Video Games have Come a Long Way

Oh, the good ol’ days of Super Mario Brothers. Video Games have come a long way.

Isn’t it interesting to see what we grew up with compared to what kids are starting out with today in video games?

Here’s a little comparison:

The Original Nintendo Entertainment System:

Trailer for a New Star Wars Video Game:

Wow. No wonder kids don’t want to do anything else but play video games.

Singing Disney Songs on YouTube

Nick Pitera is a Pixar animator, and also has quite the singing voice. We showed the video to the girls and they loved it.

Nick sings the roles of heroine, hero, villain, and chorus, in this melody of Disney songs.

The force is strong with this one…

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force.”

-Darth Vader

The Last Lions

At times, one may wonder if the funny cat videos will ever end on the Internet. But we wanted to share a serious cat (big cat) video we found on CNN that highlights a problem that has me concerned about our world.

50 Years ago there were 450,000 lions; today, there are around 20,000.

To put it in perspective, that’s like the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida reduced to half the audience of an NBA basketball game in one generation. We’d be concerned if it happened to us…

From the article transcript:

As Beverly points out in the TED talk, the death of one male lion can have drastic effects on the whole pride. A new male comes into the area and takes over the pride, killing all the cubs and possibly some of the females defending their cubs.

So we’ve estimated that from 20 to 30 lions are killed when one lion is hanging on a wall somewhere in a far-off place.

Below is the video from the TED talks. The video shows the couple getting stuck in the swamp lands of Africa, experiencing a leopard jumping in their jeep, and watching as a leopard interacts with a baby baboon…

Here’s the same video in case you have trouble viewing the first:

Star Wars…The Great Test

Well, we put Star Wars to the test this week.

Actually, it was a test of the series Star Wars: The Clone Wars which is the computer animated series produced by George Lucas in currently running in it’s third season on cable (or a great secret here if you don’t have cable, you can watch the two most recent episodes on starwars.com which is what we do).

The test was if Angie would like a couple episodes of the Clone Wars series having not really seen the series.

So, we sat down and watched two episodes from starwars.com. The great thing about being able to watch it online is that there are no commercials, and you can watch when you want to (the two most recent episodes anyway).

An interesting factor in the little test is that the episodes we watched didn’t have any lightsabers being used, the Jedi weren’t out fighting, etc. etc.

The episodes centered around the fighting and the cost of the wars. Characters debated weather or not to take the Republic further into debt to pay for the war. The debt would essentially bankrupt the Republic.

The episodes were very well thought out, and the test…Angie liked them, and we talked about the philosophical and practical points brought up by the episodes.

In the second episode we watched, one senator in the Galactic Senate faces the rest of the senators who are ready to vote to de-regulate the banks and send the Republic further into damaging debt. The senator gives a stirring speech and changes the minds of the senate and the bill is voted down.

Soon after, and the concluding scene, the Chancellor (who later becomes the emperor and who really wanted to escalate the war effort by taking the Republic further into debt) comments to his aid:

“Isn’t it remarkable, that one can have all the power in the galaxy? And yet the words of a single Senator can sway the thoughts of millions?”

-Chancellor Palpatine in the “Pursuit of Peace”

The lesson being that one person can still make a difference.