On the Edge

Jaime claims there's a useful character trait called edge that attract women to men. Edge is a funny word. You can think about it being the edge of a step, or the sharp edge of a razor. When applied to personality, it has something to do with sharpness, which means someone who isn't necessarily super-nice. He suggests that if you're too accommodating, women won't like you.

While Americans, not being used to arranged marriages, have either become used to playing the game of attracting women (given that men are expected to take the initiative) or have to deal with being single. Given that the first seems preferable to many, you then have to assess yourself. Men seem attracted to the physical. Is the person hot? Or cute?

However, do women respond similarly? There's some indication that the answer is both yes and no. Cute/hot doesn't hurt. Indeed, you can be shy, but if you're perceived as good looking and don't have off-putting personality traits, then that's usually not a deal breaker. But if you're so-so looking, then it might help to have some other personality feature that makes you more attractive.

For example, our society values extroverted people. What is an extrovert? That's a good question. Most people would say they are outgoing, and that's true, but perhaps a better definition is that an extrovert generally does not like to be alone. To be fair, introverts can also feel this way, but the point is extroverts find the company of people to be invigorating. I have a friend who says she's "shy", but the reality is that she's an extrovert. Generally speaking, she wants to be with people, and that's partly insecurity talking, rather than simply being gregarious (which she is too).

For some reason, being too friendly, too nice scares people. It makes them think you're particularly needy, and being needy means you want people to do things for you. Yet, many women are the ones that are used to being needy. When parents raise children, sometimes they let girl's needs overwhelm them. Where they would be more stern with boys, saying boys don't cry, boys should be tough, they don't apply this same standard to raising girls, and this can mean women who find themselves wanting guys to keep them happy.

Of course, this is a bit of a generalization. Plenty of women that are plenty independent, and don't need guys to keep them happy, and plenty of men that are plenty insecure that want women to solve their problems.

Point is, is Jaime right? He's got a buddy and they've been friends for so long that perhaps he doesn't pay attention to the fact that the guy is 130 pounds, and that is voice is pitched up really high, and that while highly intelligent, he isn't the model of masculinity. Jaime says he lacks edge, and edge would make him more attractive. While this is true, I point out that Jaime has a quiet, shy friend that's about to get married, and he doesn't seem particularly edgy. However, what he lacks in edge, he makes up for in being fairly cute by comparison.

In other words, you might have to make up for deficiencies, and there's some evidence to show that this can be done. Some women admire power, which is why, as hideous as Steven Tyler seems to be (he's the lead singer to Aerosmith--look him up), he probably has more than his share of women.

There appears to be at least two different axis to consider. How cute/hot are you, and what's your personality/station in life. The two can offset one another. You can be pretty good looking but have an intense personality that causes people to feel uncomfortable. You can be good looking, but be shy, in which case a suitably aggressive woman might work out for you.

Of course, I'm biasing this conversation to heterosexual relationships. When it comes to gay relationships, I wonder if more superficial aspects are at hand. It's been said that men prefer porn over women because men are strongly aroused by the visual. Gay men, therefore, are strongly motivated by how someone looks, and despite presumably, higher IQs (loneliness can facilitate studying, presumably), emotions still win out.

In any case, the question I'm pondering is whether edginess is important. I believe there are two keys: attractiveness and personality. If you're deficient in one, it helps to be proficient in the other. And, there's also how interested you are in this most basic of human pursuits. I was watching the film Into the Wild and one issue that comes up is how much McCandlesss, the guy who wants to go to Alaska and live in the wild, is willing to be in a relationship. Apparently, not so much. Clearly, if you don't care about relationships, then issues such as edginess don't particularly matter.

And I'm willing to bet many of these issues are purely cultural. Go to another society, one that, say, prefers arranged marriages, and all the shyness in the world might be compensated for by parents who do the legwork for you. And since many more people are shy than not, then this seems to be, to some, a nice option. Let someone else worry about it.

But in the US, where such options are not readily available, and where women have options, and where men are still expected to make the first move, and where men aren't always attractive, then maybe a little edge makes you more successful in the game of relationships.

History in the Making

Tonight, the New England Patriots made history. They went undefeated, the first team since the Miami Dolphins to win all games in a season. They went 16-0. New England faced four tough challenges in their way to an undefeated season. The Indianapolis Colts had a lead, before New England managed to get a win at the end.

The Philadelphia Eagles and an inspired A. J. Feeley nearly had a win, with a late turnover giving New England a chance. The best chance came from a team that has since spiraled into awfulness, namely, the Baltimore Ravens. Ray Lewis, an alumni of the University of Miami, was mourning the untimely death of Sean Taylor, also an alumni whose murder shocked the NFL. The Ravens literally had the game in their hands, but a costly timeout, and a penalty on a fourth down, let the Patriots off the hook.

And the Giants, the last obstacle to the Patriots, took a 12 point lead with Eli Manning looking better than he has all season, only to have the Patriots come back, and then take a 3 point lead, then a 10 point lead, before the Giants scored a touchdown with about a minute to go, needing to recover an onsides kick, which didn't work out.

But the Patriots, like many of the sports pundits, will tell you that this is great, but not enough. What's important is the post-season, to win the Superbowl, and who would doubt they could do it?

This year has lead to several teams with gaudy records. The Colts have two losses. The Cowboys currently have two losses. The Packers have three losses. The Jacksonville Jaguars look really dangerous too, with four losses. Everyone feels the Patriots will have their work cut out for them. They are likely to face the Jaguars, followed by either the Colts or possibly the Chargers, and then the winner of the NFC.

Without those three wins, the team will feel that there is something remarkable, but not something that would surpass what the Dolphins did which was to go undefeated (albeit with a shorter 14 game season) and win the Superbowl as well.

The next month or so will tell whether the Patriots continue their run to the Superbowl or not.

Echoes of Another Country

If you yell out, into a canyon or cave, you can hear the reverberations come back, in an echo, an echo that resembles the original sound, but it's not the original. It's distorted.

Apparently, the brass band, during the 1800s or so, became a staple of the British military, and as the British empire was in full force at the time, they brought brass bands wherever they went.

In particular, they brought it to India, who also came to like the brass band, even if they didn't care for the notes, and Indian-ized the sound. The gallantry and formalism soon made brass bands popular for Indian weddings, so much so that that, in parts of India, the size and dress of the brass band shows the wealth of the groom.

And as British brass bands look to survive, they've benefited from the migration of Indians throughout the world, and requests that British brass bands come and play in weddings in England, when many thought they'd make a living playing parades, as the opportunity became available.

Here's a link to the NPR show, Studio 360, for the Indian brass band, an echo from another country.

Why Starbuck's Isn't Evil

For several years now, I used to go to the local coffee house. Named College Perk, presumably mimicking the name of the coffee house in Friends, it would serve the artsy crowd and others who craved a coffeehouse experience.

It's not perfect, by any means. The road leading in is unpaved, and legions of cars that drive over its uneven, potholed surface might wonder if giving in to pavement might not make everyone's life a bit better.

I drank there because it was convenient, and it wasn't Starbucks. To be honest, I don't have anything against Starbucks. I felt without Starbucks, there might not have been a coffee revolution in the US, and that coffeehouses might never have made it as they have now.

People used to say there's a McDonald's at every corner. Now, they say Starbucks is at every corner, and it's true. They're everywhere. I heard about them in 1990, when you couldn't find one almost anywhere, and even the people both raved and ranted on Starbucks.

Here's a story which shows that, quite the contrary, Starbucks has actually helped small, independent coffeehouses thrive, even those that are literally next door to Starbucks. Somehow, coffee drinkers aren't beholden to Starbucks. That may be what drive them to one Starbucks or another, but if there's a quality coffeehouse nearby that offers a different atmosphere, people are willing to give their loyalties there.

So I don't feel so bad that Starbucks has taken over. I only regret that there aren't some other small coffeehouses conveniently nearby. In the meanwhile, I now go to a local Starbucks where I know a few folks by name (hi to Spencer, John, Meg, Matt, and Andrew).

Searching for Wireless

My parents don't live much in the Internet age. You and I might be able to surf endlessly on the Web for hours at a time and call that entertainment. My parents are old school. They prefer to read newspapers. Their concession to modern society is getting Chinese programming, which they can now do via Dish TV.

Even this is a minor concession. Most content providers, filled to brim with channels, give people a small tool to try to manage the plethora of channels called a guide. The guide is tiny, sporting a few channels at a time, but it lets you know what's on, to the extent the stations don't change the shows on them last minute.

Parents don't use that. They have a card, and that card tells them what channel is what. Guide is a foreign concept, and they haven't adopted it yet. It's not they aren't smart. They're plenty smart. It's that they aren't particularly adaptable. The generation of computer users, especially savvy ones like you and me, that find some mild entertainment from blogs, are able to navigate the minefield of modern UI design that tries to instill in us the necessity to do something new.

What software exists out there that doesn't require a tome the size of the Torah to use? How much of this software is discoverable? We have "wizards" to help us install stuff, but no wizards to help us use stuff. Indeed, we must learn how to use our software.

Recently, I was looking at my DVDs telling me how to use my camera. What camera is that? It's a Nikon D40. This camera, so reviews tell me, has one of the best UIs of any camera out there. The folks at Nikon have tried hard, and it seems successfully, to make a usable digital SLR. Let's face it, people wade through f-stops (seriously, folks, get rid of this term and replace it with something like depth-of-field, or something more intuitive and useful) and ISOs and zooms. I learned this stuff when I was in junior high or high school. And yet, with the digital revolution, I have to learn about white balancing and SDs vs. Compact Flashes vs. Sony's idiosyncratic MemoryStick.

I suppose I could use the dial-up, but I've become helpless to wireless. I want to open my laptop and go. I want it to connect to the Internet effortlessly. I want downloads that sing. I'd love to say that we live in a country of free Internet, but only pockets exist, and only the hours they are open.

Airports are the place that suffer the most. Most places aren't Portland or Ithaca with their enlightened view of free wireless Internet for all. Portland does one better and has it free in many spots within the city.

It's funny that old school was 15 years ago, before the Web became what it was, before we had real bandwidth. How many people live lives on the Internet now? How many can live without surfing to a reddit or a Digg or their favorite sites? It's a small number, but it grows, and puts a significantly larger number of people in the have-nots who wonder how someone can stare at a computer that long, how someone can derive entertainment from bits flying across the air.

So here I am at Panera, connected for a moment. For no one can explain the Matrix.

You have to see it for yourself.

Best "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" spoof

The RailsEnvy guys do the best parodies of the PC/Mac ad, partly because they don't even bother focusing on Macs and PCs.

Courier-Sampras

The Tennis Channel is showing reruns of old Australian Open matches, presumably to whet our appetite for the upcoming Australian Open in January. I just saw parts of the match between Sampras and Courier from the 1995 quarterfinals. I don't think I ever saw that match before.

In the fourth set, Courier was up two sets to one, and up a break. He had won the first two sets in tiebreaks. To be honest, this is a match Courier should have won. And despite Sampras coming back to win in five sets, it didn't seem that well played.

Courier seemed to have a pretty simple strategy. Attack Sampras's backhand. Sampras had, by that point, learned how to hit a reasonably consistent backhand, even if he couldn't exactly hit winners. Sampras was not really on his game, and made a few errors, but somehow, Courier, who had been playing a shade better, simply got nervous, began missing a few shots, and boom, Sampras breaks and wins the set.

This has to be frustrating. You look at Sampras, and normally, he plays pretty good for some games, and then really good to engineer a break. In this case, it was more like Courier made a mental slip, and didn't take advantage of his opportunities.

Courier had a reasonably decent cross court backhand, but I was surprised he didn't try to take his backhand up the line a few times to surprise Sampras. He must have felt a bit shaky going up the line. Generally, it is easier to go crosscourt than up the line, but if Courier didn't get a good angle, Sampras could have run around the shot and hit a decent forehand.

I'd have to imagine Courier had to be really discouraged with that match, realizing Sampras wasn't playing that well, and Courier was playing well enough to win.

I'm now watching a match from earlier this year. It's Safin vs. Federer. It's in the fifth set, and Safin is up break points. This is from two years ago. Looks like Safin eventually wins this one. Safin was always such a streaky player. If had his head on straight, we might be talking about Safin as one of the best players, not Federer. Safin's not as smooth as Federer, but his backhand is actually rather smooth, and his serve can be impressive.

When Safin is on, I'd rather watch his game than, say, Sampras's game.

Time Travel

I haven't spoken to Mike in almost twenty years. A few weeks ago, I saw that he was on Facebook, and we were able to talk to another.

Although I haven't spoken to Mike in this time, he still sounds as I remember him, from his deliberate way of speaking, to the way he sighs. It's interesting, because his life has headed down (somewhat) more conventional ways. He's gotten married, has kids, and so once that happens, you make decisions with other people in your life.

But even as, I suspect, he feels he's different from the person he was all those years ago, he sounds the same. And that makes me wonder if I sound the same. I'd say the biggest external change someone would notice talking to me is that I'm chattier than I used to be, although I find I still digress and talk about random crap like I used to in college.

Would someone who knew me well say the same thing? That I haven't changed much, at least, externally, the way I sound, the way I talk? Is that still the same after all this time? I can't say for sure.

I suppose we're all different as the years go by, and perhaps that would become more obvious as one spends time.

Even a two hour call only gets at the surface of what's going on. The thing that's interesting is that it is a form of time travel. You think back and wonder if you could have made different decisions, better decisions. Over time, you sometimes wish you had a life advisor (and to some extent, you do, namely your parents) so you could be your best self.

I remember that line from Before Sunset. Jesse is saying that he got married because he imagined his "best self". He wanted life to go a certain way, and pursued it, though he wasn't particularly happy, because they was one special night, that he had hoped to revive, and when he headed back some six months later, she wasn't there, and he tried to move on.

To some extent, if I had something to blame, it was my lack of focus. I've said it before. Focus is almost abnormal. Most people just get on with life, never quite accomplishing the stuff they wanted. Only a few do the things they had hoped for, and can look back and say they really enjoy the stuff they do. I can't say that right now. I only have a vague idea of what would make that possible.

I could hear a wisp of regret talking to Mike, realizing he made decisions because he wanted to, but that for the things he gained, he also gave up things too. I suppose that happens with us all, and only a few feel what they gained was far in excess of what they had to give up.

Life and Times of Randall Munroe

For a guy who mostly draws stick figures, Randall sure thinks a lot. Sometimes you run into folks like Randall, but it's pretty rare. The guy ponders stuff obsessive-compulsively. And, here's where it's really tough being a techie. There's an underground source of information, whether it be reddit, or lolcats, or what have you, and techies that are in the know, tap into this source of information, and to keep up with this audience you have to be just on top of the material as everyone else.

Indeed, after listening to Randall Munroe talk to Google about xkcd, his comic, I find a newer appreciation for the odd mind that is Randall Munroe.

He's perhaps one in a line of a bunch of tech celebrities. For some reason, geek types have a humor all their own, at a level of sophistication that would leave many a reader puzzled, wondering "why is that funny?". For example, I find the humor in Dinosaur Comics written by CS grad student, Ryan North, very much in line with a friend (that's you, Justin).

How long will Randall find what he does interesting? I mean, Scott Adams continues to produce Dilbert, and Dilbert used to be what geeks considered cool, until you realize that Dilbert was pretty mainstream, and that xkcd is still a bit too geek to widely appeal outside its demographics.

How many other communities out there have their own comics? Geek community thrives because the Internet and all things webbie are part of the means by which this content spreads out. What do firemen do? Or investment bankers? Or cat herders?

I follow stuff through the geek community, which seems to have developed its own stars, from folks like Randall and Ryan in the comic world, to folks like Matz or David Heinemeier Hansson in the Ruby community. There's Spolsky. There's Michael Arrington. Geek communities have their own celebrities, and it's rather egalitarian. People come out of nowhere and get some notice, and the crowd rushes this way and that way to find the stars of the day.

And so, as Warhol pointed out so long ago, soon everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, and while Warhol probably had no idea how that would happen, we are seeing it happen in front of us now.

Charity Through Technology

Chris McCandless decided to essentially abandon his family. Sean Penn's film glorifies this because he sympathizes with what Chris was trying to escape. Partly, it was to escape the lies his family had told him, and partly the constraints that society placed on him. He gave up career, family, children, and ultimately, though not intentionally, his life.

I was thinking how this sympathetic perception might be seen otherwise. Despite the idealized life McCandless was trying to live, Penn does give some time to the hurt he was inflicting on his parents. How many people would watch the film that way, wondering how his parents must have suffered, even if they were the cause of his suffering?

But that's not what I really wanted to talk about, though I'm using McCandless's goals as a counterpoint to the point I want to make.

I remember reading a blog entry from a former student. Full disclosure: I didn't really know this student that well at the time he was a student. Indeed, were you to have placed him in front of me a year or two later, I don't know I could say he had taken a class from me. Having said that, he did help arrange an interview.

Anyway, this guy had felt some desire to leave Microsoft to do something more charitable, perhaps even more "Christian". He stayed around, and when Katrina happened, several colleagues and he took laptops and headed to New Orleans to help in whatever way he could. Microsoft has made some additional steps to allow its employees to take advantage of their altruistic nature.

That made me realize that, unlike McCandless, techie types that want to be charitable aren't planning to give up everything, and certainly not what they love most, which is the computer, and by extension, the Internet. Instead, they see that they can do something using what they love. There's the 100 dollar laptop, which suggests that computers are needed everywhere (is this mistaken like democracy is needed everywhere--presumably, beyond information, this would lead to access to porn).

There's efforts to obtain stories from parents or grandparents and store them somewhere, in written form, in the Web.

The Web itself has lead to social networks that interconnect us like never before. People find causes to support that they would never have otherwise. We help, but we help through technology. And that's a brave new world, not a return to simplicity, not a return to nature, not a return to isolation.

Re-review: Into The Wild

You can see why this kind of film has a kind of appeal. People feel trapped by societal obligations. Most people don't mind them, but few do much about it, trying to escape, and live a simpler life.

Into The Wild treats Chris McCandless in a somewhat reverential way. He reads books like Thoreau and inspired to leave a potentially "successful" career and head to Alaska, where he imagines that living in the wilderness will get him to appreciate nature, and escape the insincerity of the world.

Since the film was made with the cooperation of the parents, there is some acknowledgment that for whatever faults the parents have, they were hurt by Chris leaving them with no attempt at communication, abandoning his given name for Alex Supertramp.

If he harkens back to a hippie lifestyle, this is reinforced by meeting some real hippies, and some rather giddy Danes. At two and a half hours, his adventures drag a bit, but to Penn's credit, he doesn't try to amp the tension of hitchhiking into The Hitcher, nor does he seem to encounter anyone that wants to take advantage of him.

Indeed, given the trouble he had with the honesty of his parents, they could have perhaps made him seemed more like damaged goods, rather than some misunderstood genius.

Penn doesn't try to give equal time to his detractors, who thought him a little naive to head out in the woods without a map, and trying to survive on so little, thus being ultimately responsible for his own death. But then, that's not exactly Penn's point, is it? There's a certain precociousness to toss away everything you've been brought up with, though, Penn gives history to why McCandless came to this viewpoint (admittedly, via voiceovers from his sister).

Compelling mostly because it makes you think, rather than any inherent drama from what's shown on-screen.

Oh yeah, those miniature digital cameras weren't around in 1990. (McCandless's mother takes a picture during graduation early on). William Hurt has a small role, but is pretty good. It's surprising how this actor, considered by many to be at the level of Deniro and Pacino in the 80s (without the same intensity), seems to have faded, even more so than Meryl Streep, whose made a mini-resurgence in her own career.

Emile Hirsch does well as the idealistic Chris, having to lose weight (though not to the scary extent that Christian Bale did for The Machinist). With this film and Speed Racer, expect to hear more from Emile, who is this year's newcomer.

Re-review: Into The Wild

You can see why this kind of film has a kind of appeal. People feel trapped by societal obligations. Most people don't mind them, but few do much about it, trying to escape, and live a simpler life.

Into The Wild treats Chris McCandless in a somewhat reverential way. He reads books like Thoreau and inspired to leave a potentially "successful" career and head to Alaska, where he imagines that living in the wilderness will get him to appreciate nature, and escape the insincerity of the world.

Since the film was made with the cooperation of the parents, there is some acknowledgment that for whatever faults the parents have, they were hurt by Chris leaving them with no attempt at communication, abandoning his given name for Alex Supertramp.

If he harkens back to a hippie lifestyle, this is reinforced by meeting some real hippies, and some rather giddy Danes. At two and a half hours, his adventures drag a bit, but to Penn's credit, he doesn't try to amp the tension of hitchhiking into The Hitcher, nor does he seem to encounter anyone that wants to take advantage of him.

Indeed, given the trouble he had with the honesty of his parents, they could have perhaps made him seemed more like damaged goods, rather than some misunderstood genius.

Penn doesn't try to give equal time to his detractors, who thought him a little naive to head out in the woods without a map, and trying to survive on so little, thus being ultimately responsible for his own death. But then, that's not exactly Penn's point, is it? There's a certain precociousness to toss away everything you've been brought up with, though, Penn gives history to why McCandless came to this viewpoint (admittedly, via voiceovers from his sister).

Compelling mostly because it makes you think, rather than any inherent drama from what's shown on-screen.

Oh yeah, those miniature digital cameras weren't around in 1990. (McCandless's mother takes a picture during graduation early on). William Hurt has a small role, but is pretty good. It's surprising how this actor, considered by many to be at the level of Deniro and Pacino in the 80s (without the same intensity), seems to have faded, even more so than Meryl Streep, whose made a mini-resurgence in her own career.

Emile Hirsch does well as the idealistic Chris, having to lose weight (though not to the scary extent that Christian Bale did for The Machinist). With this film and Speed Racer, expect to hear more from Emile, who is this year's newcomer.

Movie Review: Into The Wild

The Hitcher probably did as much to dramatize or sensationalize the dangers of hitchhiking, so it's to Sean Penn's credit that Into The Wild doesn't try to amp up the tension of travelling as hitchhiker, harkening back to a time when people weren't so scared to pick up hitchhikers.

Into The Wild is the story of Chris McCandless, who gave up what savings he had, and wandered the West, with a desire to head to Alaska, leaving his parents and sister behind. Given his general lack of money, hitchhiking seemed his primary mode of transportation. There's no scary guy trying to kill, nor someone wanting to swap sex for favors.

Instead, there are bits and pieces of the people McCandless meets in his journal.

Part of the intrigue of what he did, to me, is when he did. McCandless was born a few months before I was, graduated the same year I did. Between the year I graduate college and the year my brother graduated college, Chris had wandered the West Coast, deliberately cut off from his family, eventually making it to Alaska, meeting various folks along the way, most of them quite friendly.

One obvious question: why? The question is perhaps as old as man, especially once man could stop worrying about how to feed himself and stay alive, which is, what is the meaning of life. The Matrix, in its way, asks these questions (btw, the kind of stylistic flourishes that the Wachowski brothers were so noted for seem far more obvious in the original Matrix film, but not so much in the sequels--perhaps the style began to grate on them, which is why they used it less in subsequent sequels).

In The Matrix, intrepid hero, Thomas Anderson has a hidden hacker personality, Neo. Eventually, he discovers his daily life, as a programmer, is a fraud. This is, for a brief time, a revelation.

In a more mundane, but more realistic way, Chris McCandless wants to escape the constraints of society to find a truer way to live, out in the wild, without money, much like Thoreau (who apparently, didn't quite abandon society). This escape is perhaps as much rebellion from his parents, who, it turns out, had the two children (Chris and his sister) out of wedlock, while the father was still married to his first wife.

The film isn't terribly plot driven. It shows as much as Chris wanted to live on his own and as much as he felt he didn't need relations with other folks, that indeed, he did make friends, and had to take jobs here and there, to survive. But all that is somewhat beside the point.

The point is to give up all you know, and head out into the wild. In this, there are echoes of several other men. In particular, there's Timothy Treadwell (of Grizzly Man) who, several months a year, would live in the wilderness with the bears, only to be mauled (perhaps as a minor tribute, a bear shows up near the end). It also reminds me a little of Touching The Void, about mountain climbers, who, for a week or so at a time, head out by themselves or in a small group to a mountain, and try to conquer nature.

This is a challenging film to make. Was Chris so idealistic? Did he not rail against his parents? I find I don't particularly understand Chris, even if he touches something in most of us who want to escape what society has put on us. "Society, society, society!" which asks us to take jobs, which asks us to make money, which asks us to buy stuff, which asks us to raise kids. Who among us haven't thought it might be cool to give that all away, only to be yanked by the reality that they'd rather be rich, having all their needs taken care of, then to live a spare life, contributing "nothing" to society.

In the end, it's hard to say whether Chris regretted what he did. Perhaps he might have been a bit more educated about how he went out into the wild, and would have figured out how to get back to society, the one he shunned so much. Penn's film idealizes his trip, deciding that even in grips of death, it was worth it to do what he did (of course, Penn made a movie about this, so he surely had some sympathy for such a guy).

The film does make one wonder about Chris's relationships. He makes good friends, but he never quite gets a girlfriend, nor does he seem to long for such relationships. Even Timothy Treadwell, who spent months along, had several girlfriends. Did the unhealthy relationship of his parents make him not want to get into a serious relationship? Indeed, there's also hints that his sister and he had a really close relationship, though not quite sexual, but perhaps the closest he had of anyone he knew, and even then, as she points out (in, ugh, voiceover), he never contacted her, never contacted the family.

This kind of abandonment of society always seems far more romantic than the equally improbable dedication of a person to want to be successful in a society. The desire of the latter seems impure, requiring a knowledge of business, and a personality of persistence that many of us not only lack, but find rather distasteful.

The film runs very long, and despite its sprawling nature, feels rather small and intimate, because McCandless only ever relates to one or two people at a time. One interesting point is how the movie emphasizes his embrace of his own name, where he had adopted the moniker Alex Supertramp (and the rather ridiculous belt loop to indicate how much food he was eating).

All in all, a movie that's perhaps more interesting in what it makes you think about, then what it is actually.

Future Tense

Lately, I've been thinking about the future, mostly about what I want to do, as a job. As I watch people at work and elsewhere, I see different personalities. In the computer industry, there's generally pressure to figure out new things, and the best companies have people who seem fearless in their ability to get stuff to work.

I was just reading Spolsky's book on hiring the best talent. In a nutshell, the book is about its title Smart and Gets Things Done, which Joel notes is not really correlated.

There are people who are smart, and don't get things done. Joel notes Ph.Ds often fall in this category. They tend to work on whatever they want to work on, whether it is pragmatic or not, and even if nothing gets done, they can be happy if they learn something interesting out of it. This is, of course, a bit of an exaggeration. Many Ph.D's at the very least, worry about papers and conferences, at least until tenure.

The other type, those that get things done, but are not smart typically do things a bit incorrectly, and produce a lot of buggy code, which means they are a net loss to the company.

I'm probably a person that's not smart and doesn't get things done, which puts me in the worse of both worlds (well, perhaps better than the not smart, and gets things done).

Anyway, it's times like these that I ponder whether I should look at something different. I know a former co-worker who also had a fit issue, and he's also contemplating what he wants. I have a better sense of what I would like, but no clear path that would make it happen. Much of what I'm looking for is informed by having been a teacher, but so far as I know, no company works the way I'm thinking.

In the meanwhile, given that this is unlikely, there's looking for something more realistic.

And that's tough to figure out.

District B13

I suppose I'm not surprised to find out that District B13 was written by Luc Besson, the guy who also wrote The Fifth Element, which, I have to admit, while not being a great movie, is a guilty pleasure.

District is noted for its extensive use of parkour, which is urban running, a la Jackie Chan. People leaping over bars, between buildings, through windows. In other words, pretty much everything Jackie Chan does without the light humor. All French seriousness.

Sort of a French version of Escape From New York, the story is roughly about a cop who is supposed to disable a neutron bomb in a city that's been walled off because there are a bunch of criminals inside (see what I mean about Escape from NY?). Rather than being ruled by Isaac Hayes, some bald guy with a goatee is in charge.

What prevents this story from devolving into something totally sophomoric is that distrust between the two main leads, one a cop, the other a criminal who wants to save his sister (and apparently, the "inventor" of parkour). This tension means you're never quite sure how they are going to react to one another.

Then, there's the goth sister, handcuffed to a missile, propped up on a tripod, lying and moping, and probably not feeling much worse for wear from her typical day.

Still, between the two protagonists and the parkour, it's a fun enough romp.

Where On Earth Is Stuart Fletcher?

Here's an interview with Stuart.

He's got a lot longer hair than he used to.

Hmm, here's an unusual Stuart Fletcher story. We were having a final that I was proctoring, and Stuart came to the exam room somewhat late, but before the exam started. Students were being put in every other seat. But by that point, Stuart was unable to find such a seat, and thus sat between two other students.

Sometime during the exam, he had lightly scrawled out some answer, as a kind of mental reminder to check it. It was at this point my colleague told him that if he wanted to scratch the answer out he should make it more obvious. Stuart was apparently flustered by this situation as he left a question he would have known how to answer completely blank.

Indeed, a TA who had been a TA for him in two courses noticed that he had left it blank and was thinking there must have been some error (he had lost something like 20 points all semester in an earlier course, and had the highest average by far). Despite missing the question, he still had an A+ so it wasn't really that big a deal, though unusual.

He was also taking a discrete math course and rather than make the same mistake twice, he showed up quite early and found a good seat to sit in, and was, one imagines, a much happier camper.

Billy (Joel) Don't You Lose My Number

Funny.

Social Networking

The key to social networking is, much like the Verizon guys, all about the network itself. Too small a network, and it becomes a group of unrelated people. The more people that are on it, the more people you're likely to know.

Yesterday or so, I was deciding to add "friends" based on alumni from Cornell who graduated the year I did. This lead to about 100-200 people that I had to sift through. Out of this bunch, I probably vaguely knew 2-3, knew one guy reasonably well, and wasn't 100% sure on another person (I had the name, and the city seemed right, and he probably had a unique enough name to be the only one by that name).

It seems, short of something coincidental or fishy, someone that I haven't spoken (or in this case, written) to in almost 20 years. I can't say I remember half the people I went to college with. I vaguely recall what they looked like, but the names escape me. And since I went to college nearly 20 years ago, these are folks that, while computer-savvy (most likely), might find Facebook to be a bit childish, something they lack the time to deal with, and something teens do, not adults with real jobs.

When you lose track of someone for that long, usually a lot has happened to that person (and yourself). Still, I would imagine that there are some personality quirks that haven't changed much since then, for either of us.

I noticed my friends list is around 80 or so, and there are people with hundreds, and I'm sure some folks who claim to have thousands of friends, making it challenging to even remember who those folks are. And that's assuming you are legitimate in finding your friends and they are legitimate in finding you. Pick any well known celebrity and search for them in Facebook, and you'll find that they are at least half a dozen copies of this person, most likely none of them real. A celebrity has many more people interested in being their "friends" who aren't friends at all, but fans.

But beyond these anomalous cases, I've found people that have accounts, even though they are comparably aged to me. To be fair, most people are younger than me.

Regardless, the point is that people used to lose track of other folks over time, and there were no easy ways to get in touch. Alumni networks are one way to keep in touch, but there should be the equivalent of Alumni Facebook, and there isn't. Indeed, when I check my alma mater, they're more interested in having people enter their real phone number and address rather than an email address or screen name for their favorite IM network.

I could imagine you could create screen names for yourself which would really be an alias for your email, and so you could have people communicate with you without revealing real email addresses or screen names (in case you've become, you know, famous and like the anonymity).

I should note that this took a little effort on my part. I think I did a search by name, but you never know when someone decides to get online for the first time. Just because you didn't find them a month ago doesn't mean they didn't open an account last week.

Periodically, I'll try to search folks out on the Web hoping they might have a web page out there. I found someone from college doing a search ten years ago. That webpage is no longer there, so if I tried to do the search, I'd find pretty much nothing. But he still uses the same SN, even ten years later, so I talk to him every once in a while.

Ultimately, these kinds of networks allow you to keep a fringe group of friends, either people you couldn't really consider yourself close enough to as friends, or people you've really lost touch of. On this outer fringe, you're still in touch, because the network still exists, and you can look them up. Prior to social networking, you'd simply not keep up with these folks because there would be no convenient way to do it. Merely having them on a list and being able to contact them at some point becomes a way that you can say hi, even years later.

The question is what happens to this network if something else comes along, and the feeling is something else will come along. Will people abandon it en masse? Will they be in multiple networks?

Technology has created an interesting way to stay connected. Once upon a time, technology provided us letters. Due to the time it took for these letters to make their journey, the art of letterwriting became important. You crammed detail. You used good penmanship. You took the time to write something meaningful. Letters could be pages long.

But people hardly write that. You can now send a message practically instantaneously, and because you can, those messages are less well thought out, much shorter. One might say that the old way lead to something more informative than the brief snippet of emails or IMs or text messages we send, which have become something of the heir apparent to telegrams, those ancient form of abbreviated communication.

But now, we don't even have to communicate. We can merely have the option to communicate, and keep lists of folks, and as long as that list is nice and convenient and up-to-date, there's always opportunity.

Opportunities that we didn't have even ten years ago.

Addendum: Linens and Beyond

Ravi says that while the two stores may be laid out the same, the items that they sell are somewhat different. He prefers BBB, and I'd say that's my preference too, when it comes to actual merchandise.

What I was complaining about was navigating the store itself, which while attractive enough to the eye (and doesn't resemble, say, Kmart), is not conducive to easy maneuvering.

Linens and Beyond

I have some friends that prefer Bed, Bath, and Beyond to Linens N Things and some who don't. To me, this is the Coke-Pepsi war.

The two stores ARE THE SAME!

Look at their layouts. They are broken into the same groupings, with items to a very tall ceiling. They have cramped navigation. It's really hard to browse around. The checkout lines are similarly cramped and the exits are cramped.

The items are fine, and they have interesting sales (basically, pick your own sale item given the prodigious number of 20% coupons they give).

But is one really much better than the other? Neither has done much to distinguish the way it looks and provides a nearly identical customer experience, which is rather painful.

Bowling for Bucks

There's one constant in the American sportswriting universe. Complaining about the BCS. The BCS is the "Bowl Championship Series" and was meant to address a problem that used to occur rather commonly prior to the BCS.

In Division 1 college football, which is the football most people care about (divisions 2 and 3 are from smaller colleges, with far less talent), there are no playoffs. Instead, there are a bunch of bowls which invite teams to play. Some bowls, such as the Rose Bowl, and conference tie-ins.

Most football teams belong to a conference. For example, Maryland belongs to the ACC short for the Atlantic Coast Conference. Each conference has between about 8 and 12 teams. The teams play most of their games in conference. The teams with the best record at the end of the season might play in a conference championship (for a long time, the ACC, with 9 teams, did not have a conference championship, but then 3 universities joined the ACC, to make it 12 teams, and now they have one).

This past weekend was championship weekend for those that hold championships (oddly enough, the Big Ten doesn't hold one). There's usually room for upset, because a team that is vying for a BCS bowl bid must usually win their conference championship, and thus be forced to play another strong team. This hurt many teams this weekend as Missouri and West Virginia lost this past weekend, both with chances to play in the national championships.

But back to the BCS. The BCS originally had four bowls: Sugar, Orange, Rose, and Fiesta. They would take 8 teams. One of the bowls was designated as the national championship, which would rotate every year (one year Sugar, one year Rose, etc).

To decide who played in the national champion, a BCS ranking was set up, which used a combination of polls by people, computer rankings, and strength of schedule (how strong your opponents were and the quality of victory) to determine a ranking. At the end of the year, #1 would play #2. The other bowls would then take the best of the rest.

You see, prior to the BCS, the bowls had affiliation with conferences, and so it was quite common that #1 would not play #2, because, for example, the Rose Bowl wanted the Pac-10 champion vs. the Big-10 champ, and one might be #1, while the other might be #5.

The BCS doesn't remove the bowl system, but at least attempts to put #1 and #2 together. Except, each year, it creates issues. You might have one undefeated team that's good, and they're #1, but have a hard time deciding who #2 should be. There might be several one loss teams, each having a legitimate shot at #2.

This year, there was only one undefeated team, Hawaii, but it was in a conference so weak that no one seriously considered them #1 (indeed, they barely squeaked out many of their wins, including a Washington team that had a losing record). Several one-loss teams had their chances too, but blew it this past weekend. This lead to the final of Ohio State with one loss against LSU with two losses (both in triple overtime).

This year, they decided to add two more games to the BCS. Thus, in addition to the four bowl games, one of the four sites serves as the national championship the following week, which is why they held the national championship on January 8, when it used to be January 2 (then 4th). There were some plans to have a permanent site for the national championship, but instead, one of the bowls serves as the site twice (on a rotating basis).

This allowed Boise State, a smallish university to compete in one of the BCS bowls, and upset a much higher ranked Oklahoma, going for a gutsy two-point conversion with a Statue of Liberty play (a fake pass, then giving the ball to a runner going the opposite direction).

What most sports reporters want is a playoff system. They argue that Division 2 has a playoff system. Why doesn't Division 1? College presidents like the bowl system because it allows for many happy coaches. With something close to 30 bowl games, there are something close to 30 winners. In a playoff system, there might be one winner out of, say, 8 teams. The other bowls would be minor in nature (not that they aren't already).

Some college presidents (why they care is always a mystery to me, but it goes to show you the power of college sports in universities) argue that students would be taken out of class (as if they were picked for their academic abilities).

So every year, sports reporters (more like pundits, since most don't report, but weigh in on their opinion) complain how awful the BCS is, and every year, no one particularly listens.

Eight teams would put some teams in the discussion, though the last few teams would always be complaining. For example, many people see USC and Georgia as two teams that are playing pretty hot right now, but both had two losses, so despite playing good football, they were out of the national championship discussion.

But you can pretty much guarantee that next year, the reporters will complain about the BCS yet again. It's a rite of winter, and allows lazy reporters to rehash the same arguments again and again.

Just A Game

Earlier in the week, Sean Taylor, Pro Bowl safety for the Washington Redskins, was shot, a wound that eventually proved fatal. This lead to a lot of discussion on sports radio. The discussion was, initially, fairly reverential, people remembering Taylor with positive memories, and this became even more the case once people heard he had not survived. Others, more at a distance, noted that Sean Taylor, like many athletes in the NFL, was not raised in a good environment, did not always hang out with the best people, and that his chances of getting involved in something like this was far more likely than someone who lived a more sheltered life.

People said the team would have to deal with a lot. They would play a game on Sunday, less than a week after the incident. The funeral would be set for Monday. They would play a game on Thursday, barely two days to prepare.

Throughout this, people said "a human life is worth more than the game", and yet, here we are, playing games. Why is that? Because games are pretty serious business. While the impact is tremendous on the local team, there are fans in other teams who see this at a distance, much like local fans probably thought less of Corey Stringer's unfortunate death (due to overheating during a practice) than Minnesota fans.

You can tell how important sports are when you have heard no discussion of canceling the game because that would create a mess that no one wants to deal with (how do you make up the game?).

In the end, many games, especially multi-million, possibly multi-billion dollar games are more than just games. And while a human life makes one forget about games for a time, the games are still more important. People will pay respects. People will remember.

And the games will go on.

Trying the Topspin Serve

Last night, it was supposed to be in the mid 40s, which I thought would be pretty reasonable. Chilly, but not crazy cold. It was pretty much that. Chilly, but not crazy cold.

I had been looking at YouTube videos on how to this the topspin serve and was eager to try it out. I need a bit more practice, but I found that I wasn't getting that much pace, which may be a result of either falling back on old habits, or that topspin serves are just not hit that hard.

One thing I was able to do better was to hit the serve while pronating the arm, but I can't consistently get the spin and trajectory right. That's what practice is for.

I should go back and try to hit the serve by "throwing" the racquet, since that was giving me better pace, and alternate back and forth with this topspin serve.

Silky Kumar

Who is Silky Kumar?

Most of the songs (and associated dances) from India come in Bollywood film. While the films aren't exactly extended music videos (they resemble more of the music interludes in Austin Powers), they do form the most popular way of disseminating music.

Recently, a video was produced by MTV India with a guy named Silky Kumar, who is something of a dork. The song is "Scent of Desire".

This is really more of a sly marketing ad. While no mention of Axe body spray is mentioned, the product was released sometime later and was accompanied by this music, which the advertisers paid for.

It's interesting to see how ads are customized for the culture they are in. With the prodigious number of films produced and watched in India, it's a surprise that someone hasn't thought of this idea before.

Get a Grip

I like this article demonstrating the various grips using the base knuckle rather than the classic "V".

Follow Through

I had been hitting my forehand in something of a classical manner, where the racquet would end up pointing forward after I hit the shot, but if you look at any photograph of any top pro hitting their forehand, whether it be Nadal or Roddick or Agassi or Federer, their follow through is amazing.

Literally the racquet will be either above their left shoulder or somewhere above their left arm. Indeed, there's a bit of wrist pronation going on.

Vic Braden once said that what you do after you hit the ball doesn't matter. He claimed the racquet can be all over the place. But that's much like saying a baseball player hitting a ball can do anything after they hit the ball. Indeed, they can't. Baseball hitters have so much momentum that the bat keeps moving far after they hit it.

You also see this with American football players when they run to tackle a quarterback. They want to hurt the quarterback so much that they run full-speed. However, an astute quarterback typically just takes a few steps forward, and the would-be tackler, running full-bore, completely misses his target. He can't adjust that quickly if he runs that hard and that fast.

Similarly, to get power, you have to really swing fast, and this motion needs to go somewhere, so it follows through over to the other side of the body. You see nearly all modern players striking the ball with tremendous follow through. None of that compact McEnroe shot making. It's especially important when you want to generate a lot of spin.

I find that thinking more about the follow through has helped me keep power on shots that are on the run, when I'm likely to be more defensive. You have to give the racquet a pretty good swing, and let the momentum carry the racquet on.

(And I haven't begun to talk about feet position, hip, shoulder, etc).

Are You Being Served?

The hardest part of tennis is learning how to serve. The amazing thing about professional players isn't so much the pace of their serves, though that's pretty amazing, but that they can get it in the court so reliably.

Just to give you a sense of how hard the serve is, watch some slow motion serves. Here's a link to the serve of Joachim Johansson. In case you don't know who Joachim Johansson is, he's a 6'6" Swedish tennis player with a huge serve. We're talking speeds that are comparable to Andy Roddick. I was watching some Davis Cup rerun with US against Sweden, and Johansson was making Roddick's life miserable with his serve.

OK, let's start with the arm itself. People often talk about a wrist snap when serving. It's more properly called wrist pronation, which is something Vic Braden pointed out. Most average players really have a hard time understanding this, much less hitting it properly. Basically, if you watch the pros in slow motion, it appears as if they are about to hit the ball edge on.

At the last moment, they pronate their wrist, and the racquet face is flat on for the moment it's hit, and then it flip over so the racquet face which had been pointing to the left (for a rightie), then flat on, is now pointing to the right. To get a sense of this, take your right hand and raise it above your head.

Then, have the palm point left. This means your thumb would be (were it ninety degrees to your fingers pointing straight up) pointing behind you. Now, turn your palm forward. Your thumb points left.

Then, turn your palm to the right, which is pretty awkward. Your thumb points forward.

This motion, when done really fast, is wrist pronation. I've heard the analogy of whipping very much like using a large thermometer.

The way to learn wrist pronation is to really simplify the motion and just think backswing, and minimal follow through (with the pronation). Very hard to get this right, but easier then adding all the other motion to the serve.

Beyond that, there's the knee bend, the location of the hips, the hip rotation, the backscratching position, etc. That is, your hips and knees also play a role in hitting a big serve, in addition to the hard part of wrist pronation.

The other thing I learned was to "throw" the racquet, which gives it acceleration all the way through. I'd often just worry about hitting it at the point of contact, and making it more from the elbow on up, rather than the rest of the arm. I used to know this guy, who, when he was young, played baseball. The ball throwing movement he was used to making made for a really powerful serve, so the analogy of "throwing" the racquet is not so far off (except I was never that good at throwing a ball).

What you often see the average player do is to push the ball forward using the wrist as a hinge. Compared to the proper way to hit a serve, it's far simpler, but not that great for applying spin, and also not great for power. While the motion of wrist pronation feels more natural the more your practice it, it certainly feels completely unnatural until you learn how to hit it properly. And of course, it's completely unintuitive, which is why the average player would never learn it on their own without having slomo video of top servers (and they wouldn't even know what to look for, and how to achieve that motion).

What's something of a relief is that Roger Federer is not one of the biggest servers in the game. His serve might be fifth best in the world or lower, behind Sampras, Johansson, Roddick, Isner, and a few others. But it is pretty effective, nonetheless, and he returns really well too. It's interesting to note that the top two matches in terms of aces with 55 and 51 aces respectively, the person who served the most aces lost. Even with lots of aces, it needs to be timed right. When you don't get an ace, you still need to win points. And there's still the return of serve.

Which isn't to say a powerful serve doesn't help. It helped Sampras, Lendl, McEnroe, Edberg, Safin, etc. But there are many players with incredible serves which helps them get in the top 50, or even the top 30, but not much further. As hard as Roddick hits his serve, he can still hit a pretty good forehand and backhand, otherwise, he wouldn't even be mentioned as a top player.

So learning a serve is pretty tough!

Loud and Proud

More like loud and annoying. I had been referred to some article that claimed commercials aren't louder than normal programming, but that at regular TV programming reaches peak volume very rarely while commercials spend its duration at that peak volume. The analogy given is having to stare at a flash bulb. It's quick, though irritating, and having a light that is as bright as a flash bulb but continuously on.

For some reason, despite years of watching television, I've become more sensitive to it. I hear just how loud the commercials are and it's pretty annoying.

Visual Learning

When I first started playing tennis, my parents had bought a VCR. To be more precise, they have bought a Betamax. These were the days when there were two formats: VHS and Betamax, and eventually VHS won out, partly, I imagine, due to a longer format (it could record so-so quality for several hours). They didn't buy the VCR for tennis. That was mostly coincidence.

I'd record tennis matches and try to watch the players hit the strokes in slow motion. Even after imitating players like Courier or Agassi (or more likely in those days, Wilander or Lendl), I found it somewhat difficult to fully translate to the court. I'm sure an experienced coach could give me more advice.

But since then, the great information saviour of the world came about, namely, the web. And video also came, mostly YouTube. This allowed people to put all manners of videos online, in particular, videos for teaching tennis.

These videos I've included seem pretty good at teaching the topspin serve, a serve I've been trying to learn for a while. Admittedly, you have to know something about tennis serve mechanics to get the idea fully (for example, there's a wrist pronation going on in the second video). But it's a great step-by-step introduction to the topspin serve. I want to try this out on the court and see how it works out.

Tennis Lesson

I've been taking tennis lessons since Ravi was taking them too, figuring I hadn't had lessons in a long time, and my game wasn't going much of anywhere in a long time either.

The first set of lessons I took were in a group setting, and it lasted five weeks. It reminded me of the kind of environment Nick Bollettieri has at his academy (Agassi, Courier, Seles, etc. all went to his academy). Kids run drills, hit a shot, get back to the end of the line.

I find that kind of hitting pretty stressful, because you have to get ready right away, then wait and wait, then hit again. It doesn't lead to getting your strokes "grooved", meaning, in a rhythm, so that you feel comfortable.

Over time, I began to think of these drills as more exercise, meant to get your movement down, and less about hitting the ball properly. If you hit the ball well, that's good, but if you miss, you just keep going on. Once you can forget about whether you hit it in or not, it works better.

Even so, we didn't get that much instruction. I found, as I was practicing, that my backhand isn't very good, nor is my serve. My serve has been improving some, mostly because I've been trying to get better technique.

During this time, Ravi would tell me about his lessons, which were also group lessons, and how his instructor would talk about throwing the racquet, and holding the racquet a certain way. I wasn't sure what to make of it.

Thanksgiving weekend arrived and our instructor decided to take the weekend to visit relatives and such and cancelled the lesson. So I decided to take a (pricey) private lesson. And it turns out the guy teaching that was Joel. Joel's got huge dreadlocks, and is pretty chatty, but gave a lot of ideas to think about.

In particular, he talked about throwing the racquet as well. What he meant was to let the momentum of the racquet do the work. That's an interesting visualization as people tend to "muscle" the ball, which causes their arm, ironically enough, to move slower, and this idea of throwing was meant to make it move faster, and more relaxed.

I should say that "throwing" isn't quite the right visualization. You don't throw it per se. Instead, as you swing the racquet, you let the momentum carry it through. The idea of throwing it means that you make sure the momentum is pretty high.

We also worked on simplifying my backhand some, getting down some, and again, letting more of the momentum do the work. I also did this on my serve, and the pace seemed a lot better than I was used to.

I think Joel's advice worked better than I expected partly because I tend to be over-analytical about my own shots. I'm sure some people hit and don't know what they do. I try to think about how I hit my shots, how my take back should be, and so forth, and tinker with it from time to time. Lately, for instance, I've been trying to emulate more of an Agassi backhand, which is short and compact, at least in the takeback.

I was also trying to work on the pronation of the wrist that people claim is needed for a good spin serve. It didn't occur to me to hit it with more of a forehand grip as I was more of a backhand grip player (having modeled it somewhat like Edberg's serve). It felt awkward, but the spin was reasonably good, so I was a bit surprised. I might have to experiment with that some more.

All in all, though the lesson was twice as expensive, it gave me some nuggets to think about.

Too bad it's getting cold. Hope I find some time to practice.

The Popularizaton of Science

It used to be that science fiction TV shows, most notably, Star Trek, attracted people to science. Weird, since Star Trek wasn't that heavy on the science (although we pretty much have communicators).

Nowadays, there are channels like the Discovery Channel that talk about science and the universe, or Nova, the PBS show. Even those shows feel quite compelled to use CG effects to make everything seem more exciting, more enticing. It seems a bit amateurish, but I bet it works.

They use as many visual effects and analogies as possible. (Like bouncing balls representing photons).

But given the lack of math skills of most Americans, they don't bother with any serious math. Heck, any math at all. The nerdy folks will learn math and be steered in the direction of physics of some such and be out next generation of physicists.

It's sad that we can't do much math because the average person finds math too hard. To be fair, it takes a long time to learn math, and a lot of thinking, and so a show isn't really prepared to teach that in an hour's time.

It's eye candy, but only that.

The Blender Challenge

Now that smoothies are popular, it's impressive how the entire industry that makes blenders have done virtually nothing to make this easier.

Here's the challenge. Add ice. Add frozen fruit. Hit blend.

If you have to stir the items because there's an air pocket created, thus causing no blending to occur, you fail. Design it so it doesn't do this.

It's amazing how there's so little intellectual power spent on coming up with a truly innovative design. Consider how the burr grinder is a completely different design from the blade grinder for grinding beans.

Try a little harder, guys.

Western India

India's a complicated country. In a sense, it's very much many countries into one, as each state in India typically has its own language and customs. What unifies the country is religion, but even religious observations vary from state to state.

Here's an interesting article about women seeking some independence prior to marriage.

Without women working, a woman being able to live on her own would be challenging, at best. Once a society allows women to work and to make comparable money to a man, then women begin to think about a life outside of marriage.

These behaviors are more typical of "metros" or the major cities of India.

The reason that India is complex is that many women still live rather traditionally. Even the vaunted IT revolution of India only affects a small percentage of Indians, which means that most Indians still live, one would imagine, much like their parents did.

Like the rest of Asia, India struggles balancing traditional values with more "Western" values, and those can be at odds with one another.

This is not to say Western values are necessarily superior, but that when there are more options available, people are going to take those options.

While India zooms to the 21st century technologically (at least, parts of India), cultural changes will be slower. How will attitudes change in the upcoming 40 years?

Turkey Dilemma

Although this is the I-dont-know-how-many Thanksgiving I've spent away from family, I still don't know much about how to cook a turkey. My dad does a reasonably good job, so I should just follow that (having said that, Alton Brown has a version that takes, other than brining, about 3 hours).

First lesson. Don't buy a turkey on the day before. There just aren't that many choices. I went to two grocery stores that had turkeys between about 14 pounds and 15 pounds. 13 pounds? No. 15 pounds? No. Now how could that possibly be? My answer is that it's a good middling number, and many stores have resorted to having too few turkeys rather than too many and getting 14 pound turkeys when their supply runs out.

I had to go to a smallish grocery store to find turkeys that had different sizes. In this case, other than the ubiquitous 14 pounder, there was the 18-20 pounds. I did spot a few 11 pounders. That was OK, though overpriced.

Second, these turkey are popsicles. They are frozen blocks of ice. So my strategy of brining probably was far less successful than it could have been. First, being frozen, I have no idea how much brine it absorbed. Second, being frozen, all the turkey parts, wrapped in plastic, were fused inside the body cavity of the turkey.

If I got them early, then I might have let it thaw for a day, before even brining.

Third, brining is a total pain. First, to get a container that's even big enough is daunting. I bought a huge stockpot (at least, I thought it was huge). Apparently, not huge enough. You're better off buying a cheap plastic bucket (Alton Brown recommends 5 galons). I could barely fit my tiny turkey (not so tiny, as it turns out) in this stockpot, and could not submerge it at all.

Finally, slow cooking is not the ideal way to bake a turkey. I cooked the turkey over 9 hours at pretty low temperature (250 F). It causes the turkey's skin to be really dry, although the turkey itself was only modestly dry. I might aim for Alton Brown's solution which is at the other extreme. Heat at 500 F(!) for half an hour, then at normal cooking temps for 2 to 2.5 hours.

I think I need a real meat thermometer too, so I don't let it cook and cook. That would probably help as well.

All I can say is that making turkey ain't easy.

Oh yeah, and there's a lot of food to eat too.

No Country for Old Men

In a film which puts its audience on edge, sometimes the quiet moments say more than the carnage.

No Country for Old Men is the Coen brothers' latest, and pits, if that's the right word, three characters against one another. There's Llewelyn Moss, who stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad, and picks up a pile of cash, which seems, in most films, a cause for trouble. There's Tommy Lee Jones, the sheriff, whose trying to figure out what's going on. You wonder, perhaps, like Misery, whether his inquisitive nature will get him into similar consequences as the sheriff in that film. Then, there's Anton Chigurh, whose much like the Terminator. You can't stop him.

His character reminds me a little of Samuel Jackson's character, Jules Winnfield, in Pulp Fiction. To be fair, Jules, outside of his killing, seems to go on about his life as usual, trying to be cool and hip. Eventually, however, he wonders whether his life is meant for killing, and has a change of heart.

Whether that's what happens to Chigurh, is not entirely clear. Up until the ending, the film seems to be building up, as many films of this kind of genre are, to some kind of final showdown, to see who is the most clever, and who wins in the end, and yet that would lead, I imagine, to something the film can't easily deliver.

Why does Chigurh do what he does? How is Llewelyn so darn clever? Why doesn't Chigurh kill the sheriff (it seems that he could have)? Does Llewelyn's wife survive? If she doesn't, why does he seem to feel remorse? If she does, what does that mean? Has mercy meant that he's now going to pay for a life full of mayhem? Was he some kind of devil's spawn, forced to see good, and then punished for it?

Almost aside from the cat-and-mouse of the two men are the quiet conversations with Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. He relates a story early on about the old times when the sheriffs didn't need guns. What does that say about now? That we're heading to lawlessness?

And what of the rather bizarre weapon that Chigurh uses? Why does he pick something so strange? Is it because no one will suspect it is a weapon? Indeed, we don't. Many of the people he kills are randomly innocent. Does he use the weapon because he sees them as some kind of cattle, being slaughtered by him (perhaps echoing some basic idea in Killer of Sheep).

There's no doubt that the Coens are good at what they do, building up tension, but not keeping it ratcheted up throughout, letting the quiet moments be, as the sheriff recounts stories of the past.

And what of the Mexicans? They serve no function except to be some vague threat that Chigurh disposes of. What is their role? (Javier Bardem, as it turns out, is Spanish, so his American accent is fairly impressive).

The film's ending is, of course, rather abrupt. The kind of ending you don't have in really popular films because, well, it doesn't seem to satisfy. But it leaves at a point where you don't know what's going to happen. Is Llewelyn just a more sympathetic killer, who will eventually do what Chigurh does? Does the sheriff decide to leave this violence? Is the sheriff the son of Chigurh (that was a random thought I had)?

An intense film worth watching, even if it leaves your head scratching.

Internet and Films

I was just reading a review by Mike D'Angelo about a film called Reservation Road, which is a story of a lawyer, who gets into an accident and kills a kid while driving, but leaves the scene, and is later asked by the father to find who did it, and try to sue the heck out of the guy.

The point Mike finds fascinating is not the odd trap that the lawyer finds himself, and how he will deal with this situation, of a furious father asking him for help, and not knowing that the lawyer was the guy.

It's that the guy uses the Internet, mainly Google, to find information, and to find support in moments of grief, reaching out to strangers, rather than to his own wife.

The Internet is treated in a non-chalant way, instead of the way it's dealt with in older films like, say, Copycat, which uses huge fonts, and huge text so you can see the chat, or Mission Impossible, which uses a graphic of an email send randomly out by a flipping envelope. Or even more obvious film plots like You've Got Mail.

It's very much like the difference between the cyberpunk novels and Asimov novels. Asimov SF is very fascinated with the technology that Asimov has invented in his head, and the characters talk about it. In cyberpunk novels, the world is the way it is, and the people inhabiting it merely use the technology. There's no explanation of why or how the technology fully came about, even as the stories themselves to emphasize technology.

Unlike, say, Star Wars. Star Wars treats technology even more off-handedly. No one even bothers to talk about where this technology comes from. Who builds the ships? Where's the labor? Where are the smart people? All completely ignored to tell the story. But where the viewer is constantly being shown amazing images of a kind of future society (or the past, in the Star Wars mythos), it's a far remove from the culture we know today.

Certainly cell phones already make part of our current society, but the Internet has affected people more profoundly than films have represented, and in perhaps ways that are more subtle than film-makers would like. For example, people might really get into Facebook.

I've been using it lately to find some people I haven't met in a while, hoping, they, too, might have gotten on. Some folks have, while others, thinking that this is for kids, have avoided it. But it acts a bit better than LinkedIn for keeping up with people. Where's the dramatic value in that?

And more interestingly is how people are more willing to meet new people out of the blue, rather than simply restricting their circle of friends to merely the workplace or college. In that respect, the Internet allows people to meet others more easily, although possibly more superficially. It's hard to make a really good film that strikes the right balance, portraying accurately what happens to people, without seeming like some weird cautionary tale (such as the many movies or tv episodes about cyberstalking).

In particular, we now have the ability to find information about all sorts of things, from restaurants, to directions, to the origins of a holiday, to information about people, should they, for example, choose to blog about it. This is something that wasn't there before, but is there now, and the film industry has yet to popularly capture this.

And that's not even including those who love MMORPGs. I'm sure filmmakers know such players exist, but can't even imagine how that all works, or how to craft an interesting story from it.

But perhaps this is the first of more films that will treat the topic more maturely, more matter-of-factly.

Black Hole

I remember watching The Black Hole as a youth in a local movie theater. The story was about the crew of the Palomino that discovers the Cygnus, a ship once thought lost, near the event horizon of a black hole. As it turns out, the Cygnus is run by a madman, named Reinhardt. He has a right hand man, which is a robot, named Maximillian. The rest of his crew is (apparently) robots, his crew (allegedly) having abandoned him.

The film was made two years after Star Wars, and was Disney's response. Wow, does this film look old compared to Star Wars. You have Anthony Perkins (of Psycho), Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forster (Baretta). There are two robots, Vincent and Bob, that are analogous to C3PO and R2-D2. Although the film was made in 1979, the look of the film screams 1960s. The music is slightly bizarre sounding very much like James Bond's Goldfinger, which is not surprising since both were composed by John Barry.

The music also sounds a bit like Pink Panther, with the piano riff, which seems oddly out of place.

The quality of special effects, apparently well-note at the time, really doesn't hold up at all, especially, the lasers and the thrusters, which Star Wars, after all these years, still looks reasonably good. The meteors also look pretty bad. What looks good is the Cygnus itself, which is large and ponderous, but at least doesn't look like Star Wars ships.

The movie ends pretty surreal, with the crew forced to go into the black hole, and a scene that echoes a bit of 2001. Pretty unusual for a Disney film, but perhaps people were still taking their cues more from 2001 than Star Wars.

The pacing, the story, of all of it seems pretty off, despite the money spent on it. At least, Star Trek, which used (I believe) ILM for its special effects and came out the same year still looks pretty good from special effects. That, too, seemed inspired from 2001, and I think, despite its pacing, holds up pretty well even 30 years after its release.

Short and Sweet

The television was, some feared, the harbinger of doom for the film industry. One reason the television's aspect ratio was made boxish was to prevent movies from easily going to the television. Most films have pretty wide aspect ratios making it fairly rectangular.

Now, of course, with televisions becoming wider to match film ratios, films survive by getting on television.

At times, you don't realize a trip to the movies is controlled by many factors. The films themselves are almost always longer than an hour and a half, but shorter than three hours. An hour and a half or a little more is typical for a comedy, and two hours plus more common for dramas.

Most movies have to introduce the characters, action, and tell a story within those time constraints. An hour or so is just enough to do that. It contrasts greatly with ensemble shows on television, where you have many episodes to flesh out characters and relationships.

For example, Star Trek: The Next Generation had seven seasons to introduce their characters. And if people want to grow attached to the characters, you can't kill them off (which is sad that STTNG felt the need to have the "danger of the week" where the ship might blow up or characters might be killed, but, of course, aren't). Such ensemble pieces often struggle with strong, memorable characters. These are characters you become familiar with.

The weakness of this form is often seen in the big screen, when many of the minor characters are jettisoned, partly because of their acting skill, partly because the story or director is not skilled enough to juggle so many people (not everyone can be John Sayles).

The films that make it to the megaplex often have big budgets, big name actors, and tell fairly mainstream or genre pictures.

On the other end of the spectrum is the short film. Short films are often the product of film school students. Making an hour and a half film is extremely laborious requiring lots of people and lots of time. However, even a short film of twenty minutes is not nearly the "fire up the digicam and roll" experience one might imagine.

Twenty minutes is also really short to develop characters, to develop history, to have a semblance of a plot. It can be done, of course, but usually something has to go, and that something is typically both plot and characterization. Furthermore, the acting sometimes suffers, though typically, there is a glut of pretty good actors out there.

I was watching a short called Night Swimming
on TV. You'd kind of call it a coming-of-age film, but really, it's almost too short for that. One teen, whose father wants him to apply to college, is having second thoughts. His best friend is dating a girl who seem hot for one another. The two decide to head to a concert in New York City. The girl can't go because her parents won't let her.

Already, this summary shows some of the cracks of film-making. The director/writer needs a way to have the two guys be together for a quiet moment, and yet needs to stress the importance of the girlfriend, and thus, the awkward idea that she can't make it to the concert.

As they go, they end up going off the beaten path (partly because it's more scenic), and the car breaks down. With technology, one could use cell phones to call (though I've discovered some places are pretty rural, and calling out can be an issue), so this evokes a time where cell phones weren't so ubiquitous. They decide to hang out the evening until they can figure out what to do in the morning.

At this point, there is a rather odd artificial plot element added. A gunshot is fired. After all, they are in the woods. Perhaps someone is hunting. And one guy says there's some psycho out there. This turns out to be a bit of a red herring, but it adds tension to the rest of the film, because of all the old conventions of people getting killed.

After a while, it's revealed the loner teen whose dad wants him to go to college has long had a thing for his best friend. It's implied that something possibly goes on that evening as they sleep in the back of their SUV. The next day, Otter (the main character) gets up, and his friend has found the hunter, whose willing to give them a drive back. He looks creepy, and there's a thought something might go on, but again, more movie imagination. Already, his buddy is starting to distance himself from the experience.

Once they head home, his buddy is no longer interested in being together, though Otter wants it to go on, realizing it probably can't go on. He eventually places the envelope for applying to college in a mailbox (how quaint), and decides to get on with the rest of his life.

Now, compared to a longer film, this one barely has time to get to the key point of this film which is the quiet moment where one guy (Otter) finally admits to himself and his best friend how he feels. But a short film can hide some of the faults of a longer film. You'd be hard-pressed to imagine how they might stretch this film to standard feature length. That length would require a completely different plot, or something highly creative to work.

For a twenty minute film, however, there are smaller things to notice. The drive in secluded upstate New York, the sun shining in the trees, a small pickup truck, the music. Indeed, these elements, evocative of a time and place, trite as the may be, work better in short films. Short films are likely to lack in originality, mostly because the directors are often inspired by something important in their lives, often taken from films they've seen.

Even so, I'm willing to forgive a lot for shorter films because they are the stepping stone of directors, who often try to tell personal stories. You aren't likely to get genius, but you are likely to get reasonably good acting, reasonably good production values, and the germ of an idea trying to peek its head through.

Brokeback Phil

Phil Jackson, the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, recently made a remark about some Brokeback Mountain strategy involving penetration and kickouts. While this got some laughs from reporters, gay and lesbian groups found it offensive.

Some sports shows questioned whether it was offensive. Shows that had, months earlier, found Don Imus's comments of nappy-haired hos offensive, which eventually lead to Don Imus's firing (although I think he's been rehired elsewhere--man, does he look old!).

Often, many things that don't seem offensive can sound pretty offensive when you simply substitute, say, African Americans for gays, and see how that sounds.

To be fair, I think people are pretty sensitive to too many things. The comments tend to touch on issues that aren't tackled head on. For example, why is the comment "nappy haired hos" offensive? When people call other people "hos", do they really imply that they are whores? When people call someone mofos (or it's more colorful variation), is that what they really mean? Or is it something they say so often that is meant to sound offensive, but not meant exactly as stated.

I'm sure the comments will disappear. Sports is short on memory. There's always some new game being played, some new controversy. A comment like the one made by Phil Jackson will disappear, if it hasn't already. Is that good or bad?

Success, Women, and Society

I used to teach computer science. Most male computer science majors will point out that there are very few women computer science majors. Women make about 20% of the majors, and possibly less as time goes on. Depending on the course, that percentage can dip precipitously low. Certain computer science course are perceived as more "male", usually the hard core programming classes like operating systems, networking, or compilers.

If you were to take a closer look at the demographics of women, you might discover that many women are Asian. That is, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and so forth. There are some white Americans, but not like white American males (the demographics are likely to be significantly different depending on what part of the US you look).

Although this doesn't provide anywhere near a full explanation of why there are so many Asian women, I want to think about why Indian women are in computer science.

Indian society is still pretty conservative. Guys don't date women, at least, the vast majority don't seem to do it (Indians seem bent on telling you how things are changing, but I would simply run the test of naming all the people they know that go dating on their own, and how many don't, and they would see the numbers are comparatively insignificant).

Most Americans find the thought of arranged marriages as ludicrous. They can't imagine trusting their parents to decide who they should spend their lives with. How would their parents know who a person finds attractive, whether this be physical attractiveness, or personality.

But let's ponder what this means. If a society prefers arranged marriages, this means that you need to segregate boys and girls. Parents also need to play a strong role in their children's lives, and children need to have respect for their parents. In the US, it's more common, I'd imagine, to find kids who simply don't get along with their parents. In India, I imagine this is rarer, though I'm simply guessing. You wouldn't imagine kids yelling at their parents telling them how much they hate them and how they are ruining their lives.

The force of marriage is so culturally strong that when Bollywood couples get together, they stay together. You don't hear of Bollywood actresses like Elizabeth Taylor, famous for having seven marriages.

Once women and men are separate, and somewhat dependent on their parents to find their spouses, then one of the rituals of American society is no longer important. That is, guys wanting to meet girls. Well, it's not to say that they don't think about this, but that opportunities to take it very far aren't nearly as common, and so both guys and girls can get on the business of being students.

Ah, students. I'm now focusing on a small subset of Indians, the literate, well-educated subset. Since women face fewer issues of guys trying to proposition them, or the pressure of having to be dumb or beautiful to be attractive, and since parents may seek a well-educated girl to match a well-educated guy, parents may find it's advantageous for their daughters to be well-educated.

And that's an interesting thought. A well-educated guy is likely to want a well-educated woman, but typically, not as well-educated as them. So can parents be compelling enough to overcome social pressure, allowing daughters to strive for academic success, when in the US, many parents opt for the simple goal of "having happy kids", which means they don't compel their kids to succeed academically.

There's a kind of irony here. A conservative society (but progressive enough to see women as needing jobs and being educated) might actually produce far more well-adjusted, academically minded girls, in contrast to a so-called freer, liberal society, where guys and girls try to adjust their behavior during a period of their lives where they are expected to go find someone they like or want to marry.

Running To The End

Once upon a time, there were only 3 channels of note: ABC, NBC, CBS (yeah, I guess PBS too). A 30 minute program would last 22 minutes. This meant that a program that went from 7 to 7:30 would usually end at 7:26. There'd be four minutes of commercial, and closing credits, leaving the viewer enough time to snack, hit the bathroom, whatever.

However, after 30 years of cable, one thing has changed. People like to surf, which means they like to see content from start to end. Many cable programs now have content to the very end of the show. You can watch content at 7:29, so even if you were surfing, and missed stuff from 7:25 to 7:28, there's still something on up to the very last minute.

I like that.

Amusing

See here.

Backpacks

I've had backpacks for as long as I can remember, and I've been upset at many of them for as long as I can remember.

Initially, I wasn't happy with them because they didn't carry enough. The average backpack manufacturer assumes that a person might carry two or three books tops. I wanted to carry four or five books, and notebooks, and it would weigh 20 pounds or more.

Lately, I want to have a backpack for gym purposes, but I want one pocket large enough to hold shoes, and another one large enough for other stuff, like towels, gym clothes, etc. This would be still be pretty large, but I haven't found anything like that.

Sadly, this leads to another pet peeve. We buy stuff before we can properly use it. Sure, we can return it, but it can be a pain. And sometimes, we can't return it.

I can't tell you how many things I've bought that I don't use because the moment I tried it out, I realized it wasn't any good. If I could only have found out at the store, I wouldn't have even bothered.

I think the lesson I've learned, at least when it comes to backpacks is: see it before you buy it. I bought one based on a good review, and the sucker is tiny. I think it can serve my needs, but it isn't ideal.

One day, I think, they'll let people do some of the design on their own before buying it, much like people do with PCs, and that day will be revolutionary.

Love and Marriage

As much as we are bombarded by television and movies, it's amazing they don't have more influence than they do.

I'll give you an example. The typical Bollywood film, beyond being about song and dance, tends to focus on love stories. Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, that kinda thing. There are still some hangups in society which prevent, say, the three-minute onscreen kiss that, to be fair, was a problem in US cinema 50 or more years ago (and directors tried very much to skate to the edge of what was allowed), is pretty much verboten.

Yet, the entire subcontinent, which is India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh (I'm sure I'm missing some other countries) are one of the largest, last bastions of arranged marriages. Indeed, there is a name given to marriages that aren't arranged: love marriages.

Cinematically, arranged marriages aren't as dramatic as love marriages, and really, to skirt around that issue, marriages aren't even the point. It's the fairy tale meeting of boy and girl.

While guys and girls are less segregated in the metros (what we call "cities"), there is still segregation, and it's more profound in the villages, and, to be fair, even in the IT industry. I remember goading on this guy to talk to the girls in the company, and he said that he would get kicked by the girls if he tried. He was perfectly content having his marriage arranged, and not having to think about finding someone. Indeed, he might argue that he shouldn't buck tradition, and that his parents knew best.

And the funny thing? Despite the movies showing a world that seems at odds with the ones that most desis live in, movies are good entertainment. I doubt these displays of wholesome love is considered a travesty, something that criticizes the traditions of arranged marriages.

Why is that? Why, after all the movies that are shown, with many a guy wooing many a woman, does that not translate to the real world? The answer is rather simple. Guys understand they aren't the dashing movie stars that are shown. They are shy. Even in the US, where arranged marriages are practically unheard of, guys find it tough meeting that first girl. They often have to be egged on by their male friends, encouraging them to take that step, until they finally muster the courage to ask for a date. After that, it's probably not SO bad (though some always find it challenging).

And when every male you know is not asking women out, then you live with the status quo, and let the parents figure it out, so you don't have to. This, despite film after film, encouraging the notion of love.

For a less extreme example of the lack of power in pop entertainment, consider television programs. How often do you hear a Southern accent? Until the 70s, you didn't much hear African American accents. And Boston and New York accents are uncommon.

Yet, despite how common "good English" is spoken on television, the influence of family and friends seems much stronger than television, and accents persist. It hasn't been washed out because of television.

I find it fascinating how much or how little
popular entertainment affects the behavior of people.