer lab tolerable.
2.) When they moved to Windows XP, those same Gateway computers felt like the POSes they are.
Now that Apple will be transitioning to x86 architecture, hopefully a situation will emerge where Windows 2K can be run safely in virtualization under MacOS X. XP will never sully a computer of mine. I know you can already run Windows 2K in virtualization under Linux. But I'd like to do it under MacOS X. It probably would be a lot less hassle to do. It seems like everything that you can do in Linux is less hassle in MacOS X.
Yes, it is most definitely a reference to the BSD booth babes. Yes, they dressed up in red leotards with the red pointy tail and the red horns. However, I haven't seen costumed BSD girls for years. Last time was Comdex back before the Dot Bomb crash. I suppose it's good to see that the tradition continues...somewhere...:P
2K is easily the high-water mark of MS operating systems. They get my copy when they pry it from my cold dead hands.
For those who want to see 2K or NT4 open-sourced: it will happen when Hell freezes over AND the Sun goes supernova. XP is basically 2K with lots and lots of eye-candy garbaggio layered on top of it. And 2K is NT4 with a lot of stability tweaks and Plug and Play. A good deal of NT-line DNA is still in Longhorn, from all reports.
It's too bad that VMWare is so bloody expensive. I would feel more secure running 2K as a Client OS in VMWare with Linux as the Host OS. Probably after MS stops supporting 2K it will be the only safe way to do it.
It's MacOS X and Linux for me now...good night, sweet prince of an OS...
All your complaints are obsolete. You know Ubuntu's ultra-mega-spiffy installer? Guess what? That's the new debian-installer which will be "official" when Sarge becomes the stable version.
99% of the users, OO has the same functionality as MS office.
Exactly.
I have been using OO.O exclusively for my work at Valley College. Even in situations where you have to submit your work as a MS.DOC file on floppy or CD-R, none of my Profs have complained about my documents not opening up for them.
The place I'm transferring to, however, requires MS Office. They will check your laptop for its presence. They would also want you to run Windows but my choice of MacOS X is considered "acceptable" to the IT department. The IT guys there hit the roof when I suggested I'd be bringing in a ThinkPad running Debian Linux. "We don't support that, and isn't that the HACKER OS?" Sheesh.
Getting back to my experiences at Valley: I have "sold" some of my Profs on OO.O. Perhaps the ability of OO.O to cleanse documents of macro viruses by saving first as an OO.O native file then resaving as.DOC is one of the biggest reasons they are impressed. Another reason: the cost. The refrain seems to be, "Hey, I'll use this at home. Thanks for showing it to me!"
Let's face it, even with the Student/Teacher discounts, MS Office is expensive for what you get when you compare it with OO.O.
I find it quite amusing that MS is basically doing the same thing with their new file formats as OO.O has done for years. XML+Text+Graphics in a.ZIP container? Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt.
The real point we'll know MS has cried "Uncle" is if they include OASIS format as a "save as" option. I doubt it will happen, but one can dream, can't one? ^_^
I mean, a hot chick that's into computers... how often does that happen?
Michaela Pereira, who was the anchor on the TechTV nightly news program, seemed to be genuinely interested in tech. She is continuing with her tech interests on the KTLA Morning News...she seems to have a genuine knowledge and love of it. And yes, she's cute.
Soledad O'Brien, who was the original host of The Site on first MSNBC, then ZDTV, also seemed to be genuinely interested in technology. I seem to remember she was also on a syndicated tech program before that. She's now on CNN and apparently no longer on the tech beat. Pity. I haven't seen her show (it airs very early PDT) but I seem to remember she was fairly attractive.
Then again, I'm a hetero female and should qualify my opinions on female pulchritude accordingly.
What is needed, I think, is for a "Mega Phantom Edit" to be made once Episode III comes out on DVD. Cut out all the dross of both Episodes I and II and just edit scenes from them into Episode III. Basically the glimpses of the two movies that raped and murdered my childhood would only be brief flashbacks.
So yeah, once you did that, you could accomplish the viewing order you suggest. Oh yeah, another caveat: the versions of Episodes IV, V and VI should be the original theatrical versions, not the "Special Edition" ones. Fsck the added CGI eye-candy. I don't care what Lucas thinks. I fell in love with the version of Episode IV that Lucas made on an $8,000,000 budget, not the one he remade with millions and millions of dollars and a veritable clone army of animators.
Oh yeah, the Clone Wars animated shorts by Genndy Tartakovsky need to be in there somewhere. Maybe show them between V and III. Those rock.
It looks a lot like...
on
Just a Phone?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
...my Ericsson r520m. The big diff between it and my phone is that I doubt this one has Bluetooth.
Another market for basic phones like these are people who can't carry cameraphones at work. I have friends who work at Lockheed Martin, for example, and cameraphones are strictly verboten there.
I like mine because it's simple and it does the job. I also got mine for free, first when I signed up with T-Mobile, then the second one when I re-upped. My technology-scorning musician husband has one now, with a prepaid account. It's simple enough not to frustrate him, which is always a concern.
I like devices that do one thing and do it well. That way, when they fail, (and they will!) you don't lose other things you use it for. I have a separate PDA, a separate digital camera, and a separate phone. I suspect I will probably get a stand-alone GPS when I get one of those.
Most of the original actors made the jump to doing voices for the show. And most importantly of all, many of the original TOS writers wrote for the animated series. Yeah the animation was Filmation-cheap, but it was well written. Illustrated radio, but GOOD illustrated radio.
The cartoon version got me hooked on the reruns of TOS and the novelizations. I was disappointed by the first Star Trek movie but thought the second one was great. The stage was set for everything in my life to stop on nights when a new TNG episode aired.
I understand all the rights questions have been cleared up and ST:TAS will be coming out Real Soon Now (tm) on DVD. Unfortunately Paramount's prices on their DVD sets of TOS have been hideously expensive. I can't afford them, and I suspect I won't be able to afford the TAS set when it came out.
I am positively loving this. I've previously used my Yahoo account because it has everything I need when I'm traveling, or when I'm using the computers at school. I can also set it up with a two-column format that is friendly for my Original Recipe iBook. Yes I know you can also do that in Yahoo but it's just not as elegant.
I could use a link to Google Maps, My Google Groups and some sort of bookmark storage scheme, but this will do for now.
Today has really been a bad day for computer users. All we need next is Yet Another New Windows Exploit/Virus/Trojan/Worm and our day will be complete.:P
I volunteer my time for a group called Koreh LA, which works with pre-literate children. I do a lot of reading to them and reading with them, because most of the children I work with did not get that kind of interaction at home. Moms and dads who don't read to their kids don't wind up with literate kids. It's that simple.
However, one of the ways to encourage reading is reading material created by the children themselves for each other. There is nothing that is more of an ego-boost than to point at a book and say "Hey! I wrote that."
Children who are literacy learners (and adults who are literacy learners, for that matter) usually use picture books in the early phases of learning to read. Big print, lots of pictures. What produces output like that, either to screen or to page? You got it...Presentation Software. It could be PowerPoint, it could be OpenOffice.Org Impress, it could be KOffice's Presenter, it could be AppleWorks' Presentation module, it could be Keynote. Doesn't matter which. All of them have an option to print slides as full pages.
Of course, this takes patience on the part of the mentor, and a willingness to "play secretary" for your mentees. If you can type fast, type what the kids have to say right into the presentation software. If you can't, bring a tape recorder and then transcribe what the kids say.
Then the fun begins. Bring in disks full of clipart and have the kids add the art to the page. Or scan drawings directly in with a scanner. Kids love this part of the process. Print them out, page by page, laminate the front and back cover, staple together or tape together accordion style and there you go. Your kid's an author.
This is what teachers call giving kids "Language Experiences." It's powerful, and an antidote to the Phonics, Phonics, Phonics kids get shoved down their throats now.
Use ancient PCs as diskless clients, the kind your school used to throw out when companies would donate them, cobble together an Athlon64 server, voila.
The kids can't screw up what they don't have access to. And Deep Freeze costs. K12LTSP is FREE.
Finally, someone agrees with me on this! Reducing Force sensitivity to midichlorians in ones bloodstream was totally lame.
I always thought that The Force was an awful lot like The Tao, and probably that's where Lucas got the idea. Try this on for size:
The Force that can be described is not the eternal Force. The name that can be spoken is not the eternal Name.
The nameless is the boundary of the Multiverse. The named is the mother of creation.
Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery. By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.
Yet mystery and reality emerge from the same source. This source is called The Void.
A Void birthed from a Void The beginning of all understanding.
-- adapted from Lao-Tzu, "The Tao Teh Ching" Chapter 1
Tell me that doesn't sound like it could be Jedi scripture! And certainly, the Jedi Knights and the Shaolin Monks seem to share quite a few similarities.
Another thing that pissed me off about this Jedi-in-a-blender stuff that Lucas has been doing in the prequel trilogy: a Jedi can go and have a roll in the hay, so long as s/he doesn't get "attached" to that person. OK, midichlorians are one thing, but the Jedi philosophy as the Playboy Philosophy? That dog won't hunt, bubba.
It would certainly make more sense that the Jedi were sworn to celibacy after a point in their training...probably when they lost their Padawan braid. Celibate warrior-monks are a fixture of both Western and Eastern history. The Knights Templar, the aforementioned Shaolin Monks, the Yamabushi of Japan...all warrior monks for whom celibacy was one of the requirements. Of course, in all those cases, there were always cases where vows were broken. The sexual urge is like that...bubbling up especially when it is repressed.
I hope that Episode 3 renews a certain amount of wonder and mythic power to Star Wars it has lost with all this damn tinkering. I've read a purported script: if it's authentic, this is the prequel Lucas should have made all along.
I was at the Chinese in 1977 to see Star Wars the first day. I was hooked.
I cried my heart out when I first saw The Empire Strikes Back. Then I saw it again. And again. And again.
I forgave Lucas the fucking Ewoks in Return of the Jedi because seeing Luke Skywalker redeem Darth Vader was just so great.
The Phantom Menace broke my heart.
I didn't bother to see Clones.
The Clone War shorts gave me some hope...but Genndy Tartakovsky could have been the reason why that worked so well.
But I think I just might go to see Revenge. All these reports of "dark and disturbing" are music to my ears. I've read the notorious "spoiler script" and if it's correct, this is going to kick ass. The only thing that left me wanting was that Mace Windu should go out in more of a blaze of glory. His death should have been epic, with much motherfucker ass kicked by Windu on his way out.
Slashdot Mirror
would have been better.
I seem to remember that one of the people who was being considered as adult Anakin was Leonardo di Caprio. I also seem to remember that the universal feeling about Leo as Anakin was that this would be the unmitigated "worst thing in the universe."
However, I get this feeling that Leo would have pulled through and done right by Anakin/Vader. For one thing, he's a way better actor than Hayden Christenson. We first saw that when he played Arnie Grape in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." We also saw it in his rendition of real-life poet/junkie Jim Carroll in "The Basketball Diaries." It was only after this that the concept of "Leo as Teen Idol" spoiled him for a whole generation of people who hate teen idols. Never mind that he's done great work since.
No, the roar was loud and long against Leo as Anakin from a billion billion geeks. I seem to remember I even got taken in by that. I forgot the transformation of another former teen idol who is now the best character actor of his generation, Johnny Depp. DiCaprio seems to be taking the same route Depp took out of teen idoldom, with a genuinely tour-de-force performance as Howard Hughes in "The Aviator" as renewed proof of his chops as an actor.
Would DiCaprio have done the dark anti-hero Anakin Skywalker justice? He certainly portrayed the dashing daredevil tycoon who turned into a tortured, sick shutin with a germ fetish quite well. And you have to admit that even at his nadir, as Jack Dawson in "Titanic," he wasn't all bad as the romantic ragamuffin hero. He could certainly have done more with Natalie Portman than Christenson did. And I suspect that he would have played the scene where he looks at himself as the masked Vader for the first time in a far more subtle way.
Perhaps in Universe B, Episodes II and III of the Star Wars saga don't suck. Perhaps in Universe B Lucas didn't bow to fan outrage and hired Leonardo DiCaprio as the adult Anakin. Perhaps this was also the universe where Lucas realized he wasn't so hot at directing as he was at producing and got other, more talented directors to direct the next two.
Perhaps I'm being too wishful here.
Bullshit. Excel was not the first spreadsheet, Visicalc was. Visicalc was the reason why Wall Street financial firms bought Apple IIe computers. Lotus 123 and Excel were Visicalc ripoffs. HTH HAND
The base of Lycoris is...wait for it now...CALDERA OPEN LINUX. As in The SCO Group.
This was something that had to happen after the SCO v. IBM blowup sometime or another. I stopped recommending Lycoris to friends and family after the SCO lawsuit, and I suspect I was not alone. Poor Joe Cheek was stuck in the middle of all this.
Mandriva is a good distro, and Joe Cheek is a really good developer. He created a version of Linux that was really good for retraining people with Windows on the brain. Maybe Mandriva will do a "Mandriva Switch" sub-distro geared to the same audience as Lycoris.
Well if it was, it wasn't funny.
They could do worse than to have the Red vs. Blue guys write the script. There's never been a game-related intentional* comedy before. A Halo movie with humor would be great. Bungie has always been known for throwing inside jokes into their games. A comedic/dramatic Halo movie would rock.
* Many previous game-related movies have been unintentional laugh riots.
"We use Macs, we use PCs running Linux," Jobs admitted. "It pains me to write that purchase order to Dell."
;-) I'm sure those spiffy new x86 Macs will happily run Debian when they are released.
Perhaps this is yet another reason why Apple is going MacIntel?
And the rest of the convo goes like this:
.XLS files!
Apple: All-righty-then! We'll move all our users to iWork! After all, Pages and Keynote are better for the Mac than Office 2004 was anyway! And furthermore, here's "NumberCruncher" the spreadsheet for iWork, which incidentally spits out perfect
Microsoft: But they are addicted to Office OS X! They will never switch!
Apple: Not if we start giving iWork away for free-as-in-beer...BWAHAHAHAHA!
Microsoft: ^_^;;; (sweating profusely) Um uh um uh...
Why do you think they call it "Not Twice Same Color?"
Umm, Sarge just became Debian Stable, and Windows 2000 is still a supported release until the end of this month. Your point is...?
1.) Windows 2K made the crappy Gateway computers at LA Valley College's computer lab tolerable.
2.) When they moved to Windows XP, those same Gateway computers felt like the POSes they are.
Now that Apple will be transitioning to x86 architecture, hopefully a situation will emerge where Windows 2K can be run safely in virtualization under MacOS X. XP will never sully a computer of mine. I know you can already run Windows 2K in virtualization under Linux. But I'd like to do it under MacOS X. It probably would be a lot less hassle to do. It seems like everything that you can do in Linux is less hassle in MacOS X.
Yes, it is most definitely a reference to the BSD booth babes. Yes, they dressed up in red leotards with the red pointy tail and the red horns. However, I haven't seen costumed BSD girls for years. Last time was Comdex back before the Dot Bomb crash. I suppose it's good to see that the tradition continues...somewhere...:P
2K is easily the high-water mark of MS operating systems. They get my copy when they pry it from my cold dead hands.
For those who want to see 2K or NT4 open-sourced: it will happen when Hell freezes over AND the Sun goes supernova. XP is basically 2K with lots and lots of eye-candy garbaggio layered on top of it. And 2K is NT4 with a lot of stability tweaks and Plug and Play. A good deal of NT-line DNA is still in Longhorn, from all reports.
It's too bad that VMWare is so bloody expensive. I would feel more secure running 2K as a Client OS in VMWare with Linux as the Host OS. Probably after MS stops supporting 2K it will be the only safe way to do it.
It's MacOS X and Linux for me now...good night, sweet prince of an OS...
All your complaints are obsolete. You know Ubuntu's ultra-mega-spiffy installer? Guess what? That's the new debian-installer which will be "official" when Sarge becomes the stable version.
You don't have to wait for that, however...
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
99% of the users, OO has the same functionality as MS office.
.DOC file on floppy or CD-R, none of my Profs have complained about my documents not opening up for them.
.DOC is one of the biggest reasons they are impressed. Another reason: the cost. The refrain seems to be, "Hey, I'll use this at home. Thanks for showing it to me!"
.ZIP container? Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt.
Exactly.
I have been using OO.O exclusively for my work at Valley College. Even in situations where you have to submit your work as a MS
The place I'm transferring to, however, requires MS Office. They will check your laptop for its presence. They would also want you to run Windows but my choice of MacOS X is considered "acceptable" to the IT department. The IT guys there hit the roof when I suggested I'd be bringing in a ThinkPad running Debian Linux. "We don't support that, and isn't that the HACKER OS?" Sheesh.
Getting back to my experiences at Valley: I have "sold" some of my Profs on OO.O. Perhaps the ability of OO.O to cleanse documents of macro viruses by saving first as an OO.O native file then resaving as
Let's face it, even with the Student/Teacher discounts, MS Office is expensive for what you get when you compare it with OO.O.
I find it quite amusing that MS is basically doing the same thing with their new file formats as OO.O has done for years. XML+Text+Graphics in a
The real point we'll know MS has cried "Uncle" is if they include OASIS format as a "save as" option. I doubt it will happen, but one can dream, can't one? ^_^
I think it has something to do with Google's new personal page feature.
I mean, a hot chick that's into computers... how often does that happen?
Michaela Pereira, who was the anchor on the TechTV nightly news program, seemed to be genuinely interested in tech. She is continuing with her tech interests on the KTLA Morning News...she seems to have a genuine knowledge and love of it. And yes, she's cute.
Soledad O'Brien, who was the original host of The Site on first MSNBC, then ZDTV, also seemed to be genuinely interested in technology. I seem to remember she was also on a syndicated tech program before that. She's now on CNN and apparently no longer on the tech beat. Pity. I haven't seen her show (it airs very early PDT) but I seem to remember she was fairly attractive.
Then again, I'm a hetero female and should qualify my opinions on female pulchritude accordingly.
What is needed, I think, is for a "Mega Phantom Edit" to be made once Episode III comes out on DVD. Cut out all the dross of both Episodes I and II and just edit scenes from them into Episode III. Basically the glimpses of the two movies that raped and murdered my childhood would only be brief flashbacks.
So yeah, once you did that, you could accomplish the viewing order you suggest. Oh yeah, another caveat: the versions of Episodes IV, V and VI should be the original theatrical versions, not the "Special Edition" ones. Fsck the added CGI eye-candy. I don't care what Lucas thinks. I fell in love with the version of Episode IV that Lucas made on an $8,000,000 budget, not the one he remade with millions and millions of dollars and a veritable clone army of animators.
Oh yeah, the Clone Wars animated shorts by Genndy Tartakovsky need to be in there somewhere. Maybe show them between V and III. Those rock.
...my Ericsson r520m. The big diff between it and my phone is that I doubt this one has Bluetooth.
Another market for basic phones like these are people who can't carry cameraphones at work. I have friends who work at Lockheed Martin, for example, and cameraphones are strictly verboten there.
I like mine because it's simple and it does the job. I also got mine for free, first when I signed up with T-Mobile, then the second one when I re-upped. My technology-scorning musician husband has one now, with a prepaid account. It's simple enough not to frustrate him, which is always a concern.
I like devices that do one thing and do it well. That way, when they fail, (and they will!) you don't lose other things you use it for. I have a separate PDA, a separate digital camera, and a separate phone. I suspect I will probably get a stand-alone GPS when I get one of those.
A fond childhood memory, indeed.
Most of the original actors made the jump to doing voices for the show. And most importantly of all, many of the original TOS writers wrote for the animated series. Yeah the animation was Filmation-cheap, but it was well written. Illustrated radio, but GOOD illustrated radio.
The cartoon version got me hooked on the reruns of TOS and the novelizations. I was disappointed by the first Star Trek movie but thought the second one was great. The stage was set for everything in my life to stop on nights when a new TNG episode aired.
I understand all the rights questions have been cleared up and ST:TAS will be coming out Real Soon Now (tm) on DVD. Unfortunately Paramount's prices on their DVD sets of TOS have been hideously expensive. I can't afford them, and I suspect I won't be able to afford the TAS set when it came out.
I am positively loving this. I've previously used my Yahoo account because it has everything I need when I'm traveling, or when I'm using the computers at school. I can also set it up with a two-column format that is friendly for my Original Recipe iBook. Yes I know you can also do that in Yahoo but it's just not as elegant.
I could use a link to Google Maps, My Google Groups and some sort of bookmark storage scheme, but this will do for now.
Oh yeah, it loads really, really quickly too.
Call me a Google fangirl, but this rocks.
Today has really been a bad day for computer users. All we need next is Yet Another New Windows Exploit/Virus/Trojan/Worm and our day will be complete. :P
I volunteer my time for a group called Koreh LA, which works with pre-literate children. I do a lot of reading to them and reading with them, because most of the children I work with did not get that kind of interaction at home. Moms and dads who don't read to their kids don't wind up with literate kids. It's that simple.
However, one of the ways to encourage reading is reading material created by the children themselves for each other. There is nothing that is more of an ego-boost than to point at a book and say "Hey! I wrote that."
Children who are literacy learners (and adults who are literacy learners, for that matter) usually use picture books in the early phases of learning to read. Big print, lots of pictures. What produces output like that, either to screen or to page? You got it...Presentation Software. It could be PowerPoint, it could be OpenOffice.Org Impress, it could be KOffice's Presenter, it could be AppleWorks' Presentation module, it could be Keynote. Doesn't matter which. All of them have an option to print slides as full pages.
Of course, this takes patience on the part of the mentor, and a willingness to "play secretary" for your mentees. If you can type fast, type what the kids have to say right into the presentation software. If you can't, bring a tape recorder and then transcribe what the kids say.
Then the fun begins. Bring in disks full of clipart and have the kids add the art to the page. Or scan drawings directly in with a scanner. Kids love this part of the process. Print them out, page by page, laminate the front and back cover, staple together or tape together accordion style and there you go. Your kid's an author.
This is what teachers call giving kids "Language Experiences." It's powerful, and an antidote to the Phonics, Phonics, Phonics kids get shoved down their throats now.
Don't take my word for it. Here's a paper on exactly what I'm talking about. Hope this helps...
One acronym: K12LTSP.
Use ancient PCs as diskless clients, the kind your school used to throw out when companies would donate them, cobble together an Athlon64 server, voila.
The kids can't screw up what they don't have access to. And Deep Freeze costs. K12LTSP is FREE.
I always thought that The Force was an awful lot like The Tao, and probably that's where Lucas got the idea. Try this on for size:
-- adapted from Lao-Tzu, "The Tao Teh Ching" Chapter 1
Tell me that doesn't sound like it could be Jedi scripture! And certainly, the Jedi Knights and the Shaolin Monks seem to share quite a few similarities.
Another thing that pissed me off about this Jedi-in-a-blender stuff that Lucas has been doing in the prequel trilogy: a Jedi can go and have a roll in the hay, so long as s/he doesn't get "attached" to that person. OK, midichlorians are one thing, but the Jedi philosophy as the Playboy Philosophy? That dog won't hunt, bubba.
It would certainly make more sense that the Jedi were sworn to celibacy after a point in their training...probably when they lost their Padawan braid. Celibate warrior-monks are a fixture of both Western and Eastern history. The Knights Templar, the aforementioned Shaolin Monks, the Yamabushi of Japan...all warrior monks for whom celibacy was one of the requirements. Of course, in all those cases, there were always cases where vows were broken. The sexual urge is like that...bubbling up especially when it is repressed.
I hope that Episode 3 renews a certain amount of wonder and mythic power to Star Wars it has lost with all this damn tinkering. I've read a purported script: if it's authentic, this is the prequel Lucas should have made all along.
I was at the Chinese in 1977 to see Star Wars the first day. I was hooked.
I cried my heart out when I first saw The Empire Strikes Back. Then I saw it again. And again. And again.
I forgave Lucas the fucking Ewoks in Return of the Jedi because seeing Luke Skywalker redeem Darth Vader was just so great.
The Phantom Menace broke my heart.
I didn't bother to see Clones.
The Clone War shorts gave me some hope...but Genndy Tartakovsky could have been the reason why that worked so well.
But I think I just might go to see Revenge. All these reports of "dark and disturbing" are music to my ears. I've read the notorious "spoiler script" and if it's correct, this is going to kick ass. The only thing that left me wanting was that Mace Windu should go out in more of a blaze of glory. His death should have been epic, with much motherfucker ass kicked by Windu on his way out.