Requiem for a Dream

I was listening to a podcast about a week ago. The guy started off by saying that what he wanted to say was personal, and that, if you didn't mind, could you listen it by yourself. If you were in a public venue, if others could hear the podcast, if you wouldn't mind turning it down some, because this was a personal thing.

I have to admit that was a great hook. What on earth could he possibly say that could warrant wanting others not to hear about it? What could be so personal that he wouldn't want others to hear about it?

And then he says it.

He was raped.

Now, that's tough to hear. He says he's told people about it before, but people often don't know how to react. He realizes they don't intend to be insensitive, but they seem to want to say "OK" and try to move to another topic.

To be fair, how should one really react? TV and movies are filled with their share of violence. You see people get in fights. Heck, Westerns often glamorized fights. Boxing and wrestling make a sport of it. In football, there's purposeful hitting. If someone said they were beat up, others could see it.

But rape? That's so much harder to imagine. It's rarely depicted in films because it's such a challenging thing to put on film.

The podcast continues by saying that most often, rape occurs with a person the victim knows, and in this case, it was his ex-boyfriend. He continues by saying that not all rape involves sex, implying what he went through did not, even though it was emotionally traumatic nonetheless.

He was fairly young, at the time, in his late teens, and was in love. He eventually had to seek counseling, and the only place he could go for free was a center for battered women. He felt, despite the purpose of the center, that the counselor who helped him saved his life, that she never questioned why he was there, and through it, he managed to say to the counselor what he wanted to say to his ex-boyfriend who was no longer there.

For a while, I've been meaning to catch up with Gaspar Noe's Irreversible. I knew this film had a structure similar to Memento. I also knew, going into it, that the scene that everyone remembered was a prolonged rape scene. Knowing it makes it all the more difficult to watch, because you know it's coming up.

I was watching the film with friends, a guy and his girlfriend. When this scene comes up, minutes go by, and halfway through, he stops the film. He can't watch any more.

And this is interesting, because you begin to question why the director is making you see something so visceral, so painful. Is he seeing how far you're willing to go to watch the film?

At this point, I was thinking of a German film called Funny Games directed by Michael Haneke. This film is about some robbers (what would be a good name for them) who break into a house and hold a family captive. In the meanwhile, they plan to torture the family.

Apparently, they begin to talk to the camera, telling you that you should leave, that you don't want to be entertained by what you're about to watch. Throughout, they pretend to give psychological reasons for why they are doing this, but apparently, it's not serious. You're only curious because you feel their behavior must be explained by something, say, a bad childhood. Something.

I'm planning to watch Funny Games at some point, and hope to catch Cache, by the same director, which is due out pretty soon.

It took until now for me to get back to watching the rest of Irreversible, which means getting back to the scene.

But let me back up some, to the beginning of the film, which I feel I need to watch again. Perhaps that is Gaspar Noe's cleverness as a director, to make the backwards storytelling so compelling, that you must go back a second time to figure out what happened.

The beginning of the film starts off with the camera in wild frenetic mode swinging to and fro, as they head into a gay S&M club known as Le Rectum and starts into a revenge plot, except you don't know why the revenge is taking place.

As you wend back in time to the key scene, it seems almost clear that the actors who are in the scene are really getting it on. If you can tear yourself away from the accuracy of the depiction (although based on the podcast fellow, the situation would not be accurate, since the scene involves strangers), you wonder why does the director show this? Why do the actors participate? But it's also rather clear that the goal is not to glamorize what's going on, and that it's meant to be difficult to watch.

To be honest, I have to commend Monica Bellucci for doing this role, and its not just the harrowing performance here, but really, her performance afterwards, because if you had been watching the film forwards, you would never have thought it could have landed where it did. Indeed, the reverse film structure forces you to think where everything is going to head, and your mind works forwards and backwards.

If anything, her performance after this scene is as good as the scene itself, and I hate to put it in those terms, to say that it is a performance, but this is acting, and it is a film.

It says something, though, that what is shown afterwards is compelling in its own right, for as much as Noe depicts an ugly brutality, he's also perfectly willing to show a sensual reality too, and it works completely at odds with what one is going through. Can you be turned on by how hot a scene is knowing how brutal the earlier (or chronologically later) a scene is going to be?

Are you angry at what's happening? Is it exploitative? Much like Run Lola Run which tells the same story structure three times, but is really about how Lola is willing to do anything to be with her boyfriend, including, it seems, willing time to run again, so she can save him, this story has a kind of foreboding. Alex, the character played by Bellucci, wonders if things are predestined. She relates a dream that you know comes true.

For some reason, despite the emotional nature of the film, I was taken to thinking about Stanley Kubrick. I'm not sure why. And then oddly, late in the film, you see a poster of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And the film ends in a kind of 2001 end sequence, that's more easily seen, than described.

And, then you feel the need to go back, and rewatch it, not because you particularly want to see that scene again, but because there's a need to know what the story was trying to tell, what the plot was really about, how the film ended (or began) where it did.

Now, I had every intention to talk about two other films, and I'll go ahead and do it, but I find it's hard to compare.

Goldfinger is generally acknowledged as the best of the Bond films. It combines a great bad guy ("Goldfinger" himself) with sidekicks (Oddjob), Sean Connery at his mocking best, a brash Bond score, and the least subtle name for a female bad guy ever, Pussy Galore.

There are two parts of the film I remember. The first is the famous exchange "Do you expect me to talk?", "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die", when you think Bond is done for because the bad guy has actually decided he should kill Bond. Of course, Bond is extremely concerned because his death involves slicing him with a laser, with his legs spread apart, suggesting that doing away with his "masculinity" is in effect, killing Bond.

The second part of the film that I really enjoy almost every time I watch it is when Bond explains to Goldfinger that his plot to rob Fort Knox is completely ludicrous, and explains the logistics that would make it impossible to succeed. Goldfinger then says "Whoever said anything about robbing Fort Knox?".

True, the ensuing monetary chaos probably wouldn't really happen, but it's still a devilishly clever idea.

But think about why the plan doesn't succeed. Pussy Galore decides not to fill tanks of gas with poison, and instead, uses something that temporarily knocks out the troops at Fort Knox. And why does she do this? Because Bond has convinced her, in some fashion.

And, if you rewind back in your mind how he did this convincing, think about the scene in the barn. Pussy Galore, as you know, is independent. She flies planes, better than most guys, you know. She can fend for herself. Oh, but, you see, Bond is persistent, and he is going to have his way, and yes, indeed, he does.

In effect, this would be a 60s misogynistic view of a kind of rape, but of course, it's Bond, and this woman who's resisting simply is trying to save her virtue, but truly wants to be taken by her Majesty's best and has yet to see the light.

It's a scene that, unless you're an out and out feminist, wouldn't even warrant a mention. Should this not be more offensive in its own way? At the very least, the scene in Irreversible makes this horror every bit horrible.

I wonder, in fact, if men react to this more viscerally than women. Perhaps the difficulty for men is being unable to save a woman in such danger, and in fact, this drives the first part of the film.

If you can actually force yourself to watch this scene twice, you'll see something interesting in the background. The two people are in a corridor, apparently, near a subway. The corridor is empty, and only the rapist and Bellucci are in this scene.

Or are they? Because a few minutes into the scene, someone enters the corridor. It seems like a guy. He's in there for about twenty seconds or so.

Alas, if you're reading this, I've given it away, which is too bad, because if you're watching the film, your eye is drawn completely to the scene at hand. You almost feel guilty that you have forced yourself to watch this scene, and doubly so, because there's actually someone in the back.

And you wonder, why didn't that person do anything. He didn't yell to stop. Nothing. He's in. He watches a moment. He leaves. Why is that person there? What does Noe want us to think, if we spot him?

As much as one focuses on this key scene, it's perhaps to Noe's credit that the rest of the film holds its own, and in fact, would have made for a completely different film had he chosen not to depict a descent into hell.

And as much as anything, it does seem like an allegory of sorts, of Adam and Eve, and the exit from paradise, though certainly, the film doesn't try to take that too literally.

Would I recommend people watch it? Yes, I think I would. There's something to be said about a film that is fascinating to watch even after the scene everyone talks about.

Ah, which leads me to the other film. Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction, as well, has a rape scene. Again, it's hard to remember, but it involves Ving Rhames (as Marsellus) and Bruce Willus, being captured, and then raped by some guys into S&M.

Even if Tarantino did a Noe, and tried to depict this scene for the time that Noe did, would the impact have been nearly as negative? Could you have watched two guys going at it, where one guy is raping the other? Would it have been as painful to watch or not?

Because that, too, ties back to the key scene in Irreversible. If you listen to the dialogue, the man sounds like he is trying to rape another man. It's important to realize that just before this happens, the man has just struck what appears to be a woman, but if you paid attention to an earlier segment, you know that this woman is a transvestite. What does it say about him that he likes men who look like women.

And what is Noe saying about gay sex? Is he, in fact, anti-gay? Was that the same conclusion you'd draw from Pulp Fiction about Tarantino? The film appears to hit all sorts of taboos.

It says something about a film that makes you think, both in time, and about the subject matter, and about the actors who put themselves through this, and about how effective the acting and assured the directing is.

Too Many Cooks

The NFL limits rosters to about 52 players of which about 45 of them can be active to play in any given week. The rest are on the practice squad or injured reserve or what have you.

But no such limits apparently exists for coaching. The Redskins have hired two more coaches. Al Saunders was hired as offensive coordinator. The Redskins did not officially have one, but they have an assistant head coach, defense, which is Gregg Williams, who is not the defensive coordinator (was there one?). Jerry Gray has been hired to be defensive backs coach (though he was looking for both defensive coordinator and head coaching positions) to replace DeWayne Walker, who's headed to UCLA to be its defensive coordinator.

Point is, the Redskins are top-heavy in their coaching. People are are head coaches elsewhere are coordinators at the Redskins. People who would be coordinators now coach further down the totem pole.

Pretty soon, each player can have its own coach. John Hall, the kicker, could get his own coach. What would his title be? Assistant to the Head Coach, Kicking.

This is perhaps Dan Snyder's best strategy yet. For a while, he wanted superstars. This lead to Deion Sanders joining the team. He wanted a quarterback with a strong arm. Boom. Jeff George. Boom. Patrick Ramsey. He wanted "fun and gun" and hired Steve Spurrier. He wanted the man who won three Super Bowls. Bam. Joe Gibbs.

Now, he wants to hire every coach. They can't win if they don't have coaches. Snyder can pick up Mangini and Belichick and let's get Mike Tice and pick up Norv Tuner (again) and Marty Schottenheimer (again). Let's coax Bill Walsh out of retirement. Can we roll in Tom Landry or Vince Lombardi? Heck, John Wooden won like ten championships with UCLA, maybe the magic rubs off on football.

We can win the Reggie Bush, Vince Young sweepstakes. We'll hire them as coaches! Then, pulling a Michael Jordan, they can eventually feel that itch to compete on the field, and voila.

I hear athletes like to play video games in their spare time. I know a few people who could coach them on the virtual field too. As Spurrier used to say, we'll just "coach 'em up". Who knew the Redskins would take what Spurrier said to heart?

Fat Tuesday

Mardi Gras is coming around this year, once again. It's in about a month on February 28th. The holiday that's quintessentially New Orleans has deeper meaning this year. With the Katrina tragedy causing the upheaval of New Orleans, many evacuees left New Orleans, possibly never to return.

The recovery process has been amazing, but let's face it, New Orleans wasn't exactly a thriving city before the hurricane, and the hurricane only exacerbated this problem. I've heard commentators try to encourage anyone who's ever gone to Mardi Gras to come to Mardi Grad this year as a sign of support.

On the face of it, it's quite commendable. People coming to New Orleans to help spend money and help the city back on its feet. And yet, as noble as that sounds, sometimes one doesn't realize what problems a lot of people in New Orleans causes.

NPR had a story this morning about an elderly gentleman who suffered a stroke. Having worked at a hospital, he knew he was suffering from a stroke, and knew that the sooner he could get to a hospital and get treated, the better his chances of avoiding any long-term permanent damage.

His granddaughter took him to the emergency room in a hospital in New Orleans where he waited. Minutes went by. Then hours. Then several hours. The man kept wondering where the doctors were. A year ago, he would have been attended to right away. Only when a hospital administrator recognized his employee in the hospital did the man get some attention.

It had little to do with incompetence, and much more to do with the fact that several nearby hospitals hadn't reopened, and the ones that were opened were simply swamped, unable to deal with the demands being put on the system. And this is months after Katrina. A woman working at the hospital had to advise people that if they really needed care, they should consider finding some other place than New Orleans, since they were simply not capable of handling

Worse still, there's Mardi Gras. The population of New Orleans jumps up tremendously during this period. Hospitals get three times the number of people during this period. As overwhelmed as they are now, it's hard to imagine how much worse it's going to get for Mardi Gras. The city seems to feel it's necessary to carry on with Mardi Gras, nevertheless. The issue of hospitals appears to be attracting some notice. If you go to one of the Mardi Gras website, they try to reassure people that a particular hospital will remain open through Mardi Gras, which suggests it's going to be shut down afterwards.

These are the kinds of stories that NPR presents that are fascinating to listen to (though I heard the suggestion that people attend Mardi Gras from NPR as well).

The country is spending I assume billions to run a war to protect Americans, and yet, there is some very real immediate need for that money to spent locally. It's not the way the government likes to run, though.

Proof

I have a friend who's written a chapter in a book that he says is aimed to the top 1% of math students. I wonder if that's like writing a book to the wealtiest 1%. Is that not limiting the audience a little too much?

And what exactly is this audience anyway? In effect, writing for such a group is a bit of a theoretical exercise. You have imagine what that 1% must be like, perhaps using yourself as a reference.

And there's that too. So, there's this math book that a bunch of grad students are writing, and surely, the conclusion is that it's written by bright folks for bright folks.

Now, I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I just think it may be challenging to write to a consistent level for different authors. A collection of articles written together doesn't usually produce a great result. Have you noticed most books are written by one or two people? That might be saying something.

So what's my point? Is it simply to rant? Not this time, at least, not for the rest of this post.

Which, if I may digress for just a minute, I should say that Blogger has done one thing wrong, which is that they display the entire contents of each entry. They should mimic a newspaper, and only show a few paragraphs.

I know, I know. Most people's entries are only a few paragraphs. But for people like me, there should be more posts, and the opening paragraphs should serve as teaser.

But back to the point.

I'm going to try to achieve the same goal as my friend by doing a tutorial on computational complexity. I don't plan to get very far, just enough to whet the appetite.

I'm just seeing where I go with this.

Here we go.

Suppose I give you two problems. For sake of example, I might give you two calculus problems. I ask you which problem is harder. How would you decide which problem is harder?

Maybe you work on one a few minutes, then work on the other a few minutes. Eventually, you might solve one first and declare that the easier problem.

But are you a good arbiter of what problems are hard or not? Is there a better way to tell which problems are hard or easy?

Maybe I can get a classroom of people to do those two problems and then take a poll. I could interview the folks and ask why they thought this problem was hard or that problem was hard.

To a mathematician, this would seem a horrible way to decide the difficulty of a problem. It lacks precision. It's based on people's opinions. Math, if nothing, teaches us to be precise, teaches us that if we phrase our problems precisely, we have a much better chance of solving the problem.

And usually the place a mathematician might start is with a good definition. What is a problem?

Mathematicians aren't interested in all problems. They have no answers to world peace, or the secrets of a good marriage. They want problems that can be stated and reasoned in a precise manner.

Let's start off with a problem. I give you a list of numbers, say, (10, 8, 2, 5). The problem is to rearrange these numbers in increasing order. This problem is often called sorting. The solution to this problem is (2, 5, 8, 10).

You can think of a problem as associating an "input", in this case, an arbitrary list of numbers, with the "output" or solution, in this case, a sorted list.

I suppose that's not the greatest definition of a problem, i.e., a mapping of an input to an output, but it's a start, right?

Now, how do we get from the input to the output? An algorithm is a recipe for coming up with an output, given an input. Most people care that the algorithm is "correct", i.e., that it comes up with the right answer. For example, if you have the list (10, 2, 5), you don't want the output to be (5, 2, 10) since that is not in increasing order.

To convince someone an algorithm is correct, you do what mathematicians do to convince each other they are correct. You bully others mercilessly and yell at them until they are scared into agreeing with you.

Just kidding. You prove to them that you are correct. You use rules of deduction that both of you accept are agreeable to convince someone of an argument.

Although algorithms are most often associated with a computer, there's no reason a computer has to do it. For example, if I have a list of names, and I want you to sort it in alphabetical order, I can give you several ways to do this. While I could write a program to do the same thing, I could have you do it too. Of course, you might not follow my directions exactly, a problem a computer program generally doesn't have.

Even so, let's imagine that I have two programs, both of which can sort a list of numbers. How can I tell which one is faster?

Your first inclination may be to run the programs and just time it. But, maybe you wrote your program on your snazzy 2 GHz machine, and I'm running on a 64 MHz clunker. Maybe you're a clever coder and know something about what assembly language instructions are faster on your machine, and I code in a dumb way for my machine.

People used to measure programs just like that. Basically taking a stopwatch. And yet, they were comparing apples to oranges. OK, so maybe we could make the challenge more even by writing on the same computer. And maybe in the same programming language.

But even then, maybe one of us knows something tricky about the language that allows one of us to do it faster, not for any fundamental reason for solving the problem, but due to something that these computers somehow to better, for no good reasons except they were designed this way.

There were two computer scientists, Robert Tarjan and John Hopcroft, both at Stanford at the time, nearly forty years ago, that thought measuring one program against another using this stopwatch technique was an awful way to compare two programs, i.e., two algorithms.

They wanted some way to compare two algorithms that made sense even if technology were to improve the speeds of computers, even if compilers were written better. They felt there must be some salient feature that they could measure that would not change even as computer speeds increased.

They decided that what was important was not how well an algorithm solved one particular problem, e.g., how well it solved, say, sorting (2, 10, 5), but instead, it would see how much more work it took to solve the problem as the size of the input increased.

So, (2, 10, 5) is a list of 3 numbers. What if you had 6 numbers? Would it take twice as long to sort it? Would it take more than twice as long? Would it take less? Forget, for a moment, how we decide whether it takes twice as long, or more, or less.

Just think about it. It doesn't matter now if we have a computer that runs twice as fast, because what we care about is a ratio. For example, it may take one minute to sort 3 numbers on a slow (really, really slow) machine, and take two minutes to sort 6 numbers.

And on a much faster machine, the difference might be 3 milliseconds to sort 3 numbers, versus 6 milliseconds to sort 6 numbers.

The hope is that if you use a faster computer with the same algorithm, the same basic shape of the plot between input size and time will hold. And people have shown that this does basically happen.

For sorting algorithms, we can measure something that should stay the same regardless of how often pairs of numbers. Most sorting algorithms require you to look at two numbers in the list, decide which is bigger, then move numbers around.

For example, if you have (10, 2, 5), then a typical sorting algorithm might start off comparing 10 to 2. The rule might be: if the first number is bigger than the second, exchange them. Thus, you see 10 is bigger than 2, so you exchange (2, 10, 5).

So one way you could measure how much work it takes to sort a list of numbers is to ask how often you must compare pairs of numbers.

The great news about that is that, again, it doesn't depend on how fast your computer is. A faster computer simply makes each comparison faster. It doesn't make fewer comparisons.

However, two algorithms might take different approaches to sorting, and you could compare how many comparisons both made. Of course, if one algorithm somehow avoids making any comparisons, then perhaps measuring comparisons is the wrong way to go.

Now, why should you care? Sorting is a very common operation in many programs. If you can find a good way to sort, you can run your programs more efficiently, and sometimes so efficiently that you can go home early from work.

Ah, but really, people realized that the more clever their algorithm was (i.e., the better their approach to solving problems), the happier everyone was.

But that begged the question. How do you compare two algorithms? Should you simply run it and count the steps?

To be continued...

From Hell's Heart...

A few weeks ago, the Redskins were playing their first post-season game since, oh, I don't know, since 1997? Brad Johnson was quarterbacking. Norv Turner was in his last full year as head coach. Dan Snyder had yet to acquire the team.

In this first game of the playoffs at Tampa Bay, Sean Taylor, Redskins top pick from the previous year out of the "U" (the University of Miami), who had had scuffles with the law, had been having what appeared to be an argument with Michael Pittman.

In replays, Pittman was shown hitting Taylor's helmet, and yet Taylor was ejected. The commentators couldn't believe that this was happening, and said it was the worst call ever.

Only later was it revealed why Pittman had not been penalized, but why Taylor was thrown out of the game.

You see, Taylor had spit on Pittman.

That's right. Spit.

Audio replays would later show that Mike Carey, a highly respected African American referee (perhaps the most recognizable of the not terribly recognizable crew of referees because of his very kempt moustache) attempting to throw them both out of the game, then deciding only to throw out Taylor, explaining "What would you do?" and reassuring Pittman that there would be no penalty for his reaction.

For spitting.

Let's take this in context. In the same first round playoffs, the suddenly resurgent Bengals were making their first appearance, well, perhaps since a man named Ickey Woods last did his Ickey shuffle, and that, my friends, was in the 80s, nearly twenty years ago.

Carson Palmer had helped lead this resurgence along with Chad Johnson (trash talking wide receiver) and Rudy Johnson (running back), lead by former Ravens and Redskins defensive coordinator, Marvin Lewis.

Palmer had opened up his first throw with a 66 yard completion (which, alas, counts the yards the receiver ran after the catch). Fans were cheering, until they realized Palmer was hurt. Pittsburgh defensive tackle, Kimo Von Oelhoffen had rolled onto Palmer, causing a tear in Palmer's knee ligaments, which doctors later said could have been career threatening.

And how was Von Oelhoffen penalized? Not at all. Even Palmer forgave his former teammate the injury, calling it accidental.

Here was an action by a player that could have prevent Palmer from ever playing again. And there was no penalty. Football is a game where players routinely hit each other with such force that if a normal person were hit that way, they'd end up in the hospital. Violence is part and parcel of the game, but apparently, so is pride.

Because spitting is considered an offense so heinous, so vile, that Michael Wilbon, also African American, wanted Taylor to be booted out of several games, instead of ejected and fined as he was. He considered the spitting as near sin.

Is it the case that African Americans find the insult of spitting, which causes mere inconvenience, far more serious than permanent bodily damage? Apparently so. Not to say that white Americans would appreciate this either (funny how movies that portray spitting almost always have the person being spit upon look menacingly on the spitter, then wipe it away, rather than beat the ever living crap out of the person).

Loogie tossing vs. a general beatdown. On the whole, any sane person would think the two aren't even in the same vicinity of what we ought to be offended at. Let's face it, players also do a lot of trash-talking. I suspect wives are insulted, that sexuality is questioned, that skills are denigrated. Words you wouldn't say in polite company are bandied about out of earshot of the roving mikes. Yet, none of that draws a penalty. The kind of insults that can be verbally heaped are not even in the same league as the spittle aimed at one's adversary.

But then, if it were good enough for ole Cap Ahab and the whale, or Khan Noonian Singh and Cap'n Kirk, then spitting hate at one's enemy may have more weight--and more history--than one would expect.

Feature Creep

I want you to think back, way back, to thirty years ago. It's the mid-70s, and you have just bought yourself a brand-spanking-new tape recorder. That's right. A cassette tape.

Not a portable one. One that plugs into a wall.

If you look at this portable tape recorder, you'd see only a handful of buttons. Five, in fact. Stop. Play. Rewind. Fast Forward. Record. There might be one other knob to adjust the volume, and a slot to add a microphone. Unless of course, you had one of those fance setups that had a built-in microphone (I know! It's so hard to prevent yourself from gasping at this technical marvel).

I dare say that the tape recorder hadn't changed much in twenty years or more. Consumer electronics manufacturers, if you could call it that, in those days, didn't think there was a great need to add more functionality. What more could you possibly want? Super fast forward? I mean, there was simply nothing more to add, right?

And think about it. The basics of what we now call "user interface" didn't change for years, decades even.

These days, of course, consumer electronics companies can't help but add a new button, a new feature, new, new, new. Their thinking is simple. If they don't add a new feature, who's going to buy the latest gizmos?

But how could this industry, which was so loathe to change, now want to change features every year? Part of the trend must have resulted from customers who buy these goods. There's a claim that the younger generation are smarter than the older one. Television plots are increasingly more complex (compare the current version of Battlestar Galactica to the one from the late 70s). Teens now play video games as a major source of entertainment.

Back when video games were first coming out, advocates claimed that playing video games would increase hand-eye coordination, and that this would be a positive benefit. Critics argued that we weren't training kids to be fighter pilots, and thus, such games were useless beyond their capacity at games.

However, there are plenty of video games that give users very little clue as to what they are supposed to do. Occasionally, figures come out to give you advice in case you get particularly stuck. The point is that these games teach kids to reason with fewer clues than usual. With kids now using TV and movie references (quotes from Simpsons, The Family Guy, Seinfeld, etc. now abound) to be sly and humorous at the same time, there's an increasing sophistication (though perhaps not book smarts) to today's younger crowd.

The skill to deal with the unknown has pushed its way to electronic goods. There are plenty of bright people, folks with post-undergraduate degrees, folks with Ph.Ds, folks who are just plain smart (say, Tony Kornheiser), who can't stand new technology. Kornheiser, of all people, should appreciate the new, because sports is all about the new. But it's easy stuff. Sportscenter highlights all the stuff of importance, and sports commentators like Kornheiser simply have to offer opinions. He doesn't have to go to some special website or blog to find unusual information. He can do something that's simple for him to do (gather sports information) to do the hard stuff he does (make humorous entertainment out of it all).

I was just talking to someone of the twenty something set, and he said "the vast majority of people want to play with new things". Maybe the vast majority of people he knows. I'm old school. I don't like to learn new things, but I'm constantly forced to do so.

I should take that back. I don't like to constantly learn new arbitrary things. I don't want buttons to move around, menu choices to change. I don't want a paradigm shift. Most of these decisions are really, completely arbitrary, made to be "different", and thus adding to the general confusion of consumers who just want things simple and unchanging.

But, it looks like I'm not the face of the new generation. The new generation wants all this stuff.

Now, I have to be fair, because my friend's a smart guy, and he likely has friends that are smart as well, and so, it's possible that he happens to hang around folks that are peculiarly blessed (or cursed) with the pursuit of the next bright shiny thing (TM), and have the patience, and the mental makeup to deal with newness and embrace it lovingly.

I'm a disgruntled old so-and-so, and so I have to resort to silly things like buying books on IPod and ITunes. By the way, I really have to give props to the Missing Manual dudes for writing such a great book on IPod and ITunes.

And, in fact, let me address those who would scoff at my desire to obtain such a book. Those who would say "Why do you need a book to deal with something so simple, so easy, as an Apple product?". I will then turn you to this book, and note its thickness. It is several hundred pages long.

I would also implore you to think about how long a manual would be for the lowly tape recorder. In case you need some help, let me get you started.

Ladies and gentleman. Welcome to the latest generation of the TruRecord Tape Recorder, a technical marvel of no equal. To operate this recorder, you need to plug the recorder into a working outlet. Then, obtain yourself a cassette. Insert the cassette into the recorder as follows.

Now, we wish to record. At the same time, press the record button and play button. Both will stay down, if you have done things correctly. Say "hello, hello" and then repeat the declaration of independence. Once done, press the stop button. The two buttons you just pressed will now pop up, and you have stopped recording.

To listen to your spectacular piece of oration, press the rewind button, back to the beginning. If the tape did not move in this time, you put the cassette in on the wrong side, and must flip it 180 degrees and insert, and try again. If you have done it correctly, and the rewind button did not pop up when it stopped at the beginning of the tape, then press the stop button.

Press play button to listen (but do not press the record button, lest you start recording again). You will hear a hissy version of the Declaration, but it should sound like you. Once you are done listening, press Stop.

The cassette can be recorded many times, for up to half the time on the cassette. Should you have a 60 minute cassette, each side can record 30 minutes.

Thank you for your attention. The directions for this recorder, or any other, made by any other manufacturer, will work almost identically.

And see if you can do the same thing with your little Apple doodad, which, yes, can do much, much more, at the expense of learning much, much more.

In order to survive the America of tomorrow, you must put away this prejudice of yesterday which says that the knowledge you have is worth keeping, because someone else will come up with some silly idea, and convince you that more button pressing, more menus, more choices is what you really, really want.

(Strains of Spice Girls Wannabe play).

Dan the Man

Dan Lucal.

Is the...

man!

Let's think about how it is today. You're sitting at the TV trying to decide what to watch. If you have a newspaper or TV Guide nearby, you might pick that up and peruse it over. Or if not, you might flip to the electronic version on television, assuming you have cable, or you might simply just channel-surf.

Even the most channel laden cable station is likely to have no more than the fabled nirvana of 500 channels, and more likely 100 maybe 150.

The point? You can view all the (time-sensitive) content in about two minutes of remote control repetitive strain thumb pressing.

But these days, there's an alternative. No, no, not the DVD player, but the Web. The web's been around (popularly) for a little over ten years. I'd say, by 1994, you could start to visit some websites.

However, in those days, you had about one web browser (Mosaic) and bandwidth was deadly slow. This meant watching a webpage with two images download from a website was like watching paint dry. Or reading this blog. It was interminable.

Then came Netscape, and things were better, because the folks at Netscape realized that people were impatient, but they'd be far more patient if they could see a little progress. HCI 101, my friends. So, these images would appear line by line, slowly forming on a page, but at least you could read the page while waiting for your latest porn, er, artistic nudes, er, clothing-challenged images to download (my goodness, Rover, I never knew you had no clothing! --ruff!)

Then, came great bandwidth. And with great bandwidth comes great responsibility! No, seriously, it comes with not having to see those images slowly trickle in. Ten years of high speed Internet and servers that could deal with the load has resulted in webpages that load zippity doo dah fast, and the good old days of paint-drying-image downloads are safely in the past.

In that same time, the amount of stuff you can get on the web has grown exponentially, which means you can't do the equivalent of channel-surfing. You'd go through plenty of pages of Craig's List before hitting anything meaningful.

Of course, sharing the meteoric rise of the Web was search engines. Back in the day, people would argue whether you should search with Lycos or AltaVista or, well, who even remembers what search engines were around then. Google became king of search, and that was that.

But, still, there's a problem. What if you want to see the equivalent of TV on the Internet? Searching for information content is pretty good. Searching for entertainment content, not so good.

And entertainment content is starting to make a lot of progress, primarily because of cheap video equipment, cheap editing equipment, well, pretty much cheap everything. Kids now make films with special effects, music, editing, the works.

What prevents the content from being any good is simply lack of cohesive talent. Go watch the end credits of Lord of the Rings.

Go on.

I'll wait.

OK, fine, that probably took ten minutes, and involved more people than likely graduated from your high school. Tons of talented people spending way too many hours in New Zealand making hobbits look good.

What's a poor boy to do? Most people who are putting content up have to be one-man shows, where they do pretty much everything. Acting, singing, editing, more editing, webpage development. It helps to be multi-talented, because you ain't got the friends nor the money to do anything better.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. There's a corollary that says desperation and poverty are the mothers (no, it's OK to have two mamas in Maryland now) of creativity on the cheap.

Which brings me back to...

Dan...Lucal...is...

The Man!

OK, I found Dan's site recently because he posted some stuff to You Tube. Right now, You Tube seems to be the video content provider of choice even if their interface (and Google's) suck a**. That lead me back to his own site, which is:

thedan.com

Let me link a few videos for you to see. The first is basically an ad for his own website:

Com Dan Thee movie

Yes, he's doing his own lyrics and dancing and bad lip synching.

A good second video retells the story of a guy who took some hostages at a Sam Goody. Dan plays all roles in this one:

Dan tells about Dominic

Oh, one more, for my bro, who likes juggling. Let's face it. Once I discovered Dan was into juggling, this is the kind of related behavior I might expect (jugglers draws geeky show-offs, but are generally harmless).

Dan juggles five!

(Note: brother can also juggle five, about as skillfully as Dan).

While the songs give you a sense of Dan's creativity, try visiting the rest of his website. In particular, segments in "The Dan TV".

Dan's a cross between Jim Carrey and Jon Heder (that's Napoleon Dynamite. You know. Napo..oh never mind).

To be honest, I don't know who Dan is. He has links to Harvard and MIR, so maybe he's out in Boston. Or something.

But the point is this. Creativity from the masses is likely to come from small one-man operations where the lead guy invites a few friends from time to time.

And these days, with editing equipment readily available, people can do effects that would have been modestly impossible (or expensive) years ago, slow mo, cuts, dissolves, lighting, and in particular, overlaying music on top of videos.

I have to be fair. If this were a multimillion dollar outfit, his stuff would look like pure crap. It's because it's not that it looks like pure gold. Other people trying to put up videos literally do no more than turn on the video camera record a few minutes, and they're done. There's no editing or creativity. It's America's (Not So) Funniest Home Videos.

So, run your little ole browser to Dan's site and have yourself a peek.

And remember.

You heard it here first!

Because you surf the web way too much if you come to my website and Dan's at the same time.

Really.

Go away now.

Shoo!

Getting To Know You

You could say that the business of people is getting to know other people. Oh sure, there are a few of us that are so introverted, so disdainful of people in general, that they find a life of isolation much more to their liking, much as Thoreau must have felt when he headed off to Walden.

But for the rest of us, we live in a social world where we try to understand others, and perhaps get them to like us. It's easier to notice behavior in others. That person's an ass. That person's quiet. She's sassy. He's funny. She's nerdy. He's brooding. Even these adjectives serve only as signposts that reduce the totality of a person to a word or two.

It's clearly not fair that we label people this way, and yet it happens all the time, because humans don't deal with complexity well. Stereotyping is part of that. It is a laziness that tries to pin labels on a group so we don't have to think too hard.

We've all met people that are easy to like. They seem to make friends easily. They smile. They joke. They always seem to have something interesting to say. We gravitate to such people because they generally make us feel good about ourselves, to make us feel a greater self worth.

I've always found it fascinating to try to figure out why people are the way they are, but as I've grown older, I realize that I'm not particularly scientific about it. I'm not, say, Kinsey, who studied gall wasps with fastidious detail, collecting hundreds of thousands of specimens, and then used this technique on people. His studies were meant to be scientific, to get at a cross-section of American males and females.

I'm sure my fascination extends mostly to people that are interesting to me, rather than everyone in general, and therefore lacks the dispassion one needs to really understand people.

At the root of this is trying to explain how others behave, as one is in an emotional state. I've been told that this is unwise. An emotional person trying to be rational often leads to a false sense of the world. And yet, that's my inclination, and perhaps explains why I'm drawn to science and engineering: the need to explain why the world works.

I posit this idea: the goal of people is to be liked by other people. I think, for the most part, it's true, even if many of us aren't very good at it. I know people who whine about such things, wondering why a person they like won't do things with them. Whining is something easy we can all do. It's wondering why the world isn't the way we want it to be, rather than figuring out how to make it the way we want it.

Sadly, it's much easier to get people to dislike you than like you, and even when they like you (or dislike), there's a matter of degree. A person may be polite to you, but otherwise keep a professional distance. They may like you, but not exactly invite you to hang out with them. They may want to hang out with you. They may want to date you. Whatever.

The point is that liking and disliking occurs on a huge spectrum.

But, the point I wanted to make was knowing someone. That's more challenging, because people are often more complex than you give them credit for. Again, like anything in life, you need to pick and choose who you want to know better, and then it depends partly on their personality, partly on yours, to figure out something about someone.

This is one reason I find blogs fascinating. I know that blogs can convey very little information. Some blogs are business-like in nature. They point out outrages in society, or the latest technological gizmo, or link to nifty websites. They say something about the author, but not a lot.

Some bloggers are much more introspective. I know a person who used to talk about his girlfriend, and the difficulties they'd go through. This was a blog, you realize. Obviously, near strangers such as myself could read it, but more than that, his girlfriend (now ex) could also read it. And yet it was fascinating because he wanted to bare it all, to tell the world why he thought the relationship was or was not working. Most people would find such honesty as washing one's laundry in public. It would be seen as particularly unfair to the girl to expose this kind of emotional detail on the world.

And yet, it's these kinds of blogs that fascinate me most because they are the ones that offer insight into a person, which is what I find I like about blogs.

You find that it's necessary to have a kind of internal censor when blogging. You read about a person who went on vacation with his wife and the places they see, but then details about the fight they might have had, or that she seemed inattentive or too attentive, or the hot lady at the restaurant that he may have fantasized about briefly, or any number of embarassing details that often the author can't even remember when they start blogging are missing, mostly because they don't think it's important, but in the end, if pressed, mostly because they don't think it's your business.

I recently read an article in the Post about high schools that are warning students not to blog too personally about themselves. Teens, who are almost by definition, novices when it comes to dealing with people, are often startlingly honest, their problems, which often seem so petty and inconsequential with the hindsight of age, are often monumental as they are living it. And they're willing to blog about it, spewing emotion and possibly rancor to anyone who's willing to read it.

Yet, despite their very public nature, blogs are treated by teens as somewhat personal, aimed at a select audience which often don't include their parents. These kids are often shocked, shocked!, that there parents read their blogs. And yet, parents are reading them for the very same reason people read blogs at all. To gain insight.

A person can come across far more interesting in words than they do in person. With the privacy of the computer, and the time to compose, a good wordsmith can scribe far more passionately than they could elocute.

I remember seeing an interview with Frank Miller, the artist who drew Sin City. He seemed far too nerdy of a guy to have drawn such violence, and it made me think that he was a person who could at least draw the kind of world he might want to live in, if he had that kind of personality to survive in it.

Still, were I to meet this Miller, I might not know that graphic novels represent a side of his personality, and were I to simply read his graphic novels, I'd certainly gain little insight into Miller, except in the narrowest of ways.

Reading a blog has that same problem. People mentioned in the blog are people you don't know. Is the author sufficiently aware of his audience that he or she is willing to fill details in about who Peter is, who Mary Jane is, who Aunt May is, so that you can begin to form your own opinions, albeit through the eyes of the blogger?

Or are their names dropped in without concern of whether you know or don't know the person.

I've also met people via the Internet, and that's when I really don't know much about that person. Still, I know people who say it's the opposite. For some reason, being able to talk to a stranger can be strangely liberating, as you reveal bits and pieces of who you are that you can't reveal to your real-life friends because the consequences of doing so are too problematic.

And I haven't even pointed out that there are people, who's interests and backgrounds are so far removed from mine, that I could hardly begin to understand them. For example, imagine hanging out with a boxing trainer, or a homeless person, or a musician, or an aborigine from Australia, or a Buddhist monk, or a rabbi.

There are people you'd simply scratch your head trying to say, what on earth do I possibly have in common with these people? And again, to that extent, I admit I have no interet in finding out who they are.

Culture has a lot to do with that. I like to buy gifts for friends, but generally, those friends, while appreciative, feel awkward with accepting gifts. In general, they're not going to say "That's the greatest thing ever, thanks!". Giving gifts can be awkward, as it turns out. However, my mother, growing up in another culture, feels that giving too much leaves you open to those who would take advantage of it, that they would perhaps pester you for more money, more gifts, because they know you're a sucker.

Yet, that thought would never cross my mind. I don't think I'd even want to hang out with anyone like that. And the people I know don't behave like that, yet, clearly my mother grew up in a culture where such behavior was, if not commonplace, at least not unheard of.

Her model about the way the world works clearly doesn't match mine, which isn't to say that either of us are wrong, but that maybe the model only applies to the culture we're in.

This is why I have to laugh when people make pronouncements about the world, particularly conservatives. Conservatism, almost by its very definition, is about the status quo, about liking the way the world is. If you grew up in small, conservative, Western America, then that's the world you see and like to see, and to be told that there's a whole world out there that views things differently, is to dig at the root of what people want, which is comfort.

People are scared of what's different, and are comforted by the familiar, except the few of us who constantly seek the different.

Anyway, this entry is going totally nowhere. It conveys some of what I want to say, but as usual, in this mishmash of a stream of consciousness style that I tend to embrace out of mental laziness.

I Like It, I Love It

It's the football postseason, and this is perhaps the most interesting week, effectively the quarter finals.

Yesterday, the Redskins played the Seahawks. I had felt certain that the Redskins would fare much better against the Seahawks than they did against Tampa Bay, where they managed a win despite a woeful offensive effort. They earned points on defense efforts with a Lavar Arrington interception and a Sean Taylor fumble recovery for a touchdown.

The Seahawks hadn't played anybody that good the whole season, and yet sat atop the NFC with a 13-3 record. Still, they had Shaun Alexander, who was the NFL MVP. Even so, the Redskins had shut him down (more or less) the first time the teams played one another. When Alexander left the game early with a concussion, surely, the Redskins would have a chance to slow down the Seahawks.

But this was not the case. Both defenses played extremely well in the first quarter, with both sides going 3 and out over and over again. Unfortunately, for the second week in a row, the Redskins could not muster much offense. Although Clinton Portis played a fair bit, the Seahawks stacked the line, and Portis went nowhere. The Redskins had somewhat more success in the air.

However, the Redskins could have own if they had managed to take advantage of three turnovers. Last week, turnovers lead to 14 points. This week, it lead to 3 points. Even though the Redskins had a chance to tie it (missed a field goal, then had a touchdown batted away from Santana Moss), it was clear that the Seahawks were the better team, and had they won it, the Seahawks would have been left shaking their heads.

The second game had Denver against New England. New England had looked bad in the middle of the year, decimated with injuries. Still, their division was weak, and they were winning games. By the end of the year, however, their defense was getting healthier, and people began to seriously talk about the Patriots three-peating.

Denver also had a very solid season. Jake Plummer, who struggled quarterbacking Arizona, had done much better under the tutelage of Mike Shanahan. He was seen as one of those players you could rattle and force into mistakes, although this year, he had cut down on many of these errors. Even so, the Patriots were playing very good defense.

Although Denver ended up winning this game, 27-13, you had to say that New England had their chances. Brady was making efficient progress. Were it not for an interception by Champ Bailey returned to the 1 yard line, which replays showed he fumbled into the endzone, which should have turned the ball over to the Patriots for a touchback, but instead was given the Denver at the 1, where they proceeded to make a touchdown, then New England should have made it 13-10. Instead, they found themselves down 6-17. It was a 14 point turnaround.

Brady, undefeated in the post-season, with 10 consecutive wins in a row, found himself with his first loss in a game that the Patriots should have won.

Today's game put the Colts, a team that looked on the verge of undefeated this year, but finished 14-2, against the Steelers, who had a 15-1 record last year (eventually losing in the playoffs to the Super Bowl winner, the Patriots), but had also lost a game earlier in the season to the Colts. That game was marked by a quick touchdown within the first two plays of the game, and a failed onside kick by Pittsburgh which lead to another Colts score.

This time, it was Pittsburgh that ran to an early lead, up 14-0. The Colts only managed 3 points in the first half.

Several times, it looked like the Colts were done for. At one point, Polamalu appeared to have an interception. He caught the ball, rolled around, then had his knee kick the ball out, and then he recovered the ball. Replays seemed to show, for certain, that Pittsburgh recovered.

Yet, officials ruled it incomplete. The Colts scored in a minute, and brought the score 21-18. Then, once Indianapolis had the ball again, Peyton was sacked on fourth down on what almost appeared to be a safety, and Pittsburgh had the ball with around a minute and a half, and simply had to kneel on the ball several times. True, Indy had three time outs and could have stopped the clock, but Pittsburgh seemed like they didn't need to do anything. If all failed, they'd kick an easy field goal, forcing Manning to score. Still, they were quite capable of that.

So they had Jerome Bettis attempt to bull his way in. One of the Indy defenders hit his helmet on the ball, and out it popped, and Indy recovers. Indy can still score a touchdown to win, or a field goal to tie.

Eventually, they get so that Vanderjagt, their usually reliable kicker, has a 46 yd kick to tie. And. He shanks it to the right. Game over.

Pittsburgh had many chances to win more outright. The Colts simply didn't look that sharp. At times, their offense was extremely efficient, but they couldn't muster more than 3 points in the first half, and still, they came that close to sending it to overtime.

The Bears and Panthers played a much higher scoring game than expected. The Panthers had pretty much shut out the Giants last week, and the Bears had only allowed the Panthers to score 3 points last time they met.

The Bears gave up 200 plus yards in the first half, and nearly as many in the second. Even so, by the end, the Bears had chances to tie. Down by 8 points, they were finally unable to muster a final drive. Delhomme and Smith looked real good in piling up 29 points in their victory (the Bears gave up only 61 points all season, showing how ineffective they were this time around).

So, this means the Seahawks will play Carolina, and Denver hosts Pittsburgh. Ought to be interesting.

The Colts will have to figure out what went wrong. Their defense still isn't where it should be, and they spent a lot of time passing the ball, hardly running it at all.

That Time of Month

Star Trek, like many alleged science fiction television series, was never that much about science fiction. Genre fiction, like science fiction or romances or westerns, seem to be populated by people who don't seek to be great writers, or lack what it takes. Science fiction, in particular, tends to attract writers with good ideas or good science, but often lack the skill to write good characters.

Star Trek, like many shows that aren't set in the present, often serves as commentary about the present, particularly the original Star Trek. In Let This Be Your Last Battlefield, the Enterprise picks up two beings, who look rather identical to the crew, until one (played by Frank Gorshin) says that he is black on one side and white on the other, but the other gentleman has his black and white side reversed.

It is a thinly veiled reference to the racial politics of the time, where liberal thinkers would argue that color shouldn't matter. It took many years later to realize that although color doesn't matter, culture does, and that African Americans were leading different lives than white Americans, and for that matter, based on class, white Americans weren't unanimous in their values.

Science fiction wasn't the only genre television dealing with topics of interest in the present. Shows like Gunsmoke and Bonanza would deal with issues such as treatment of Native Americans, or of Asian Americans. The enlightened view of the characters often matching the enlightened views of the era these shows were on.

I went to watch Casanova earlier today, though it has been my intention to watch Match Point, Woody Allen's latest. To be honest, I generally don't care for the kind of neurotics that inhabit Allen's films, but this was considered his best movie in years, set with a British cast (and Scarlett Johansson). My housemate, Dave, had not been that enthused when he watched it, since it was a film filled with unlikable characters, much in the same vein as Closer.

I decided, pretty much last moment, that I didn't want to watch that either, and would catch the lighter fare of Casanova. To be honest, I wasn't sure I wanted to watch it. About the only thing that I thought might be interesting was watching Heath Ledger.

Depending on whether you consider Casanova a film from 2005 or 2006, it is Heath Ledger's third film in the past year. Interestingly enough, all three films are period pieces. He play one of the Grimm brothers in the terribly uneven Brothers Grimm directed by Terry Gilliam (who also directed the absurdist Brazil), then the "gay cowboy" movie, Brokeback Mountain, and now, Casanova.

As I said, I had rather low expectations of Casanova. It tells the story of Casanova, lover of many women in Italy, but who has never found a true love, and who is waiting for the return of his mother, who left him as a young child to seek a better life. He encounters Francesca Bruni who secretly enters all-male universities and pronounces that women are just as capable of men, and Casanova is intrigued by this most feminist of women.

Perhaps the reason Casanova works well is that it doesn't take itself particularly seriously. Jeremy Irons plays the inquisitor, but balances it so he's not quite horrifying, nor buffonish. Oliver Platt plays Paprizzio, the wealthy lardmaker of Genoa, who has an arranged marriage with Francesca, a marriage Francesca wants no part of, but is compelled by her single mother, who tells her that they need the money to survive.

Ultimately, the film is about everyone in love with everyone, with Casanova pretending to be one person, then the next.

This film resembles, to some extent, Dangerous Liaisons, but where Liaisons was about two manipulators who eventually manipulate each other and had a nasty edge, Casanova isn't about being devious or nasty. Liaisons cast John Malkovich as, effectively, the Casanova of that film. It's a testament to the boldness of that choice and the strength of the acting that we don't mind that Malkovich isn't obscenely handsome, as Ledger is.

Casanova ought to be faced with a similar dilemma that plagued Lucas in Revenge of the Sith. Lucas had to find someway to explain why a good man becomes evil. His answers are lacking.

Casanova should explain why Casanova is in love with so many women, what he gains from it. Liaisons treats it as a game, with two cunning experts of deception, that challenge each other to use their skill to humiliate and conquer others. To its credit, Casanova simply offers no explanation at all. By the time he's interested in Francesca, he's basically able to put away any other interest in women. There's no explanation that he's a sexaholic, or that somehow he sees his mother in the women he sleeps with (admittedly, a rather twisted theme for a film so light). Heck, there isn't even an explanation why there is a religious figure that defends Casanova. There's almost a hint that Casanova may not restrict himself to the fairer sex, but otherwise, there's nothing much said.

Casanova is presented, much like James Bond. He's well versed in philosophy, and a gentleman, but also happens to like sleeping around with women. Otherwise, how would he appeal to the educated Francesca? He's not going to woo her by being too hot to resist. He has to rise above that.

But the film doesn't focus on him. Instead, there are a bunch of other plots, including how Paprizzio thinks he's way too fat to be attractive to Francesca, never mind that he's wealthy, and that should have been enough during this period, to Francesca's brother, who pines for the woman who lives in the next building over, and who Casanova reluctantly agrees to marry, so he can stay out of trouble (don't ask).

For period pieces like this, it's all about buxomous women wearing clothing they literally burst out of, and masquerade balls, and the church, and boating around in Venice, and eventually, a madcap conclusion, with confusion of identities.

I can't quite tell you why I liked it, though I suspect having more than one character fall in love makes it easier to swallow.

Can't say Ledger worked real hard at this character. He's still interesting enough to watch, but not as surprising as either his performance as bookish Jacob Grimm, nor his reticent portray of Ennis Del Mar. You can't even say that this role is like Denzel Washington doing an action movie because he wants to appeal, every once in a while, to the African American base, since period pieces don't attract people in large numbers.

I suspect, much like Johnny Depp, or, dare I say it, Tom Cruise, that Heath Ledger is trying to find ways to have a lasting career, and one way to do this is to work with good directors. As much as one thinks about Cruise from his earlier films: Days of Thunder, Risky Business, and Top Gun, he's since worked with a number of well-reputed directors.

These include Steven Spielberg (three times!), Stanley Kubrick, Rob Reiner, Cameron Crowe, John Woo, Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, P.T. Anderson. Compare him to the brat pack actors of the day, and you see that he's worked with far more important directors.

Ledger, too, has been aiming his career in this direction, and he seems to have the acting chops to handle it. Most actors would love to manage their career half as well as Tom Cruise has, and Cruise isn't even a particularly good actor (although credit him for trying). Ledger has, for a guy who's basically another of the hunkish types out of Australia (Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe, in particular), been a pretty good actor. To be fair, many of the folks coming out of Australia falling in that mode have been good actors (add to that, Eric Bana and Guy Pearce).

Back to the movie. I'll say that Sienna Miller acquits herself well, portraying a woman who both seeks to be independent, but feels modestly trapped by her family's misfortunes. I had never heard of her before this film, but it seems she's the one dating Jude Law. They met on the set of Alfie, one of a gazillion movies that Law made last year (I saw four of them, I think). He had cheated on her with some nanny or some such. I don't follow the tabloids, so I couldn't say for sure.

I'll say that the film is much better than I had expected, in that it was fun, I somewhat cared about the characters, and I could forgive the silly plot that doesn't, upon scrutiny, make a whole lot of sense. I'm sure the cast had fun getting into costumes and running around.

The films I'm looking forward to, but may or may not watch are: Match Point, which I missed today, Transamerica, with Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives playing a transvestite (and seemingly convincingly! I had thought a male played the lead role of a man trying to take the last steps to become a woman, who is reunited with a son she's hardly ever met), and Michale Haneke's, Cache, the Austrian or German director directing French superstars Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche (are there only like 5 real famous actors in all of France?). Haneke, in particular, is noted as something of a formalist director that can make scenes creepy, a la David Lynch, I suppose (though not nearly as weird as Lynch).

Lynch is apparently wrapping up a movie to be released this year which stars Jeremy Irons, who also appeared in Casanova.

Freedom of Song

When I think of folk music, I think of something that sounds a bit like country music, but is paced a bit slower, and isn't about divorce, or boozing, or the other topics people stereotype with country. Bluegrass, then, is country heavy metal, with banjo virtuosity replacing electric guitar virtuosity. If you make me think hard enough, then I'll recall that in the 60s, people like Bob Dylan were writing folk songs with a political bent.

This isn't exactly new. Woody Guthrie wrote This Land Is Your Land, and perhaps, much like Bruce Springsteen's, Born in the USA, it's been miscontrued as a patriotic song. And, if you only read the first two verses, it does paint an idyllic view of these United States. Get past the first few verses, and you'll read:

As I was walkin'
I saw a sign there
And that sign said no trespassin'
But on the other side
It didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city
In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office
I see my people
And some are grumblin'
And some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking
That freedom highway
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me

The lyrics become rather ironic, as it turns out that only part of the US are made for you and me (the parts that aren't blocked off), and then he talks about the poor, unable to make a living in the US, and finally says that he can achieve freedom by essentially hitchhiking. There's a kind of freedom in poverty, and yet, not really.

I had heard some relative of Woodie who said he would have found it quite strange that kids would embrace this song as symbolic of all that is good about America, its simple values. And yet, it's only because people conveniently don't sing the verses you see above.

Bruce Springsteen's lyrics ought to be even more obvious. While Guthrie's lyrics are ironic, starting off with the idealistic notion of every part of the US belonging to everyone, and then basically saying it ain't for the poor, Springsteen's Born in the USA is about coming back from Vietnam and being unable to cope, sort of like Rambo without the heroics. And yet this song was embraced during the Reagan administration as a particularly red state song, because, fundamentally, they skipped listening to any other parts of the song other than "Born in the USA". The imagery of Springsteen's back and a flag waving was his form of ironic portrayal, and yet, people thought of it as patriotism, at least, 80s style, cowboy patriotism.

With the advent of alt-folk artists like Sufjan Stevens, Devendra Banhart, and Iron and Wine's Sam Beam, there's a resurgence in folk music, but not of necessarily of the political variety. It's still great stuff to listen to, but occasionally, you want to be reminded of the politcal roots of folk.

As usual, I was perusing for music at NPR's All Songs Considered, and listened to Janis Ian's Danger Danger from her upcoming album Folk is the New Black (listen to Press On). Ian hits all the topics that tend to get people riled up. Racism, gender preferences, books with racy topics, the war. For some reason, this song elicits memories of Annie Lennox since Missionary Man, which is trying to be oddly blasphemous, creating imagery of a missionary man who's part superhero. Is it trying to provocative by using the word "missionary"? Still, oddly enough, I could see Annie Lennox singing (or in her case, wailing) this song, and wonder if it might not derive some power from it.

Speaking of folk and bluegrass, I was also listening to Robinella Contreras. She and her husband are bluegrass musicians, but in their latest album, have tried out other folks of music, more closely resembling jazz or new-age sounds. In Solace for the Lonely, Robinella sings Press On, which has a steady drumbeat sounding like Native American beats. The song seems downbeat, the early parts describing a need to get away from presumably an awful situation, and head where? To heaven, to meet Jesus.

Throughout the song the refrain "Press On" repeats, which, to me, suggests soldiering on. And it made me think of these two word phrases that simply don't make sense, like "press on". "Press on", in this context, seems like, you keep moving on regardless of what life is dealing you, which presumably is not something great. In the year that the Red Sox got the monkey off their back and won the World Series in dramatic fashion (down 3-0 to the rival Yankees, who had beaten them the previous year in a pivotal 7th game, with Aaron Boone hitting a home run on knuckleballer, Tim Wakefield, and his brother, Bret announcing the game.

Last year, they won, and the key phrase was "Cowboy Up", which made no sense, but which I pieced together to mean that you have to get up, and be, well, a cowboy? The 2004 Red Sox team was supposed to be loose, having fun, and a contrast to the businesslike pinstripes of the Yankees. Perhaps no one more symbolized the Red Sox than the long-maned Jonny Damon, who refused to cut his hair, when the rest of the team showed solidarity. It didn't take him too long to accept the money that the Yankees were offering, and Johnny was shearing off his beard and long hair.

I read another similar phrase just yesterday about Cornelius Griffin. His dad was a pastor and preached to his kids that they had to "Tighten Up", that when things got tough, they, too, had to stay tough. When his dad was killed by a drunk driver, he almost wanted to turn back from heading to Alabama, where he was ready to play college football, but the words of his dad told him to stay steady, to be reliable, to "tighten up". If you were to ask anyone what "tighten up" means they'd almost surely say that it meant getting nervous, getting too tight, not relaxed enough. Yet, in this context, it means pretty much "press on", go forward (now I'm about to quote Devo songs, but I digress).

Put two words together, give it a context, and someone will figure out what it means.

Blog On!

That's fine, man!

Recently, a coworker discovered that other coworkers found out about her blog. Her response was to shut it down. There's a funny aspect about blogs. Despite its very public nature, it's quite common to want a blog that's somewhat secret, i.e., available to some people you know, but not to others.

You could, of course, achieve this effect by password protecting the blog, and only letting your friends know, but then they'd have to remember the password. And there's something about strangers reading it too.

As usual, even though this opens up my entry for the blog, it's not what I want to really write about.

What I really want to write about is Richard Feynman. I have to say that he is one of the great influences of my life. No, I didn't go into physics. I didn't become a genius. I won't become a Nobel prize winner, nor have I played bongos, nor did I try to find my way to Tuva.

However, he did have an influence on how I try to think about things. In particular, he tried to understand things in a real-world sort of way. He gave credit to his dad for that, who would tell him how big dinosaurs were by picturing them relative to the house they lived in.

Recently, a friend gave me a copy of Feynman's Lectures on Computation. No, this is not his original book on physics. It's about the fundamentals of computers.

Feynman died in the late 80s, but by then computers were quite prevalent. While he was a physicist by training, he learned some stuff about computers too, though in a fundamental sort of way. He would be interested, for example, in the basic computer architecture, and to know what is or is not computable. He would probably not care to know how modern software is written.

Like many books that he gets credit for, these lectures were not written by Feynman. Instead, they were recorded, and more or less transcribed. His original lectures in physics were done this way too, and usually, someone else did the job of transcribing.

Although Feynman had the reputation of being a good teacher, what makes for a good lecture doesn't always translate to easy reading. It takes work to make it sound as easy to follow as it was live.

With that caveat, I must say Feynman seemed to have a pretty good idea how to teach stuff. He knew that the key was to relate what he was teaching to every day things people understood. Even a well-educated person benefits from such explanations.

I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of explanations and feel that Feynman was perhaps nearly as brilliant a teacher as he was a physicist, and that's a rare quality indeed.

If you get a chance, I'd read his book on computation. It's not revolutionary by any means, but it is a interesting read by a person who looked at the world in his own way.

Hasselbeck Guy

Why is it that announcers insist on calling Matt Hasselbeck, Matt HasselBACK? Because he is a quarterBACK? Because they can't read? If a name gets too long, it seems like the average person just stops reading.

I feel certain that Brett Favre's name is not really pronounced "FARV", that it's more likely pronounced "Fahv", but that ever since Madden pronounces it that way, so does everyone else. And maybe the same is true of Hasselbeck.

Ah, Hasselbeck. He's the quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks, don't you know? Mike Holmgren, who coached the Green Bay Packers to a Super Bowl win (1997), has been toiling in Seattle for a while. He put his trust in Hasselbeck, who seemed like a poor quarterback for several years, but finally seems like he's playing decently, especially with a reliable running back in Shaun Alexander, who is this year's league MVP.

The Redskins have the honor of flying cross-country to face them in the next round of playoffs. They're lucky to be there because the defense pretty much did all the scoring for them.

The much maligned Lavar Arrington, who was benched for quite a few weeks and has earned so little trust from the defensive personnel that he only plays first and second downs, managed an interception, that lead Portis to an easy score. Arrington was positively giddy about that, and beamed uncontrollably after the end of the game, trying to say nothing was bothering him. One year with Norv, one with Schottenheimer, two with Spurrier, and now two years with Joe Gibbs, and he's in his first playoff game. That's how bad things had been for the Redskins under the Snyder regime.

The second touchdown came from a particularly odd play. Marcus Washington had stripped the ball from Cadillac Williams, the Tampa Bay running back, that had been injured for part of the season. He picked the ball up and began to run, when he fumbled the ball himself. This was then scooped by Redskins' safety, Sean Taylor, who ran it in for a touchdown. He was later ejected for the game for spitting at an opponent.

With a 14-0 lead, it looked as if the Redskins would run away with it. Little did they know that they'd score only 3 more points. Meanwhile, Tampa Bay almost tied it up with a third down pass by Simms to Edell Shepherd, who bobbled the catch, enough for the incomplete call to be upheld in review. Tampa Bay tried the play again, then gave it up on downs.

Redskins simply could not move the ball, and broke a record for the fewest number of yards made by a winning team in a playoff, breaking the record held by Baltimore, the year they won the Super Bowl. Portis couldn't run (it seemed he was out half the time), and Brunell couldn't pass (intercepted once late in the game). To be fair, Tampa Bay had the number one ranked defense in the league (though that ranking is primarily based on number of yards given up by the defense, which isn't always a good way to measure how good a defense is).

With this win, the Redskins face Seattle. Seattle seems highly favored. Here are the reasons why. With Hasselbeck, Seattle can put up a lot of points. They have a star running back in Shaun Alexander, who was the league MVP.

But here are reasons to think that Seattle may not be all that good. First, they play 6 games in their division. Who's in their division you might ask? St. Louis, Arizona, and San Francisco. These are bad teams, and two are truly horrendous. Houston wins the Reggie Bowl (though they may pick Vince Young, instead) with the worst record in the league at 2-14. The next two are Arizona and San Francisco.

Let's look at some of their other wins: Atlanta, NY Giants, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Houston. Of the bunch, only the Giants made it to the playoffs, and even that game was close, with Eli Manning tying it up late. And the Giants were just demolished by Carolina, who is a visiting team!

The one quality win they had was against Indianapolis, and they had just lost to San Diego, and were resting their starters. Sorgi played most of the game. Harrison didn't even fly out. So it's hard to point to that.

And look at their losses: Green Bay (in the last game of the season), who is awful this year, Jacksonville, who is decent, but just got thumped by the Patriots (admittedly, without a healthy Byron Leftwich), and yes, the Redskins (admittedly, at Washington).

Yes, the Redskins are one of the three losses by Seattle. Now, there is still every reason to think Seattle can win this. The Redskins need to shore up their offense, though there's reason to believe they can move the ball on Seattle (and Seattle used to be the one team that the Redskins did all right against, even when they weren't so good). Although the defense is likely to be the best that Seattle has faced all year, it is a bit banged up. Still, if Shawn Springs can be effective, it's all the more reason to see if Gregg Williams can rattle the Seattle offense.

But the real issue is travel. Redskins must travel to Seattle. However, travelling is usually a bit easier going to the West Coast, because everything is a few hours later, relative to the East Coast. It's tiring to go West to East, where you add a few more hours due to timezone differences, and have to start earlier than usual.

Still, I put the game at just about even, and certainly, the Redskins have a chance to beat Seattle. If they were playing, say, Carolina or Pittsburgh or the Patriots, I'd worry a lot more. All three have stout defenses, and also play a ball control style that the Redskins like. Of all the teams to play, Seattle seems as good an opponent as any for the Redskins.

I wouldn't be surprised if they lost, but I wouldn't be surprised if they won either.

Video Killed the Webpage Star

Let me digress a bit before getting on to the point of today's entry. MTV started August 1, 1981 with the video Video Killed The Radio Star by the British band, The Buggles.

The song itself is rather insightful making it a good choice for the first video. Basically, the song is about a change in emphasis from radio to television, and that some stars weren't able to make the transition. It could be seen as a statement about music videos.

The novelty of the music video lead to a lot of creative artists in the first decade, but you don't see that many new videos these days. MTV and VH-1 simply couldn't hold people's attentions watching videos.

Eventually, both stations had to abandon showing videos and go to reality and game shows, or in VH-1's case, shows about the 70s and 80s, appealing to nostalgia buffs. MTV was perhaps as instrumental as any in producing the reality TV show, even if Survivor was the one that made it the format take off.

Instead of talking about music videos, which still occasionally produces highly creative art (see Feel Good, Inc by the Gorillaz), I want to talk about putting video out for all to see.

While most of the talk is on Google Video, there's also You Tube. Both allow people to post up videos, I believe, for free (I have no idea how they manage this).

The question is what will come of this. Will people put good stuff on there? Already, I've seen a few videos that are, well, if not good, then better than what you used to be able to do with video. People now edit somewhat better, can overlay what they do with music, but usually, these videos are a step above home videos, often made without professional actors, or for that matter, a script. It's a person taking a camera, and filming stuff.

Such video sites give free distribution, but what if you want to make money off of it? Or to maintain some intellectual property. Does this do it?

And to gaze into the crystal ball more deeply, is this something people care about? Right now, instead of sending jokes, people may send a link to a site with a funny or unusual video. For example, there's this video called "Matrix Ping Pong". It appears to be this Japanese game show of sorts, where these two guys are pretending to play ping pong. It's not really a ping pong, but a guy holding a stick with something that resembles a ball.

Assistants dressed in black maneuver the two players, so it appears as if they are defying gravity. While it's obvious enough that they aren't, it's still awfully creative. Someone tapes this, puts it up at a website, and tells their friends about it.

The next step, really, is convincing content providers to put stuff on there. Original TV programming, for example. Will people prefer to watch programming off the web.

The first key, really, was to make this video watchable on the web without the usually jittery behavior that sometimes comes from a streaming feed. Both Google and You Tube seem to have done a reasonably good job, provided you have a fast enough connection.

The problem, as it now stands, is organizing this content, and deciding what to watch. Until real content arrives, and until it becomes exclusively available in this medium, and until it becomes easy to figure out what to watch, these services will be novelties. However, there's a sense that Google does not want this to be a pure novelty.

Google has come up with unusual strategies to push its own business. Rather than think of the traditional forms of software, e.g., office software or presentation software, they've looked to search, blogging, and now video distribution as ways of branching out.

They came about the problem sideways, trying to figure out what kind of services people wanted from the web. Not everything they've done has turned to gold. For example, Blogger, while successful, appears to be overtaken by MySpace.

GTalk is not the most widely used IM, as far as I know. I barely use Froogle for anything.

Still, they have more hits than misses, and all without users having to spend money, which is really the most amazing part of it all. Although I'm sure that will change (and perhaps some stuff already requires money), it shows a highly unusual view of the software world.

I think we're still looking at a few years down the road before we figure out whether this kind of video distribution will lead to something interesting or not.

Learning Curve

There are plenty of teachers at colleges who've never had one single education course. Not one. More than that, have they even wanted to take an education class? I doubt it. Teaching is easy. You just teach. And there must be some evidence of it too. What university has ever required their faculty to learn how to teach? They figure it's the transferrence of knowledge from teacher to student, and most of that, they figure, isn't how that knowledge is transferred, but what the knowledge is.

To be fair, education classes are no more about (in general) teaching and learning theory as computer science courses are about installing software. Sure, some of it is about that, but there's also courses dealing with students that have learning disabilities, or teaching younger kids or adolescents.

For some reason, though, everyone else outside the education department seems pretty content that they don't need to learn much about teaching. All the years I taught, I was never really advised to do anything to improve my teaching. Indeed, if anything, it was mainly about putting out fires. For example, a colleague set a deadline for a particular time, and said the project would get a 0 if it came after a certain time. And it did, and it got a 0. Student wasn't happy about this. He was furious. Why should that be the case?

What's the fair thing to do? I mean, without such rules, students (some) would always turn things in late, and you'd encourage that lateness is fine, and that you should be cut a break, when other students worked hard so they could get it in on time.

And what if a student is sick. Not a day. Not two days. But a week. Two weeks. This is already a significant part of a semester. Do you cut them a break? What kind of break? In general, as a teacher, the more you can keep everyone on the same schedule, the more efficient you can be. If anyone is late, you are dealing with them differently, which means they are causing you much more grief. That one student can take as much time as a dozen other students who do things on time.

There are many issues that sit outside of plain-old teaching. In general, most teachers would rather simply teach. Help students learn. Reality means that a teacher's job is not confined to just this, because the teacher student ratio is high enough that teachers must find ways to be efficient with their time.

I do want to get to the issue of teaching, however.

I like to think of teaching in much the same way people think about transmitting information, say, music through an antennae. There's a transmitter. There's a receiver. Information is sent accurately if the signal received by the receiver matches that sent from the transmitter.

This is quite a bit more complex when it comes to teaching, because what we convey is only approximated by words. Concepts such as, dare I say it, recursion and pointers require time for the listener to digest, reformulate, and eventually comprehend.

The most surprising thing I learned about learning is that, no matter how good you are, if the material is sufficiently technical, then half the people listening will have no clue what you are talking about, or only partly grasp what you're talking about. I remember, sitting at a restaurant, watching a basketball game, hearing someone ask about the posession arrow. A person piped up and said that it alternated between teams.

Technically, that's true. That's what the possession arrow does. But it doesn't explain why the possession arrow exists. So, here's the explanation. In basketball, there are times when two players are contesting the ball. Say, I grab at the ball, and you grab it simultaneously. I'm pulling. You're pulling. There's no clear advantage.

A referee would normally call "jump ball" to settle this dispute, to decide who should have the ball. A referee would stand between the two players, toss the ball higher than either player, and on the way down, each player would try to bat the ball to their team.

However, jump balls favor taller players. In college, there are only a handful of very tall players, and so certain teams would generally always have the advantage when it comes to jump balls. So, college basketball instituted a rule that said that in jump ball situations, the team that has the arrow pointing to it gets the ball.

Say, the arrow points to your team. You get the ball. At that point, the possession arrow switches over to the other team. If there's another similar situation, then the other team gets the ball.

With this explanation, you see the history of how the possession arrow came to be, you get the sense of why it exists. Of course, you might wonder why the NBA still uses jump balls, or what exactly is a jump ball situation. And in the end, you may not care about the answer, since you don't care about basketball.

The answer I give depends much on who's listening. Part of the problem with explaining it to someone who doesn't know much about sports is that they are convinced they don't know much about sports, and so they don't make a particular effort to pay attention.

To give an explanation that may resonate more with people who do follow sports, but don't play, say role-playing games, I could tell you a rule about when you should roll 2 ten-sided dice vs. 3 six-sided dice. But it is an isolated rule in a game filled with rules, and makes very little sense in isolation.

If the game is well-crafted, I might be able to give you a good explanation. Or it could simply be a rule that doesn't make sense, but is simply part of the game.

I've tried to explain to my brother the basics of football as well as programming, but he has a strong aversion to me explaining it to him. For one, he honestly doesn't care. For a second, he just doesn't like me explaining stuff to him. For some reason, it grates at him. Maybe because he's really, really not interested. But even when he is, I think it's painful, because he's so used to not wanting to hear me explain stuff.

What's the point? The point is that teaching something to someone is challenging because it presupposes they want to learn. Go and ask a class if they want to learn, and they'll say they do, but they'll also say they don't want to be bored, that they want to expend less effort to learned. If you're funny, then it's much easier to hold someone's attention.

Part of the challenge of learning is that much of learning is indeed doing. You can hear an explanation of how to make, say, a pie, but if you don't try to make it yourself, you don't make mistakes, you don't realize what's important to know. A teacher can run into this problem too. One reason teachers learn about teaching by doing is that they make some assumptions about what the students are learning and how they are learning. They get exasperated if students aren't learning at the pace they want.

I remember taking a class where the teacher would assign algorithm problems to work on. He rarely gave complete solutions. They were sketches of solutions. That was his problem. He thought that you simply had to give a solution. It never occurred for him to think about how one would come up with that solution. It's getting the right kind of thinking that helps you head to the solution, but so many people are unaware of how they come to solutions. They think hard, and get to it. But have the m explain how they do it, and they aren't really sure. Then, have them explain how anyone else is supposed to get it, and they'll say "Well, I figured it out. And a few others figured it out too!". And eventually they decide it's something you're born with, which makes you wonder why they bother teaching, except that, with some odds, the people who are born to understand it just need to be directed to the right problems to think about, and all is well.

Oh, I forgot to say that there were solutions for only those problems he cared to give solutions to. The rest, he'd point to some paper or another. At the time, I thought this was the height of laziness. I believe I was right. He honestly didn't want to spend more than ten minutes writing solutions, even if he'd have to spend hours and hours writing up a paper to submit to a journal, he couldn't devote even a fraction of that time to writing good solutions, which, by the way, he could even reuse if he had done it right the first time.

But, it's not like he was wrong either. If I really wanted to be successful in this area, I needed to read papers. But I had never done this as an undergrad. No one had bothered to explain it to me, and I was supposed to magically infer that reading papers, even papers that were probably written in a rush to other people who are well-versed in algorithms.

If you want to explain things to people, you need to know where they're coming from, and the truth is, the audience is far from homogenous. Give me one person, and I can sketch out an explanation for them and they'll go "yeah, yeah, I get it". Same explanation, different person, and I'd have to explain it ten different ways, make them review stuff they should already know, and even when it kinda got through, it would not make as much sense to this person as it did to the first person, who had the right mental tools to take that answer, and make sense of it, and more importantly, take it to the next step.

And really, many people find it incredibly challenging to listen to an explanation. You might think, well, I'll simply ask them "Do you have any questions?". But it's the one thing that you can ask that simply doesn't work. Many people are so lost that they couldn't ask a well-formed question if they wanted to. Some get it, and don't need to ask questions. Some are indeed too shy to ask.

You would think, for such bright people, teachers would realize how rarely this works. My solution is simpler. Ask the students an easy question based on what you've been teaching. If they can't answer it, then you need to work on your explanations.

For technical things, I'd suggest the following strategy. First, show them how to solve a problem. Then, ask them to solve a similar problem. See how well they do. Then, add a twist to the problem, and see how well they do. You'd be surprised that there are people, when shown a solution, then asked to reproduce it, aren't able to do it. That goes to show you how much you showing, and them not doing makes a difference.

There's a problem with this idea. It can slow you down. Also, there's no guarantee people will want to do it. Learning is a painful process for some. They feel like they're being forced to do something, and some mentally rebel against it, even as they ought to know it's in their best interest to pay attention.

But, when it works, it should work far better than the way you've been teaching now, because fundamentally, it gets students to do things now. And doing is almost always a better way to teach then having them watch you.

How obvious do you think this idea is? It doesn't seem revolutionary. Maybe it isn't. But see how often it is used, and then ask yourself why teaching is often this passive one-way experience.

And then you'll have the answer why students don't learn as much as they can.