There is a reason graphic artists take so long to become good at their job: recreating real life on a computer screen is hard work... Or maybe it's just that they have the wrong tools... If everyone had an I/O Brush like the one created by MIT, everyone could create nifty electronic art just by copying real life!

But wait - you probably don't know what an I/O Brush is... So take a look at the videos here and here... And then realize that the first video is from 2005!

Its been two years! I want one!

Thirty years ago today - May 25th, 1977, Star Wars opened in theaters for the first time! What started out being billed as a "space opera" turned into a epic movie and cultural phenomenon unlike anything seen before or since...

[Me - I saw it the first time at a drive in movie theater... And I'm not going to say how many times I've seen it since or how much Star Wars stuff I own... ;) But I will say all of my kids have lightsabers...]

So how much do you know about Star Wars? Let's find out:

Did you know...

• Star Wars cost only $11 million to make (and was only budgeted originally for $7.5 million)... But it made over $798 million...
• The full title - Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope - wasn't part of the movie until it was re-released in 1981...
• The opening story crawl for Star Wars was co-written by Brian De Palma, the director of Scarface...
• Sir Alec Guinness recognized Star Wars as a future success (unlike Fox, who almost cancelled it) and negotiated for 2% of the box office rather than a set salary! Later he complained he was only known for his role of Ben Kenobi rather than his serious theatre and movie roles...
• Anthony Daniels as C-3PO and Kenny Baker as R2-D2 are the only actors credited with being in all six Star Wars films...
• Carrie Fisher got the role of Princess Leia - but she was told she had to lose 10 pounds!
• Chewbacca was inspired by George Lucas' dog Indiana!
• Over 42 million action figures were sold in the first year after Star Wars came out... And over 250 million in the first 8 years...
• The demand for Star Wars toys was so big the first Christmas after its release, Kenner Toys sold empty early bird certificate boxes for limited edition toys and promised to send the toys when they were made - in some cases over 2 months later!
• In 30 years, the Star Wars francise has generated over $20 Billion!
• The music for Star Wars won composer John Williams an Oscar and was later named by the American Film Institute as the greatest film score of all time!
• The film opened in only 32 theaters nationwide... In fact, theater owners had to be threatened with not showing the much anticipated The Other Side of Midnight (which flopped!) in order to get them to show Star Wars...

Quick - get a dictionary... Then look up the term McJob... Or better yet just link to the American Heritage Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, or Answers.com online dictionaries... Doesn't matter where you go, you pretty much get the following: "a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement"...

McDonald's, however, would like to disagree... And they've decided to start with the Oxford English Dictionary in the UK... "The current definition is extremely insulting to the 67,000 people who work for us within the UK," McDonald's senior VP David Fairhurst says... "It is also insulting for everyone else who works in the wider restaurant and tourism sectors... It is time for us now to make a stand and get the Oxford English Dictionary to change the definition..."

And they're serious... First they asked their employees, and say 90% of them agree their training will benefit them even in other jobs and that 82% would recommend a McDonald's job to friends... Then they polled the UK populace and say 69% of the people believe the definition needs updating... And now they've set up a web site - ChangeTheDefinition.com - to get people to sign electronic petitions to the dictionary publishers in the UK (paper petitions are in stores too)...

Still, given the prevalence of the definition and the fact that it's been around for almost 20 years, it's going to be an uphill McBattle...

What do you do if an election ends in a tie? Have a run-off? Have the courts decide? Or just flip a coin? For the city council election in Bontoc, Philippines, they decided on a coin toss! Candidates Bryan Byrd Bellang and Benjamin Ngeteg were both tied with the exact same number of votes for the last seat on the city council last week, so election supervisor Mary Umaming asked them how they would like to proceed... "I asked them if they wanted to break the tie by tossing a coin or drawing lots, and somebody in the crowd wondered if I was cracking a joke," she said... "I said those options were in the rules, and they agreed to flip a coin..." Bryan Bellang called heads and won the council seat! The candidates then sealed the agreement with a handshake and the watching crowd erupted with applause...

Just when you thought it was safe to go walking in the park, people start getting mugged... This time, though, it's not people who are doing the mugging - it's geese! Just ask Sam Rozati... He was walking home last week in Colchester, UK, when he apparently came into territory claimed by a family of geese... Four of the geese came running after him, pecking him viciously... He had his cell phone, but he couldn't use it to call for help... "They flew over and started biting my hand until I dropped the phone... I had to move away for my safety," he said... The geese took the phone and left... All attempts to find the phone have failed, because he had it in silent mode and the geese aren't squealing... "I'd never been mugged by anyone before, but now I've been mugged by geese," Sam says, "I go the long way round to go home now..."

(And you thought it was only the mice you had to be afraid of...)

I don't know of anyone who likes driving in the rain... But sometimes it is worth it just to come out on the other side...

In this case, drivers earlier today on the A419 near Cheltenham in the UK got quite a view when the rain stopped...

Most people don't pay much attention to their college graduation ceremony... Many don't attend at all... Kind of like First Lady Laura Bush - she didn't attend hers... But she decided to talk about it at University of Texas at Arlington on Friday at their commencement ceremony:

"Now, I know I'm supposed to offer some kind of parting wisdom. So I thought back to my own graduation. And I tried to remember the advice my graduation speaker gave to me. But I couldn't recall who gave that speech at the University of Texas back in 1973. And maybe that's because I skipped the ceremony. But I did look it up, and I found out who gave that address. And you can imagine my surprise when I discovered it was some guy named George Bush. Four years after that speech I married his son. We never know where life is going to take us."

(No, you never know...)

Everyone wants something for nothing... IWantOneOfThose.com wants $6.28 (3.49 Pounds)... Seriously - they will sell you Nothing for $6.28!

The product label tells the whole story:

Remember - you heard it here first... Back in 2004 we talked about Sweden and it's law protecting the giant serpent of Lake Storsjoen (like the Loch Ness Monster) and wondered if Bigfoot might be worthy of similar protection...

Now Canadian MP Mike Lake has introduced a bill in parliament to protect Bigfoot under Canada's Species at Risk act... "The debate over their existence is moot in the circumstance of their tenuous hold on merely existing," the petition reads... "Therefore, the petitioners request the House of Commons to establish immediate, comprehensive legislation to affect immediate protection of Bigfoot..."

There's support for the measure in Western Canada, where Bigfoot is believed to live in remote forests and ranges as far south as the United States... The petition was signed by almost 500 of Lake's constituents in Edmonton, Alberta...

(Reportedly, a similar petition has been sent to the U.S. government... Write your congressman (House & Senate) now!)

Is your doctor wearing a tie? Then you should hope they keep a really clean office... A study at the New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens in 2004 found almost 50% of ties had pathogens that cause wound infections, food poisoning, meningitis and other diseases... A followup study by the British Medical Association in 2006 found ties can contribute to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria! So now the Malaysian Medical Association is urging the health ministry to drop their requirement that all doctors wear ties - because it is hazardous to the health of their patients... "When doctors are doing their clinical rounds, [ties] dangle all over the place," Dr. Teoh Siang Chin, president of the Medical Association said...