Movies: Well, Ridley Scott's "Gladiator" was very exciting and Russell Crowe's performance as Maximus was outstanding. Although the plot was basically a simple morality play, I enjoyed it immensely. I realize the film was criticized for lack of historical accuracy but it wasn't intended to be a documentary. It was meant to be entertaining and on that score it succeeded brilliantly. Roger Ebert complained that the graphics looked like those of a computer game but I didn't find them lacking. The only thing I found distracting was the disco-like flashes of still images that were used to mitigate some of the violence in the opening battle sequence and the transitioning from sepia tone to natural color at different points in the film. I realize the art director was trying to be visually artistic but I would have preferred the rich tapestry of natural colors to these monochromatic effects. I personally know very little about Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus. Most of my study of the Roman Empire has focussed on the Republican period. But, this film stirred my interest enough to research these individuals further. I had never watched "Fall of the Roman Empire" all the way through either until after I watched "Gladiator" so I was amazed at the similar plot lines. However, "Gladiator" was told with such power that "Fall of the Roman Empire" seemed flat by comparison even though "Fall..." had a formidable cast. Christopher Plummer's Commodus seemed thin and pathetic compared to Joaquin Phoenix's dynamic portrayal of a man tortured by insecurity and incestuous lust. Crowe's Maximus was courageous though introspective, principled though physically powerful, spiritual but by necessity brutal - a man of war who longed for nothing but peace. In contrast, Stephen Boyd's character in "Fall..." was not developed beyond the caricature of a loyal soldier trying to do his duty "for the good of Rome". I look forward to adding "Gladiator" to my personal collection.

On pay-per-view I watched yet another telling of the Joan of Arc story, "The Messenger". I must admit, among the three versions I have seen, this iteration was more emotionally engaging although the vision sequences were a little confusing at times and the battle sequences were extremely graphic - I would venture to say even more graphic than "Braveheart". I personally have a problem with the concept that "God" would want one particular group of people to triumph over another, especially in view of the weakness of the Dauphin's character, but I am not a theologian and Christian literature seems to be full of such events. This is the first dramatization that emphasizes the fact that Joan continued her military activities after the King of France was restored to the thrown without further celestial encouragement. In "Messenger" she claims her voices had been silent after the King's coronation so her efforts were simply her own after that point.

I also watched a Harrison Ford vehicle, "Random Hearts". Although I have usually enjoyed Ford's action films, his latest script choices have not been particularly astute in my opinion. I found "Six Days and Seven Nights" to be shallow and basically ridiculous. "Random Hearts" seemed to have no point whatsoever. He and the character portrayed by Kristin Scott-Thomas both discover after a plane crash that their respective spouses were having an affair with each other. Ford's character cannot accept the fact, so spends two hours snooping around trying to find out where the two used to have their trysts and other people they also trifled with. Ford is a cop and a subplot about a crooked cop is introduced but seems to have no relevance to the basic storyline at all. Maybe the director needed something to use up part of the time. I have heard Ford is preparing to shoot one last Indiana Jones movie. This may put him back on track, although at his age, credibility may become an issue in a physically demanding role. Still, Sean Connery certainly pulled it off in "The Rock".

Speaking of putting a career back on track or failure to do so, I watched Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest "End of Days". Hopefully, we can all forget this film if he signs on for another "Terminator". It lacked the suspense of "The Omen" and the spirituality of "The Seventh Sign". Although it was directed by Robocop's Peter Hyams, it failed to develop the hero's character sufficiently for you to care enough about the ending or generate any feeling of catharsis.

Readings: "Rush to Destiny" by Larry Jay Martin was an interesting although not particularly outstanding historical saga. Perhaps the audio abridgement deleted too much characterization or the first half of the novel dealing with the main character's experiences as a midshipman seemed too similar to A & E's Horatio Hornblower, at any rate I did not find myself as engaged in the story as I did reading John Jakes.

I attempted to read "Closing Time" by Joseph Heller, author of "Catch-22". I just couldn't get into the author's sense of satire as the story picks up the life of Yossarian and Milo Mindbender his old Army chaplain. I listened to the first tape and decided I didn't really care what happened to this pitiful cluster of miscreants and really didn't want to waste five more commutes finding out.

My sister had also sent me a simple crime novel "Riding The Rap" by Elmore Leonard. This novel had, at least, an interesting main character, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, and kept my interest enough to finish it although, as my son would say, it lacked scope.

I was thrilled to learn that one of my favorite authors, Colleen McCullough, is coming out with another Roman story, "The October Horse". I can hardly wait. I also learned about another historical novel she produced called "The Song of Troy". The novel is not available in the U.S. but I was able to order it from Amazon.uk. I also saw a couple of other interesting books about Roman figures on their website by Allan Massie. I ordered "Antony" and "Augustus". I do hope Massie's writing style is colorful and his research consumate. It would be really hard to top McCullough, however.

Technology: A new network query language has been developed by NQL solutions (http://www.nqlsolutions.com/ ) that provides the tools to develop intelligent agents, in conjunction with Microsoft's agent products, that can perform such tasks as submitting a web form; extracting content from a web site; sending or reading e-mail; interacting with databases; and connecting to a legacy system as a terminal in addition to simple retrieval of an existing web page. Microsoft agents can also be programmed to use and interpret speech as well as basic text input. A properly designed agent could "read" e-mail and extract key phrases which could then be used to query a knowledgebase and retrieve and e-mail an appropriate response without an instructor's intervention. This type of agent could help to alleviate the e-mail overload frequently suffered by professors engaged in distance education.

I ordered a Quicklink Pen for the dean. A Qucklink Pen is a small hand-held scanner that resembles a highlighter pen. Supposedly you can use it like a highlighter pen to scan article quotes, etc. then download them (via serial or IR port) to your computer for inclusion in presentations or papers. I saw one demonstrated at Comdex and was quite impressed but the demonstrator must have been scanning items printed in just the right size of type and accustomed to drawing the pen across the type in an even horizontal stroke. My first efforts to use the device on a copy of Infoworld were clumsy at best and even when the text was successfully scanned, the Optical Character Recognition was only about 50% accurate (compared to the current 98% accuracy of Omnipage, one of the leading OCR applications. ) Infoworld's type size is quite small, though, so I'll try it with other publications and point sizes before I issue my evaluation results. I had also attempted to use a serial-to-USB converter to download the text but could not get the converter to recognize the pen. Perhaps it has to do with the serial port designation assigned to the converter device by Windows 98.