SW

Lucas on Upcoming Star Wars Projects
Source: TheForce.net, IESB.net (March 5, 2007)

TheForce.net received word from the Directors Guild of America where George Lucas was a guest speaker. The "Star Wars" creator talked about Lucasfilm's upcoming projects. Here's a clip:

He's very excited about the animated 3D Clone Wars TV series. He is trying to recreate the ambiance of a SW film in cartoon form – "there won't be anything on TV like it" – it'll be "smart ass comedy with contemporary humor." It won't be dealing with the Skywalker story. The emphasis is on freedom to portray anything they feel like; for instance some episodes are just about clonetroopers, another features as the main character Kit Fisto. He's going to make 100 episodes, doesn't have a network yet.

The live action series is still a few years away, no character decisions have been cast in stone. He did say that each show will be a different character.

IESB.net also got a chance to talk to Lucas and he revealed more about the animated show:

He tells us about a new character we will see in the upcoming animated series that takes place during the Clone wars. Her name is Osoka (this is a phonetic spelling, after all, with Lucas and his spelling magic it will probably be Osaakua or something like that), she is a young Padawan learner, it's her first assignment and she's very young. she's a little Togruta, the same species as Shaak Ti from Episodes II and III.

Health Insurance

Without Health Benefits, a Good Life Turns Fragile
By ROBERT PEAR, The New York Times, March 5, 2007

SALISBURY, N.C. — Vicki H. Readling vividly remembers the start of 2006.

“Everybody was saying, ‘Happy new year,’ ” Ms. Readling recalled. “But I remember going straight to bed and lying down scared to death because I knew that at that very minute, after midnight, I was without insurance. I was kissing away a bad year of cancer. But I was getting ready to open up to a door of hell.”

Ms. Readling, a 50-year-old real estate agent, is one of nearly 47 million people in America with no health insurance.

Increasingly, the problem affects middle-class people like Ms. Readling, who said she made about $60,000 last year. As an independent contractor, like many real estate agents, Ms. Readling does not receive health benefits from an employer. She tried to buy a policy in the individual insurance market, but — having had cancer — could not obtain coverage, except at a price exceeding $27,000 a year, which was more than she could pay.

“I don’t know which was worse, being told that I had cancer or finding that I could not get insurance,” Ms. Readling (pronounced RED-ling) said in an interview in her office, near the tree-lined streets and stately old homes of this city in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.

It is well known that the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling; federal figures show an increase of 6.8 million since 2000.

But the surprise is that the uninsured are not necessarily the poor, the unemployed and the undocumented. Solidly middle-class people like Ms. Readling are one of the fastest growing subgroups.
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