Awaken The Dragon

Bruce Lee's classic martial arts film Enter the Dragon is getting remade by Warner Bros., reports the Associated Press. The redux, to be called Awaken the Dragon, will be written and directed by Kurt Sutter, a producer on the TV series The Shield.

The 1973 original had Lee traveling to an island fortress where a villain hosts a martial-arts tournament. Warner Bros. tells the AP that the remake will be about an FBI agent who is investigating a Shaolin monk and "underground kung fu fight clubs," so there seems to be some similarity in terms of story there.

It remains to be seen who will be cast to play the lead role, though filling Lee's shoes will be a very big job indeed. Lee died just prior to the release of Enter the Dragon in 1973.

Twenty Million

We were taught that the American Civil War was one of the bloodiest wars, taking nearly 700,000 lives. That seems like a lot, especially when you consider that fewer than 4,000 Americans have died in our current war. But according to a buddy of mine, A.J. Jacobs, who wrote a book about how he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, at about the time of the Civil War, a war was raging in China that took about 20 million lives. TWENTY MILLION! The conflict is referred to quaintly, or bizarrely, as the Taiping Rebellion.

USA like Rome?

The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”.

These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

[via pohick2@chucks_angels]

Jack Kirby revived

And now, 40 years later and 13 years after his death, the "Fourth Universe" is seeing the light of day again in swelligant new printings by DC. The first volume of "Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus" collects his first works for the company when he, of all things, reinvented the lame also-ran title "Jimmy Olsen -- Superman's Pal" as a parable of the shifting forces of nature and destiny, played out in startling, vivid style. It was dense, packed comics-izations, like eating a whole pizza.

The book and Kirby's work gets the full treatment here, and the printing is extraordinarily good. DC must have kept the original artwork. The colors are so densely printed they seem as solid as poster paints.

The book is not just a blast from the past, but a blast of the future.

The tallest country in the world

America used to be the tallest country in the world. From the days of the founding fathers right on through the industrial revolution and two world wars, Americans literally towered over other nations. In a land of boundless open spaces and limitless natural abundance, the young nation transformed its increasing wealth into human growth.

But just as it has in so many other arenas, America's predominance in height has faded. Americans reached a height plateau after World War II, gradually falling behind the rest of the world as it continued growing taller.

By the time the baby boomers reached adulthood in the 1960s, most northern and western European countries had caught up with and surpassed the United States. Young adults in Japan and other prosperous Asian countries now stand nearly as tall as Americans do.

Even residents of the formerly communist East Germany are taller than Americans today. In Holland, the tallest country in the world, the typical man now measures 6 feet, a good two inches more than his average American counterpart.

Compare that to 1850, when the situation was reversed. Not just the Dutch but all the nations of western Europe stood 2 1/2 inches shorter than their American brethren.