Return to Transcripts main page
Next@CNN
How Much Do You Waste in Traffic?; Nevada Girl Takes on School District; Tips to Keep Pop-Ups Off Your Screen
Aired June 22, 2002 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: Today, on NEXT@CNN: Have you ever wondered how much time you waste in rush-hour traffic? Well, transportation experts have, and they've come up with an answer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can think of that as an extra work week and a half.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: We'll tell you whether your city has made the worst traffic list.
Remember dissection in biology class?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Try to cut this muscle back to here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: We'll tell you about the battle of a Nevada girl who didn't want to make the cut.
And if you're fed up with pop-ups, we'll tell you how to keep the ads from cluttering your computer screen. All that, and more, on NEXT.
JAMES HATTORI, HOST: The spectacular vermilion orange span of the Golden Gate Bridge. Hi, everybody. I'm James Hattori. Welcome to NEXT@CNN, this week from San Francisco's world famous landmark, at the mouth of the Golden Gate straits.
Forty-two million vehicles a year cross this bridge. That gives you an idea of the often nightmarish traffic drivers face around here. And, of course, we're not alone. Natalie Pawelski has the numbers on what it costs Americans to cope with rush-hour traffic, in time and money.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you think traffic is getting worse in your town, you're probably right.
TIM LOMAX, TEXAS TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE: There's a combination of factors. It's the amount of people, the amount of roadway that is there. It's sort of a demand/supply relationship. You can think of it that way, and there's a lot more demand than there is supply.
PAWELSKI: The annual Urban Mobility Report from the Texas Transportation Institute finds in the average American city people traveled 85 percent more miles by car in the year 2000 than they did in 1982. And rush hour drivers are now wasting an average of 62 hours a year stuck in traffic. Now that's not total travel time, that's just the extra time spent going slow or going nowhere because of traffic congestion.
The study says the worst traffic is in Los Angeles where the average rush hour driver loses 136 hours a year, more than three work weeks, to traffic jams. The runners up in the time drained category San Francisco, D.C., Seattle, Houston, San Jose, Dallas, New York, Atlanta and Miami where the average rush hour driver loses an extra 69 hours a year stuck in traffic.
LOMAX: Once you get to a big system, it's difficult to maintain the pace of the roadway and transit system development and you wind up falling behind. More congestion is typical in bigger cities.
PAWELSKI (on camera): The report says traffic jams aren't just annoying, they are expensive. For the 75 cities studied, researchers added up all the extra time and fuel wasted because of traffic congestion. The price tag they figure is almost $68 billion a year.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: Of course, not all traffic jams are caused by too many cars. Bonehead drivers -- I mean, accidents are another culprit. Well, in its efforts to reduce the accident rate, Volvo has unveiled a $10 million safety concept car. And someday, features from this vehicle may go into cars that we can afford. Ann Kellan takes it for a spin.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Most, if not all, car manufacturers create concept cars you won't find in a showroom but are used to help develop technologies for future cars. This one focuses on safety.
From a see through pillar that reduces a driver's blind spots to sensors and computers that adjust the seats based on the location of the driver's eyes, the goal, to reduce accidents and improve comfort and security on the road.
Ford, by the way, owns Volvo. Funny looking key, this personal communicator is your keyless entry into the car. It stores information like your seat setting, even medical records in case you're in an accident and protects the information with a fingerprint lock. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think problem today is parents don't take their booster seat from car to car so this has it built right in.
KELLAN: And the entire seat rises to give kids a better view of the road ahead.
(on camera): Let's take it for a test drive.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can tell when there's a car coming up on you, when you're changing lanes.
KELLAN: OK, here he comes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) flashing. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) no you shouldn't go over. We are over that line here. We should hear other warning signals. Yes, that was the one that picks up...
KELLAN: Over the line.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The lights change depending on whether you're on a highway or in the city. They also...
KELLAN: So they actually move when the steering wheel moves, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They move when you're turning, right, to illuminate where you're going rather than the road in front. There are around eight different cameras inside looking at the rear seat for children, looking out the back to make sure you don't run over a child behind the car.
KELLAN (voice-over): Could all these safety features create unsafe distractions?
DANIEL JOHNSTON, VOLVO: We want to be able to put people in the car and see what kind of situations they're in where they can become distracted by too much technology and then we start looking at that. Is there a benefit to that or is it a distraction and then take it out.
KELLAN (on camera): Now don't expect to see a car like this on the road anytime soon, this is a prototype, but a lot of the safety features in this car will be on the road over the next five years.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: OK, technology's great, but who's going to fix this stuff when it breaks down? There's a shortage of qualified auto mechanics. Experts say 150,000 new ones will be needed by the year 2010.
And what's going to attract them? How about salaries ranging into the six figures? More on that, and a lot more, still ahead on NEXT@CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HATTORI: We've all come to know too well that terrorism can be exported. Now, Israel, a country with perhaps the most experience dealing with terrorism, including the spade of recent suicide bombings, is exporting technology to combat it. And, as Kristie Lu Stout reports, in a world where no one is immune to terrorists, the Israelis are getting a lot of attention.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From razor wire to surveillance bots (ph), demand for security gear has soared since 9/11, the day that re-awakened the world to terrorism.
Yet, suicide attacks have long been a brutal fact of life in Israel, a country better known for its political unrest than IT prowess. The government hopes to change that, by pitching its latest high-tech wizardry at an Asian Security Conference in Hong Kong.
ORNIT AVIDAR, ISRAELI COMMERCIAL ATTACHE: We have surveillance companies, we have access control systems, we have sophisticated evacuation systems, IT security in general, fire detection and others.
STOUT (on camera): The Israel technology booth is only one of hundreds of exhibits here at the Asian Securitex Conference. Yet, it's been getting its fair bit of attention because of its unique, homegrown experience.
(voice-over): That expertise is boosting Israeli tech firms like Synel, a maker of fingerprint recognition systems.
ARIEL NIELAWITZKY, SYNEL INDUSTRIES: Today, when you say that you are an Israeli company doing business in security, people pay a lot of attention.
STOUT: The country may boast the most experience in developing anti-terror technologies, but is an Israeli-made security product the best-made in the market?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Terrorism is a global thing, and just because Israel is going through problems at the moment doesn't make them stand out more than anybody else.
STOUT: Mixed reviews from the exhibition hall, but Avidar is certain she'll return next year. After all, the business of security is a national concern.
AVIDAR: We had to do it, and we're doing it. And we're doing it the best possible way that we can. And, actually, on almost every suicide attack, there are around 10 preventions. So can you imagine if we didn't have all this state-of-the-art technology, or these professional people, what a tragedy it really would have been.
STOUT: A tragedy foiled by a bit of home-grown tech, proving that necessity is indeed the mother of invention.
(END VIDEOTAPE) HATTORI: Big cities have all kinds of effects, both good and bad, on the surrounding environment. Now, NASA scientists have added another one to the list, increased rain. Researchers have known for a while that in summer, cities become what they call "heat islands," because buildings and pavement hold heat. Now, they've proved that rising air from the heat islands can actually produce rain clouds, or add to existing ones. And the rain ends up downwind, in the suburbs. Rainfall rates within 35 miles downwind from cities were as much as 51 percent higher than those upwind. The data comes from NASA's rain- measuring satellite called Trim (ph).
Astronomers are getting a look at the birth of a solar system. They've been watching a young star called KH-15D, discovered five years ago. They noticed that every 50 days, it was winking at them, temporarily disappearing, then reappearing. The researchers determined that the winking is caused when the star's light is blocked by a disk of dust and rocks that surrounds the star, where a planet may be forming. Over billions of years, a disk like that can spawn a whole solar system, as happened around our own sun. It's the first time astronomers have been able to watch the process as it happens.
Now, some processes are better watched from afar. At least, that's what a 12-year-old Nevada girl thinks about dissection. You remember middle school science class, right? Well, she staked her moral ground on animal rights and individual rights. The result was a lesson for the whole school district.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI (on camera): Are you surprised at all the attention?
LAURIE WOLFF, STUDENT: Yeah. A lot.
HATTORI (voice-over): 14-year-old Laurie Wolf earned celebrity extra credit when she challenged the Clark County school district's policy on classroom dissection.
WOLFF: They dissect a worm first and then after that they go to dissect a frog.
HATTORI: It was a lesson that seemed to contradict the values she had learned before.
WOLFF: We teach them to be kind to animals, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, let's cut up the frog and let's cut up the worm. And it's gross.
HATTORI: Though her science teacher now disputes it, Laurie says she was sent out of the room and given a bad assignment grade two years ago after she declined to dissect a worm. That's when she decided to fight.
LAURA SOMMERFELD, LAURIE'S MOTHER: I found out about it the day she brought home the petition that she had all her friends sign that they didn't want to have to dissect.
WOLFF: They make us dissect cats.
HATTORI: It was a battle that went all the way to the school board, covered in newspapers and on local TV. Laurie telling members the policy was insensitive and outdated.
AUGUSTIN ORCI, CLARK COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT: She came to the school board and stated her beliefs and the fact that other school districts in the country allowed this. She did her homework, and the board listened.
HATTORI: Some students have no problem and even enjoy dissections. High schools here also obtain cat corpses and use them in labs for science majors.
JULIE ALLENBECK, HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: It shows you the anatomy and the muscles and everything about the human body that you need to learn.
MARK TONDRICK, TEACHER: Certain students are, you know, hands-on learners. The best way they can do that, obviously, is to get in here and get their hands a little dirty.
HATTORI: A number of large school districts and even major medical schools have eliminated animal dissections, favoring interactive computer software instead.
Finally, this April, Clark County went along, the board deciding labs are no longer mandatory and students' grades won't suffer if they sit out.
As for Laurie...
WOLFF: And so I know now that I can encourage other students, you know. If something is wrong in your district or something, you can change it, too.
HATTORI: She skipped dissection, but learned all about slicing red tape.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: The glitzy overwrought dot-com era is, of course, just a footnote in a lot of people's unemployment forms these days, so no surprise this year's Webby Awards, honoring the best sites on the Internet, have lost a little bit of their luster as well. This year's sixth annual ceremony, despite a colorfully-dressed welcoming committee, was marked by its lack of flash. Entertainment was decidedly low-tech.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (rapping): You've got mail.
HATTORI (voice-over): The tradition of five-word acceptance speeches remained with some of the humor and irreverence of years past. The winners in the health category, Teenwire.com, said... UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sex is complicated, we're easy.
HATTORI: From the print and e-zines winner, Salon.com...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We know Deep Throat is...
(LAUGHTER)
HATTORI: And from The Onion, winner in the humor category...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Airport security should love this.
HATTORI: Emode.com, a self-improvement site that took the rising star award, was more pragmatic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fifty thousand new members daily. Profitable.
HATTORI: But, given the times, perhaps the words from the winners in the spirituality category, Beliefnet, were most profound.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, talking.
HATTORI: Top overall honors went to the search site Google, for the second year in a row.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: You can find a link to the entire list of Webby Awards on our Web site, which didn't win anything, by the way, CNN.com/next.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, could all this complicated equipment someday lead to transporter systems a la "Star Trek?"
Also ahead, an accessory no pampered pooch can do without. That, and more. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: The Great Pyramid at Giza is one of the seven wonders of the world, but did the guy who oversaw construction get any credit? Well, that could change, since the discovery of his sarcophagus, which has been sealed for more than 4,500 years. Kathy Healey reports it could be the oldest mummy ever found in Egypt.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHY HEALEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Over the years, archaeologists have found over 120 tombs around the pyramids at Giza, but this is the first time they have discovered a tomb with an unbroken seal on the coffin, making this the oldest intact sarcophagus found in Egypt. Hieroglyphics in the tomb reveal the owner of the sarcophagus oversaw of the work force who built the pyramids. The sarcophagus dates back to the Fourth Dynasty, during the rein of Khufu, or Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid. DR. ZAHI HAWASS, SUPREME COUNCIL OF ANTIQUITIES: All the site has been completely sealed with mortar to show that this sarcophagus is completely intact as the oldest sarcophagus to be intact ever found in Egypt.
I believe that inside the sarcophagus, we should find a mummy, and this will be the oldest sarcophagus and mummy to be found in Egypt.
HEALEY: There are plans to open the tomb in September.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: From a relic of the past to a technology of the future. In fact, right out of "Star Trek." Researchers in Canberra, Australia are celebrating a breakthrough in teleportation. But, as CNN's Chris Wheelock reports, the transporter room isn't quite ready yet.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS WHEELOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Gathered around the lab like a bunch of giddy teens, researchers at the Australian National University did not use the terms most fans of the movie and series "Star Trek" are familiar with. They don't call it a transporter. They call it a teleporter, and, for now at least, there's no "beam me up, Scotty." But the concept is remarkably similar.
BEN BUCHLER, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY: At this stage, certainly it's not possible to teleport atoms, or solid objects. Certainly, the idea of teleporting a person is a long way off, but there are more immediate applications and significance to this result.
WHEELOCK: What Dr. Ping Koy Lam and his team of researchers has done is move a beam of light from one place to another, in the blink of an eye.
PING KOY LAM, PHYSICIST: What we have done is we have taken a beam of laser light, and we completely destroyed that beam of laser light. We take it apart, if you like, and destroyed it. And then made measurements of the destroyed laser beam, and then we took the measured results, walked over to the other side of the lab, and then reconstructed an exact replica of what we have destroyed. Although the distance between destruction and reconstruction is only one meter apart, in principle, we can do that kilometers away.
WHEELOCK: Even though some 40 other labs have been working on teleportation, Dr. Lam and his team have been able to repeat their experiment again and again, with 100 percent reliability.
The likely applications in the near future involve encrypting information for super-computers, but they also say moving solid objects could only be a few years away.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: If only they could find the di-lithium (ph) crystals.
Anyway, some inventions span space and time; others are more down to earth. And then, there are doggles. Jeanne Moos now with what to get for the pooch that has everything, including a chauffeur.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Imagine this pulls up in the car next to you. For the dog who likes to stick his neck out, now there are doggles.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dogs and goggles, doggles.
MOOS: Doggles are the brainchild of this California couple, who run the business out of their garage. Their inspiration was their own dog, Midnight.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He would always be squinting, and he seemed really sensitive to the bright light.
MOOS: So Veronica Dilullo (ph) designed goggles fit for a dog, with two straps.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Adjust the bottom strap.
MOOS: One goes under the chin, the other around the head.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then scoop it under the ears like that.
MOOS: Doggles protect a pet's eyes from bugs and dirt while he's enjoying the feel of wind in his fur. You're probably wondering, what dog would let you put goggles on him. But for Max, it was...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Easy. He put them on, and he had no problem wearing them.
MOOS (on camera): Does he associate them with anything, like hey, I'm going for a drive.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he knows he's going in the car when he has them on.
MOOS (voice-over): Brooklyn dentist Tom Dimaria (ph) bought doggles for Max after sand scratched his cornea. Other customers have sent in photos to the doggles Web page. Mookie has had strokes and seizures and can't go out in the bright sun. Bluey has a detached retina. Hawkeye lost one eye, and his owner wants to protect the other. Pets wear doggles to go motorcycle riding, bike riding, even boating on the Mississippi River. Ski patrol dogs wear them to prevent snow blindness. Warlord here has an eye infection. Plus, the female dogs love him.
MOOS (on camera): Do people stop you at red lights and stuff?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the doggles?
MOOS: Yes, do they say stuff to you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely, turns a lot of heads.
MOOS (voice-over): Human heads he means. Shatter-proof doggles come clear or tinted in four sizes and various colors.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chrome is very, very popular.
MOOS: Remember when Snoopy used to be the only goggle-wearing canine?
Talk about contact. As if goggles for dogs weren't enough.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've got quite a few requests for pigs with goggles.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Vietnamese pot-bellied pig.
MOOS: Here's how things look through the doggle cam. One dog even used them to skydive. They cost 20 to 24 bucks a pair. Might take a while for your dog to get used to them. We caught both Max and Midnight trying to get them off. Nevertheless...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have to admit, he looks pretty good.
MOOS: I have to say, his looks better than mine. Max is cool you could almost mistake him for Bono, even sings like Bono.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: Well, on that note, we're going to take a bark -- I mean a break, and then get the latest headlines from the CNN newsroom. We'll be back in a bit.
ANNOUNCER: When NEXT@CNN returns, we'll tell you ways to kill annoying pop-up ads, and show you the lasting legacy of the Tuskegee airmen.
Plus, Tom Cruise talks about the future and his latest flick, "Minority Report." All that and more still to come. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. We've all been there. Web pages that seem to have more pop-up ad windows than a Golden Gate Bridge has rivets. Well, there are ways to combat pesky pop-ups, short of killing your computer. Natalie Pawelski and consumer tech expert Marc Saltzman have some tools.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAWELSKI (on camera): So, Marc, there I am cruising the Internet, and these stupid advertisements pop up.
MARC SALTZMAN, CONSUMER TECH GURU: How annoying.
PAWELSKI: Can you do anything about it?
SALTZMAN: You can. There are -- we call them pop-up killers. There are a number of free programs, where some of them are limited, like a month's worth of use, that finally get rid of those pop-up windows that we've been plagued with for the last year and a half.
OK, so let's start with our first anti-pop-up software solution. This one is called Pop-up Stopper from Panicware. It's at Panicware.com. It's actually a free download. It's a small, small software program that you only need to download once. And once it's on your hard drive, you install it. Here it is here. Pop-up Stopper. You can manually start Pop-up Stopper or you can have it always on.
So you saw how easy it was to install. A couple of clicks of the mouse, and it stays in your tray there, it's always running in the background.
PAWELSKI: Let's do "USA Today."
SALTZMAN: OK. "USA Today" had two pop-up windows, if you remember. Voila. No pop-up windows at all. It works very well.
OK. The next software package we are going to look at is called Ad Subtract. Clever name. So you go to Adsubtract.com. You click "download," and you can download this program -- it's $30, but you do have a 30-day trial period. So if you don't want it, you can uninstall it after that month is over.
PAWELSKI: So do they have any evidence that those annoying pop- up windows actually sell anybody on any of these products?
SALTZMAN: They do. Like all online Internet advertising, they're paying for a reason, because there is a percentage of the population that will click on that link and it will take you to a travel destination or that online casino, and the ubiquitous X-10 security cam, those little cameras that you can place around your house to spy on your nanny. I think it's public knowledge that Internet companies are trying to find a way to make money. They have to advertise, be it banner ads or those annoying pop-up windows, or now the ones that float across the screen that are difficult to close.
PAWELSKI: OK. So we've got Pop-up Stopper, we've got Ad Subtract. Any more?
SALTZMAN: Last but not least we've got a third program called Ads Gone. You go to A1tech.com. You can see there is a 21-day free trial.
PAWELSKI: And very happy, too.
SALTZMAN: Yes, she looks like she's really happy that the pop-up ads are gone. So you simply click the "try it" button, and you've got three weeks to try it. After that, it costs $20 to unlock the software to work after that.
PAWELSKI: Does this work the same as the others? SALTZMAN: Absolutely. Ads Gone, Ad Subtract and Pop-Up Stopper, all aimed to get rid of those pesky pop-up windows.
PAWELSKI: Any downsides?
SALTZMAN: Well, sometimes they work so well that they'll prevent you from opening up windows that you want opened. For example, if you go to CNN.com, the popular thing to do is to click on the video tab so you can watch some video clips. But with some of the software packages that I test drove, it won't open those clips, and you want them open. So sometimes you have to either disable the Pop-up Stopper or you can customize the settings to allow some.
PAWELSKI: So it considers it just one more window that wants opened?
SALTZMAN: Yes, it doesn't know the difference between when you want and when you don't want.
Some of them are better than others, though.
PAWELSKI: So would you recommend this for the average surfer?
SALTZMAN: Absolutely. Whether you're on a dial-up modem or high-speed, if you're aggravated by those pop-up windows, test drive one of these programs for free.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Next on NEXT@CNN, what does the future hold for us? Movies like "Minority Report" depict their own version. How accurate might they be? A Web site has some insight. That and more still to come.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: The much hyped movie "Minority Report" hit theaters this weekend. It's the latest in a long series of sci-fi flicks fantasizing about an action-packed future world. But just how well do films like this represent what's to come? Some answers perhaps in this week's "Nothin' but Net."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "MINORITY REPORT")
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Murder.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HATTORI (voice-over): Steven Spielberg's new sci-fi thriller "Minority Report" is part Hollywood fantasy, part social commentary.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "MINORITY REPORT")
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looking for clues as to where the murder is going to happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TOM CRUISE, "MINORITY REPORT": These things are happening right now. You know, we have cameras in the cities that are watching people. We have -- you know, people go and surf the Net, and yet there is someone watching them and taking notes on, you know, the sites they go to, what they buy, so that they're doing character profiles on them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "MINORITY REPORT")
CRUISE: I'm placing you under arrest for the future murder of Sarah Marks (ph).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HATTORI: Just how well the future and the present dance in sci- fi time is the focus in FuturistMovies.com. Its founder is promoting a new way of looking at the genre, which includes seven of the top 10 grossing films of all time.
JOSH CALDER, FUTURIST: A lot of futurist movies recently have been about reality and memory. So it's possible that this is reflecting a fear of the real becoming more elusive. A continual trend in futurist movies is that they tend to be about things we fear in the future.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "MINORITY REPORT")
CRUISE: You don't have to run.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HATTORI: Josh Calder's system of rating films comes down to three questions. How plausible are the scenarios, how entertaining is the story, and how grand is the future vision?
THOMAS GOETZ, "WIRED" MAGAZINE: What we loved about FuturistMovies.com was the way that Josh holds them accountable, not just for the plot, but also for the science and for this kind of visionary aspect of the films.
HATTORI: Based on his mathematical formula, Calder has identified the top futurist movies of all time. Number one is "Blade Runner," whose humanoid replicants were based by dark fantasy writer Philip K. Dick, whose work also inspired "Minority Report."
CALDER: "Blade Runner" is imperfect as a piece of entertainment, but for a seamless vision of the future, it's pretty much unequaled.
HATTORI: In terms of plausibility, "Blade Runner" scores low, but it makes up with a futurism rating of nine out of 10 and in entertainment value of eight.
"Gattaca," featuring a genetically improved Ethan Hawke scores second on the list, but for different reasons.
GOETZ: So a movie like "Gattaca," which actually is not a very popular mainstream science fiction favorite, it actually holds up very well on the futurism and the plausibility scale.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "MATRIX")
KEANU REEVES, ACTOR: Lots of guns.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HATTORI: Rounding out the top 10, the digitally rendered world of "The Matrix."
CALDER: "The Matrix" is interesting because it offers a view of what it might like for reality to be fully malleable, what true virtual reality might be like.
HATTORI: While "Matrix" scores high on the entertainment index, its blue pillow fantasy renders the film somewhat unbelievable.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE MATRIX")
REEVES: This can't...
LAURENCE FISHBURNE, ACTOR: Be what? Be real?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOETZ: It's not plausible to us that the world is governed by computers, and in fact, the world is a computer. But on the futurism scale, it ranks very high.
HATTORI: Spielberg's dark new vision of the future at least seems plausible, and with its star power there is little doubt it aims to entertain. Still, on FuturistMovies.com, success is as difficult to predict as the future.
CALDER: I'd say that futurists never predict. Futurists above all know that the future is unpredictable, and we also know that predictions are really just statements of assumptions.
HATTORI: That's "Nothin' but Net."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: You can find a link to the futurist movie site and a lot more on our Web site, CNN.com/next.
But suppose you're not satisfied just to read about movies? Suppose you want the movies themselves on your super-fat hard drive? At some point, for a price, you'll be able to get them legally, but more and more people who don't want to wait or don't want to pay are becoming online movie pirates. Here's Ann Kellan.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Want to see "Star Wars," "Return of the Jedi"? It's not theater quality, but it's free. Some teenagers download movies like this off the Internet. They say it's the wave of the future. The movie industry says...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's against the law.
KELLAN: But can it be stopped?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You often see like movies that are still in theaters or that were in theaters like a couple of weeks ago are already up on the Internet for downloading.
KELLAN: Like "Spider-Man." Viant Media and Entertainment studied the amount of downloading, and Internet film piracy is growing steadily, with about half million movies downloaded every day. Even higher at peak moments, when movies when like the new "Star Wars" are released.
Faster Internet connections have the movie industry worrying that piracy will take a bite out of the bottom line.
(on camera): "American Beauty," "The Mask of Zorro," "American Pie." It's easy to find off the Internet?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, they're...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
KELLAN (voice-over): Does this sound familiar? It's the same argument computer users made for music downloading. These teens are using the same logic. First, it's a way to check out the goods before they buy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It also encourages better movies to come out, because we'll have access to it first. We can, you know, see it beforehand.
BENJAMIN FEINGOLD, PRES. COLUMBIA TRISTAR MOTION PICTURE GROUP: Just to say that it's convenient and they like to watch it on the computer is not appropriate.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) movies all the time. You can't be going to that huge theater, buying popcorn, and sitting with all your friends in a straight, you know, great speakers and humongous screen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. You can't get a computer monitor that big.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
KELLAN: The movie industry hasn't seen it hit their bottom line yet, but it hopes to pop the piracy bubble. If technology and bandwidth allow, companies like Columbia Tri-Star hope you'll be able to legally download a movie like "Blackhawk Down" off the Internet within a year.
FEINGOLD: If there's consumer demand on the Internet for films to be downloaded, we want to meet that demand at the beginning.
KELLAN: And while these teens say illegal downloading is here to stay...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just say it's not going to go away.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, that's what I was going -- they should adapt to it, because they're not going to just say, OK, don't download. People say, OK, we won't download.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's adapt or die, basically how it works.
KELLAN: Movie companies are loading up their DVDs with extra features and scenes, the goal, get people to spend the money on the disks, and not spend the time downloading lower quality versions of movies off the Internet.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: When we come back, we'll go flying with the Tuskegee airmen and find out how they made history during World War II.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: In the history of World War II aviation, the Tuskegee airmen are legendary. The African-American fighter pilots flew missions protecting U.S. bombers over Europe and never lost a bomber. Since then, they've inspired new generations of pilots. Miles O'Brien has their story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In its heyday, the B-51 Mustang owned the sky, a legendary fighter. So too were the men who strapped into the seats of red-tailed Mustangs, unmistakable markings of the 332nd fighter group, the Tuskegee airmen, African- Americans like Ray Williams who always dreamed of flying.
RAY WILLIAMS, TUSKEGEE AIRMAN: When I was 5 years old, Lindbergh flew the ocean. And from then on, when I said my prayers at night, it was "God bless Lindbergh, mommy and daddy." And from that moment on, I wanted to be a pilot.
O'BRIEN: The record speaks for itself. The first black flying group in the U.S. military flew more than 1,500 missions in World War II. They destroyed 261 enemy aircraft, garnered 850 medals, and most importantly, never lost an allied bomber they were assigned to protect.
(on camera): Did you all feel collectively you had to prove something to the rest of the Air Corps and to the Pentagon?
WILLIAMS: Oh, sure. That was with us constantly. O'BRIEN (voice-over): It had to be better to tame this machine, as pilot Don Hines (ph) showed me during a formation flight with some other vintage warplanes owned by the Commemorative Air Force.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pilots describe the B-51 as a flying Ferrari. That's a good analogy, because (UNINTELLIGIBLE). It's fast. It's very cramped.
O'BRIEN: Off our wing was a fighter from another generation. A native of Haiti, George Sulmers was in the vanguard as blacks broke the color barrier in airline cockpits in the late '60s. He's now a captain for United. But he's dismayed to see there aren't more young people of color following in his footsteps.
GEORGE SULMERS, UNITED AIRLINES CAPTAIN: There has never been a program established to teach the young -- the youngsters from the elementary schools so that they can develop the discipline that is required for them to become a professional pilot.
O'BRIEN: So he started a program called Flying Mentors at this airport in Atlanta. The Mentors help minority youngsters turn their flights of fancy into the real thing.
Keynan Jackson is one of those being helped along. He's a young man with some clearly defined lofty goals.
KEYNAN JACKSON, FLYING MENTORS PROGRAM: I want to be a commercial airline pilot. Hopefully, get on with the majors in the next 10 years and then after I retire, I want to buy one of those B- 51s and fly for the rest of my life.
O'BRIEN (on camera): Will you give me a ride?
JACKSON: Sure.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): I hope to take him up on that offer some day. And if I do, we will stop for a moment to remember the people who helped make it possible.
For Ray Williams, there could be no better legacy for him and his Tuskegee brothers.
WILLIAMS: It feels wonderful. It feels wonderful because we were in the position, and we accomplished the very thing that we wanted to do, and that was to let the people know that we were equal. Basically, we've opened many, many doors. And that, of course, gives us a lot of pleasure.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Just ahead, the top high school auto mechanics in the U.S. are set loose on a field full of broken down cars. Find out what happened when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HATTORI: Star students from all over the U.S. traveling to Washington to test their knowledge against each other. No, it's not the spelling bee. It's a gathering of the best high school auto mechanics in the country. Recently they faced off wrench to wrench, and our Kathleen Koch was there.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They laid out their tools like surgeons preparing to operate. And they were off. Their patients, Ford Mustang convertibles, all with identical defects that the top 100 high school student mechanics in the country had to find and fix as fast as they could, a first for the Ford AAA Student Auto Skills Test twin competitors.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've been training for two hours a day so for a couple of weeks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ever since we found out what car we had, we've been training.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just go through the car and find something that you think they could bug or something that they could do to throw you off, I guess.
KOCH: And as has now become routine, there are female contestants, including Melissa Campbell of New Mexico.
MELISSA CAMPBELL, NEW MEXICO TEAM: Ever since I was little, I played with cars. And well it's not really a man's competition, it's a person's competition. And it's never really bothered me being outnumbered by any boys.
KOCH: Contestants could use the manuals. Team judges handed out repair parts. Some raced like the wind while others stalled.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well there's like nothing there.
KOCH: Finally, cars headed across the finish line to the judges.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pull the headlights on. All right. Turn signal. And step on the brake. Let's pop the trunk open and look at the trim there real quick.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The top won't go back up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So it won't go back up. OK, so we'll just mark that down as a...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... workmanship. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right (ph).
KOCH: Melissa's team was stumped by the convertible top.
CAMPBELL: It sounded like the motor was cranking but it ended up there was a bad relay in the back behind the seat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, the national champions are from Ohio.
(CROWD CHEERS)
KOCH: Wayland Tilley (ph) and Matthew Snodgrass (ph) credit their instructor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We tried to do the same thing and we practiced and listened to him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Keep my fingers crossed and we made it.
KOCH (on camera): The competition is also designed to draw attention to a shortage in auto technicians. Students who enter the field can earn up to six figure salaries.
(voice-over): That's because computer expertise is now needed, not just to win such competitions, but to fix the cars of the 21st century.
JIM EOEN, JUDGE: It's a shift from brawn to brands, if you'd like to say. A shift from the real mechanical, physical moving of parts to brains, what it takes to really figure out what's causing the problem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: The winning team split $8 million in scholarships and prizes. That's enough to get your manifold vacuumed a few times.
Speaking of putting the pedal to the metal, time for us to hit the road. But first, here's a look at what's coming up next week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HATTORI: Babies appreciate more complicated music than you might imagine, according to new research. Does that give parents a way to raise a musical prodigy?
And elevator entertainment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: TV!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HATTORI: Would people rather watch 10 seconds of TV than stare at the floor indicator?
That and a lot more coming up on NEXT. Until then, let us hear from you. You can e-mail us. Our address is next@cnn.com.
Thanks so much for joining us this week. For all of us on the sci-tech beat, I am James Hattori. We will see you next time.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
