• It looks like tomorrow, Tuesday, February 19, 2008, will be the official TOD for the HD-DVD format, as Toshiba has scheduled a press conference to be held at 5:00 PM Tokyo time. It’s assumed this will be to declare the death of the format.
• On the subject of the death of HD-DVD, looks like a second season set of the original Star Trek series HD remasters have hit a major snag. We’re not going to be seeing that release for a while, from the sound of it. Ah well, I’ve been going rather slowly through the first season set, so I’ll continue to pace myself.
• Hurray! Tremors: The Series is heading for DVD on July 22nd! (tentative)
• I’ve mentioned it here before a handful of times, and Dubai continues their insanity (here’s a mirror copy, as the original page is getting hammered pretty hard). Frankly, if you take a step back and think about it, all of this is brilliant. It’s some of the only aggressive, intelligent, long-term thinking going on in the world right now. The folks in Dubai clearly know where the oil industry is headed. And while their piece of that pie is at its height, they are transforming themselves into the single most impressive tourist spot on the face of the Earth. Few governments and/or companies are anywhere this forward thinking or self-aware. The stats on Dubai are purely mind-blowing. Seriously, read throught that whole page. This is the first city that TRULY looks like it is from a 1950’s sci-fi landscape. This *IS* “the future.”
• Meanwhile, here’s an article I very much agree with as to the dumbing down of folks domestically here in “The States.” Now admittedly, I was somebody who intentionally coasted by through high school with little effort, and dropped out of college (admittedly, it was primarily due to boredome). I think the modern education system is broken beyond repair. But I’m a naturally curious person (in many areas - there are numerous areas I will never care about in the slightest, like sports, fashion or the like). They touch on it in the article, and I completely believe it to be one of the primary reasons, which is the attention span of the modern American citizen. It’s truly alarming. I was recently watching The Truman Show (an awesome movie), and it honestly scared me to realize just how likely the scenario of that plot now seems (particularly in light of looking at the immensity of the stuff they are building in Dubai, referenced in the above post). It was far fetched 10 years ago when it first came out. As usual, writer Andrew Niccol was ahead of his time. The rise in “reality TV” (one of the greatest misnomers, or so I would like to think) is an obvious result of this epidemic. I loathe reality TV. It’s depressing that what Max Headroom (the series, not the specific character) had to say more than 20 years ago is now true today. The majority of broadcast/cable/satellite TV is now Network 23 (or Network 66, for that matter).
• Christopher Lloyd is to briefly repirse his role of Doc Brown
• Knight Rider did very impressively in the ratings. I haven’t watched it yet, but probably will tomorrow.
• Speaking of doing well, Jumper did decently opening in #1 with around $27 million for the weekend ($33 million if you count Thursday as well). I like the movie well enough. Not awesome, but pretty good.

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