Zune, Zune, Zune

I read reddit. As anyone who's read reddit knows, articles with big points have a skewed view of the world. They're heavily Democratic, anti-authority (mainly, the police abusing their privilege at the expense of citizens), pro Joel Spolsky, and anti-Microsoft.

Especially Zune.

Now, reddit readers, while numerous, are tiny compared the with millions of web surfers. However, many of these negative articles come from newspapers, or at least, their online versions, which are expected to have large readerships.

As Joel points out, people don't like to make decisions, so they're willing to have their decisions made for them. If Microsoft doesn't somehow combat the negative publicity, it's going to have to take the X-box strategy, which is to stay in this for the long haul, that is, take their lumps now, in the hopes that a second or third generation Zune will be significantly better than Apple's IPod.

This may be difficult because Apple is pretty good at hyping themselves. The media is enraptured by all things Apple. Let's ignore the fact that IPods don't have replaceable batteries (would ruin the sleek appearance, and prevent people from buying the latest model).

Indeed, Apple would love nothing better than the people think of portable players like they think of cars. They get tired of the fashion and have to have the newest ones.

The question is, will time cure what ails Zune? Zune apparently is being pressured by the music industry, and lacks the clout, despite being Microsoft, to fight back. Interestingly, Microsoft seems more willing to fight back on more traditional grounds, against Apple, then against its biggest competitor, Google, whose odd strategy has made it difficult for Microsoft to compete. Microsoft thinks very much in terms of products. The idea that Google would have so many of its products free must really gall Microsoft.

It's true that Google is itself playing a dangerous game. Can Adsense keep Google flush with money? They have to find the next Adsense, just as they were the next search engine.

To be honest, Google could simply take aim at a bunch of software no one seems to care that deeply about. For example, there's library software. Only a handful of companies make software for it, and I'm sure they'd be hard-pressed to have anywhere near the talent of Google.

For some smallish price, Google could take over library software everywhere. Would they want to do so? I don't know. There's medical software meant to keep track of patients.

I mean, you can go on and on with specialized software that the big boys find tedious and completely ignore, but could be easily pickings should these large companies choose to set their sights.

But, anyway, the Zune. I dunno. There's rumors again floating that Apple will make the IPhone. If that ever turns out to be true, would that doom Zune? Are they ready to enter the phone business?

Think about it.

Clothes Call

Humans have invented quite a few languages. Although English is widely spoken, there are many who do not speak. Thus, pictures and symbols have been developed to help those who may not speak English.

In particular, the universal bodily function, that of removing one's wastes from one's body, means that most people need to find restrooms.

So think about it. What iconography is used to represent men and women for restrooms? You have a stick figure of indeterminate gender, who represents the man. And the woman? Someone wearing, presumably, a skirt.

That's right. A skirt.

Now, I don't know about you, but outside some Brittany Spears fantasy video, I don't recall the last time I've seen a woman casually wearing a skirt. The US doesn't have much in the way of uniforms for pre-college boys and girls.

But I find it fascinating that we have stuck to symbols that are now some 40 years out-of-date, because, frankly, we lack the imagination to replace them.

Having said that, there's a reason why we choose such images. We want them to stand the test of time. Thus, we're stuck with the symbols we've picked.

Occasionally, some restaurants choose a variation on a theme that makes it even more challenging to figure out, such as seafood restaurants being clever with buoys and gulls. Forget the fact that people don't always speak English. Now, they must be familiar with these punny near-homonyms.

But what would we replace them with? Ah, there's the rub.

The obvious choice, at least, from a "historical" view, would be the circle with the arrow and the circle with the cross. Except who remembers which is male, and which is female (the one with the arrow is male)?

Another choice that ought to stand the test of time would be a little NSFW for public consumption, which is to have some depiction of genitals. I suppose one could try to represent X and Y chromosomes, but who is XY? Who is XX? And what if you're genetically unique, and don't fit those two?

Or perhaps our notions of having separate men and women's restrooms is passe, and we should allow for unisex restrooms! If that's too much, then we can have separate unisex restrooms, with one occupant at a time, if the thought of women and men relieving themselves in near proximity is too much for our frail sensibilities.

And, let's all be careful next time we're near a school, where signs abound that show the handsome young stick figure of a man, helping the diminutive young lass, who is, of course, wearing her skirt, or some triangular outfit.

More Hot Sour

Thanksgiving Dinner. Turkey. Ham. Stuffing. Mashed potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Hot and Sour Soup.

Really?

I've been living in a house dubbed geek-house for a few years now. The original occupants probably lived there for two or three more years before me.

I'd be willing to bet that in all that time, they never made turkey. At least, for Thanksgiving. After all, Thanksgiving is the holiday most people associate with going home, so I suspect the Americans in the household went home, and the non-Americans didn't make turkey.

This year, I thought I'd have to work. Deadlines, you know.

So I didn't plan to go home for Thanksgiving, which I had done the previous two years.

So this year, I decided to make turkey. Now, I didn't have a particular plan for turkey. I had read some ideas on turkey preparation. Some people suggest baking the turkey upside down. Spice rubs have become popular. Then, there's the recent hot trend of brining the turkey. A few years ago, I had read about cooking the turkey in very low temperatures, around 200 F, instead of say 350. You'd bake it twice as long, and then, say, in the final hour, pump the temperature up so it wouldn't be full of bacteria and such.

I tried brining, but without actually reading about it. Not such a good idea. And I only did it for an hour, instead of the recommended 6-8 hours, so I'm sure the effect was rather minimal.

But what else to cook besides the standard turkey? I had stuffing. I had some potatoes. I bought french-cut green beans. What makes them French, I don't know.

Then, I thought, I could make hot and sour soup. I had made it a few times before, and it seemed pretty easy. Most recipes call for lily buds of some sort, and cloud ears, both ingredients rather difficult to find. They also ask for Asian mushrooms like shitaake, which has become much easier to find in recent years.

I usually get tofu and regular mushrooms and bamboo shoots.

But the key to hot and sour soup? Other than decent broth, it's the vinegar. If you want something that tastes a bit out of the ordinary, but is still quite tasty, get Chiangking vinegar. It's a kind of black Chinese vinegar. I'd get it instead of Chinese black vinegar. The one I bought was simply not sour. I'd pour a cup in, and still the sourness didn't come through. Get Chiangking instead.

I also got pork chops and cut it thin. But really, you should douse it in soy and some alcohol of some sort, say, sherry or some alcohol. I think this breaks down the meat some so it isn't so tough, and darkens the pork from a pale white to a rich brown.

Then, mix eggs with cornstarch (supposed to make the eggs stay together as you cook). Mix, stir, and half an hour later, you have decent soup.

Is Joel Spolsky Right About Hiring?

Joel Spolsky is opinionated about hiring great programmers. That's fine. He recognizes that great programmers produce at a rate that's gaudy compared to the average programmer. There are certainly people smart enough to be a great programmer, but lack the will to do it. Thus, in principle, a Ph.D. in computer science is bright enough to figure out most of the complexities of programs, but it may frustrate them to no end to actually do it.

But Joel has the luxury to hire as he wants. As I've pointed out numerous times, his blog allows him to get some fame, at least, in enough circles that he can get talented programmers to apply. Needless to say, without his blog, he'd find his talent pool far, far thinner.

There's still an additional issue. Joel is cautious about how much business he takes on, and indeed, the worst thing that could happen to Joel is to have a project that requires two dozen programmers to accomplish. He'd have to reject such projects, because he needs the time to find the programmers he wants.

Indeed, even places as vaunted as Google or Microsoft who try to hire the best, may end up having to "lower" their standards to get enough people to do what needs to be done. Having said that, this lowering of standards often leaves them with people that are still far above their competitors.

Joel does get one thing right, and it's somewhat sad, but true. He assumes that great programmers are, well, born, but not made. More properly, there's some things you can teach to improve the skill of a programmer, but that takes effort most companies are unwilling to take. They'd prefer that programmers have already reached the stage that anything they need to learn, they can learn on their own.

And someone like Joel wants programmers that show good judgment, meaning they don't get distracted on coding or research that doesn't pertain to what needs to be done, and yet be careful enough not to write quick and dirty code that forgets to deal with strange cases.

The point is that, given his company, he has the luxury to refuse people, because he never has the need to have, say, 20 people hired in three months. He simply couldn't find that many good people because as well known as Fog Creek Software is, it's still an elite community that's heard of them. They lack the day-to-day recognition that Microsoft and Google has, and this is even among people who program for a living.

Indeed, Joel could almost say "I wouldn't hire someone who had never read my blog or heard about the company", because it means that person isn't savvy about the technical world around them. These are the same folks that are likely not to have heard about Ajax, Web 2.0, Reddit, Digg, and so forth.

And of course, I haven't even bother to talk about the fact that if you take his philosophy to the extreme, then any talk he presents to colleges (and he has been doing that lately) could start with "Most of you, I would reject in a heartbeat. You're not good enough to work for my company, and frankly, most of you shouldn't even be working at all, because if I would reject you, so should everyone else".

That's, of course, far too mean to say, because it might scare off the good people too, who usually aren't so narcissistic to believe they are the best (a few believe that, but they can be a pain to work with, especially if they are right--which makes it a reason to avoid hiring them as well).

This strategy is basically like professional sports. Most people playing college sports will never make a living as a professional, and frankly, they don't. They have to seek alternatives. To be fair, those that make it to the pros are handsomely compensated. And to be fair, if you're above a certain level in programming competency (which might be a bar set very high), then you can have as many of that skill of programmer as you could want.

What I mean is this. Competitive sports directly pits athlete against athlete, and as athletes get better, what used to be good enough is no longer good enough, because they have to compete against better players.

This is less the case with programmers. If you're smart enough to understand algorithms, graphics, math, etc. and you're able to master new material and software quickly, and you're savvy enough to decide whether you should take path X or Y, then you're probably good enough to be a top-notch programmer. And anyone who can pass this threshold should be good enough. Theoretically, that can be as many people as you'd want.

Practically, it's hard to get programmers to this level, because it takes a certain attitude and intelligence to reach here.

To sum up (which I find I need to do often), hiring as Joel suggests is not often feasible unless you can control how much work you need. This is exactly why Joel refuses to do consultingware. He simply lacks the manpower to do that, and this would force him to hire someone just to get stuff done, and therefore, people he'd ordinarily reject, he'd have to take a second look. And unlike the mostly fuss-free management he does now (or his second-in-commands), he'd really need to have someone to budget, manage, cajole, teach these folks so they could get stuff done.

What? No Mango Lassi

If you ask Americans who like/love eating Indian food, one refreshment they seem to universally love is mango lassi (lassi is pronounced like "hussy"). This is basically pureed mangos and yogurt. It's nice. It's sweet. (Although lassis can be made salty).

But you know what? Can't seem to find mango lassis in India. Most lassis are made from buttermilk, at least, it seems that way. Mostly, I use buttermilk to cook, not so much to drink. And I'm used to mango lassis.

When I asked about it, I was told "mangoes aren't in season now". I realize that people in the US don't think about foods being in or out of season. Somehow they manage to grow stuff year round, or preserve it enough, or something. Or maybe they used the canned stuff when making the drink.

On the other hand, most items in an Indian menu do look like dishes I've seen before, even down to the variety of breads you can get (rotis, chapatis, naans), which makes me think that Indian restaurants, outside the lack of heat, is reasonably close to what you get in India, at least, in terms of what is served.

The food that I had, for the most part, wasn't fiery hot, but it was hot. The hot and sour soup, for that reason, was pretty good in India.

Anyhoo, I'm looking forward to mango lassis next time I go to an Indian restaurant.

Why I Hate Cars

You know, for all the advances car manufacturers make, they still completely avoid one thing. They haven't made cars easier to repair.

Time and again, the novice among us (including me) must place trust in people who have no incentive to be trustworthy. There are, I'm sure, many a mechanic that is honest, and many a mechanic who will exaggerate a problem or even suggest a problem that doesn't exist, so they can make more money.

This is where you'd hope that consumer activists would periodically go from mechanic to mechanic on behalf of people with car problems, and see whether you have a real problem or not, and if the mechanic suggest something outrageous, they would get sued.

I know. I know. Our litiginous society. Too many lawsuits. But there should be some effective way to make it painful for mechanics to suggest outrageous repairs when they are not needed. Clearly, I don't want mechanics to end up the way of doctors, who much spend a great deal of income protecting themselves against lawsuits, but I want a negative incentive to make mechanics have something to think about before they say you need something that you don't.

But, to get back to the point.

Here's something that should be reinvented.

The car battery.

Let me explain the situation. I came back from out of the country to be greeted by a car whose electrical power went away. Was it the alternator? Was it the battery? Was it both?

To replace the battery, one of my housemates, who had done this before, helped me change it.

Let me recount what was needed. A battery is held in place by these two clamps, that are held by a nut (what a name). Thus, you need a wrench of some sort to remove this nut.

Except of course, this is a battery, and batteries corrode, and so there's a bunch of corroded stuff on the nut, which means that even if you managed to completely remove it, which you would think you should do, there's not a good change you can get it put back on again.

The nut is low to the battery, and adjacent to some other piece of metal that makes it rather difficult to remove, even under the best of circumstances. Thus, you can barely get access, even with a wrench, to remove the nut.

But my housemate doesn't remove it. Instead, he just loosens it some, then gets a rubber mallet, and hits at it. The idea, again, is to shake loose some of the buildup so that it isn't so glued to the battery terminal, then, he tries to knock the entire clamp off the battery.

This is not exactly an obvious idea, and clearly, if this is what you're supposed to do, then it's very badly designed. This is, to me, the equivalent of taking a wrench to yank out a floppy from a drive. Surely, this horribly awfully wrong.

And yet, I know, this is practically how it's supposed to be done.

Once removed, there is this plastic cover that also needs to be removed, which also has some kind of screw holding some bar in place, which is also corroded. This contraption also makes no sense. I understand it's meant to prevent the battery from moving around, but seriously, there has to be a better way than this retainer for car batteries.

So once this metal crossbar is removed, then the plastic covering that is meant to keep the battery from wobbling is removed, the battery can be taken out.

Except the battery is like 20 lbs. It's very heavy, and worse still, it has no plastic handle.

Everything so far is meant to discourage, well, to be sexist, women. While women, undoubtedly, could do what is being done, plenty of things have been put in place to make this the messiest operation imaginable.

And let's not forget that to jump start a battery, you require clamps that barely clamp, and the clamps need to be clamped in an order that everyone forgets (red dead, red live, black live, black dead).

Let's figure out how this really should be done.

First, the battery should not use clamps to be hooked to the car. It should use something like an oversized plug, and that plug should be insulated in such a way so you don't accidentally touch it.

Second, the battery should be placed elsewhere, perhaps in the back of the car somewhere, so that it isn't susceptible to outside weather and corrosion.

Third, jump starting should be done inside the car, with some mechanism that doesn't involve using oversized alligator clips.

Fourth, there should be some other, more permanent battery that can be used, instead of the one that is used. Replacing the battery should then be a matter of opening the trunk, popping out the battery, popping in the new one, and done.

The point is, car manufacturers and battery manufacturers have done very little to make this process any easier. Indeed, it's just as complex now as it's ever been, with the exception that you no longer need to add water to the battery.

Indeed, a car manufacturer, if it's trying to keep the customer happy (and not its own dealers) should make every effort to make repairing one's own car easy, and that means redesigning the parts to make that happen.

Were it not for the fact that connectors to computers keep changing every few years, thus making things obsolete way too quick (USB, USB2, Firewire--what will we have in twenty years? And what will happen to these?), then we could have a connector (heck make it a car standard) that you could attach to your computer, and could give you diagnostics so that a mechanic couldn't rip you off. You'd have some idea of what to do first.

Indeed, more companies should hire a mechanic, part time, to evaluate cars, and find out what's wrong before it gets sent to a real mechanic. This would make everyone's life easier, and make employees that much happier.

That this isn't a standard benefit is rather surprising.

Sure, I know this means I'm addicted to a piece of technology I don't understand and don't really care to understand.

Such lessons, alas, are unlikely to be learned, as manufacturers make deals with dealers so they can make a living. You'd think that somehow, somewhere, someone would try something different, and yet, they don't.

War and Peace

The above video is a collaboration between U2 and Green Day. You may wish to watch it before reading further.

I read about what this video was from another blog, and so there were spoilers. In the spoilers, it says that halfway through, it imagines what happens if the US had responded the way it should have during Katrina.

Now, this is a video, so exactly how do you do this?

You take liberties, of course.

So you imagine hundreds of fighter jets flying over New Orleans, even if they're not exactly ideal candidates for rescue. The idea is to juxtapose scenes you'd expect in a miliary strike (a very heavy military strike--basically only stuff you see in Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica) serving as rescue.

But just in case that's not entirely clear, you add a typical news crawl at the bottom indicating that the military has recalled troops from Iraq to deal with the Katrina crisis.

And as silly as that seems, because the logistics feels all wrong, it is reasonably effective at getting its point across. There's this old saying of beating swords into plowshares. This is a modern equivalent, of using US weapons of mass destruction into vehicles of rescue and hope.

So while I might laugh at the idea of this kind of rescue from a pragmatic view, it is a rather clever idea if your point is to say that we should stop the war and use those resources to good, and for that, I have to credit the creative artists who thought of this (I suppose the idea may be obvious to you, but it wasn't so obvious to me).

Lucky 13

The ACC, a much maligned football conference, made an upgrade two years ago, when Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College defected from the Big East, and joined the ACC. Miami routinely ranks in the top 10, and has won more than its share of national championships.

Virginia Tech also ranks rather highly, usually, in the top 10 most years. Boston College is a very solid football team, even if all anyone every remembers of the team is Doug Flutie, and that was twenty years ago.

The timing of these powerhouse teams made Maryland's road to respectability that much tougher. The 90s were a decade of futility for Maryland. After Bobby Ross had left Maryland for the pros and Georgia Tech, Maryland struggled to make it to the post season.

Maryland had three coaches before Friedgen. Joe Krivak coached between 1987-1991. Mark Duffner was coach for Holy Cross, a successful coach for a rather small division. However, he did not do well at Maryland. He was followed by Ron Vanderlinden, who had been an assistant under the resurgent program at Northwestern (which had the reputation as the worst football team in the country, before it turned it around).

Many a time, Maryland came close to have winning seasons, only to eke out a loss, and miss the postseason. Most Maryland fans saw football season as a way to bide time until basketball season started. At least, under Gary Williams, Maryland had a basketball team that did well regularly.

Then, Maryland hired one of its own. Ralph Friedgen had not only been a Maryland alum, playing for its football team once upon a time, but was part of the last really successful football program at Maryland, under Bobby Ross.

When Ross headed to the NFL, George O'Leary became head coach at Georgia Tech. Friedgen was still offensive coordinator. He was at the age where assistant coaches don't get chances to become head coaches. He was ready to settle down in Atlanta, and was in the process of having a house built, when he got the call from Debbie Yow, athletic director.

Friedgen had a great first year. He went 10-3. That year was a year when many teams had first year coaches. Friedgen was the most successful. His reward? An Orange Bowl matchup against Steve Spurrier's Gators. Spurrier coached a juggernaut of a team, that perennial would content for the national title. Soon thereafter, he left the program, wooed by Daniel Snyder and his millions, for two disastrous years with the Redskins, before taking a break, and then accepting a head coaching position at South Carolina.

Friedgen would follow the first successful year with two more successful years, each somewhat less successful than before.

By the fourth year, Miami and Virginia Tech entered the fray. And, worst still, many of those first year coaches that Friedgen had success with were getting better. Rich Rodriguez, head coach for West Virginia, was taking advantage of the vacuum left when Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College left the Big East, which made WVU a team that ought to contend each year for the Big East title.

The subsequent two years were tough years at Maryland. Not only was it tough in football, it was also tough in basketball. Those two years, neither the football nor basketball teams made the postseason (at least, a postseason of note, ie, the NCAA tournament).

Given the level of difficulty of the ACC, it was no sure thing that this year would be that much different.

But somehow Maryland began to win. Despite a 20 point deficit to Virginia, Maryland won that game by 2 points. They somehow hung on to beat Florida State. And Clemson.

They had a five game win streak, won by a total of 12 points. This was one lucky team.

This week, Maryland would go against Miami. In any normal year, Miami would crush Maryland. They're that good.

But Miami has been having a down year. Injuries and a controversial fight with Florida International had lead Miami to a 5-4 record, and in danger of not making a bowl, something unthinkable at the beginning of the year.

To compound their problems, Bryan Pata, a senior defenseman had been shot and killed just outside his apartment on Tuesday, shortly after practice. There was some debate as to whether the team should play its game, but of course, they decided to play. Pata would have wanted it that way.

Maryland started off with two big scores, both to Heyward-Bey, including the longest touchdown pass ever made against Miami. Maryland had a 14-0 lead, and they hadn't even had their running game starting.

But Maryland would find that gaining yards in smaller chunks to be a daunting task. Miami would get a field goal, then a touchdown, to close the gap to 14-10 by halftime, and Maryland would struggle to move the ball.

The third quarter was scoreless as Maryland's defense, logging plenty of minutes, was at least effective enough to keep Miami at bay. Miami would then engineer a very long drive that eventually lead to a field goal, and trailed by a point.

Although Maryland was able to move the ball some in the fourth quarter, it was still an exercise in futility, and Maryland again had to punt it to Miami. Miami had chances to score an easy touchdown earlier, but a receiver mismanaged the ball, and Maryland stayed ahead by the thinnest of margins.

Miami's decision to go for the field goal was mostly out of being safe, and mostly because they saw that Maryland was rather ineffective trying to stop Miami's offense. And they didn't need a touchdown. They merely needed a field goal.

Yet, Maryland's luck would remain with them. A pass was broken up when a Maryland defender stuck his hand out. This caused the ball to deflect nearly straight up. Another defender came and grabbed the ball, and landed with both feet barely in, before falling out of bounds.

With three minutes left, Maryland just needed a first down to run the clock out.

But it wasn't to be. Three and out.

So Maryland had to kick the ball away with a minute and a half left. Miami had already called time out, and it appeared that Maryland was going to run a fourth down play. Of course, that deep into Maryland territory, it was silly to run the play.

Maryland really was hoping Miami would go offsides, and then they would get a penalty, and start running the clock some more. Miami didn't fall for it, so Maryland punted the ball away, deep and high.

Miami appeared as if it would get a chance to try for a winning field goal.

If only.

If only the punt returner had held onto the ball.

Maryland's special teams came up, knocked the punt returner, and the ball slipped out. A Maryland player pounced on the ball.

Turnover.

With 45 seconds left, Maryland could now run out the clock and preserve their 1 point victory.

Five straight games by a total of 13 points. A two point victory against UVA. A 6 point victory against NC State. A three point victory against FSU. And a one point victory against Clemson and Miami.

This is not the kind of gaudy results that bodes well for the future, but the team believes. Two more tough games. At Boston College, who is ranked, and at home against Wake Forest, a team that used to have a laughable football team, but now is also ranked.

While Maryland is assured of a bowl game of some sort now, winning those two games, as improbable as that is, would mean the ACC title. Is Maryland deserving? Eh. This is how football is sometimes. Luck more important than skill.

Yo Vote!

I was reading reports about voting issues on election day. Again, machines didn't quite work write, and people had to cast provisional ballots in the meanwhile. What I'm wondering is this. Don't they test these machines in dry run situations? It seems like volunteers come on election day and wonder "why doesn't this work?". For something as important as voting, they should check the equipment works the night before, and make sure those who are setting things up are properly trained.

Second, why are there only two major manufacturers of voting booths? Why doesn't, say, Apple make voting booths. OK, maybe not Apple, but someone serious? Why isn't the process of voting booth approval opened up to a serious panel that knows something about voting security?

I had heard, on one of these pundit shows that have, frankly, begun to lose interest for me, a comment that was anti-Democrat. Why do Democrats only complain about voting irregularities when they lose, and not when they win?

Simple. Sour grapes. Democrats could easily point to voting irregularites even in this campaign, but what would be the point? Should they say "hey, we won, but there were still voting irregularities anyway, that made the victories closer than it should have been". It seems many people complain about these irregularites, but I want to see a report about why there aren't active competitors among voting booth manufacturers.

It's probably one of those silly state laws that requires a contract bid so that all state booths come from one source, which forces a near monopoly on those who can provide these booths.

Personally, I'd like to see non-anonymous voting, in which case, voters can verify their own votes online. If Amazon can handle so many customers, one would imagine it could possibly handle all sorts of voters. I know. I know. We're still not technically savvy as a country to vote using webpages and the like.

It just seems like there are so many more solutions that somehow aren't being actively explored.

And of course, this makes you wonder, for as much as we tout democracy, why is it that we don't spend the kind of money, and get the kind of resources and assurances to protect this democracy? The process is certainly unwieldy, forcing people to head to voting areas, making voting something of a pain, when it could be far more effortless.

On Digging Deeper

Many a news article isn't simply timely reporting. We think of news as "new", because that's literally its name. The problem with timely reporting is that it's often shallow reporting.

For example, I just read an article about the guy who was called "macaca" by George Allen. At the time, the reaction was "how could he make a (bizarre) racial slur like that"? And it said something about Allen's past, and possibly about the state he came from. Not much was said immediately about S.R. Sidarth, the person whom the slur was aimed.

Before getting into the article, I should note that "macaca" is, as slurs go, a bit unusual. Apparently, it's a slur in some parts of Europe, which would lend some credence to Allen saying he made it up (maybe not then and there--perhaps he used this term when he was a kid and it's only specifically regional).

In any case, who was this guy?

He recently wrote a report to the Washington Post. He had been on Webb's campaign, and had been following Allen around to listen to what he was saying. The Allen campaign should have been more than aware who he was, and with a little research, what his background was. Of Indian descent, he was born and raised in Virginia. He had nothing but positive things to say about the hospitality he received, even from the Allen campaign.

In other words, he wasn't particularly offended, though he was puzzled why he was used as political fodder when Allen should have known better. But perhaps that is trying to make political hay of the situation. If you're in hicktown, maybe you play on the fears of foreigners, or at least, perceived foreigners, since Sidharth claims that he's about as native as he can be (at least, by birth, if not by deep cultural ties).

Is this news? Of a sort. It reveals detail of something that was reported. True, Sidarth himself was the one that gave a first person report of the situation, and he may be able to vault himself into an initial job because of it. Allen's comment may do more for Sidarth's career (and his gaffe more to hurt his own) than anything Sidarth would have done on his own. To be fair, Sidarth was already doing the work of a foot soldier in a campaign, so who knows? With time, he may have been successful anyway.

The point is, Sidarth's career aspirations aside, that this kind of article digs deeper at something most of us only had the most rudimentary information about.

It's the kind of journalism that was missing from what I would read in India, which seemed to me, filled with all sorts of lazy journalism. It's not to say Americans aren't filled with its share of lazy journalism, where briefings from the White House is considered "news" and the content of what's said is often analyzed, if at all, at some later point.

This is the kind of journalism that people should crave for, and the kind journalism should provide. The best papers do this in the US, and certainly NPR is good at this kind of trend news that pokes deeper at things people may soon care about. It's not always new, or politically relevant, but it's socially relevant.

These articles, to me, form the bedrock of a free society. I was going to say a democratic society, but I think, democracy equated to freedom is far overstated. Many societies claim to have democracy, but really, it's other civil liberties that matter as much, and it's the government's ability to remain free of corruption that matters, because they can control the level of freedom we have.

How Bizarre

Cameras and video recorders are cheap enough that everyone can have one. With websites like Flickr and Photobucket, you can upload photos. With YouTube, you can upload videos. With digital cameras, you can take hundreds of photos and never have to buy film again. Indeed, it's becoming difficult to get film anymore. And who needs the hassle?

A few years ago, I attended an engagement ceremony. This was, apparently, a Vietnamese tradition. The groom-to-be brings along several male friends and his parents to the bride-to-be's house, where the groom-to-be's parents ask permission for the daughter's hand in marriage.

A tea ceremony followed where bride and groom-to-be serve tea to family members.

Throughout this rather ancient ceremony, cameras and video cameras were everywhere, snapping shots, and video. It was ancient meeting technology.

And furthermore, there was some leftover technology right in the middle. Vietnam, perhaps much like the rest of Southeast Asia, practices ancestor worhip. Thus, a black and white photo of some elderly relative, a grandfather or great grandfather, most likely passed away, was hung on the wall, overlooking the ceremony.

This relatively recent technology (admittedly over a hundred years old now) has become even more widespread with cheap cameras, and it means people now photograph and video many things.

Yet, photography can be thought of as, well, creepy.

Recently, I was in Rockville with Gabe of Memeorandum and some people who were fans of the website. During this time, the cameras came out, and pictures were taken. Now, I've know Gabe for a while, and he enjoys photography and such, but by nature, he's a bit of an introvert. In the past, he might have felt some discomfort at all this picture taking, and indeed, I think he still does. But it's become the norm among the Web 2.0 cognoscenti to take photos and not even bother asking if it bothers anyone.

This is the age of reality TV, and photo taking has become the norm.

I was watching some home videos of Reggie Bush somewhere, when he was in high school. They were showing how dazzling he was, even in high school, and certainly how dazzling he is in college.

Parents routinely video their kids accomplishments. Soccer moms taking photos of their kids playing soccer. Sports parents taking videos of basketball and football games. And maybe if a daughter was doing ballet, or a beauty contest, well, there'd be videos of that too.

Recently, I saw a video. On the surface, it seems none too interesting. There's a teenaged guy weight training. He has a home gym with free weights. He's mentioning how much weight he's lifting, and whether he was able to do it the last time he worked out.

Because he's shirtless, you can tell he's worked out quite a bit. He's not at the level to do bodybuilding professionally (perhaps because he's not taking performance enhancing drugs), but he might be able to model or something.

Dad's spotting. He doesn't seem like a pushy dad, though he's encouraging the son. Dad could spend some time working out himself. His gut hangs over his belt. Wisely, he's kept his shirt on.

All in all, there's nothing untowards about his behavior.

Except it's all on video.

And I'm watching it on YouTube.

So think about this mindset. Dad wants to video tape his son working out, and put it on the Internet? (It's not clear he's the one that has done this, but it seems certain dad is running the video camera).

Is this strange? Or, is it no different from parents taping their kids at a sporting event? Perhaps it's the narcissism that's involved in bodybuilding (or something approximating that) that seems creepy, but I'd imagine that a parent taping a daughter doing a talent performance at home might seem less odd.

And that started to make me think, why do I think this is strange behavior from a parent? After all, there are many things like this that seem innocent. Is it like those Calvin Klein ads? That this isn't sport, but some kind of exploitation?

You could point out the motivation. Why is dad so concerned with son's workout? Maybe because he was never fit and this gave him troubles in life, at least, he thought it did, and he wanted his son to be fit so he could, um, well, meet women? Or something.

But how different is that from a sports parent who was never that good who wants their kid to be a star athlete? Is it so different? Mothers may want their daughters to look pretty, be thin, all the traits the media presents as ideal.

Of course, from my view, I think dad has made some odd decisions. What about education? What about a job? The sports parent has, at the very least, deluded themselves into thinking their child will become a star athlete, make lots of money, and take care of them. What about a parent that wants their kid to work out?

Now, he's what's worse.

Like many folks, I'm making a judgement on very little information. A ten minute video tells you nothing, and yet, you fill in the pieces, assuming that the son must be devoted to working out, and since there's no particular reason you can imagine why dad would want this, there's all sorts of strange scenarios that can be worked out.

Perhaps in context, this would be weird. But I'm already making judgements with very little information, and yet, people do this all the time. We believe, with our lifetime of experience, of watching situations, that we know what's happening.

Yet I know that this ability is very culture specific. My mother reasons about the world quite a bit differently than me, because her personal experiences with people are different. She feels people are out to take advantage of you, and yet that's not been my own experience with people. I can only attribute this to having grown up in a different culture than my mother.

The video I'm watching is within (roughly) my own culture, yet I'm willing to say that the US is broad in its background that I can't make judgements that apply universally to all Americans.

But let me get to the point I was originally trying to make.

Perhaps, ordinarily, dad working out with son at home is no big deal. OK, so he wants his son to be ripped. Other parents want their kids to play soccer. Whatever.

But, what makes it more peculiar is the act of videotaping it. Something makes that different. (It's a theme that Atom Egoyan hints at in most of his films, but I don't think he's really made a film that really digs at this). Videotaping means you can show it to others, that you (in principle) want to show it to others. And that's a different psychology.

But who would have thought that today's teens would decide privacy is not that important. That putting out their daily schedule for their friends to see is fine. My brother finds that this loss of privacy is too much, and yet today's teens think of Big Brother as something they want.

Is this merely an extension of this idea that our lives are public, and the oft-repeated maxim of Andy Warhol, that we'll all be famous for fifteen minutes?

Touring with Sufjan

Seattle seems like a small eternity ago. I was there during the weekend that Sufjan wrapped up his tour in the US. Last stop, Paramount Theater.

The theater itself looks like one of those old-timey theaters, where someone must still go out and place letters up. This bit of nostalgia is a bit of Americana, where technology rushes forward, but bits of history linger, trying to root us to some time and place, even if that time and place is less than a hundred years old, perhaps indicative of the brief period of American history.

Inside, there is ornate art on the ceiling, on the side of walls, again recalling a period in time when people seemed to care about this. Oddly enough, it reminds me of my trip in India, where buildings built by kings were also ornate. At some point, the craftsmanship needed to create such art has been lost, replaced by plain walls. To be sure, baroque things sometimes look way overdone, far too glitzy for the common man. Yet, they also harken to a time when this kind of excess meant something.

This theater looked like it could easily hold 500 people. I did some mental calculations. My ticket was probably 40 dollars. Sufjan probably makes, hmm, 30 bucks on the ticket. That means 15,000 dollars on the evening. And he's sold out everywhere in the US, presumably at similar sized venues.

And perhaps he needs to make such a pretty penny because his band is huge. For such a personal singer, his stage performances seem more like Broadway, or perhaps, an oddly put together high school stage performance, than a normal band.

At least, Sufjan (or his band) thinks that when you come to a performance, it's more than just the music. I had likened it to Prince. So many bands put all their creativity in the songs, and very little in the actual staging. This may simply be Sufjan's literary background coming through. Stories to be told and seen and sung.

Sufjan's band wore plastic butterfly wings the size of small kites. Sufjan himself donned eagle wings, also kite-like. He would arch his shoulders back and forth, causing his wings to flutter. Reflecting much of his persona, this borders between kitsch and mocking to something profound, much like his 50 states project.

Blow-up Santas and Supermans were strewned throughtout the stage as part of setup. Again, total kitsch and possibly kink too. Who blew them up? (Perhaps machines!). And did they buy out the only Santa/Superman blowup factory. Apparently, most of these were tossed out into the audience who then lofted these dolls upward, in some kind of cartoonish mosh pit, without the angst and seriousness.

All the while, I'm thinking of logistics. Bands often stay one day in a city, and perform the next day in another city. Do they arrange hotels? Do they decide to stay the evening, and then head to the next destination in the morning? Are they taking huge busses around? Are they flying? Does someone go ahead, while the others remain behind?

Do so-called band-aids hang out, hand selected by those who know of the peculiarities of someone's tastes?

I know. Odd thoughts while attending a concert. I'm supposed to be in the here and now. I'm supposed to sing with the lyrics. I'm supposed to laugh at Sufjan's curiously oblique story, one that has been told time and again, but refined because the story didn't quite hold water. It was a large paper mache rooster, and it was raining, and they propped it in the forest and we made a "caw, caw" sound, oh, but roosters make, what is it? "Cock a doodle do!".

We were like brothers, he said, born on the same time on the same day. ("What day was that, Sufjan". He demurred and would not answer). And this meandering story prefaced the song, the Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to get you, a song which seems to be about gay longing, though many have tried to dissect its meaning (maybe the narrator is a woman). It gave rise to a thought that maybe he was singing in the guise of his friend, who had something for Sufjan, and that it was Sufjan that may have freaked out.

Or not.

As I was heading back from Seattle, then heading out to India, I knew Sufjan would similarly be touring in Europe, to eventually conclude the tour in Iceland, land of Sigur Ros, in some church, perhaps of some stature.

This vast entourage would wend its way from town to town. More like city to city. Would the stories make sense? The humor, so attuned to American oddity a la Keillor, might not make sense abroad, but then, maybe it wouldn't matter. Interesting how Europeans and even Japanese embrace bands that don't speak the local tongue, and yet foreign bands struggle in the US. When was the last time you went to a band that didn't really speak English?

No, I don't mean Ozzy.

One of these days, they might actually take a good picture of Sufjan, but then, he'd actually have to look into the camera.

Indian Movie

I have to describe this plot, which just seems too odd.

I'm watching an Indian movie on the plane from Bangalore to Frankfurt.

Here's the plot summary. A girl and her best friend are visiting rural India. Girl meets a guy named Krishna. He's kind of a Fabio type. They sing, run up and down mountains, by idyllic water. Julie Andrews, eat your heart out!

The guy, in fact, looks a bit dumb and happy. There's a goofy smile, and he seems none too bright. He lives under the eye of his watchful grandmother. He also seems to run fast, jump high. They must have something special up in the mountain water.

After ten days of nothing but bliss and dancing, the girls return back to Singapore (yes, they're still Indian--but Indians live in Singapore) where they get promptly fired for taking an additional five days of vacation.

To save their job, the main female's friend says they need to convince Krishna to come to Singapore, where he'l be a star, since he can run faster, jump higher, and sing and dance longer than the average bear.

But Krishna is an innocent and they'll need a ploy to convince him to come. So the friend writes a script which says the main female's mom is going to arrange a marriage with another guy, and she needs him to come to show to her mom so she'll pick him and they can get married. And she desperately misses him too.

OK, a bit of lying, but when you need to save your job, what's a little lying?

Krishna, so happy that she cares that much, starts to plan a trip to Singapore, and wants to ask permission from Grandma.

She won't allow it.

Why not, Grandma?

OK, she explains. There was some accident involving an alien spacecraft.

Yes. Alien.

And somehow her son was made none-too-bright.

The alien (not quite ET) felt bad and gave him super powers. He's now super smart, super athletic, everything a proud Indian mama could want.

His prowess leads him to the attention of one Dr. Arya, who speaks a good deal of English, perhaps to emphasize his evil.

He is very impressed by Rajiv, who is the father of Krishna. He wants him to come to Singapore to work for him (this is about 20 years ago). He tasks him with making a machine that can tell the future. You know. Minority Report. Paycheck. That kinda thing. Krishna spends two years making this machine, and is finally successful. It uses retinal scans and his heartbeat to turn on. Retinal scans are key.

Dr. Arya then has a plan. Now that Rajiv is done, he doesn't need to live anymore. So he'll kill him. Not one to delegate, Arya will do it himself.

Except Rajiv discovers this plan by looking into the future in his machine. And he destroys his own machine before Arya arrives.

This is all being revealed by a security chief that works for Arya, but was good friends with Rajiv.

And he saves Rajiv's life! Arya still wants to kill Rajiv, since he already has the plans to make a new machine, courtesy of Rajiv. But the security chief says that he can't kill Rajiv, because his retinal scan and heartbeats turn on the machine. So Arya puts him in his dungeon or something, and he's kept out of sight.

Meanwhile, his wife pulls an Amidala of sorts, and dies when she hears her husband has died.

Meanwhile, the mother of Rajiv is all sad, because she's heard her son has died to the manipulations of an evil company and she won't have her grandson risked. He's all she has, don't you know? And she's ever so jealous.

But after this impassioned plea with aliens and a megalomaniac entrepreneur, she changes her mind. If he's truly in love, she can't stop him. Go find her.

So he promises to hide his powers so no one will know.

When he arrives, he sees this Chinese girl in a wheelchair. She is begging for money while her abled brother does martial arts tricks. But then the cane he's using to lift himself breaks, and he's hurt.

The audience, not feeling much sympathy, leave. Krishna, feeling generous, comes out with sword and does a show. This raises a charitable mood. The brother, ever grateful, says he works for the Bombay Circus. Come watch him.

So Krishna and female go watch. And there's a fire. And there's a girl trapped inside.

But he promised not to show his powers. He sees a mask, and as Phantom of the Opera man, he goes inside and rescues the girl. He has powers similar to Neo in Matrix, doing wire fu, and able to kick serious ass. Except in rescues.

The girl asks who he is. He says "Kriisshhh..." and so he goes by "Krish". Newspapers want to know. Who is this masked man? Who is Krish.

Female lead thinks that it's her boyfriend, Krishna. She hires some thugs to pretend to kidnap her, so she'll be rescued by him.

But apparently, real thugs show up, and rather than reveal he has superpowers, he pretends to get beat up. Girl is all sad. But they take the engagement ring, and so he has to go get it back.

He does more Neo action and beats up the gang to get the ring back. At that point, he takes his mask off, and guess who's there? The guy from the circus whose sister was in the wheelchair! You're Krish? You must tell the world. You'll get a huge reward.

No, I don't to tell anyone. Here, you take the mask. You be Krish. You get the reward. Pay for your sister's surgerty to make her better (right). He reluctantly agrees and becomes a star in the Singapore press.

Meanwhile, female lead discovers she had a video camera and it was aimed at the circus, and shows Krishna finding his mask, and then rescuing. So it was Krishna!

Meanwhile Krishna tries to talk to girl, but ends up talking to her mom. She has never heard of Krishna, and never went to Hong Kong (which is where the girls said she was, which was the reason they couldn't see her).

Anyhoo. Some accusations fly about how this girl lied to him and grandma was right, and he's heading back. And she's so sorry about lying to him.

That's when the security chief shows up and finds Krisha, who looks just like dad, and tells them that dad is still alive!

And this coincides with the new future telling machine being rebuilt, and thus the need to use Rajiv to start the machine.

But Krishna is there to rescue everything, kill Arya, and then bring the whole family back.

I must say there was a tear in my eye when Rajiv is reunited with mom, even if the plot was completely ridiculous.

Cobbled together from Batman, Superman, Sound of Music, Matrix, and ET, at least, it was original in very odd ways.

Ah Indian films.

I want my MTV

Michael Jackson was as profound an influence on MTV as any artist. There may have been people who found the medium of music videos creative, leading to videos by A-Ha, Peter Gabriel, and yes, even Michael Jackson.

Jackson started the dance video. Well, at least, I'm crediting him with it. Others followed suit. MC Hammer, Madonna, Paula Abdul, and sister, Janet Jackson. They taught the public how to dance with a lead singer/dancer and several precision dancers.

But music videos never caught on in the US. MTV and VH-1 couldn't attract viewers to watch more than a few minutes. They had to create shows like Real World or some flashback to the 80s, to keep viewers from switching channels. Pretty soon, the station that brought you music videos all the time, abandonded it for anything but videos.

But there's one country where song and dance have always been popular.

India.

A typical Indian movie is positive, either comedic, or just plain happy. There's dancing and singing. The singing is always dubbed and alas they want a certain voice for male and female singing, that makes them blandly one like the other. You'll not find a Leonard Cohen type among Indian singers, and all the women sing in this falsetto, "I'm 13" voice.

The dancing seems clearly inspired by Michael Jackson, except there's usually a female involved too.

Indians have this peculiar restriction. No kissing. There's a puritannical streak among Indians. Many look down on alcohol too. It's not quite banned, but a family restaurant wouldn't sell alcohol. Drink of the devil, you know.

Despite this lack of kissing, any manner of gyration is potentially possible. Midriffs showing? Check. Hip gyrating? Check. Simulated sex? Check. Women pretending to slap guys around? Women dominating guys? Check and check!

To be fair, such "women is powerful" videos are somewhat uncommon, but I saw at least one that fit the bill.

Furthermore, I have no idea what percentage of Indians watch these videos, but it says something that many of these stations still show videos!

I think MTV would like to create a revolution that allows singer/songwriters to start up, instead of dance oriented videos. The music industry seems a bit like that of Hong Kong, where beautiful women who can sing are groomed (much like Whitney Houston) for success. Lyrics and songs are written for them. They just sing. I bet MTV wants something rawer, wants more originality, less glitz, and would love their station to transform Indian music by encouraging bands to start up, much like their English counterparts.

The other channels I would see on cable? Americans have religious folks preaching on TV. Indians appear to have yogis and such, stretching and speaking. A few channels had such yogis.

There were some historical dramas going on too, about ancient India.

Of course, some Western shows too. I wonder, though, how many people have access to cable? I feel like it's like the 1970s USA for cable in India, though maybe early 80s is closer to correct. Certainly, more international than anything you get in the US.

Anyway, next time you wonder what happened to Michael Jackson, his spirit is alive in India, singing and dancing away.

Hindification

Watching hotel TV sucks. If you really want to watch Indian, you need cable.

I was staying in Bombay, now renamed Mumbai, and watching my 70-80 channels of television. It seems many American cable stations have an Indian equivalent. Discovery Channel, ESPN, Disney, Cartoon Network, and so forth.

I want to start with Cartoon Network, more specifically, Builder Bob. I was treated to this show when I visited Lance a while back when his wife and other daughter were out of town. To keep his elder daughter occupied, he played a Tivo'ed Builder Bob.

Builder Bob seems like a mild mannered guy a la Mr. Rogers. It seems he talks to his various pieces of equipment. (No, not that kind of equipment). Hoes, shovels, or some such. He has a handy wife. But make no mistake. It's his show. He's the mild mannered star of his mild mannered show.

So, I saw this show, among other "cartoons" on CN (Cartoon Network) in Hindi. Or at least, I think it's Hindi. India is a country with many languages. The official one is Hindi, but some people don't like it. Still, if you have to guess a language in India that you don't know, Hindi's your best bet.

I figured why not? Why not translate western cartoons to Hindi.

But, then I saw Builder Bob two more times. In one version, they spoke English. But Indian English. I'm not kidding. English as Indians (or some Indians) would speak it. Then, again, I heard it in English, but this time British English.

And it made me wonder.

Does Builder Bob actually have any plot? Maybe it's like those Jackie Chan movies where they tell everyone to speak in their native tongue, and it will be dubbed later (I suspect this also happened in all those Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns). I was even doubting whether Builder Bob was even an American show!

But it gets better.

I'm watching Power Rangers.

Now this is my knowledge of the history of Power Rangers. Some Americans were visiting Japan, and watching the original Japanese version. They reached something of an epiphany. ("Light has reached me brain"). These guys wear masks! You can't tell they're Japanese!

What we'll do is to hire some actors, make it all multicultural and sh*t, and when they were masks and fight monsters (a recurring theme in children's shows), we use the original footage. When they are without their masks, we use the actors we hired. Brilliant!

So you might think the Indians would say "Why, we'll do the same thing!" and hire Indian actors to play the roles.

Except that would require money, wouldn't it? And hiring actors? And maybe they'd want to dance and sing.

Instead, they just dubbed it into Hindi. And of course, you can watch Scooby Doo in Hindi too. One cartoon that requires no translation (except occasional text)? Road Runner.

I would have been far more amused had they hired Indian actors.

I'll continue with more Indian television in the next post.

Eau de Toilette

Who makes your toilet?

Really!

Apparently, I know one maker of toilets in India. Hindware. They make billboards, in English no less. Their toilets were to be found at the company I was visiting.

India has two kinds of toilets, which seem to reflect toilets in any country that doesn't have completely Westernized toilets. They have Western toilets. They have traditional squat toilets.

I tried to avoid the second, and mostly did so.

The Western toilets are modelled after European ones. Apparently, no one has ever heard of low flow there.

American toilets often have a fair degree more water in the bowl than Indian/European ones. It almost resembles airline toilets, which actually have no water.

When you flush, a water fountain of a stream comes from the front part of the toilet (the part near you) and flows into the bottom part of the toilet near the back. There's a fair bit of water flowing.

I tend to prefer that.

And, oh yes, in India, the toilets are in small rooms that are completely enclosed, as opposed to Americans that are open air which allow both flatulence and odors to migrate all over. Yo, Americans, take a lesson when it comes to this.

You may wonder why I'm talking about toilets. Well, for some reason, this is the one activity that people tend to be most ashamed about, and yet, also curiously used to handling in the way they are accustomed.

And it got me to thinking.

If you had to improve a public toilet, how would you do it? So here are some of the issues.

First, you have a toilet that's being used by many people. Second, it's possible people will urinate (I'm a guy, so I'm thinking guys using toilets). And there's the smell factor. And there's the splash factor. And so on.

Somehow, I feel toilets haven't changed in a while, and it's up for a good redesign. I'd think some fancy toilet that sprayed warm water to keep things clean might be disconcerting. Is there a way to manage this?

In any case, Hindware. Making better Indian toilets.

Back in the USA

I was hoping to blog a bit more in India, but I'm back.

So what to talk about?

Ah yes. This was one I wanted to write on Friday just before I left.

There's this TOS ("The Original Series") episode of Star Trek that's called The Menagerie. It was a pilot for the series before the one with Kirk. Two characters in that pilot were added to the one with Kirk. Number One, who came back as Nurse Chapel (apparently, making herself blond fooled Gene Roddenberry, though he eventually married Majel Barrett), and Spock, who was played by Nimoy.

In this episode, there's some oddity with Christopher Pike, who's now an invalid (this isn't explained too well, or else I simply don't recall) is going through some trial with Spock. The evidence is presented as some flashback from old "tapes" which was the original episode.

Somehow Pike and crew have landed on a planet that has primitive folks on it. Pike is kidnapped and brought underground and put in a kind of cage (thus, the original title, The Cage).

He's given some illusions about life elsewhere, and is expected to enjoy the fantasyland that aliens are providing him, which he rejects.

For some reason, there's the same woman in each of these fantasy sequences, who plays a wife or some such in each one.

Eventually, it is revealed that she's human and has been living on the planet because of the aliens. At the end, she says that there was an accident, and she was on the planet dying. The aliens did their best to put her back, but they had no reference model to fix her, so she looks, well, somewhat like them, but hideous (apparently, symmetry was not uppermost on their list of fixing her).

The point? That they were trying to rebuild a human, and had no idea what they were doing, so they cobbled something together.

That was my dinner.

The hotel I was at, a five (or seven--but whose counting?) star hotel, has a theme Monday through Friday. Friday was "Barnside Grill". Normally, the event is held just outside, but it was raining, so it was moved indoors.

I'm thinking I'm going to get ribs and baked beans and potato salad and all sorts of picnic food. They're going to play some bluegrass, and it'll all be great.

Or not.

Instead, I start off with soup, where I get to pick the ingredients. It's a little like Mongolian Grill where you pick various meats and veggies and a sauce, and the guys cook it for you.

The soup was decent--it looked Thai even, though it was merely chicken broth. Tasty, but hardly quintessential American barnside cookin'.

This was followed by some fancy-schmancy salad. I picked shrimp and various other items. They arranged it and sorta cooked it, and it was delicious, but again, not particularly barnside.

My main dish was some small pieces of tenderloin steak. There was a mini baked potato, and one other thing. OK, little better, though steak isn't what I think of when I think barnside.

Dessert was apple pie a la mode, but you know, they couldn't resist by adding some red syrup to make the presentation oh-so-five-star. It's as if one of the Iron Chefs was asked to make burger and fries, and felt the need to take the ketchup and make tiny lines on the plate of ketchup, to brighten the plate. Somehow, the chefs just can't slum it that much.

Then, the music. I was listening to some Bryan Adams song, you know, the one that they used in Robin Hood. You don't know? Well, it reminded me of a barnside. Not.

And then something that sounded a little like Santana.

Then, Elton John (and possibly the Beatles).

So I'm thinking maybe this is an English barnside. And here I am in India being American-centric and all. But then, why wasn't I given bangers and mash?

And, so this reminded me of The Menagerie. It was the best they could do!

I recall Thomas Friedman had begun his book, The World is Flat, by wanting to see how Americans were perceived across the world. What better way than to talk to folks working at call centers, pretending to be Americans.

I can see another analog to this. Go to restaurants around the world pretending to be American, and see what they come up with.

The Client

I've been in India for about two weeks now. Ah, the mobiles. For some reason, everyone has one. Think about this. Most people fancy that the US is advanced technologically. Yet, many countries have adopted mobiles (which I prefer over the name cell) with far more vigor than the US. Apparently, a far cheaper alternative than landlines, with phone providers willing to provide cheap phones for about probably 40 US dollars. That is kinda expensive in Indian amounts, but still within grasp of many.

But beyond that, what's the social implication?

Suppose you're eating, and you get a call. Do you answer it? American etiquette says this is rude. You should not take the call, so you can pay attention to the guests you are with.

However, so far, this has not been the experience I've seen in India. Most people just pick up the call and answer.

And that's where I hear that word.

"Yes, yes. I am eating lunch with the client."

The client? Is this a legal firm? Where's John Grisham? Who's this client? What? It's me. Ah, yes, I'm the client.

But who are they? They are the? Uh. I'm not sure what they're supposed to be called.

But it makes me think of those old-fashioned meetings, you know, the three martini lunches where business, of sorts, was done under an acceptable form of bribery. Alcohol.

There's not much of that happening in India, which, while not a Muslim country, tends to look unfavorably towards alcohol.

Well, I must head off to see my...peeps.

Govinda Bolo

I've been watching some MTV India. There's this one video I've seen a few times, with an image of a white bearded Hindu, presumably dressed up like they used to several hundred years ago.

While many television shows in India are set in modern times, a few (like in Chinese TV), are set in historical India, and while I know next to nothing about historical India, it seems to resemble some historical China.

Well, except for the phallic thing. India is known for phallic workship. I wonder if any other society (surely, there must be some) where society accepted worship to male body parts.

I have more comments on videos, but just wanted to point this out before I forgot.

A Tale of Two..Something

There are (at least) two main concerns people have going to India. First, they think they are going to get sick. Surely, the less than pristine sanitary conditions will assault immune systems that are not used to these bugs. Second, they're going to get fat. Especially, if they really like Indian food.

I had found myself at the morning breakfast buffet at an Indian five star hotel (or 7, but who's counting?).

They talk about five, seven, or more course meals from the turn of the century, when you worried about the order of meals, and gorged unnecessarily.

I've been doing a mini-revival of it at this buffet. Half-western food, half-Indian. Juices. Breads. Cereals. A gentleman making omelettes, pancakes, waffles, you name it. It's food nirvana! Or food hell, depending on whether your tastebuds or waistline is the final arbiter.

And surely enough, after a week, my weight had been going up by a few pounds. And despite an attempt to exercise, the body's not that used to intaking this much food. Exercise was losing.

But then, for yin, there's yang, and for food, there's illness! And off to the toilet I go, and again, and again! Normally, if this kind of illness causes discomfort, it can be bad, but except for some occasional stomach bloat and such, a visit to my Western style toilet can be thought of positively.

All my sins of excess can be forgiven at the shrine of the porcelain god.

Enjoy your breakfast!