Category: Entertainment

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Up at the visitor’s center for the Mauna Kea observatories, there’s a sign that says, “Beware of Invisible Cows.” It was dark when we were there, and I tried to get this picture without using the flash since there were people with portable telescopes ten feet away, so it’s really blurry:

The actual invisible cows sign (blurry)

Fortunately someone in charge recognized the humor value, and the visitor’s center sells bumper stickers:

Beware of Invisible Cows
Why invisible cows? It's dark and foggy.

Of course, it turns out other people, visiting during the day, have snapped better pictures of the sign.

Update 2025: They still sell stickers, magnets and T-shirts featuring the warning! The T-shirts are printed with the words, but not the cows, in glow-in-the-dark ink, so at night, the cows are in fact invisible. I’m tempted…

Note: Our visit to Mauna Kea was on Saturday, April 9, 2005.

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I was thinking about Star Wars, the “bringing balance to the Force” prophecy, and RPG character alignments, and realized that while you can neatly map the Jedi and Sith to good and evil (Anakin’s confusion notwithstanding), you can’t map them so neatly to order and chaos.

The Sith are a chaotic organization. They thrive on emotional chaos, they spread chaos to meet their ends… but when they get in charge, they impose order on everyone else.

The Jedi are extremely ordered. They try to purge emotions, they deny attachments. They’re hidebound by tradition. The organization is very structured. And yet they fight not to impose order but to protect it. The Jedi actually strive to preserve the balance of law and chaos.

I’m actually reminded a bit of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series, in which the cosmic balance between order and chaos is treated as its own faction. The Eternal Champion, in his various incarnations, always fights for the Balance, bringing order to Chaos worlds and chaos to Order worlds.

So the Sith are chaotic, but impose order, while the Jedi are ordered, but fight for balance. The problem, of course, is that the Jedi are not balanced themselves. Anakin does three things to correct this:

  1. He destroys the old Jedi order
  2. He destroys the Sith (two decades later)
  3. Destroying the Jedi ensures that Luke and Leia, heirs to the Force, will grow up as people first, Jedi later.

Luke and Leia have the opportunity to re-create the Jedi without all the baggage that dragged the old Jedi order down… and they can rebuild it with Jedi who are actually in balance themselves.

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An interesting read on the Most Lucrative Movie Franchises, not so much for what it gets right, but for what it gets wrong.

Tonight’s premiere of Batman Begins marks the sixth in the series. And that’s only counting the “modern” era of Batman flicks, dating from 1989’s Batman from director Tim Burton.

Sixth? Are they including the cartoon Batman: Mask of the Phantasm? If so, why not Batman: Sub-Zero? (Curiously, the table on page two only indicates five Batman films.)

And where do they get four Lord of the Rings films? I suppose they could be counting the Bakshi cartoon, but what about the Rankin-Bass Return of the King and The Hobbit?

Where are they getting their numbers?

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We went to see Revenge of the Sith again last night. Fourth weekend out, and the theater was still packed. (We were able to get tickets 15 minutes before showtime—or, rather, preview time—but it was pure luck that we managed to find a pair of seats that weren’t in the front three rows.)

And now, Decisions that could have changed everything.

  1. Obi-Wan: Certainly, I’ll take down General Grievous. But since he wiped the floor with me last time, I’d like some backup. Anakin, would you care to join me?
  2. Mace Windu: Palpatine is the Sith Lord? Great work, Anakin! I’m going to recommend you for full Jedi Masterhood next week for this! Hey, you’ve been working hard, why don’t you go celebrate and unwind. Here, I’ve got a pair of tickets to the Outer Rim… (I can’t take credit for this one.)
  3. Anakin: (after delivering the report on Grievous’ location to the Jedi Council) *keeps his mouth shut*
  4. Anakin: In my vision, Obi-Wan was trying to help you. You’re right, we should ask him for help.
  5. Obi-Wan: You know, Anakin has been spending a whole lot of time with Senator Amidala. And everyone’s wondering who the father of her child is. I wonder if she’s told him, I mean we were on Coruscant around the time that… oh, blast!
  6. Ki-Adi-Mundi: Relax, Skywalker, I was on the Council before they made me a master, too. Oh, wait, they wrote that out? Never mind.

Finally, some thoughts on viewing order. For a new viewer, I think watching the original trilogy first, then the prequel trilogy, probably works best dramatically. There’s so much in the prequels that has impact simply because you recognize elements from the original.
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