Record company execs see anything new or different as a threat to their system, and they fight it.  First Napster, now web radio. You'll recall that all the movie companies fought savagely against VCRs in the past, saying they'd put movies out of business, and they felt much the same about DVDs.  You can't really trust an industry to have a realistic view of what's best for them, and you just have to know they'll panic about any new technology that seems to be problematic.  They don't have the confidence in their ability to change and adapt their business model, and often have to be forced to evolve.

• There are actual plans to make a Batman vs. Superman movie.  It sounds like an idea only slightly cheesier than the Alien vs. Predator concept (fine for a computer game, absurd for a film). Perhaps I'm the only one who thinks it's abysmally stupid though?  So I took a quick survey of people online on my intentionally-small ICQ list, and got the following responses:

You'll note that reply #1 and reply #4 are identical, just that #4 spelled out the acronym.  I assure you these are replies from real people (or perhaps extremely clever computer chat programs whose deception I've yet to awaken to). There is discussion of it in this article on AICN, and one post in the typically-flaming talkback was brilliant:

• This article pretty well sums up the problems with Star Wars; Spielberg wanted to direct one of them years ago, and still does now, but Lucas won't let him.  Lucas did not direct Empire or Return of the Jedi, and when he directed Episode One it was the first movie he'd directed and first script he'd written in like 15 years.  The dialogue for SW 1 and 2 has been universally ridiculed, and the plots are pretty weak, and the direction is totally uninspired.  No one but Lucas himself doesn't think it would be a great idea for Spielberg, or pretty much any talented director (imagine the guys doing The Matrix, or Peter Jackson of LotR?) to take over and do the next SW movie, and punch up the damn script some also.  Lucas has infinite money, he's not worried about paying out, he's just not able to see his work with any objectivity, and doesn't realize he's the weakest link in the quality of what was once a great movie series.

• Interesting article by Michael Kinsley about the apparent road to war with Iraq that the US is taking, and the weird silence from most Americans about this.  We keep hearing about plans, various warbloggers are all for it (or pretty much anything else involving explosions in other countries), but since when does a national war effort just happen, in a constitutional democracy?  The US government is set up with various checks and balances, and one of the biggest is that the President can't declare war or commit troops to foreign locations without the approval of congress.  As the article says:

I don't really have an opinion on the issue.  Saddam is pretty much beyond debate a scumbag dictator, and a dangerous nut.  He's trying to obtain nukes, he's manufactured tons of chemical weapons and used them freely in the past on Iran and Kurds in his own country, and he builds new palaces while starving much of his population in order to make the UN sanctions on trade with his nation look evil and baby-killing.  No one wants him there, even the other Arab nations around Iraq hate him.  But is that a reason to invade?  The fear is of escalation.  He launches every Scud he has at Israel, killing tens of thousands with gas attacks.  What if Israel nukes Baghdad in retaliation? What if that triggers a fanatical Islamic revolution in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Pakistan and a total OPEC oil embargo of the US, which sends gas up to $7 a gallon and triggers a massive recession?

All speculation, but you have to decide if taking out Saddam (and we assume that will be so easy; it's not like he's a few staving savages in caves like the Taliban was, and they just all moved to Pakistan anyway) is worth the associated risks.  In theory that's what public debate and congressional approval of war plans is for; instead we've got an administration elected by around 1/4 of the country pressing on with whatever they want to do, almost unopposed by anyone, despite the majority of the country being highly-ambivalent about things.  Probably since most of us just don't want to think about it, or do anything more write wishy-washy articles about it on our blogs.  *cough*

• More of the lovely societies that form around the worship of Islam.  Story about how women in Iran are murdering their husbands to get out of marriages.

You'll note that Christianity wasn't much different in its treatment of women in the past; it's just that there was a Renaissance, which was mostly a period of people throwing off the draconian and primitive church laws that held sway during the Dark Ages.  Since then the influence of religion over law and private live has more or less steadily-decreased in Western civilization, with the final breakthroughs of equal rights for non-whites and women, divorce laws, etc in the last 50 or so years.  Keep this in mind when you hear talk about how we need more religion in our laws and lives, and how secular society is so horrible and lacking in morality.

• I posted about the reaction to the latest police beating case in LA yesterday, and realized that I'd not posted the link to the site with a copy of the film previously.  D'oh.  Here it is. 

The kid is handcuffed with a huge cop holding him, and he jerks the kid over to the car, lifts him up, and slams him down on the hood.  It looks quite painful.  The cop then shoves into him several more times, and throws a vicious punch to the side of the kid's face before some other cops manage to pull him back and walk the kid away to safety.

• Something to whet your appetite for processed chicken.

ere's an interesting photo of a prototype flying wing that's shown on Yahoo today.

It occurs to me that flying in that would be quite different from a plane or a bus or a train, the normal modes we think of today, just due to the width of it.  Seating would be in rows still, I assume, and facing forwards, but most of the people in the plane couldn't see out at all, with the windows so far to their sides.  This might actually not be a bad idea, for people who are afraid of flying. Perhaps they'd prefer to sit in the middle and not have to be reminded constantly that they were 30,000 feet in the air?  I wouldn't like to be on that and not in a window seat; I like to look out and down, see the fields and clouds and such, but then I've got no fear of flying and I like heights.

The plane reminded me of a story I'd always heard, of the first models of the Flying Wing and how the project funding was canceled suddenly and mysteriously.  So what with this being the Internet, I went looking.  Searched on Google for "flying wing conspiracy" and one of the first responses was this page.  It's actually better if you read this one first, which is the official military version, from the Edwards Air Force Base site.

The official version talks about the engineering problems and safety and design issues, which were certainly real, but are apparently not the whole story. The non-official pages, of which there are dozens, all hint at conspiracies, shady senate testimony, etc.  This Conspiracy page covers it in somewhat fragmented detail, which is why I said to read the official version first.

...the YB-49 [Flying Wing] had gotten itself into competition with the Convair B-36 for consideration as the next long-range strategic bomber for the USAF. The Air Force decided to order the B-36D (with six piston engines and four jets) to meet the requirement for a long-range strategic bomber, and the contract for 30 new RB-49A aircraft was canceled in April of 1949. In November of 1949, the conversion of the existing YB-35 airframes to jet-powered configuration was also cancelled. The surviving airframes were ordered destroyed. In 1952, Jack Northrop abruptly retired from the company he had founded and divested himself of all interests. He was personally devastated by the cancellation and destruction of his pet project.

The reasons for the abrupt cancellation of the B-49 project remain uncertain even today, and many of the details are still classified.

The head of the company resigns and won't say why, and the government not only cancels funding, but actually orders all prototypes destroyed?

In 1980, Jack Northrop finally told his side of the story to the press. He claimed that the YB-49 program had been cancelled by the Air Force not because of any insoluble technical problems but because he refused to obey an order to merge Northrop with Convair. He said that he had kept quiet all these years because he feared that the Pentagon would boycott his company if he disclosed the story to the public.

I'm not real invested in the story, I just wanted to see what was rumored. There is a much more detailed and researched report on things here, in Adobe Acrobat format.  The author concludes, after investigation, that despite the improprieties by the defense secretary at the time, the decision to eventually cut funding for the planes was a sound decision, based on their performance problems and long history cost overruns.  

My only objection would be to point out that dozens of other major military projects for tanks, guns, ships, etc have doubtless had much bigger shady funding dealings, scandals of performance issues, etc, but been pushed through, and often proved worthwhile investments eventually. If funding had continued for the flying wing in the 50's, with improving jets and construction techniques wouldn't it have been viable by the 60's, and a mainstay of commercial aviation by the 80's, providing a safer alternative to the relatively flimsy fixed wing aircraft like 747s?  Impossible to say, but it's interesting to speculate about.

Japan is developing their own superjet for the future, and it's quite a different design, so obviously the Flying Wing isn't quite universally-accepted as of yet.