Carbon Credits have come to the forefront in our country again because Al Gore is making a big deal about them. The problem is, it turns out that Carbon Credits aren't quite the deal they are cracked up to be.

A big deal was made recently when it was discovered that Al Gore's Tennessee mansion consumes 20 times the amount of energy of the average American home. No problem, Al Gore offsets his massive energy consumption by purchasing carbon credits through and switching from incandescent to florescent light bulbs. Incidentally, GIM, LLP is . So he reduces his "carbon footprint" by purchasing carbon credits...from himself.

Okay, so that's not really a big deal. After all, if I owned Jack-in-the-Box, its not like I wouldn't run down and get me a burger from the old JIB once in a while. Al Gore likes to say that he's "Carbon-neutral" because he's purchased enough carbon credits to offset the carbon footprint he creates with his giant home, his flights on private jets, and I can guaran-damn-tee you he don't drive around in a Prius. That's kind of like being a vegetarian because you don't like the unethical treatment of animals, but paying someone else to eat all your veggies because you just can't get by without the taste of a good steak, isn't it?

The bigger problem here is in the "carbon credit" principle itself. You buy "carbon credits" from a company because they promise they will do something eco-friendly with it. But there's no watchdog in place to make sure that companies do what they say they're going to do, its really just a case of a company selling you a bottle of snake oil.

An investigation by the Financial Times has revealed some interesting results:

DuPont, for instance, has asked consumers to help them reduce the amount of CO2 emissions from one of its Kentucky plants. The plant reduces its emissions by 1 ton for every $4 paid. However, the equipment needed isn't very expensive and DuPont has refused to disclose how much money it has taken in.

Blue Source asks consumers to invest in an enhanced oil recovery where companies pump CO2 into underground reserves to bring up oil more efficiently and bury the CO2. However, because of the high price of oil, Blue Source admits that this process was already profitable, so consumers are investing in a process that oil companies were doing on their own.

The investigation also uncovered many cases where people purchased worthless credits that did not yield any reductions, as well as companies profiting from little effort or from gains in efficiency that they were already profiting from in the first place. This is all due to a huge lack in verification of the whole process. Consumers are giving money to companies to purchase "carbon credits" but there is no way for them to be sure that that money is being put to use for the purpose of actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But hey, it absolves us of responsibility to do anything if we pay someone else to do it for us and certainly makes us feel better, right?

The planet has been dubbed Gliese 581 C after its star, the red dwarf Gliese 581, about 20 light years away. Because of limitations on current technology, planets must be in a very close orbit to their stars in order to be detected. Since red dwarves are cooler than our sun, planets can have a close orbit and still be in what's called the "Goldilocks zone," or the zone a planet must be in in order to be habitable. Gliese 581 C orbits its star every 13 Earth days. If you were 30 years old on Earht you'd be 842 on Gliese 581 C!

Gliese 581 C inhabits a system with three other known planets, a gas giant about 15 times Earth's mass, and another planet about 8 times Earth's mass discovered at the same time as Gliese 581 C (this planet is outside the system's habitable zone.) Right now it is speculated that Gliese 581 C is either a rocky planet like earth, or covered completely by liquid water since it is not far enough from its star for the water to be frozen, nor close enough for the star to boil the water away.

To date, over 200 extra-solar planets have been discovered. I love this stuff!

Am I the only one annoyed by the naming convention for planets? I mean, Gliese 581 C? That's not going to work in a science fiction film...

Tarkin - I grow tired of asking this, so it will be the last time. Where is the rrrrebel base? (gotta roll that "r.")
Leia - Gliese 581 C...They're on Gliese 581 C.

Chekov - You lie! On Gliese 581 C there was life. There was a fair chance to...
Kahn - THIS IS GLIESE 581 C! Gliese 581 D exploded six months after we were left here. The shock shifted the orbit of this planet and everything was laid to waste.

Why was this even an issue in a country where we supposedly have "religious freedom?" The VA was already issuing headstones with over 30 religious symbols, including Konko-Kyo(?), Eckanar(??), and Sikh(??!). Why was Wicca excluded?

Seems to me that a country of "religious freedom" would put the symbol of ANY religion on a headstone if it was the religion of one our our soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines, right?

Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.

How hard is it to make a bloody pot of coffee? Well, if the monkeys that work here are any indication, it is probably a damn sight harder that nook-yoo-lur physics.

I don't ask for many things in life, coffee is one of the few pleasures I have (actually, this is not true, as I ask for quite a lot, but that wouldn't quite fit my template of making you empathize with me). If I had my 'druthers, I'd ruther be in complete control of the two coffee pots here in the office, selecting the beans we use (whole, not pre-ground), grinding them myself, placing a high-quality filter on our water lines, having a high-capacity manual drip coffee pot, give myself the most control over the process possible. Since I'm a simple peon, however, and knowing that being my office's brew master would adversely affect my work performance, I grudgingly accept that, logistically, our two Mr. Coffee automatic drips and bulk discount purchases of coffee are the way to go.

My main problem is that I make the best pot of coffee in the office. Not just in my opinion, but everyone else's. So much so that the coffee drinkers here have decided not to even attempt at brewing a pot, but rather wait until I do so to get their java. Sure, the office opens at six and I don't get to work until about an hour and a half later, so they make two pots of the vilest swill just so they can get by until I get here, but this is usually only drunk (drank?) by the most hardcore caffeine junkies. You know the type, the guy that gets a headache if he doesn't have his three cups by lunch time. To say that the coffee other employees here make is "bad" is an understatement. The "other" coffee here makes "BK Joe" taste like the finest of Italian brews.

Before I became the gold standard for coffee in our office, any old hack would take their shot at brewing coffee with the end result being either so weak that it looked (and tasted) like brown water or so bitter that it was simply undrinkable. Then I came along. I've got several years of coffee making experience under my belt, and even more of just drinking the stuff. (FYI, for those who believe that drinking coffee stunts your growth, I agree. I was 5' at the age of 5, and I've grown only 10 inches in the 25+ years since. Coincidentally, I started drinking "Coffee milk*" at that age.) It took about a week to get the brew just right.

When I get to work, the first thing I do after clocking in is head to the employee break room and brew two pots. The ones that were brewed earlier have either been consumed or (more likely) poured down the sink in disgust. The problem is my office is in a different building from the break room. After I get to my desk, log on to my computer, file away the various doctor excuses and employee warnings submitted from the weekend, answer any vital e-mails and head over to get a cup, its all gone. I stayed behind once to see why it disappeared so quickly. I figured that someone was being greedy and filling up a thermos to bring to their office. What I saw amazed me. After about 7 minutes (which is the approximate brew time for these two Mr. Coffee's), the employees would form a single-file line to the break room and start filling their mugs, styrofoam cups, and other coffee-holding vessels. All 20 something coffee-drinkers had depleted the supply of brewed coffee so that nothing but the dregs were left by the time I returned.

I tried staking out the pot so that I could get a cup as soon as the brew cycle was repeated, but since the advent of the "drip stop" function with modern coffee makers, people just come get a cup before the cycle is even finished. It's a vicious cycle, I have to either resort to setting a timer so that I could get to the pot as soon as brew is done and hope some coffee was still there, or settle the crap brewed by someone who either thinks they can take on the master or simply doesn't care and drinks coffee simply as a means to get caffeine into their system (go drink a Coke, dammit!) Usually, I just have to brew another pot and try again (we go through about six or seven pots a day.) I've floated a few ideas around, but I've pretty much settled on bringing my own coffee maker to work, commandeering a bag of coffee, and brewing a pot in my office for my own consumption (the other two people in my building are non-drinkers.) Is it wrong that an artisan will withhold his own talents simply because he wants to be able to share in the fruits of his own labor? Since I'm, apparently, the only person here capable of making at least a semi-decent cup, do I have an obligation to share this talent with others?

I'm torn.

*Coffee milk. Made from equal parts coffee and whole milk (increase the amount of milk for 2% or 1% to reach the desired "creaminess"), sweetened with sugar (I used to like 2 tsp for an 8 oz. cup). It is common to decrease the ratio of milk to coffee, as well as sugar as the drinker ages.

Washington Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman and his teammates came out in the second inning of their game against the Atlanta Braves at RFK Tuesday night wearing caps from Virginia Tech. The RFK crowd responded with a standing ovation. (Source - Rich Galen, of the Alexandria Times)

Income Share vs. Tax Share
The share of taxes income earners pay is disproportionate to the amount of income they earn. This information comes from the IRS.

In 2004, the most recent year for which data is available, the top 1% of the US's individual wage earners earned 19% of the income in the country. This means that the remaining 99% of the country earned the remaining 81%. HOWEVER, the top 1% paid 36.89% of the income taxes paid. The top 1% paid over a third of the country's income taxes despite earning less than 20% of the income.
The top 5% earned 33.45% of the income, but paid 57.13% of the taxes. The top 5% only earned a third of the income earned in this country, but paid OVER HALF of the taxes.
The top 10% earned 44.35% of the income, but paid 68.19% of the taxes. Still earning less than half of the income, the top 10% of wage earners were responsible for paying over TWO THIRDS of the country's taxes.
The top 25% earned 66.13% of the country's income, but paid 84.86% of the taxes.
The top 50% of the United States' individual wage earners earned 86.58% of the income in the country, but paid 96.7% of the income taxes. Half of the country's tax payers are responsible for almost all of the country's income taxes.

Now, who exactly make up these percentages? The much reviled "evil rich?" Billionaires? People who do not work for a living and instead live off mommy and daddy's trust fund? Hardly.

If you earned $328,049 in 2004, you were in the top 1%. Sure, that's a lot of money, but not quite Bill Gates money. Earn at least $137,056? That puts you in the top 5%. An adjusted gross income of $99,112 or more puts you in the top 10%. $60,041 will put you in the top 25%. If you earned at least $30,122, YOU ARE IN THE TOP 50%. Do you see the disparity here?

This unfair tax policy is not the only quibble I have with income taxes. Billions of dollars and hours are spent when tax payers are simply filing their income tax reports. that every year Americans spend 6.4 BILLION (with a "B") hours filling out their tax forms, which works out to about an average of 27 hours per report filed. He also notes that some European countries have taken steps to simplify their tax codes.

He gives the example of Estonia. Estonia was the first country to adopt a . Everyone, individuals as well as corporations, were taxed at the same rate. In 1995, the tax rate was 26%. The rate has dropped to 22% and is scheduled to drop to 20% in 2009. In Mr. Stossel's words:

Unsurprisingly, Estonia is booming. The former Soviet republic used to be poor, with an average income 65 percent below its European neighbors. Today, Estonians are almost as rich as their neighbors, and their economy is growing more than 11 percent a year.

Corporations like a tax system that is low and simple, too, and that leads them to do more business in flat-tax countries. American companies such as Microsoft, Colgate, 3M, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, and Johnson & Johnson opened businesses in Estonia after the flat tax was adopted. Twelve years ago, foreign investment in Estonia made up only 5 percent of GDP, but today, it's up to 20 percent. That means there's more money in the Estonian economy to tax. So while the tax rate dropped, government revenues actually increased.

I cited an article about the shooting that stated:

Virginia Tech is in Blacksburg, in a scenic Blue Ridge valley in southwestern Virginia, in an area where gun ownership is common.

Virginia has lenient gun-ownership laws. Ownership requires only passing criminal background checks, which can be bypassed by buying from an unlicensed dealer. And unlicensed dealers can sell their wares at gun shows without requiring criminal checks. Guns need not be registered unless the owner wants to carry a concealed weapon.

State of Virginia
Virginia law does not require a permit to purchase any type of firearm. Virginia does require citizens to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon (as do most states which allow concealed carrying of firearms.) Usual restrictions apply (felons, people under the age of 29 with juvenile delinquent records, and people with restraining orders cannot possess firearms).

The Brady Campaign's 2005 state report card (the most recent) gives Virginia a grade of "C minus" for their gun control laws. For gun controllers, A = good, F = bad. For me, the lower your score, the better state you live in. According to the Brady Campaign, 32 of the 50 states received grades of "D" or "F," which, by their standards, means Virginia is better than most states. (My home state gets an "F," which means I live in a relatively free state.)

Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech, on the other hand does not allow ANYONE to possess a firearm at all:

The university's employees, students, and volunteers, or any visitor or other third party attending a sporting, entertainment, or educational event, or visiting an academic or administrative office building or residence hall, are further prohibited from carrying, maintaining, or storing a firearm or weapon on any university facility, even if the owner has a valid permit, when it is not required by the individual's job, or in accordance with the relevant University Student Life Policies

An employee may possess a firearm or weapon if it is:
- Used by an employee who is a certified law enforcement officer employed by the Virginia Tech Police Department;
- Required as a part of the employee's job duties with the Commonwealth of Virginia; or
- Connected with training received by the employee in order to perform the responsibilities of their job with the university.

Employees and students may possess and use appropriate tools, such as saws, knives, and other such implements, necessary for the performance of their job duties or school work, or for student recreational purposes approved under University Student Life Policies. Certain agricultural workers have been authorized to use firearms, and hunting on university property may be authorized by the appropriate university officials. Some employees reside in university-owned houses and are permitted to keep personal firearms on these premises; however, this exception does not extend to employees living in university residence halls.

Personally, I wonder, what if Virginia Tech didn't have such restrictive measures in place? What if citizens were not denied the right to carry a firearm on campus? Would 30 people have died yesterday?

UPDATE!
This article is oddly prophetic. Earlier this year, Virginia House Bill 1572 was proposed which would prohibit Virginia universities from making rules or regulations preventing students with concealed carry permits from carrying firearms on campus. At the time, Larry Hinker, a spokesman for VT said of the bill "Why would the General Assembly wish to legislate to make campuses unsafe?"

The bill died in subcommittee. Afterwards, Hinker said, "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

I'm sure.

In 1997, this young woman joined the US Navy because she wanted to see the world. She began her two year tour of duty that year, and also married a man 14 years her senior. In 1998, the young woman accused her husband of threatening to kill her, which he denied doing. The charges were dropped when the young woman failed to appear at a court hearing. That same year, she divorced her husband and was discharged from the Navy because of a pregnancy by a sailor she was having an affair with.

By 2002, the young woman has given up on seeing the world. She was back in her hometown, unable to find work. That year, she was arrested while working as a topless dancer. According to police, the young woman stole the keys to a customer's tax while giving him a lap dance and stealing his car when he went to the restroom. The woman leads police on a car chase, finally being caught after suffering a flat tire, leaving a damaged police car and 10 charges in her wake. She was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.19, over twice the legal limit. In 2003, the young woman pled guilty to four of the 10 charges leveled against her, and served three weekends in jail plus two years' probation.

At some point during the last few years, the young woman had suffered from a mental breakdown and was taken to a hospital.

This is the story of Crystal Mangum, the young woman who accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her. Most of the country overwhelmingly came to her defense. Reporters and news anchors were breathless. "What kind of filthy underbelly does Duke have?" some asked. We were assailed with "Duke Lacrosse Rape Scandal" headlines. The story, poor, young, single black mother assaulted by three privileged white college athletes, was too juicy to ignore.

A group of Duke Professors placed an ad in a local newspaper supporting the victim and stating that there was an environment of sexism and racism at Duke. (The ad, posted at University's African & African-American Studies website, has since been removed.) "Wanted Posters" of the Duke lacrosse team were created. Two of the three players were suspended from school (the third graduated the day before the three were indicted.)

The team's remaining season was cancelled. Former Duke Professor Houston Baker wrote a letter just a scant two weeks after the incident allegedly occurred, asking "What have Duke and its leadership done to address this horrific, racist incident alleged to have occurred," asserting "internationally, we have been deeply embarrassed by the silence that seems to surround this white, male athletic team's racist assaults (by words, certainly - deeds, possibly) in our community." He also stated that the players were "safe under the cover of silent whiteness..." asking "How many more people of color must fall victim to violent, white, male, athletic privilege...?"

Coach Mike Pressler, a victim of hate mail, phone calls, and vandalism, resigned. Players were vilified and threatened. Duke's already strained relationship with the city of Durham, NC, worsened. Jesse Jackson offered to pay the girl's college tuition.

The three players have been found innocent; the conclusion was that no attack had ever occurred.

Flip this over to the thing going on with Don Imus. Imus made a smarmy, stupid remark about a basketball team (composed of black AND white players), and at the same time complimented the other team (composed of white AND black players) as being "cute." This man operates a charity ranch for children suffering from cancer and has raised millions of charity dollars. He makes a mildly-retarded, throw-away remark on the air, and he's lynched for it.

Does racism still exist in the United States? You're damn right it does.

Breaking News - Shooting at Virginia Tech
Reportedly, over 30 people have been shot and killed in a shooting at Virginia Tech. I love the reporting in this article:

Virginia Tech is in Blacksburg, in a scenic Blue Ridge valley in southwestern Virginia, in an area where gun ownership is common.

Virginia has lenient gun-ownership laws. Ownership requires only passing criminal background checks, which can be bypassed by buying from an unlicensed dealer. And unlicensed dealers can sell their wares at gun shows without requiring criminal checks. Guns need not be registered unless the owner wants to carry a concealed weapon.

PC World has come up with a list of their 10 Worst Video Games of all Time. Here it is with my comments. As a video game fan, I understand that everyone's list is subjective, and your top 10 list won't be the same as mine (or theirs).

10. Elf Bowling - Nintendo DS, 2005
This game started life as a free downloadable game back in 1999. It got old real fast (like within an hour.) In 2005, for some reason, the brainiacs at Nintendo decided to convert this to a Nintendo DS game, and make you pay for it. To date, the game has sold one copy (okay, I made that last part up, but you actually paid money for this game, you are an idiot.)

9. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - various platforms, 2004
Prince of Persia is a long-standing game series, going all the way back to 1989. The game's hero had always been a cheerful, generally positive character. However, with Warrior Within, the game designers decided to make the game more adult-oriented, with more gore, violence, sex, etc...basically undoing everything the series had done to date. I don't know why this game is on the "Worst 10," though, because many game critics actually liked the game, and it sold better than its predecessor, PoP: Sands of Time

8. Make My Video - Sega CD, 1992
I'd never heard of this game, but it allowed you to make videos for bands such as Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, C+C Music Factory, and Kriss Kross (STRIKE ONE!) Unfortunately, the game limited you to pre-rendered videos and a few video effects (STRIKE TWO!) It's cover featured a picture of a shirtless "Marky" Mark Wahlberg (STRIKE THREE...YER OUT!)

7. Shaq-Fu - various platforms, 1994
Yes...as you can probably infer from the title, you took on the roll of Shaquille O'Neal and used his Kung Fu skills to save the world. But, if the thought of fighting evil dressed as a basketball player didn't appeal to you, you could also play as cat-girl Kaori, the monster Beast, the mummy Sett, the zombie Mephis, the voodoo priestess Voodoo, or some guy from India named Rajah. No, I did NOT make that up.

6. Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle - Atari 2600, ColecoVision, 1982
Remember the Smurfs? Me too. Remember wishing you could be a generic Smurf tasked with saving Smurfette? Me neither. This game let you do it, anyway. On another (positive?) note, the ColecoVision version would let you take advantage of a graphical glitch to make Smurfette appear without her dress on.

5. Pac-Man - Atari 2600, 1981
I disagree with this one. Sure, this version of Pac-Man didn't feature the sounds or graphics of the arcade game it was based on. And Pac-Man didn't make the classic "wagga wagga wagga" sound when he ate his pellets, but an irritating "wonk wonk wonk" sound. And the music from the arcade game was missing. But I spent many hours playing this game at home, and I don't think it was THAT bad. However, this game is largely considered to be one of the catalysts of the video game crash of '83. Atari produced 12 million copies of the game, despite there only being around 10 million Atari 2600 systems in homes. The logic here was that so many people would want a home version of the popular arcade game, they'd purchase an Atari 2600 to get it.

4. Daikatana - N64, GameCube, Windows, 2000
Never heard of it. Supposedly the game's development was supposed to last 7 months and somehow got stretched out to three years. Featured an infamous ad in 1997 that stated "John Romero's (the game's creator) about to make you his bitch." Never, ever, taunt gamers. There's always someone better who will make you their bitch.

3. Custer's Revenge - Atari 2600, 1982
The game had you taking on the role of a well-armed General George Custer, and you must dodge various obstacles and reunite with your Native American lover. And by "well-armed" I actually mean "sporting a raging hard-on." And by "reunite," I actually mean "have sex with." I'm not kidding.

2. Super Columbine Massacre RPG - Windows, 2005
This game was available as a free download. I don't know what's worse...the fact that this game was created, or the fact that the game designer had to shut down his website due to the overwhelming demand.

1. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - Atari 2600, 1982
This game tops every "Worst Games Ever Made" list ever...uhhh...made. E.T. was a box-office smash in June of 1982. Warner announced in July that it had acquired the game rights to the film. Warner wanted to get the game on store shelves in time for the Christmas season, which meant the game would need to be finished by the end of August in order get the game into production. This left 5 weeks for the game to be developed where most games at the time required 5-7 months to turn out a decent product. As with Pac-Man, Atari overestimated the demand for this game, producing 4 million copies, and only around 1.5 million actually sold. Retailers returned the unsold copies to Atari in droves, and Atari, according to some, actually resorted to burying the copies en masse and then covering them with a layer of concrete in an Arizona landfill.

The only thing I'd change is delete Pac-Man off the list and ad the NES game Magic Johnson's Fast Break. This was the first game I actually saved money and purchased on my own, shelling out $30 bucks for it. I couldn't wait to play as one of my hardcourt heroes, Magic Johnson. This was at a time when I was naive enough to believe that a game with a well-known athlete's name meant that the athlete had been in on the development of the game, making sure it was of good-quality and realistic, etc. Sadly, this was not the case. MJ's Fast Break was a two on two game, and basically all you had to do to rack 100+ points in a game (and thereby CRUSHING the CPU), was get the ball to the baseline at the top corner of the court and shoot three-pointers all day. The game designers didn't develop the in-game physics very well (or at all). I'll use a screen shot from the old Atari 2600 game Basketball to illustrate.

In a three-dimensional world, the players would each be roughly the same distance from the basket. Shots taken by either player would arc along the yellow lines from the player to the basket. From the viewer's perspective, the apex of the shot taken by the purple player would be lower than the apex of the shot taken by the green player, even though each shot would reach the same height from the perspective of the players. In the game, though, there was an invisible "ceiling" represented by the red line. Any shot taken by your player would leave the hands in an "upwardly" direction to this ceiling, and then travel in a "downwardly" direct to the basket. As you can see, the further "up" the court your player moved (from sideline to sideline) the less "arc" the shot had.

Since video games only take place in the two-dimensional world of your television screen, and since the game's limited physics had the ball move at a fixed speed, the ball had less distance to travel from the green player to the basket than from the purple player to the basket. The result is that shot's taken from the purple player's position took FOREVER to get to the basket, while shot's taken from the green player's position traveled very quickly. That, coupled with the fact that the player's also moved at unrealistic speeds, and covered the distance of the court faster than humanly possible, made it rather unfair to play against the computer. All you had to do was continually get your player to the green player's position, and the game was out of reach in about 30 seconds.

Tombstone on its surface appears to be a straightforward Western film. But if you look deeper into the movie there is also an underlying tone of Armageddon. Let me explain.

At the beginning of the film members of the Cow-Boys gang are shown interrupting a Mexican wedding and gun down several attendees. A priest is shown angrily shouting in Spanish at the Cow-Boys, seemingly placing a curse on them, before being killed by Johnny Ringo. When asked to translate what the priest was saying, Ringo says that the priest was quoting Revelation 6:8:

Behold a pale horse, the man that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him...

Pale Horse
Certainly the reference here is the character Doc Holliday. It is established in the film, as was true in real life, that Holliday suffered from "consumption," or more properly, tuberculosis. Long-sufferers of this disease become extremely pale in complexion as their health deteriorates and Holliday has obviously lived with the disease for a long time. Holliday, through the course of the film, becomes Wyatt's right hand man. He is the first part of the priest's curse (or prophesy), the pale horse.

Death and Hell Follows
Obviously, the character of Wyatt Earp fulfills this part of the priest's prophecy. In the film, Wyatt at first seems reluctant to take on any law enforcement role. However, his other two brothers, Morgan and Virgil do, forcing Wyatt to follow suit. The Cow-Boys are not willing to follow the rule of law (not carrying guns in town) so the Earps, along with a deputized Doc Holliday, decide to make them do so which leads up to the famous gunfight, which begins the conflict between the Earps and the Cow-boys.

As the four lawmen (Four Horsemen?) walk down one of Tombstone's dusty streets, the burning building is seen. Not simply a burning building, but the embodiment of Hell's raging fires which foreshadow the start of the film's violent conflict.

In retribution for the gunfight, assassination attempts are made on the wives of the Earps, Virgil, and Morgan. Virgil looses the use of an arm, and Morgan dies after being shot in the back. (minor note, the film makes it look as though the shootings happen back to back when, in reality, they were several months apart.) It is decided that Earps will pull up stakes and leave Tombstone. Curly Bill Brocius, leader of the Cow-Boys, sends some of his gang to follow the Earps and "finish it." However, Wyatt and his group of riders intercepts the gang at Tucson's train station as they are leaving. All of the gang are killed, except one, whom Wyatt sends back to Curly Bill with a message:

Tell him the law's comin'! You tell him I'm comin'! And hell's comin' with me, you hear?! Hell's comin' with me!

Another important point to remember is that in the book of Revelation, Death is an agent of God, sent out unto the Earth to "kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth." In the Earp posse's battle with a group led by Curly Bill, Wyatt walks into a creek...stepping out into the middle of the gunfight. Curly Bill fires several shots at Wyatt from point blank range but never hits him. Perhaps this is because of Divine Intervention? After the fight, when asked of Wyatt's location, Doc replies "He's down by the creek, walking on water."

Thus, Tombstone may seem like your standard western, but can just as easily be interpreted as a tale of Armageddon. The lawless Cow-Boys decide to spit in the face of God by killing the wedding party and the priest. Their reward is divine retribution and to experience part of the Book of Revelation firsthand.

Don't you just love it when movies can seem so straightforward, yet they have a deeper meaning or message hidden down in there?

Monkey: Dad, how come there's a bug in the water mom fixed for me?
Heavyarms: Son, there is NOT a bug in your water.

(My son, raised on a steady diet of Transformers, Star Wars, Ninja Turtles, etc. has quite a vivid imagination. Monkey, from time to time, can pull things completely out of his ass, like pretending there is a bug in his water.)

(Okay, so maybe there is something in his glass. We use a Brita water filter, and from time to time little flecks of charcoal gets in the water.)

(This gets my attention since bugs do, in fact, have six legs.)

[SIDE NOTE: It's a little known fact that the atmospheric composition in Louisiana differs a little from the standard 78/21/1 Nitrogen/Oxygen/"other junk" mix. In Louisiana, it's actually 68% Nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1 % other junk. During the Summer* the remaining 10% is composed mainly of mosquitos**. (With Love Bugs taking up a portion of this percentage during May and September).]

And thus, the cycle repeats.

*Louisiana doesn't have to fortune to enjoy the four season the rest of you get, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Louisiana has two seasons...Summer and Christmas. Summer is divided into three parts, Almost Summer, Summer, and Still Summer.

**The mosquito is the official State Bird of Louisiana. In other places, mosquitos "swarm," here they "flock." We even have a town named after them.

The Good
No super-fancy, top-of-the-line, yet completely out of place CG tomfoolery going on here. This was the original version (at least in spirit, as this is just a transfer of the 1993 Laserdisc version.) The opening crawl doesn't have the retconned "Episode IV: A New Hope" title line, it just jumps straight to "It is a period of civil war." There aren't droids and aliens crammed into every frame. Mos Eisley feels less like a bustling metropolis and more like a dusty little desert ghost town. The final battle over the Death Star reverts back to its original plastic, string and spit glory that gives it a "documentary film footage feel." You are not distracted by the difference between the "pretty" CG rendered X-Wings and TIE fighters and the "ugly" plastic models. Luke's and Obi Wan's lightsabers have their original "not quite blue and not quite green" luster. Also gone is that lame scene in Docking Bay 94 where Han has the same exact conversation with Jabba that he just had with Greedo before blasting a hole in his chest. Speaking of, HAN SHOOTS FIRST! The scene where Han Solo displays Jedi like reflexes in simultaneously dodging a shot from Greedo and blasting the poor fool is gone!

The Bad
The audio is presented in its original 2.0 (stereo) rather than 5.1 (surround). I don't care, but some theater-philes might. They would have had to come up with a new audio track to do this, so it is understandable that the original stereo track is used. Also, they did not do any sort of restoration or clean-up on this film at all. Picture quality isn't bad, its a little grainy at times, but the colors are still vibrant and the film has held up well for being 30 years old. While I don't have a problem with grainy film, there are still several noticeable pops and scratches, especially during the film's final third. Unlike a new 5.1 audio track, these would not have been hard to fix.

Another bad thing is that this is not a standalone DVD. These DVDs are being marketed as the 2004 release (which are updates of the 1997 Special Editions) available individually for the first time with the original version as a pack-in Bonus Disc. So in buying this DVD for the original version of the film, I am buying a version of the film that I already own as I already bought the 2004 DVD set.

The Ugly
The film is NOT presented in an anamorphic form but instead is non-anamorphic format. In anamorphic format, the film frame is usually "squeezed" horizontally (like squeezing a bug between your fingers) from a 2.35:1 ratio to a 1.34:1 ratio. When played back, the film is "unsqueezed" back to the original 2.35:1 ratio (a picture 1 foot tall would be 2.35 feet across). Your standard television picture has a 4:3 presentation (which, coincidentally, works out to 1.34:1) Now for those of us who have regular old television sets, that's not a problem. You still see the widescreen picture, with the "letterbox" black bars that fill the picture from top to bottom of your screen. But for those of us who either have or are planning to get a widescreen television set, this non-anamorphic presentation poses a problem.

You see, DVDs with the film in an anamorphic form actually have the information recorded as that "squeezed" picture. Your DVD player, being smart, unsqueezes the image and sends it to your TV. Your standard TV, not being smart, plays only the information it is being sent by your DVD player and expands the picture to fill the screen left to right. Since that image will not fill the picture from top to bottom, your TV ads the letterbox bars to do that. A widescreen TV is kinda smart because it will also expand ANAMORPHIC pictures to fill the screen from left to right, and since most widescreen TVs are in 16:9 presentation (screens 1 foot tall are 1.78 feet wide) they have to ad smaller black bars to fill the screen top to bottom since the image is not as tall as the widescreen TV.

The problem arises in non-anamorphic presentations. Non-anamorphic means that the image is not squeezed, but rather the black letterbox bars are recorded as part of the image. Your DVD player, being smart, can tell the difference between anamorphic and non- and does not "unsqueeze" the image, it just sends out the image. Your regular TV, still just as stupid, plays what your DVD player sends it. The image fills your screen left to right, but since non-anamorphic presentation already includes the letterbox bars on the top and bottom as part of the picture, your regular television doesn't have to do anything to fit the image to its screen. The letterbox bars fit the image for your television. Your widescreen TV wants to expand that image to fill the screen left to right. However, when it tries to do that the parts of the image that are the black letterbox bars on top and bottom of the image "bump" into the top and bottom of your screen. Your widescreen TV, being kinda smart, thinks that if it expands the picture to fill the screen left to right, some of image's information (top and bottom) will be cut off. Your widescreen TV solves this quandary by filling the screen top to bottom (letterbox bars and all), and now ads black bars on the left and right of the picture to fill the screen horizontally.

The result is that on a widescreen TV playing a non-anamorphic DVD, you have a seemingly widescreen picture with a black bar running around the entire frame, and the frame does not fill the screen either left to right OR top to bottom to your eyes. You can solve this problem on some TVs by using its zoom function, but this costs you picture resolution and definition.

Final Verdict
If you already bought the 2004 DVD release of the original trilogy, you don't need this. I already have 4 versions of the original Star Wars trilogy...an old VHS set circa 1991, the 1995 THX-remastered VHS set, the Special Edition VHS set, and the 2004 DVD set. Given the limitations and sub-par quality of this version, I cannot see myself going out and getting the other three films. Every single Star Wars fan out there knows that this is not the last chance to own the original three films on DVD, I'm sure there are others sets in the works right now. There will be a complete set with all six films, and I have no doubt in my mind that the original films will eventually see the light of day in a decent DVD release.