I saw the Xena episode "Life Blood" today. About half of it uses clips from the Amazon High pilot, which I didn't realize until I looked up the episode on www.whoosh.org (I wanted to know if Danielle Cormack was playing Samsara). After watching the episode, I at least have a bit of an idea of how Amazon High was going to look like.

When I first heard of Amazon High I thought the concept was rather silly, even for the Hercules/Xena universe. Girl from the present somehow transported back in time where she helps form the first Amazon tribe. After seeing the episode I can see that it could have worked out. Future girl reminded me of the High Priestess, who's an avid horse rider/trainer. Anyway, interesting episode...

Speaking of spin-offs, I wonder if they'll be another Star Trek series soon. Voyager is on its sixth year, and will probably go a seventh, but then there's nothing in the works to replace it. The last couple of concepts were rejected by Paramount (Starfleet Academy and something else). It'd be rather sad not to have some Star Trek series in production, since there has been at least one for almost the last 15 years.

One of the flame wars I waded through a week ago was if Starfleet is a military organization. It kind of bothers me that there are people that think that the military is there only so we can fight wars that we start. There's the argument that Starfleet is an exploration-focused organization with some defense roles. I don't see that as being incompatible with the thought that Starfleet is also the military arm of the UFP. Even today the military does a lot of research, and they did a lot of the exploration in the past (not so much exploring on earth today). It just seems logical to me that there is a clear line that goes from today's militaries to Starfleet...

Every once in a while I go the local Asian market and buy a bunch of stuff. It's usually snacks and preprepared foods so there's no problem with those. But this I bought some raw materials, which I actually had to cook and not just heat up. That didn't go well, as I have little idea of how to cook chinese food so it ended up barely eatable, and that's to my rather lenient standards.

Which reminds me that I have this big bag of ice in my freezer which we got a couple of weeks ago. Now, I don't use ice at all and Dave only rarely when he comes over, so the ice will last the rest of the year, taking up a lot of valuable space in the freezer. Not a problem now but I'll have to throw it away if my parents send me home with a bunch of food (of course, I could just leave it in the fridge and eat more so I can finish it before it spoils; but what's a little spoiled food going to do to you? :-)...

It's kind of disappointing that UCLA is the only Pac-10 team to make it to the Sweet 16. I had high hopes for Stanford and Arizona, although I didn't expect Oregon to make it. So now it's just UCLA defending the Pac-10 honor. Oh well. On another front, Cal has made it to the NIT quaterfinals. Cal is the defending NIT champion, which pits the next 32 best schools that weren't picked for the NCAA Tournament. There are some 200+ Division I college basketball teams, so quite a good percentage make it to one of the two season-ending tournaments.

I approve of the Pac-10's decision not to have a conference basketball tourney. Unlike most of the other conferences, the Pac-10 spurned the extra income so that players can concentrate on their finals. Although now that I look at the regular season schedule, I'm wondering when finals are done since the season ends in early March. But that is one reason why the Pac-10 doesn't have a tournament.