Eye Get It

Occasionally, I'll be reading something at a website, and my eyes won't really focus that well, and it makes me not want to read. Some of it is interest, but some of it is the widescreen display of the text.

Think how difficult it is to track a single line with your eyes all the way across the screen. It's interesting how computers still present text much like print does.

I recall listening to the commentary for resultFinding Nemo. The people in charge noted that although they were not constrained to film it as live-action folks would, they chose to do so anyway.

Similarly, I feel that there might be better ways to display text, and sadly, the one way may simply be to read the text aloud, relieving the eyes from having to track text. This would benefit the visually impaired as well.

For some reason, I find it much easier to track text if I type, and so maybe if text slowly reveals itself, I would find it easier to follow.

Think about it.

Lyrics

I'd swim across lake Michigan
I'd sell my shoes
I'd give my body to be back again
In the rest of the room

To be alone with you
To be alone with you
To be alone with you
To be alone with you

You gave your body to the lonely
They took your clothes
You gave up a wife and a family
You gave your goals

To be alone with me
To be alone with me
To be alone with me
You went up on a tree

To be alone with me you went up on the tree

I'll never know the man who loved me

Sufjan Stevens' lyrics tend to float between spiritual and secular. Christians will argue that the lyrics refer to Christ, and yet, you can also read this in a more secular way.

Bob Dylan also had a song called To Be Alone With You, though his lyrics are decidedly of the flesh.

To be alone with you
Just you and me
Now won't you tell me true
Ain't that the way it oughta be?
To hold each other tight
The whole night through
Ev'rything is always right
When I'm alone with you.

To be alone with you
At the close of the day
With only you in view
While evening slips away
It only goes to show
That while life's pleasures be few
The only one I know
Is when I'm alone with you.

They say that nighttime is the right time
To be with the one you love
Too many thoughts get in the way in the day
But you're always what I'm thinkin' of
I wish the night were here
Bringin' me all of your charms
When only you are near
To hold me in your arms.

I'll always thank the Lord
When my working day's through
I get my sweet reward
To be alone with you.

Indeed, Dylan explicitly refers to the Lord, and yet in the offhanded way people refer to the Lord. I suppose Dylan could be referring to Christ too, but somehow you don't really get that feeling.

The other interpretation for Sufjan's song is a man whose discovered he's gay. Consider the lyrics "You gave up a wife and family. You gave your goals." This theory doesn't quite hold up as well with "You gave your body to the lonely.
They took your clothes."

Indeed, the religious interpretation fits the best to the lyrics, suggesting that the person singing would give all he had to be with Jesus, who sacrificed himself. The person says he doesn't know why Jesus loved him.

But being explicit with references to Christ tends to be death knell for songs that want to have broad appeal, so by leaving it more ambiguous, it also leaves the song to broader interpretation.

This is a general issue with lyrics. They tend to be far more cryptic than, say, books. Sometimes you wonder if the lyrics have any real meaning at all, or that the sound of the words just sound good together, regardless of the meaning.

American Pie

Almost everyone agrees that the best player in golf currently playing is Tiger Woods and that possibly, within a few years, he may go down as the greatest ever, provided he breaks Jack Nicklaus's record in Grand Slam tournament wins.

Tiger Woods' success has been magnified that much more because, on the face of it, he is black. Tiger is, of course, not 100% African American. His father, the late Earl Woods, was African American. His mother, Kultida, is Thai. The Thai people, being more open-minded than most Asians, consider Tiger to be Thai. Americans, on the other hand, are likely to see him as black.

Even as esteemed a writer as Michael Wilbon, who knows about Tiger's heritage, would have to say that it's Tiger's looks combined with his extreme success that has drawn audiences that normally didn't care about golf to watch golf. Tiger was, of course, not the first to break the color barrier. However, he's been the best African American (and by extension, Asian American) player ever.

While the average person focuses a great deal on "African", there is a second component, which is "American", and I argue that this is at least as important to his popularity as anything.

Imagine, if you will, that Tiger is from Australia or England, and is half-black, half-Thai. Would he be revered as much in the US as he is now? I wonder.

Consider Roger Federer. Even after Sampras, who was not nearly as popular as either Connors or McEnroe, had been anointed as the great one, the tennis world is ready to place the new title to Federer. And Federer has yet to disappoint. His biggest rival is not American Andy Roddick, who can hardly be called a rival since he loses to Federer almost always, but Rafael Nadal, and then, only on clay. At one point, Nalbandian gave Federer fits, but no longer.

He's as dominant a player as tennis has produced since, well, Sampras, and perhaps even more so, because Federer can play on clay, a surface Sampras seemed ill-at-ease for nearly his entire career. Despite Sampras's powerful serves, his health was generally questionable, and he would gear himself for the Grand Slams even if this meant subpar performances in other titles. Federer, on the other hand, is more like Borg or Lendl, cranking up wins on big and small occasions alike.

Even as the media has tried to link the superstars together, Federer and Woods, Federer has much less fame and clout compared to Tiger. That's mostly because Federer is white, in a sport that is mostly perceived as white, but also because he's European, so that his fame is far less than Sampras. True, Federer is also fairly mild-mannered, but even so, he's not American, and so we don't seem to care. Even Borg, with his epic battles against Americans, was quite a bit more famous than Federer.

Were it not for Federer, perhaps someone like James Blake would stand out more. Blake is ranked around fifth in the world, and is African American. That, alas, has not piqued American interest that much. Blake and Roddick appear more like A&F coverboys (except A&F has been quite lily white for a long time) than serious tennis players, and that neither seriously challenge Federer make them afterthoughts.

Americans, it seems, likes winners, especially in the world sports market. Consider a fan can root for the Redskins, despite another season with no post-season, but if you're not number 1 in tennis (or not Anna Kournikova), then it doesn't matter, since people don't generally care about tennis. And I say this from the point of view of someone who followed tennis seriously for quite a few years.

Would Federer be much more well-regarded if he were African European, say, like Yannick Noah? I think he would be, again, for the same reason Tiger is regarded well outside the US. This is still a novelty in tennis, much like a dominant white marathoner would be a novelty in a sport that tends to be dominated by Kenyans.

But his popularity in the US would be even greater if he were American. And really, there have been modestly successful African Americans in tennis, not the least of which are the Williams sisters. Serena came back from injury and a lowly rank of 81 to completely dominate world number 1, Maria Sharapova. And let's face it, you'd think the Williams sisters would be well-regarded, but after a while, people in the US think "come on, it's women's sports---who cares?".

American sportscasters will always be more passionate about football, baseball, and basketball than other sports. Far more passionate. Thus, great players in other sports are rarely given their due. I listen to morning sports radio, and someone like Federer barely gets mentioned. Instead, a minor player can get far more airplay because of comments they make, and it can be debated on and on, because it's baseball, basketball, or football.

So as Federer wins yet another Australian Open, ask yourself why so few people seem to care in the US.

Morning Rush

Weekends are meant for sleeping in. Yet, I found myself up at 7:30 debating whether I should make the trip to Kennedy Center via the Metro. The website said it would take some 30 minutes to make it there, and then I'd likely have to wait in line. I'd want something to eat beforehand too.

You see, they were handing out free tickets to celebrate the tenth year anniversary of the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center. Whatever that means. All I cared about was that they were planning to give out free tickets to Sufjan Stevens who would perform for this anniversary.

Now, I figured the kind of people who'd go see Sufjan (pronounced Soo-fee-ahn, sounding Armenian) would be college kids who couldn't drag themselves out of bed at such an early time. But alas, I forget college kids often camp out for basketball tickets for crucial games.

I was planning to eat a healthy breakfast at Dunkin Donuts, but to no avail. The parking lot, small as it is, was full, and therefore, there were plenty of people in line. Instead I went to College Perk, got a coffee I was happier with, and a brownie, and drove to the College Park Metro.

The website for Metro suggested I transfer at L'Enfant Plaza, but I could cut a few stops short if I got off at Gallery Place, then onto Metro Center, and pick up the Blue/Orange line from there. Alas, when I got to Metro Center, I had to wait 9 minutes, even as I had barely caught the Gallery Place Red Line and didn't have to wait.

I knew once I arrived I was supposed to take New Hampshire. Signs pointed to Kennedy Center, so that made locating the building much easier. As I neared it, I didn't realize just how close the Kennedy Center was to the Watergate hotel, so I took a few photos.

The temperature was chilly, but at least it wasn't windy, and indeed, it was sunny.

As I got near the Kennedy Center, I got in a line that was already stretched out the side. It looked like 100 or so people. I had no idea how many tickets would be available. We asked the cop or whatever he was what line it was for, and he asked us what line we wanted to be in. I said "Sufjan", and he pointed further down.

When I got further down, I saw a line, but as a I rounded the corner, the line went on and on and on. There were at least 1000 people, but it looked closer to maybe 2000, maybe 3000 people. I was told there was 2300 tickets. Each person could claim two tickets, so at worst, there would be 1250 people, and at best 2300. Even then, I felt there were at least 2300 people.

I showed up 10 minutes or so before 9 when they would start selling tickets, and still people were coming in. I later heard that some people had camped out two days. Still, I thought it would be fun to wait some, and they kept people moving, rearranging the line, and so even though our chances of getting tickets were small, it was still interesting to see how many people were out there.

The average person looked in their 20s, kind of the bohemian art type with thick glasses, drinking their oversized Starbuck's.

I eventually struck a conversation with the guy behind me, who was a geographer, belonging to some society, and we talked about maps and such for a while. I find it easier to talk about other people's backgrounds than mine, plus I ask questions, more than I gave out answers.

At one point, some of those in uniform directing crowds claimed there were enough tickets, but that seemed unlikely. Even so, we stood in line, watching birds fly above, and planes take off, and the water in the distance.

Eventually, one of the guys said the chances of us getting tickets were pretty much impossible. I stayed a few more minutes longer then decided to leave. As we passed near the front of the line, someone asked how long they had been there, and one said they had arrived at 6:15, which was earlier than I was planning to be there by at least 45 minutes (best scenario). It was nice to know that I was hours late and didn't waste too much time.

Apparently, the optimal time to come was at least 4 hours before, around 5 in the morning, and wait the four hours until they sold tickets. This would still leave you with a bad seat, but at least you'd be in.

I kept thinking Sufjan would easily make ten thousand dollars if each person paid five bucks, which I'm sure most would have been happy to do.

I then ate at a coffee and sandwich place at the Watergate Hotel, which may not be a hotel according to Dave, who thinks it's a condo by now. I thought prices would be outrageous, but it's comparable to other places.

After waking up that early, I got home and decided to sleep. While the trip didn't yield me much, I did get to see a bunch of people who had hoped they'd be among the lucky 2300, but weren't. Politeness ruled, and no one seemed to shove or cut in line so much.

The day was sunny and brisk, and I wasn't too unhappy being out at this early hour.

Writing on a Deadline

Sportswriters claim that it's tough doing what they do. They have to watch a late game, and be writing a column. Imagine watching the Patriots-Colts game. After 21-3, you are crafting a story that again extols the genius of Belichick and the unflappability of Tom Brady and the Sisyphean task of Manning trying to beat his nemesis.

But, then the game gets close, and then, gets tied, and you're rewriting that again.

Most sports stories appear to be written in halfs. You write the second half of the story first, which is really a report on the first half. It contains details of what happened there, and you hope to fix up just enough of it so that it meshes with the first half, which is really about the second half, or the ending. You see people want to read about how a game ends at the start, but for completeness, you want to talk about the beginning.

Thus, you get the common formula of "cover the first half of the game in the second half of the column and the second half of the game in the first half of the column". It creates an article that's ends ehh, but what can you do? They want to publish the column not even half an hour after the game ends. You have to trust your quick wordsmithing, plus double check your numbers and facts, and fire off the article.

As much as people malign sportswriters for reporting on sports, and not real news, this is the one aspect that sportswriters have it tough, which is to write quickly. And generally, this impedes the quality of what's written. You know you want to cover a few key points. For example, nearly everyone (myself included) has pointed out that two African Americans will coach in the Superbowl for the first time.

You want to talk about the history of the Patriots vs. the Colts, and perhaps even say that the Patriots weren't expected to get this far, and yet, came awfully close to making the Colts have to watch the Superbowl at home again.

You resort to a formula because you don't have time to do much else. Can you be so creative, while still paying attention to the game, enough to do some kind of analysis beyond what the scoreboard says? Most likely no. The only advantage is that the next day's more complete coverage is often no more in depth either. How many sports columnists are competent enough to rewatch the game and analyze details at the level of real coaches? Probably not many. So they appeal to more basic opinions, about how one team lacked heart, or guts, or what have you. Emotion replaces solid analysis because when you lack analytical skills, this is what you do.

All I can say is that despite a game's odd newspaper coverage, I admire the writers for what must be the toughest way to write an article.

Black Magic

It was said, a few weeks ago, that if the Indianapolis Colts were to meet the Chicago Bears in the Superbowl, then it would be the first time two African American head coaches would have met. Indeed, even if one had shown up, it would have been the first time an African American head coach had made it to the Superbowl.

For all the African American head coaches in the league (until recently for some), Denny Green, Art Shell, Ray Rhodes, Herm Edwards, Marvin Lewis, Romeo Crennel, heck, how about interim coach, Terry Robiskie, none had made it to the final game, and until today, neither had Lovie Smith nor Tony Dungy.

Their paths had been different. The Chicago Bears were riding an inconsistent and fairly new quarterback in Rex Grossman. Their defense, dominant in the first ten weeks of the season, had been struggling. The Saints had been riding a high, turning a dismal season last year post Katrina, into a heartwarming story that inspired a city seeking to rebuild. With Drew Brees, Deuce McAllister, Marques Colston, and Reggie Bush, it was thought their offense could come in and put points up on Chicago.

Instead, it was Chicago, on a slippery field, putting up points on the Saints. The Saints would draw it close after an electrifying return by Reggie Bush, showing that the USC star and Heisman winner was ready for the big time, but that would be as close as they would get as Grossman again, played within himself, and the defense came up big for this Chicago win.

Perhaps only Chicago fans whose pinnacle was the 1985 win for a team that nearly went undefeated, and used a stout defense to win. This year's Chicago isn't quite that good, but they found ways to score points.

The drama wasn't the same as the late game. The Colts. The Patriots. Again. This time, instead of holding court in the chilly climes of New England, the contest was held in the balmy dome stadium at Indianapolis, what most considered to be the advantage they would need to finally break through.

The Colts had gotten this far, oddly enough, with a resurgence in their defense, which covered up for an ineffective Peyton Manning. But when the Patriots came out to a 21-3 lead, it seemed another doomed Colts effort, especially when you consider how the scoring went.

The first touchdown was a fumble, but recovered by the offense for a touchdown. The third touchdown was on an interception of Peyton Manning. It seemed the worst of both worlds. The defense was playing back to its poor self, prior to the playoffs, while Manning was still throwing interceptions.

Even as the Colts were finally able to march down the field and possibly score a TD just before the half, they were held to a field goal, and entered half-time at 21-6.

The Patriots, having barely escaped with a win over the Chargers last week, were again hobbled this week, and worse still, many on the defense were dealing with the flu. However, you could hardly tell. Just the thought of playing the Colts who must have been worried about their nemesis seemed to keep the Patriots up. But realistically, they probably knew they had to play well the first half before fatigue set in. In the first half, the defense appeared to have no ill effects, as they batted away one deep Peyton pass after another.

But the drive to end the first half seemed to invigorate the Colts. They would get the ball again, and the hope was they could score right out of the gate. And surprisingly, they moved the ball incredibly well and scored. And, then, again. Down by two points, the Colts decided to gamble with a 2 point play and made it, to tie the score as 21 apiece.

And yet, the Patriots, with a solid return, again scored to move up a touchdown, and the Colts again came back to tie. At this point, the Colts offense appeared to be humming, but still, the Patriots weren't going down easily. The Patriots scored a field goal on the next play, but the Colts couldn't respond right away.

Then, it became a replay of last week, as field goal kickers took over. First, Gostkowski scored a field goal, the rookie kicker that replaced legend Vinatieri. Then Vinatieri, now a Colt, kicked one. And Gostkowski responded again, though they had chances to score a touchdown.

Finally, Manning lead a drive, that featured throws and runs, and eventually Addai walked in and finally the Colts had a lead of 38-34.

Tom Brady had a minute to work with. He could hope for a good return to set himself up. Special teams had been doing well for the Patriots, but the return wasn't so good. Even so, Brady made several long passes, and Manning could only stare down, making prayers to someone that just this once, maybe he could be the one that won the game.

And finally, his prayers were answered as Marlin Jackson intercepted a Brady pass, started running back, then realized that maybe he better avoid getting hit and possibly coughing the ball up. He slid onto his back and lifted the ball, and Manning, sneaking a peek, ran to the field, realizing, in the 20 or so seconds left, that all he had to do was to kneel down, and let the clock expire.

And Manning would finally see what this Superbowl thing was all about.

And Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith would smile as well. Two classy gentleman, who represented the struggle of African Americans in sports, who would coach two teams to the game's biggest trophy.

Sometimes, magic happens.

AZ Azzi

Even though we graduated the same year, I can't say that I actually knew Jennifer Azzi, only that I knew of her. She's probably, I'd imagine, the most famous athlete to have graduated from Oak Ridge High, but I can't be sure.

Occasionally, I'd see her. One day, she showed up on the cover of a local TV guide, you know, the one published by the local paper. She had decided on a basketball career at Stanford. I wonder how much the calculus teacher (she also taught pre-calc) had an influence on that decision. She had said if Jennifer got into Stanford, she had to go.

To be fair, Stanford, of all big name academic schools, has often relaxed its entrance standards based on academics, which is why Stanford is competitive in many of the sports it participates in. It would struggle if it had to, say, meet the same standards as the Naval Academy or the Ivies.

Someone decided to make a documentary about the Stanford women's basketball team at about the time they won their national championship, and Jennifer Azzi played a big role in that. She'd go on to participate in the Olympics, then play professional basketball. These days, it appears, she runs a fitness center in Salt Lake and gives motivational speeches, which is perhaps par for the course for an athlete in a sport where millions are not showered on its star players.

Ultimately, it's public figures like Jennifer that embed themselves into the history of a high school. Who remembers star scientists or even successful businessmen or musicians?

I can think of a few others, I suppose, that went to our high school. Kai-Fu Lee was a cousin of someone I went to high school with, and he attended the same high school a few years later, eventually earning a Ph.D. at CMU, often regarded as the number 1 rated computer science department, then would have a career with Apple, then Microsoft, now Google.

Were there others that slip my mind or simply didn't take the classes I took or achieved fame but in relative obscurity? And why do I feel kinship with that? With people I barely knew? With people I merely shared a physical space with, and even that, probably rooms away?

I remember I was sitting in the principal's office, which was, I suppose, really the guidance counselor's room. There was another girl sitting there, and she was hoping she could be some kind of track star. How many people dream those dreams, not realizing how hard it is to achieve those dreams. What happens to those whose lives have been more difficult?

I don't often look back and think about these things, but occasionally, I think about how many other lives spent some time in buildings that made our high school, and how many paths diverged to do many different things, and how completely unaware I was while I lead my own life.

Web Star

A few years ago, I had heard that Gabe had a blog. That information, as it turns out, was incorrect. It sounded a bit fishy too.

To put things in context, let me back up. I was in grad school for a long time, interminably long. About five years into grad school, I met a few people who I still have some contact with even now.

At the time, Gabe was in grad school presumably because his grades had been good, and he was advised to do so, even though grad school was something, as far as I recall, that he wasn't that familiar with.

Throughout, he'd waffle between wanting to finish his Ph.D., and deciding he should get a job, and finally, he waffled long enough that he had a Ph.D., then got a job in California, presumably doing some compiler optimization stuff, which was the topic of his thesis.

Now throughout grad school, Gabe liked writing programs for fun, whether it was something as small as a script to manage who owed whom money, to scripts that could do basic text analysis, which was used to automate grading, to writing a X-window based fighting program with miniature soldiers, which he would instruct en masse to go in this direction or that. We would call the scripts that he wrote "gabelets" after applets, which were these mini applications written in Java for browsers. The phrase "gabelets" continues to amuse me, even now.

Indeed, his scripting background came from a sysadmin kind of job he had had when he was an undergrad. I recall an amusing anecdote about how he got this job, which at the time, was perhaps not exactly attracting people by the boatloads, but he managed to try to reduce his competition to zero (no violence, really!).

Now Gabe's a pretty smart guy, but he probably had some insecurity going to a school that was not that well known (I believe its historical significance may lie with something in women's basketball, but I'd have to search for it on the web), and so there were competitors from much bigger named schools.

In particular, we knew this guy from India whose name was Sudipto. Sudipto had an odd situation. In India, at the top universities, the top students try to segregate their applications so they don't step on each other too much. Somehow, in this process, Sudipto managed to get in nowhere.

One of the Indian professors managed to hear about this, and was able to convince the admissions committee to select him, and he came for about a year, until he decided to reapply for Stanford, where he later received a Ph.D. in theory.

There was some problem set, I recall, and Gabe had asked him about a particular problem. Gabe, naturally, had his own ideas, but he wanted to compare with Sudipto, who was supposed to be pretty smart when it came to algorithms. He came away not entirely convinced that Sudipto was that smart.

To be fair, there could have been many explanations. First, perhaps on that problem, Sudipto didn't have the answer, at least, not there and then. And perhaps he was plenty smart, but just not that particular problem. For whatever the reason, it seemd to make Gabe feel better about himself. Of course, his grades also did that as well.

After Gabe received his Ph.D. and headed off to California, I didn't really keep in touch with him. I don't even think I had his email address (or more than likely, I sent him email via his university email address, which appeared to be doing just fine).

So, now back to a few years ago, and I hear indirectly that Gabe has a blog. He had, apparently, told a former roommate of his, Omer, about this, and who doesn't want to hobnob with someone that has minor celebrity, right?

Turns out it's not a blog per se, but a blog aggregator. It takes articles that bloggers have been blogging about, and picks out the important articles based on their buzz. This, like Google News, is done automatically, and updates itself fairly frequently.

The original website, Memeorandum, focused on political blogs. Then, TechMeme on tech blogs, BallBuzz on baseball, and WeSmirch on gossip.

Of the four, I only occasionally check out Techmeme. The others don't interest me as much, so I read it far less. These days, I'm rather hooked to reddit and its subreddit, programming.reddit.com.

I recently read an interview with Gabe from a week ago or so as the interviewer asks how Gabe does what he does. Gabe seemed pretty honest with the answers without hitting the key technical details, which I'm sure, are a little too involved to get into in an interview.

Gabe's basically a one-man shop right now. I'd hazard a guess that he'd feel uncomfortable even sharing the task he does with other people, and certainly, after doing things your own way for a while, you'd probably be loathe to want to work for someone else who you thought was less than capable.

Perhaps I'm mischaracterizing him, but then he used to accuse me of that too, and this is a poorly read blog in any case, and I'm not beholden to good journalistic practices, nor solid English, for that matter. I just thought I'd blog about him again, for lack of anything better to do this evening.

The Next Great Thing

A while ago, a professor posed the question, "What is the most important invention of the last N years?" where N was probably 25 years.

At the time, I said the web, or perhaps the browser. I've blogged about this before. It's not simply the browser or the Web, but search engines and content providers, i.e., the places you can visit on what used to be called the information superhighway (thanks, Al).

How has this transformed our lives? We're now more savvy about things. Not only do I read conventional news sources such as the Washington Post online, I read less conventional sources like Reddit. Combined with email, which was the last great thing before the web, I have friends who send me links to interesting stuff to see. Now I get far more information than I would have otherwise.

As I've blogged about before, this hasn't made me "smarter", if by smarter, one uses a traditional math-y definition, whereby I can solve hard problems. I can't. Instead, I collect information that's easy to digest. Whether that's useful or not, I don't know, but it makes feel more well read.

However, as I clunk through my browser, with its so-so response time (but what a difference speed makes compared to even ten years ago, when loading a page with more than 2-3 images was painfully slow), I wonder, what's next?

To give you an impression of how difficult this is, consider the futurists of the 50s, and what they thought the future was like. Flying cars, automation everywhere, and colonies on the moon. We'd wear jet-packs. However, those futurists weren't entirely ready to forecast how people were going to live their lives, except as extensions of what they see now. For example, would they suggest that people would become hedonists? Or that marriage would dissolve as an institution?

Such things require no technology at all (or does it?), and therefore are difficult to predict. Think of the web. How hard is that to visualize? The ubiquity of the home computer was hard enough to imagine. Who would have thought that a computer would be small enough to fit in a pocket? Who would have thought non-brainy people would want to use a computer.

Let's see a few things that seem utterly ridiculous, but continue to exist now. First, there's parking meters. We still use them as we have for many years. If technology were more ubiquitous, we'd have some way to communicate with people who owned cars and simply charge them as long as they stayed. We could eliminate towing as a business (a pet peeve of mine) using the same mechanism.

How would you invent a new bathroom? This hasn't changed much in many years, yet, one place that has changed a lot is the kitchen.

The kitchen is being reimagined because we have so many appliances, but not much counter space. Kitchens have grown to accommodate the stuff we have.

The way to imagine the future, I suppose, depends on how you envision now, but that can be very challenging, because new ideas often spring out of places you least imagine. Remember mail-order used to mean 4-6 weeks? If it takes more than a week, the company is out of business. UPS and FedEx made this new world of delivery possible.

Most people probably envision the next great thing being computer related, whether it be wearable computers (essentially, the IPhone, the Blackberry, the Palm and all manners of PDA are starting to make that reality) or the more traditional laptops. For example, it'd be cool to see a rollup computer, that allows us to display content on large pieces of foldable something, with the resolution of high quality books, but the dynamism of graphics.

Ultimately, I imagine the next big step is figuring out how to make us better. The Matrix imagined that we would plug in and get new information injected into us (why they didn't fill themselves with useful information all the time to make people smarter than machines, well, you can't analyze the movie too deeply).

If someone can really make breakthroughs in how we learn, and I don't necessarily mean meaningful learning, but even how to use Microsoft Office, they might move on to something. How do we improve as people?

Science fiction writers used to think about this issue too, that eventually, it's not just technology as tools, but how people change, and indeed technology itself doesn't explain everything.

Here's a simple thought. Consider working women. Once upon a time, we asked women to stay at home and cook and clean and rear children. Offices were male-dominated. Now that women do work in great numbers, their need to be married is far less. It's perhaps no surprise that divorce rate skyrocketed when women had the capacity to live independently of men, and it has lead men to a more egalitarian role with women. Even so, for whatever reason, women do tend to still be more emotional about things, and so this has meant men have learned to offer placation. Will this attitude change?

I recall the pilot episode of Star Trek where they imagined a future, several hundred years from now. Captain Pike was meant to be a throwback to, well, the 20th century, and even then, to the 1950s in particular. He said he wasn't used to seeing women in positions of command.

What world did he grow up in? Well, that of the 50s of course. His comment was a comment about the period the show was made, not about someone who truly imagined what starships with women would be like, that it would necessarily involve seeing equality of opportunity throughout, and so forth (though it would have been intriguing to show that indeed, a small percentage of women still had power even hundreds of years in the future).

Predicting how men relate to women is difficult. One place that will become fascinating to watch is India. Where the 1960s saw women entering the workforce in large numbers, in jobs that weren't secretarial nor teachers, women began entering the workplace in the 1980s in India. This has begun to change the way some women and men interact, especially in the cities.

However, there's a balancing force and that is the numerous small villages throughout India that still are bastions of conservatism. What will happen in 20 years or 30 years? And India is not isolated from the rest of the world. They have the web, they get Western entertainment. How does it compete against the Indian culture.

Indeed, one fascinating part about culture is how much it persists despite the constant bombardment of entertainment. Women in Indian films often wear jeans and tight clothing, yet, this does not translate to the average woman who would have to deal with disapproving men in their lives. But is that so different from Americans? When we see Paris Hilton and like revealing a little too much in their clothing, do we imitate them and do the same? Not really. Something else informs our decision to resist what we see.

And despite all the technological advances, people seem to greatly underestimate how things have changed for them because so many other things have remained the same.

So, if we can move out of an era of fear, then it will be fascinating to see what the future holds for us.

Man to Manning

I've known about Peyton Manning for quite a while now. I suppose that's true of anyone who follows football. Son of Archie Manning, who played for the hapless Saints, Peyton took a detour. Rather than play at pop's alma mater, he headed to Tennessee. Prior to Manning, one Heath Shuler was the Tennessee star.

Shuler's NFL career would send him to the Redskins, but not to success. Eventually, he'd leave the NFL, then start a real estate agency, then run for political office.

Manning, on the other hand, would help win an SEC championship, but never the national title. He'd come close twice to winning the Heisman, but not quite. Then, he'd turn pro, drafted number 1, when deciding between Manning and Leaf mattered, play every game his rookie year for the, then, abysmal Colts, racking up yards and interceptions and losses.

And being touted as the smartest quarterback, the best quarterback, on teams that would get out of the gates with strong starts, and have MVP seasons, and never even get a whiff of the Super Bowl.

The Patriots would often be the reason why. Tom Brady, drafted in the sixth round, playing behind Drew Bledsoe, until injury let him start and win and win, until he never relinquished his starter role. And as much as things change on the Patriots, they'd go on to win three Super Bowls. Is Brady that good? Or Belichick? Are both meant for each other?

And Tony Dungy. He took the Bucs from laughing stock to playoff contender, playing the kind of defense that made 13-10 victories seem like a walk in the park. Despite his success, they wanted someone else, sometime like Jon Gruden, Chucky, and he'd take Dungy's team and win a Super Bowl.

Dungy would head to the Colts and try to teach this high powered offense how to play defense. But with so much money tied to the offense, money for the defense wasn't there, and so Dungy tried his best to get the defense the way he wanted, and while they struggled the year long, they have caught fire just as Manning has played awfully, giving up five interceptions in two games. The defense has come through.

And it's lead to this. Another meeting of Patriots and Colts, or as some people put it, Manning vs. Belichick.

This time, though, it's not in the freeze of New England but within the dome of Indianapolis.

And the drama is mounting. Can Peyton win the big one? Does Brady have his number? Whose kicker reigns supreme?

Are you ready for some football?

Coffee Condiments Bar

OK, condiments are normally thought of as ketchup (or is it catsup?), mustard, mayo, salt, pepper. But it's the closest name I can think of for this tiny fixture at coffee houses where you can get sugar, sugar alternatives, cream, and cream alternatives (all dairy, natch).

How big is this condiment bar?

It's frickin tiny. At any point, only one, maybe two, people can stand there. Otherwise, you're forced to wait as the person opens the cap, finds some appropriate sugar, stirs, and so forth. There's something about waiting that the coffee places like.

I suppose it could simply be appearance. Imagine the condiments bar being wide enough for 3 people, that is, triple its current width. It would seem very much like a cafeteria, thus lowering the high brow status coffee houses want to convey. But, you could create two such tables, and that would at least make it that much more pleasant.

The situation is akin to many people standing outside the lavatory, waiting for an open spot.

My rant of the day. Make them condiments bar bigger!

Receipts Be Gone

You know what I hate?

Receipts.

Online banking has, on the other hand, transformed my life. Not in any major way, but even so. I hate paper. I hate keeping track of paper. Online banking helped solve this problem with respect to banking.

But receipts. Oh my.

We still get them by the bucketful. Every purchase I make. It would be idea if I could have, say, some card or perhaps even a cell phone, where the contents of the receipt, perhaps as a PDF, could be placed on there, and I could go receiptless. Then, I could store this away somewhere electronic.

This receipt could also be kept electronically by the store, and we'd both have copies. Simple metadata could be extracted from this, and we'd be mucho happy.

Think about it.

Pan's Labyrinth

I remember watching Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm. About the only positive aspect was Heath Ledger showing his acting chops as the more bookish of the two brothers. Given Ledger's looks, you'd imagine that he'd focus on hero roles, so it was refreshing to see him try something new, and gave some hope (well-founded) that there might be a special performance in Brokeback Mountain.

The rest of the film was awful, mixing stories of two tones together that didn't really make sense together. The first half resembled Scooby Doo, except the brothers were both the ghosts and the crime solvers at the same time. The second half was like Scooby Doo post mystery machine when it was merely Scooby, Shaggy, and, sigh, Scrappy, mostly getting scared with real monsters.

If Gilliam needs lessons in telling two stories together that don't seem to fit, he should observer Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth.

Interestingly enough, the fairy tales of old, circa the Brothers Grimm, were often noted for being quite grim and grisly, and only lightened up some for the post Blues Clues set.

If there's an American counterpart to del Toro, I'd imagine it would be Spielberg. As expertly as Spielberg manipulates emotion, he'd keep himself well to the PG-13 side of things. del Toro, feeling no such desire, amps up everything in this story of good vs. evil.

Ostensibly, the story is about Ofelia, whose mother owes the Captain her livelihood. She carries his male heir, but is otherwise expendible. An early scene establishes the Captain as cruel. He is fighting off "red" sympathizers (the story as set in Spain), punishing an offender, and even after a mistake, not caring about it much. You know the captain is a bad, bad man.

Ofelia, meanwhile, spins off into her own fantasy world. del Toro walks a fine line, indulging Ofelia her fantasies, but not quite claiming Ofelia is crazy or imagining things. Part of the reason is that what Ofelia does in the fantasy world leaks into the real world.

You have to hand it to special effects these days. While science fiction fans still grumble about the fake CG effects a la Star Wars (the first three episodes). But put it in a fantasy setting, and we're willing to suspend disbelief more. Fortunately, the faun ("Pan" presumably) is no demon--not exactly, anyway. You've seen movies where the devil utters evil sounding phrases. In English. American English. You imagine how scary he'd be in Indian English.

It goes to show you the power of language, and certainly, the thought of this faun speaking Spanish is amusing for a bit, before you get engrossed.

del Toro, the expert manipulator he is, knows how to amp up scenes, no more gruesome when the Captain, post slashing, does his own surgery (good skill that) and takes a swig, to realize that his effort did not produce a leak-proof solution. It's darkly humorous and painful.

The fairy tale seems too offset what would be a story almost too violent to bear, creating an odd lightness, and a strong desire, like any fairy tale, for a happy ending. Throughout, there's a battle between the cruelty of adults who live in the real world, and the magic of Ofelia's world, where, perhaps much like the real world, it's not all sugar and spice.

You can tell how masterful del Toro is in when Ofelia meets Pan the second time. In the first, while she's a bit scared of Pan, he seems trustworthy enough. But somehow, right from the get go, in the second meeting, you feel Pan is up to no good, that what he says is not what he means, and Ofelia also senses this.

The acting is superb throughout, especially Ofelia. You have to love non American directors who often find child actors that are not ultra moppet. Even Mercedes, the ostensible adult hero is not traditionally beautiful, making her actions seem reasonable.

You need a bit of a strong stomach to watch this magical tale, but if you can take it, it's a transcendent experience.

Let's Go, Lesko!

If you've lived in the DC area any amount of time and watch any TV late in the evening, you'll eventually see or hear a commercial by one Matthew Lesko.

Senor Lesko wears a suit filled with questions marks and such, our own local version of the Riddler, but instead of questions, he has answers. Apparently his gig has been to help people find money through the government. He collects this information (various grants and such) and sells it to those who want money.

Admittedly, this sounds like a scam if you've ever heard one. I don't mean in the usual sense. I mean, sure, this money is probably available, but if it's so available, why doesn't he get it for himself? Is it because he can make more money selling access to this information? Maybe he simply likes the publicity.

Now, to be honest, after all these years in Maryland, I hadn't much paid attention to these ads. My brain tends to filter this stuff out.

However, being a Maryland kinda guy, Matt Lesko has two sons: Morgan and Max. Though it's hard to imagine quite what growing up in the household must be like, the two kids have gotten involved first in anti-smoking (in particular, cigarette machines near schools) then anti-drug campaigns. And they've done this since they were like 8 years old, and even met the President (Clinton, in those days) due to their vigilance.

Now, as it turned out, I was teaching a class in programming and Morgan Lesko was a student. At the time, Morgan probably sported some blond tints, as was the fashion with some guys some ten years ago, and was shockingly cheery. Computer science at Maryland tended to beat people down, and yet he seemed happy. Who knows why?

But it goes to show that even if your dad likes to get in wacky outfits and drive his kids in his wacky car, he's still interested in their well-being and education.

Of course, with a dad that loud, the kids tend to be far quieter, and Morgan, while not exactly shy, wasn't exactly shilling his dad's products or any products for that matter.

This thought mostly came to me while I was driving and listening to the radio and the Lesko ad came on. Up to that point, I hadn't thought that much about it. But that's what blogging is all about. You hear something. You blog.

So here's to the Leskos!

Get No Kick From Champagne

I get no kick from champagne (or it cocaine---I can never remember lyrics).

But I do get a kick out of pundits trying to predict football games. Last week, after the Colts edged by the Chiefs, with Manning making 3 turnovers, everyone (at least in this area---so very close to Baltimore) said that the Colts couldn't make the same mistakes and win in Baltimore.

First, the Ravens defense was far stouter. You could easily claim it was a top-3 defense. McNair had infused the team with some offense. And the Colts defense had a fluke of a day, which couldn't be repeated.

Colts fans figured it was Peyton who was having a fluke of a day, and that he would turn around, and light up the Ravens, cutting down on his mistakes, and basically show why he's been the MVP of the league and the first choice QB of many a fantasy football owner (though Peyton's been more conservative these past two years).

Instead, who would have thought that the result would be pretty much a repeat of last week? Peyton turning the ball over. McNair, doing his best Trent Green, also turning the ball over.

Indeed, the fourth quarter stood at a taut 12-6. That's six field goals in all, folks. All the Ravens needed was a good drive, or an interception, and they could squeak out a 13-12 win. The new look Billick, delegating more to his assistants, infused with an unflappable, experienced quarterback, and self-appointed genius, was ready to knock the Colts out.

Of course, the game had much more meaning to Baltimore fans, much more so than either of the teams playing. It was some 22 years ago that the owner packed up the team and sent to the Indianapolis and not only took the team, but the name, to their new home. Baltimore fans would have to wait ten years plus until 1995 before Modell moved the Browns from Cleveland to Baltimore. They would leave the name "Browns" behind, for future franchises in Cleveland to reclaim the name and pick up what is, for my money, the best name ever for a Baltimore team--the Ravens, named after the famous Edgar Allan Poe poem, he, a famous Baltimorean. Indeed, the three ravens that serve as mascots are Edgar, Allan, and Poe.

As much as long suffering Baltimore fans wanted the Ravens to administer a Colts beatdown, the players, who were probably in high school (or younger) when the retreat to Indianapolis took place, simply saw it as a game. All the history, all the animosity, all the enmity didn't matter.

And so it came down to kickers. In a game where fans grimace when it comes to kickers (even if the sport is named football), Adam Vinatieri booted 5 field goals, to Matt Stover's 2. In the end, Colts fans may point to this off-season acquisition as its most important. Vinatieri, who had a hand in key runs for three of the Patriots Super Bowl championships, had left chilly New England for the somewhat warmer climes of Indianapolis.

And of course, with this win, it's possible, with a Pats win, that Vinatieri will kick against his previous team, and the Colts would face an opponent that has given them fits in the past.

And wouldn't it be ironic if it was the Colts defense that won it for them?

What would the pundits say then? Maybe they should analyze games instead of predict them.

More Iwo Jima

I think the solution to my movie reviews is simply to get one out of my system, and write a second one.

When I saw Letters from Iwo Jima, I had a few thoughts throughout. For example, I realized that even though this was based on real events, I had assumed many parts would be fictionalized. However, many parts were not as fictionalized as I had thought.

General Kuribayashi had studied in the west (in Canada) and had traveled extensively in the United States. He did not support war against the United States. He had developed the strategy shown in the movie based on the idea that Japan could not help out, and therefore the battle at Iwo Jima was doomed.

This meant digging out tunnels in the mountains and abandoning the beaches because there would be no support. Kuribayashi's goals were simply to take out as many Americans as he could while he could. The Americans sent forces that were four times the size of the Japanese defending the island, and suffered casualties four times as great.

And despite Eastwood's inclination to spice up people's lives in films (for example, his own role in Million Dollar Baby where he read Gaelic), apparently they really did discover personal letters from Kuribayashi to his family, where he drew sketches for his family.

Emotionally, I felt the film didn't move me as much as I thought it might, and yet, there are tiny things Eastwood does well. Most of these are tiny observed points, such as the Olympian Japanese who brings his horse. Eastwood makes fun that most people have a picture of a girlfriend or family member, but this guy has a picture of his horse. It's no wonder, when the horse passes away, that he grieves.

Eastwood probably knows that acting is often about the tiny things you do. Coughing, wiping the brow off your head. An early scene has Watanabe (as Kuribayashi) telling one of his subordinates to run around on the beach as he tries to think about how Americans would attack. But he cuts that with lowly soldiers watching the general do this.

Little points are made throughout. There's the gun that the General carries, which we see two more times to great effect, the second time when he receives the gun as a gift, and once again, when an American soldier grabs it as a spoil of war.

When there are so many characters in a film, everyone needs to be distinctive. Saigo is the baker who is the reluctant soldier. He never, indeed, decides to be a great soldier. In fact, much is made how poor a shot he is. It's a testament to Eastwood that his goal is not to make him any sort of hero at all, but a victim and beneficiary of circumstances. Saigo's goal is really to survive the war, although, at a key scene at the end, he sees the gun of his former commander held by an American, and then simply swats away at Americans, even though it risks getting himself killed.

There has been, I think, some wish fulfillment in people pointing to this film and its relation to Iraq. Are we ready to have a film where Iraqis are heroes of sorts? Heck, we can't even make one about Germans, because history has done such a good job demonizing Nazis. The Japanese weren't exactly noble either. Koreans and Chinese still harbor deep resentment over Japanese treatment of their people.

Even so, it suggests that in any war, there are people who support it and those who don't, and there is, alas, lots of needless death.

Perhaps it's because I'm Asian and because I watch a lot of foreign films that I don't view this film as being particular enlightening. Maybe the average white American who thinks of the war abstractly, rarely thinks about their enemy.

It makes you wonder how people would have reacted had this film been made in, say, 1950, mere years after the war.

By rights, this is a rather modern film, where some of the edges are softened because the average person isn't a soldier and can't imagine a situation where their fellow man might take their own lives by hand grenades.

If there's a scene that perhaps captures the film, it is from the trailer, where Kurabayashi walks with his cane, staggering over the black sands (due to volcanic ash) of Iwo Jima. He has been called to carry out a duty, a duty he doesn't think the country should have made, but one he's nevertheless willing to do.

Certainly, Americans marvel at the code of honor the Japanese had (the next-generation Klingons were modelled after war-time Japanese).

I'm now intrigued by watching Flags of Our Fathers as a companion piece. That film, apparently, treated the Japanese as nameless, faceless killing machines, and this flips the role, and so, each may inform the other.

And such films often inform us in our current day, where we hear mounting casualties in Iraq, and yet, have no real sense of what the even means.

Letters From Iwo Jima

Letters from Iwo Jima is the second of two films about Iwo Jima by Clint Eastwood. Originally titled Red Sun, Black Sand (the new title seems more apt), Eastwood has filmed in Japanese (for the most part). Were it not for Mel Gibson filming Passion of the Christ in Aramaic or the more recent Apocalypto in presumably Aztec or whatever the language is, this might seem more novel.

It probably says something about the relations between US and Japan these days that one can make a film about Japan by an American that is clearly sympathetic to the Japanese. In a nutshell, the Japanese are people too.

The film starts off fairly slow so we can get to know better the General (played ably by Ken Watanabe in a much better role then the awful Last Samurai) and a lowly soldier, Saigo, who longs to reunite with his wife and daughter.

People always say that war films are all anti-war, and this certainly falls in that category. While the importance of Iwo Jima is stated in the film, once the body count starts going up, you just wonder at the futility of it all.

The film's story line is fairly straight-forward. At one point in time, the Japanese were not enemies with the Americans, allowing Japanese to visit the US from time to time. There's some sympathy shown by Japanese to Americans (though not everywhere) and similarly Americans weren't always so sympathetic to Japanese.

The film is more about small inflections, facial reactions, and even faces. When you have literally a cast of unknowns, the more distinct the people look, the better. Thus, old and young, thin faced and fat.

The reason the title works so well is that everyone is so literary, writing letters. I'm almost surprised that mail travelled so freely to an island, given that they seemed to be losing the war. Would letters help morale? And, some of the translations seemed a touch too Westernized.

There is a sense the film's a bit too Westernized, that it does indeed feel like an American director directing Japanese, even if he observes things well.

The film does convey a sense of the confusion in the war, but not so much a sense of what was happening. Perhaps that's because it's based on something real, where, say, Lord of the Rings and the battle at Helm's Deep had a rather simple idea: an attack on a fortress, that made it simple to follow, even as the storyline also followed only a few characters.

The running time, which is awfully long, though it never feels particularly long, is useful to convey the battle which seems to go on and on and on.

And, Eastwood's at least observant enough (or his writers are) to have a scene where a guy says he will throw himself under a tank as his last act of heroism, and finds it incredibly difficult to do so.

In the end, it feels a bit slight. At least, they didn't have any scenes of the baker (Saigo) meeting his wife and such.

Still, the impact of what happened and the meaninglessness of it all doesn't quite come through, which is too bad. The bar was set pretty high, but a bit too high for what ended up on screen.

Authority?

Check this link.

It is a list of 15 foods you should eat.

There are plenty of sites just like this, that purport something just as authoritative, and yet, they somehow lack any evidence, any credentials. It must make authors plenty happy when they can say "this is what you ought to do".

Funny that such items, with the possible exception of green tea, aw, heck, let's include that too, are items that you can readily get in an American grocery store. Note how items you've never heard of, say, some exotic fruit, rhizome or vegetable aren't listed.

Imagine if the list contain items that you hadn't heard of. Would you think it useful? Would you think the author mad?

What do these lists even mean?

There ought to be a law!

Inside Out

Yesterday, I was in the Smith building, which is the business school at the University of Maryland. Business schools, for some reason, always get lavished upon. From the outside, this building is not much to look at. Even from the inside, it's perhaps no different from a dozen other buildings I've seen. But, compare it to any other campus building, and it's far nicer.

Basically, the building inverts inside and outside.

Let me explain.

Most people say that the idea rooms in a building are those with a window. However, if a building is not expected to be very thin, there's bound to be rooms with no windows to the outside world.

However, someone came up with the following brilliant idea. Have the windows face inwards. That's right, inwards.

You might complain "but won't they merely see the inside of the building"? And sure you enough, you do. But most buildings of this kind have a central region where you can see all the way up, four to five floors up. Thus, when you look out, you see this area which, in the past, would be a tiny courtyard lit by sunlight.

And in such buildings, sunlight can still hit this area, but through windows, instead.

And this view is actually not that bad.

Think about it. When you have windows that face outside, what do you see? Parking lots? Cars? Roads? It's all manmade and ugly.

But take that to the extreme, have the windows point to the interior architecture, and instead of ugly parking lots, you have reasonably beautiful interior architecture.

If only all buildings on the campus were so nice. Instead, you have the architecture of the 60s and 70s which were more utilitarian than beautiful. And, fair being fair, this isn't terribly original. Once someone has a good idea, it gets copied over and over and over again. But, at least, it's one way to deal with lack of windows.

The idea seems to have sprouted sometime during the 90s, perhaps even into the new millenium. You see it in all recent academic buildings in the last ten years.

Let's see what the next ten years brings.

Passion Play

If you listen to sports pundits, which have proliferated with the sudden boom in sports radio (now you can listen to sports as you trudge your way through the ironically named "rush hour"), you'd think the only thing that mattered in sports is passion.

Not strategy. Not skill. Not injuries. Passion.

This feeling usually occurs with the home team. After all, people invest a great deal of emotion in their home team. It doesn't matter that their starting quarterback may be injured, a key running back is out for the season. They point to some other team, suffering from just as many problems, and say that it's a lack of passion.

I watch tennis. Or at least, I used to.

Since it's an individual sport, you can point to talent as being a key. It doesn't take much to see that when Graf was starting to win big, in the late 80s, she simply hit much harder than most of her opponents. That pace often meant most of her opponents were simply outclassed. Passion would have little to do with it.

And whoever mentions passion when mistakes are made? Somehow, people can't say "they were extremely passionate, but they allowed 3 turnovers, and let them run for 150 yards". Oh, passion is pure, and therefore, anything that leads to failure must simply be a lack of passion.

It's the kind of thing that makes me retch listening to some pundits, because you realize they don't know that much about sports. Sad thing is that the coaches and players also talk about it in this manner. They don't want to admit that they were totally confused on the field, and had no idea what their opponent would do.

But you watch, say, tennis, and you see a player like Roger Federer. He has great groundstrokes, great serve, and can hit amazing shots in difficult positions. Other players simply lack those skills, and so they lack the weapons to hurt Roger when playing tennis.

To be fair, tennis is an individual sport, and football is a team sport, but surely, some talent and skill matters. I was watching the Boise State/Oklahoma game, which had as wild an ending as you could imagine. While Oklahoma had better athletes, several things happened. First, Oklahoma made lots of mistakes and turned the ball over a lot. That may have to do with Boise State, I don't know. But mistakes like that can make pretty good teams look ordinary.

Second, Boise State used trick plays to confuse Oklahoma, so their athletic talent wouldn't be nearly as overwhelming. Of course, trick plays, being what they are, can completely backfire, leaving a team wishing they had tried something more conservative. But when they work, they can work well. They rely on the element of surprise, with an opponent not expecting the trick.

The funny thing is, after the game, everyone said Boise State should be allowed to compete with the big boys, that the guts they had to win the game was enough. But, what if they had lost? What if that 2-point play had failed?

You see, commentators only care about winning and losing. How something is interpreted depends on the final score. Oh, so running back X ran for 150 yards, but the team lost. Or, the team wins. The interpretation in one case is that it's wasted, and in the other, "he carried the team on his back". Unlike, say, fantasy football, where such stats can be judged independently of wins and losses.

Ultimately, while passion may be important, it's also sheer laziness on the pundits part, who don't sit and review game tape, who don't understand strategy, who don't understand illnesses, etc. and only make comments that show why they have a job in a radio booth and not coaching (and honestly, one wonders why they have the radio job too).

The Wizz

Have you noticed lately? Perhaps airports did it first. Urinals that flush themselves. Nearly all use some sensor technology trying to detect the male in front of the urinal.

But why?

A friend felt bad that many an office has resorted to doing this. He was responsible enough to flush the toilet. To have an automated system do it for you must mean too many folks are not flushing.

Now, to be fair, flushing is something of a reaction we base on shame. I suppose it's possible that urine filled toilets lack cleanliness, but even toilets with plain water suggest filth, for some reason.

We'd conserve more water if we didn't flush at a urinal, no?

And why do some urinals have water in it at all? This is not our homes where there are no urinals (and I think there should be--a tiny room that is just a urinal, plus a place to wash hands, perhaps the size of those you find in an airplane).

Why do men need to pee in water?

If there are sensors anyway, why not have guys pee in the porcelain, then a gentle spray, every once in a while sprays. Heck, why do we even need to time it whenever someone is actually done?

The answer, I suppose, is that's how it's always been done, and we have a perception of what is clean.

But it doesn't make much sense.

It's Hard Being Easy

I was talking to Justin recently, who had this idea for a great online business. It was great to him, of course. Basically, without giving away too much, he wanted a website so easy his mom could use it.

Now, I've always joked that there may be some technically literate mom's out there, so maybe Justin's mom would like to type her queries using lambda expressions. Justin, I'm sure, would assure me that his mom would fit into the plethora of users who find everything a mystery at a webpage.

And to be fair, this website she was using is already pretty easy, at least, for technical guys like me, meaning, it gives step-by-step directions, and such, and that's still too hard.

Justin figures he could make lots of money just by appealing to folks like his mom, who have money, but want things to be easy.

Reduce options!

But I think it's tough to be easy. The problem is that it's difficult to know just how little someone else knows. How smart should the program be to fill in for mistakes?

For many technophobes, the solution is to provide a high-level request to a real person, who figures out all the low-level details of what needs to happen.

I mean, a computer is pretty complex, if for no other reason than it's a huge repository of stuff. Files, programs, more files, more programs, directories, more directories.

If I had a solution, it would simply be to show a person how to do it. Pull up one of those YouTube like videos and go through the steps to do the task. People like seeing others do stuff for them. The real problem is when a person's likely to use the product once or twice, and so they need to spend the time to figure it out.

The key to developing these websites is the scientific principle. State your assumptions. ("Mom knows how to download photos to folders, and find them"). State what the person does or does not need to know. ("Knows what a hyperlink is", "Can't deal with busy screens"). Then, design, then test the design with real people (preferably, while you're not there).

Users wonder why some stuff is so complicated. The reason is developers are smart people but lazy. They pick a solution that's easy for them to write, even if it's hard to use. It takes lots of work to simplify, simplify, simplify. And yes, Justin's right about reducing choice. Present too many choices and people don't know what to do.

They wonder why certain choices are choices at all. For example, in my browser, I have "Character Encoding". For a naive user, this choice makes no sense at all. Of course, if you were Chinese wanting to read pages displayed in Chinese, this would be useful. But it makes no sense to most anyone else.

The lesson is simple. It's hard being easy.

Feast in the Fiesta

Boise State had gone undefeated in the regular season, but they belonged Western Athletic Conference, better known as the WAC. This had earned them a berth in the BCS. But who would have thought them deserving of this berth? They were playing the big boys now. They were playing Oklahoma, who are not even a decade removed from their national championship.

Oklahoma was seeded higher, with an 11-2 record. They had tradition, history, all the talent they could possibly want. The Broncos had spent most of the game giving Oklahoma all they could handle, taking a lead into the fourth quarter, before Oklahoma burst with an 18 point fourth quarter, taking a 7 point lead with just about a minute to go.

Goodbye Cinderella, good to know you. You've fallen behind Boise State, come again, next year.

But Boise State wouldn't quit. Digging into their bag of tricks, Zabransky threw a pass, the receiver caught it, then pitched it back, to a rushing Bronco who went into the endzone, to tie the game at 35 apiece, with only 7 seconds left.

College overtime lets each team make an attempt at their opponents 25 yard line. Each team gets a chance to score. Usually, the team that wins the coin toss elects to play defense, so they know how much they need to score to win. The Broncos called tails and tails it was.

It had to be deflating when Adrian Peterson, in one rush, scored a touchdown, outrunning the Boise State defenders.

Boise State's turn. They would not get their touchdown easily, requiring a miracle at 4th and 2, and getting it, as the quarterback rolled out right, and hit Schouman.

Then, came the big decision. Go for the extra point and go to double overtime, or elect to end it there and then, with a 2-point conversion. They elect to go for two.

The Broncos knew that Oklahoma would have studied every important game they played, studied every two point attempt. They had a trap. They would attempt the same play that had done for the two point conversion earlier in the season. Nearly lateral the ball to the right. But it would be a fake. The ball would not be thrown to the right.

Instead, they would hand it over to Ian Johnson, who'd rush to the left, as the entire offense appeared to have gone to the right, and rush in uncontested.

This was reminiscent of George Mason's win over Connecticut. When UConn forced overtime, everyone thought it was good night for George Mason. You had your chance, now let the big boys play. But Mason kept hitting shot after shot and won the game, instead of watching UConn blow it.

Boise State kept coming up with clutch play after clutch play, after taking sure victory, and letting Oklahoma take the lead. You will not see a more exciting conclusion to a bowl game this year, and nothing this profoundly important to a small program like Boise State. Nevada had its chance to knock off Miami and lost by a point. But even had Nevada made the win, Miami was in a down year. An 11-2 record is hardly anything to scoff at. Oklahoma had a great record.

This was amazing coaching, pulling out tricks from everywhere, and getting the most out of a team that surely lacked the same kind of talent Oklahoma had, and to win it in this fashion, when it seemed their fairy tale had ended, to still have magic at the end, that was something.

I watched only the last forty seconds plus overtime, and I can't begin to tell you what a thrill ride it was.

Boise State over Oklahoma, 43-42, overtime.

Idaho has something to cheer about for a long, long time.

From Each According To His Own Ability

There's a Marx (Karl, not Groucho) that goes "From each according to his own ability, to each according to his needs". It's perhaps typical of phrasing from the times that it's more bloated than it has to be (much like my own writing).

But basically, it seems to say that each person should do what they have ability to do. Fair enough.

Occasionally, I think of Google, and by Google, I could mean Microsoft or Yahoo. Anyone that has both search engines and email.

Here's the question I ponder. A company would like to hire the best (or many do) and yet getting the attention of the best (ah, attention economics) is difficult, just as finding the best is difficult. For all the talented people you may find, there are likely to be hundreds of thousands that may be nearly as talented. They may be buried in jobs that don't fully utilize that talent.

Of course, talent is only part of the picture. Working at a company also requires some interpersonal skills and some high level evaluation. How many senior management types would you imagine doing the actual grunt work needed to make a software product work? And yet, they have some skills too, whether it be ambition, or the clarity to decide what is important to work on and what is not.

Over time, I've begun to think that management is a necessary, well, evil. Management likes to pay itself a lot, for whatever reason, but mainly because it must make decisions to steer a company towards its goals, and part of that is identifying what the goals are, and how to achieve those goals.

Is there anything particular special about this talent? Well, it helps not to be wrong too often, but it seems people simply learn from experience as to what is right and wrong.

I know this isn't a well-focused entry, because the idea is muddled in my own head. All I can say is that often it's uncharted territory, and people do what they can to make progress. Smarter people, one hopes, can make better decisions.

But to get back to my previous thought, there is the idea that somewhere, there's a gold mine of talent, if one could only identify this talent, and that we're not particularly good at it.

For some areas, like sports, people have stats, people can look at plenty of TV coverage. If you want to know the best center, or the best quarterback, you have plenty of information in front of you. Sports commentators blah blah blah about it all the time. TO this, LT that, and so forth.

But nearly every other job has far less information for evaluation.

And what happens to the rest of us? If leagues like the NFL and NBA seek the best of the best, what happens to those who aren't good enough? They have to seek something else to do.

And what happens when you need the effort anyway, and yet, there isn't enough talent to go around?

It makes me wonder why top companies, the Googles and Microsofts of the world, aren't out there trying to figure out how to improve the baseline average of the talent the seek. Rather than find gold, how do you make gold? That's tougher to do, I imagine, and there's no guarantee of success.

And so does the information in email that are stored in servers begin to tap into finding talent or not?

I wonder.

Curse of the Golden Flower

Review of Curse of the Golden Flower.

• Plot line seems more Japanese than Chinese, e.g. Kurosawa.
  
• For some reason, rulers of countries and their kin are more likely to kill one another than most siblings.
  
• Reminded me of LOTR, to some extent, except it gets outlandishly crazy. Compare it to, say, the battle at Helm's Deep, and you realize Peter Jackson is rather restrained.
  
• One key difference between LOTR and CofGF is ritual. In particular, the opening scene when the women are getting ready to greet the Emperor. This is common in Kurosawa films. People kneeling, bowing, taking care of minor duties. LOTR doesn't have that much hierarchy. You don't see servants in the film doing this or that.
  
• Furthermore, the Emperor is definitely in charge, with the Empress having to do his bidding. You don't get the sense that, say, Aragorn (being the gentle king) would ever exercise the kind of authority the Emperor has here.
  
• Zhang Yimou appears to borrow an idea from Elizabethan era dramas, which are tightly corseted women with their bosoms sticking out, quite a feat, given that Asian women tend to be less buxomous than Europeans or Americans.
  
• As usual, eye-popping colors, and extremely ornate sets. How much did this cost?
  
• And the cast? Did Zhang use lots of extras or was it CG?
  
• The Emperor seems rather cold and distant. It's not quite clear what his feelings for his first wife are, except that there is some scheming on his part to get to where he is. This is a problem because it doesn't give enough emotional impact near the end of the film.
  
• The Emperor's sons, by and large, seem like a wimpy lot. I know, they're all being compared to Chow Yun Fat.
  
• The approach of the assassins into the village is just too cool. They look like ninjas though. Again, the film seems more Japanese than Chinese.
  
• Gong Li does disdain about as well as anyone. She's at the emotional core of the film. Chow Yun Fat's Emperor while powerful, seems remote, distant. If you're meant to sympathize with anyone, it's the Empress, even though she's hardly full of virtue.
  
• They could have taken the Lone Star solution to the forbidden love affair.
  
• There's much less of the wire-fu going on, though obviously, there is some.
  
• The ending is not really that satisfying. In the end, it's hard to say who you want to root for. It's not the kind of kick in the gut feeling one gets at the end of, say, The Usual Suspects
  
• Overall, I still liked Hero better. Although there's a story of revenge there, it is an intriguing way to handle the problem. The bleak ending suggests that there are some principles, as distasteful as they maybe, that are worth dying for. CofGF doesn't have this, and merely serves as something of a revenge plot.
  
• It's not that clear why the Emperor is doing this at all. Why does he do it now? And is that story enough to really hang a whole film on? I don't feel it is.
  
• Zhang Yimou knows how to turn the melodrama to 11 and beyond, almost to the point it becomes laughably nuts. It prevents the story from becoming as touching as it could be. Peter Jackson, et al, knew that the story of the LOTR is more than just its battle sequences. It's about Frodo's journey and Samwise's friendship, to do something he doesn't want to do, but must. Even the battles have a human element to it (for example, Denethor who doesn't like his son Faramir, and is willing to kill him, even as he is being attacked).
  
• Note how important ceremony is. When the battle is over, there are people to return things back to order.
  
• So what do you think happens after the end scene? It's not clear life goes on, as it somewhat implies, as opposed to the chaos at the end of Ran when an empire effectively crumbles, taken over by the enemy.
  
• The long hair looks great on Chow Yun Fat.
  

Is Laughter Contagious?

Watch this video. See if you laugh.



I think it goes to show why it's easier to be funny with a large crowd. When several people laugh, it makes other people laugh.

Why do babies laugh? Hmmm. Why do people laugh in general? Hmmm. By the way, have you noticed that as you get older, more things seem funny?