Squashed

Tennis is so much more popular, as a spectator sport, than pretty much every other racquet sport. Table tennis, racquetball, squash. You can't really see these sports on TV.

Somehow I stumbled on this tennis channel, which lacks any contracts to show the top tournaments, and so they show some casual tennis, and some competitive squash. What you realize is that squash and badminton have far more finesse than tennis. Tennis is really built on power. Badminton has a lot of finesse, which lots of drop shots and lobs, forcing players up and down. Tennis players lack finesse, and you feel, if they'd only watch other sports, they'd be using drop shots a lot and using fitness and speed to try to win.

The problem is the serve. A powerful guy can zip in a fast serve, and finesse is no good if you can't deal with power.

Squash has even more finesse. Racquetball has long gone way too powerful, much like tennis on grass courts, with powerful servers. Squash players force down the line backhand shots over and again, and then drop shots, lobs across the back corner. Rallies run 10, 12, 15 and more shots, requiring speed and finesse.

This sport was once dominated by Pakistanis, but the Brits and even Egyptians are masters of this sport. One obvious missing nationality is the US, since, of course, Americans simply do not care for international sports, where they might suck in any given year.

So inward looking are Americans that a recent Miss Teen USA was asked why 20% of Americans couldn't find the US on a map, and she seemed fixated on South Africa and Iraq in her answer, rather than point out that Americans simply care about the US. We may be more international, but it's too complex for Americans, who, even now, see Iraq as the country "over there", with even American deaths meaningless as long as it's not in the US.

Tennis players could learn lessons by watching squash and badminton. The next revolution appears to be Roger Federer, but I think it will eventually be about people who can drop shot at will, running shots down, playing lobs, and such. But racquets are so heavy, and tennis balls so heavy, that this finesse isn't used much.

Maybe some day.

Monkey Ball

It's not typical, in a second round match, to find a top seed, struggling for his tennis life against the oldest male left in the tournament. But there he was, James Blake, against Fabrice Santoro.

Santoro is French, and has been playing for quite a while. He has pretty odd strokes. He appears to hit a two handed forehand with his right hand over his left (he appears to be a lefty), and then slices a one-handed lefty backhand.

Even though Santoro is French, and Americans are notoriously (and unreasonably) anti-French, they love to see a scrapper. When Alex Corretja pushed Sampras to a fifth set, with Sampras puking all over, people were impressed by how hard Corretja pushed Sampras.

This time, Santoro was the one who was suffering. Despite having cramps and injury timeouts, the crowd didn't turn on him, wishing him well, even as they wanted Blake to win.

And Blake. At times, he was just striking the ball long or wide. And when Santoro clawed his way to a fifth set, that had to get on Blake's mind. Blake had played nine five-setters and had the unenviable record of 0-9. When the score was 4-4, Blake had to be wondering if he could pull this match out, or would he choke against a cramping player and lose?

But Blake kept his head in their long enough, and Santoro, as dogged as his attempt couldn't overcome age and a body that wouldn't stay pain-free long enough for him to claim a nice win.

And Blake, who knew it was a matter of time before he won his first fifth-setter didn't have to wait any longer. The moment was here, and Blake was relieved, ready to play one more round, and live up to a promise of the next great American player.

Caan Job

Scott Caan is not nearly as famous as his dad, James Caan. But he gets a steady diet of jobs. He's been in films like Varsity Blues, Dallas 362, and Ocean's 11, which I've seen several times.

But here's the key. Scott Caan is 5'6". That makes him a pretty short guy. But no other industry can hide height as well as acting. In movies, people don't like to see characters whose heights are drastically different. They don't like pairing a guy, 6'4" with someone 5'7". That difference leads to awkward scenes.

Instead, they try to hide the differences, playing shots at different angles, so height differences are hidden. Actors like Tom Cruise must be pretty happy that, unlike football, height doesn't matter so much.

If you watch Ocean's 11, keep an eye on Scott Caan. He's the guy who hangs out with Casey Affleck. Watch all the things they do to de-emphasize the height differences. Casey Affleck is about 6 ft tall, so he's at least a head taller than Scott Caan.

A bit of movie trickery, as you realize the director tries to manipulate what you see to make you feel and think what the director wants you to see and feel.

Shake and Blake

James Blake should have been the Tiger Woods of men's tennis. But he's not as irascible. He's a bit too good looking. And he's not nearly as supremely talented.

Having said that, I've seen him play a few times recently, and he's got enough speed and power that when he's on his game, he can be tough to beat. But, as good as he is, enough to be a top ten player, he can't even touch Roger Federer, who basically has Blake's number. Blake never seems like he can win against Federer.

And partly because of that, no one much cares about James Blake. Which is too bad, because for a variety of reasons, he should be the kind of guy that promoters ought to love. Yet, because men's tennis is basically the Rafa and Roger show, and even Andy Roddick steals a bit of James's thunder, James Blake has been relegated to the pretty good, but not great player, which, in tennis, in the US, is nothing.

This is how much American care about winners. Heck, Indians, who haven't had a really good singles players in years, follow tennis far more than Americans, who follow football and basketball and sometimes baseball religiously, but no sport that has competitors active from outside North America (the NBA, to its credit, and the MLB, to its, have attracted players from around the world, but the fact is the teams are in the US, and sometimes Canada).

One of these days, maybe more Americans will follow a sport where the best players aren't American.

But don't count on it.

Conditioned Response

There are some words/phrases, when you think about it, that are totally ridiculous. The one I'm thinking of is: air conditioning. Heating, that makes sense. But air conditioning? It sounds like hair conditioning to me!

Why not cooling? Or air chilling? Or chilling? But AC? Or air?

I'm sure there are other, similar phrases that sound totally inane (some people like to point to American football's "yardage" as silly, which it is, if you think about "meterage").

Smile

Image searching is still a tough task. I was trying to find the following image (don't ask why). Asian women (mostly Japanese women) are taught not to smile too broadly. Most women will cover their mouths if they are about to show their teeth because they find something funny. Americans find this odd, and part of the shy nature of Asian women.

Anyway, I still haven't found this photo online because my various search queries do nothing (mostly "shy", "Japanese", "girl", "smile", "cover mouth").

You'd think it would be easier.

Oh stop it!

Bourne Again

It's weird, but I've been in line for movies twice where people talked about The Bourne Ultimatum, the third installment in the Bourne series, about a guy who has amnesia, but is actually a super agent, whose mind has been erased for who-knows-why.

This third installment was directed by Paul Greengrass, who also directed United 93, one of two films that came out last year about the 9/11 tragedy, this one being filmed like a documentary.

It's rare that a third film gets so much praise that people who had basically ignored the series feel compelled to watch it, but word of mouth suggests that is what's happened.

Can anyone think of a film whose third installment might be its best? For most, it's the second (Star Wars), or even the first (The Matrix).

This is also one of many series to appear to have taken the mantle of superspy from James Bond (the other contender would be Mission Impossible, but really?). Is this even a viable genre these days?

Smart Enough to be Dumb

I've longed complained that so-called "dummies" books are often not geared to dummies. You can tell this kind of book within a chapter or so. The author tries to be hip, making some cultural references. "Wardrobe malfunction!". We're supposed to laugh and say "Ha, that humor is helping me to learn already".

While spending an interminable time waiting for my car to get routine maintenance, I was reading a book on Ruby for sys admins. This seems like a peculiar topic for a book, but given that Perl is used for sys admins, why not Ruby?

Oddly enough, the book doesn't start off with a clear explanation of why someone would use Ruby over Perl, nor does it attempt to characterize what typical sys admins do, and why Ruby would be well-suited to the task. Many sys-admins don't think of themselves as deep programmers. They aren't planning to write complex data structures. They typically need to do some common user tasks, and then worry about security.

This book, nevertheless, starts delving into Ruby, with no reassuring words why this would be at all useful.

Often, when "dummies" authors (bad ones I mean) start explaining a language, they mix cute phrases, with technical ones, thus, telling you this is an instance variable, and that is a class variable, and not explaining what either is, or why either is important. This is much like explaining parts of a frog, but not explaining what function it serves.

Many people who teach programming fall in the trap of explaning syntax, because frankly, explaining syntax is easy. Explaining how to program? Not so easy. Explaining how to program is fundamentally explaining how to solve problems, and solving problems is such a general problem, that it's difficult to explain.

Furthermore, bad authors seem to "explain" stuff without making sure the readers are doing something to learn it. This is much like an expert telling you how to play basketball by telling you the rules, the names of the various positions, how scoring is done, but leaving out strategy, and leaving out useful comments about how different people have different skills, and finally, leaving out anything you can do to learn the stuff on your own.

Sometimes I wonder how these books manage to get past an editor, whether they even bother to try the book on real sysadmins (oh, that would be too much work, don't you know?).

Writing books for dummies requires that you understand why some people struggle with the topic you're talking about. This Ruby book (the real title is: Practical Ruby for System Administration by André Ben Hamou) illustrates a common problem for authors: explaing OO programming. Inevitably, they start using terms like methods, objects, messages, inheritance, subclassing, and so forth. Often, in the struggle to make sure they don't say anything technically wrong, they use the terms as if people already knew what they meant, because explaining these concepts would be really hard.

Maybe, in time, such books will improve. In the meanwhile, I'm sure many books will start off with good intentions, but end up helping few dummies, because the authors weren't smart enough to know what a dummy needs.

Words Fail Me

The Prisoner

When I was in high school, I knew this girl, a year older than me, named Janet. Janet's family was over-achieving. Her brother had been one of the top finalists in the Westinghouse science competition (now Intel sponsors it). Their whole family had gone to Princeton (dad, all the kids). For a year or so, she and her family had lived in Massachusetts, then came back to Tennessee.

Our high school, unlike some nearby high schools, lacked a debate class and debate teams. (The following edited for clarity, as per Al's suggestion). When Janet returned, she helped organize a debate club, where she was president. As she was the only one who knew any debate, this made sense. That is also made sense that she probably started the club to pad her college applications wasn't so clear to me then, but makes some sense to me now. At the time, I saw it as an opportunity to learn to debate, learn to speak in public. I was awful at both.

High school debate has been around a long time, and so typically, former debaters teach these courses and field teams for competitions. These are "real" debates. While presidential debates are hardly anything of the sort (they are Q&A sessions, with liberal amounts of spin thrown for ill measure) often relying on emotion rather than reason, these debates favor sounder forms of reasoning.

The format is this. Each year, a topic is picked. Students then research the heck out of them. Books with plenty of facts are made available. Budding lawyers see this as a kind of training for a future career (mock trials fit in this category too). Typically, two people to a team. Two argue for the topic, two against. There's a time limit to present an argument, present a rebut, present a rebut to the rebut, and once more. Then, both sides present closing arguments.

Since the format is timed, debaters sometimes learn to "spread", which is to speak awfully fast, a la Jon Moschita (he used to do the FedEx commercials).

I had forgotten this, since it was so many years ago. I can't say I was even a good debater, because I was pretty nervous speaking, and couldn't produce cogent arguments on the fly. Even so, I thought it would help me with speaking (it didn't).

Rocket Science is a film that's loosely about debate, though it feels more like a Wes Anderson film. While comparisons have been drawn to Election about an ambitious girl who needs to be class president, and the civics teacher who opposes everything this girl stands for, Rocket Science is not that malicious.

Indeed, it's a kind of fantasy, about a painfully shy guy, who stutters, whose mom kicks out his dad, then begins dating a Korean American judge (the Asians are a bit too caricatured for my tastes, but it does show the diversity of our society). Ginny is the object of his affection, a debater whose successful partner suddenly freezes one day (diversity rears its head, as the opposing debate team's male representative is Indian American) during the debate championships, and she seeks, in this repressed kid, a new partner, perhaps serving as Professor Higgins to Hal (the pressed kid) as Eliza.

Much like Wes Anderson, music plays a big role in this film, as do Hal's awkward moments (exaggerated to effect).

And I'd have a full review had the bulb not been dying, and the theater manager come in to say he'd have to replace this hot, hot bulb, requiring at least 45 minutes to cool before it could be replaced.

And why was I watching this movie?

I had wanted to see it, of course, but I hadn't expected to see it then. I was being held prisoner by the car dealership. Not exactly literally, but close enough. I was in for routine servicing, which means they were not only going to charge an arm and a leg, but also ask if you wouldn't mind giving up vital organs while you were at it. I'm sure, somewhere by my name, is the word "Sucker", as in, offer any expensive service, because this guy will take it.

And I end up taking it because I think that any time I spend in preventive care is better than dealing with it unexpectedly in the shop.

But everyone knows the dealer charges at least 50% more than a regular mechanic, if not more. Odd that they have five people up front, who seem perpetually busy, but doing what? They don't repair a thing. They are there to essentially convince you to get more servicing. And man, do they always seem busy for a job that shouldn't require that much inattention to customers.

They have little incentive to do what's in your best interest, but at least they aren't so egregiously awful as to recommend everything under the sun.

And yet, because I don't really want to find another mechanic to do fixing, I let them do the work.

And even though I came in at 7:30 and figured I could be out by maybe 9, I had to stay til noon. Amazingly ridiculous. The only saving grace is that it's right in downtown Bethesda, and there are other things to do in the meantime.

Including watching Rocket Science.

Right now, I'd have to say car dealerships are down there with, I dunno, torturers? as the least desirable people on the face of the Earth. I would love if the government would send in people to get car repairs and for every useless repair, the mechanic would get fined. Indeed, I think people should go through someone that does diagnosis (much like a doctor) and someone else that does the repair.

It's honestly too bad that places like Honda and such who could do a lot to make the experience nice and honest, simply does what everyone else does, which is to take their money due to their ignorance.

The Law of Desire

In the deceptive trailer of Primer, you are lead to believe that the main characters have created a wish fulfillment device. They ask "what is truly wanted"? Power, wealth, reputation. Hidden in this is a time travel story, one so low-key and low-tech, to focus on the vices of man once he discovers he can travel back and change things.

Once I moved on my own, which has been a few weeks, I began asking those questions, though in a more mundane way. Before discussing how I answered those questions, I am reminded of a friend, who, with his roommate, decided to purchase the house he had been formerly renting (an unusual setup, to be sure). Up until then, he hadn't done anything too special with the place. They didn't own it.

Something about owning your own place drives some to improve it. Something about not owning it makes you decide there's no reason to improve it. Once he had the place, they started sprucing up the place, trying to decide how to make it better. Even though this would involve both effort and money, it was their place, and it was worth it, if for no other reason than to increase its resale value, thus balancing a desire for more with a pragmatic desire to see it as an investment.

Until recently, I had always had roommates, which is really to say, I had housemates/apartmentmates, because I haven't had to share a room for over ten years. And they always had dishes and utensils and furniture, so I rarely needed it for myself.

Once I had my own place, I realized I lacked a lot of simple things. I had no dishes. I had no utensils. I had few cups. I didn't have a garbage can. And once I realized I didn't have those things, I began to wonder what I needed. For example, my friend suggested that I definitely had to hang my LCD TV off the wall. It wasn't a regular TV anymore. Hang it up!

Of course, my thought was "Will the wall support it? What if my expensive TV fell down and cracked?". And, even before that, I had to make a decision, did I want a better TV? What made a better TV? I used to have a TV, but got rid of it, and so I didn't even have a television. However, without one, my DVD player would lie mostly useless, as would my Wii.

And a garbage can. Should I get a plain Jane one? There are ones that are cheap, but they don't have a cover. Or I could really shell out bucks for the Simple Human cans that cost like a hundred bucks. They look great. They cost a lot for holding garbage. Should I care?

What is wanted? And more importantly, why?

We live in a culture where we rarely question why we want, only what we want. Ask people to take Buddhist ideals, and you find that it's too tough for many to say no. When we're young, we want food, we want sweets. I saw a mother and daughter having a discussion. The daughter wanted this or that, and even (despite her age) questioned why her mom wanted this or that. As kids, we desire. As parents, we try to reign in kid's desires, even as parents themselves desire too.

Of course, when basics needs, food, shelter, water, all require money, then we're already spending that on "essentials", so why not spend more on things that make us happy? And companies, of course, thrive on convincing us we need stuff to make us happy.

And this is so ingrained, that I still think about what next to purchase.

Still.

Club Players

Our family used to get Tennis magazine when we were kids. This used to be the tennis magazine, though tennis, unlike, say, football, encouraged its readers to play.

In particular, there would be regular segments where American players, like Tony Trabert or Stan Smith, would offer advice to play better tennis. Despite the tennis boom of the 70s, which encouraged the average person to play tennis (up til then, most people had thought of tennis as a sport of the rich), advice was always aimed at the "club player".

At the time, being young, I thought club player meant "not-so-good player", which was partly true, but still reflected the fact that a real tennis pro would still often make additional money on the side teaching people at special camps, for folks who joined clubs, i.e., people who were rich. And why not? Was Tony Trabert and Stan Smith likely to teach kids for free at a public court?

You have to realize that while rich people played tennis, tennis players weren't rich until the mid-70s and really until the 80s when a top player could make a million dollars a year. Players from the 60s and before were amateurs, and pro careers consisted of exhibitions. The Open Era finally moved the big tournaments like Wimbledon to pay pros to play, which meant you could make a living playing tennis, and a pretty good one at that.

Indeed, so good, that top players never have to interact with the average "club" player to make money, so good is the money you make from endorsements alone (at least, at the top ranks).

Thus, while club players meant "players that weren't that good, that weren't pros", it's implied, even in the 70s, that this was the typical tennis player, someone rich, someone who could afford club fees. Even by the 70s, this was no longer the picture the average tennis player in the US, and it was something the editors of Tennis magazine should have realized.

By the way, Tennis magazine was oddly disconnected from the pro game. The publishing schedule typically meant the magazine was printed months afterwards, making any sort of timely reviews untenable. Worse, they probably couldn't even send a reporter to write meaningful reviews of a tournament. Even big tournaments like the US Open merely had previews. The reviews were a pale comparison to Sports Illustrated. You might imagine that they could do really heavy in-depth interviews, exposing people to new players, and so forth.

Not really. The magazine probably could only afford one reporter who probably spent time schmoozing with the players, and not really paying close attention to the tournament that they were allegedly covering. Even now, I doubt the magazine has improved that much.

Pretty sad for a flagship magazine of a sport.

Fall Guy

Summer's nice. People seem happier in the summer. T-shirts replace long sleeves. Shorts replace pants. Sandals replace shoes. Time to put on shades. People head to the beach, to camping.

But summer's hot. Real hot. I like it just as you can tell summer's over. Today seemed just that kind of day. I had woken up early. 5 AM. Watched some TV. Then, I got hungry, so I decided to find a breakfast place. I knew one place, the Silver Diner, on Rockville Pike. But as I drove down, I thought of trying out The Original Pancake House.

A few years ago, I began going to diners, which usually "specialize" in breakfasts. They often have the virtue that they are open around the clock. The Original Pancake House doesn't fit in this category, as it only opens in the morning up to the early afternoon. For that matter, they aren't like Dunkin Donuts or Kripy Kreme or McDonald's or Starbucks which often open at 6, and some of these places, even earlier. They open at 7, which was good enough for me.

And being Sunday, not a work day, and a bit early for church, there were few cars on the road. It was overcast. It was a bit nippy. It felt a bit like a trip I had to San Diego last year, where it was still February, and despite being California, it was still a touch chilly.

Although I don't want every day to be overcast and cool, it's a nice feeling.

A nice feeling indeed.

Almost Movie Review: Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

Reminder to self. Don't watch a movie when you have a headache.

Although I took some pills and had some food, and although the film had very little in camera motion, the kinda thing that gets me nauseous watching films, I had the same feelings watching the latest Harry Potter installment, which meant I only saw half the film before I left.

Too bad, because it seemed like the best of the Harry Potter films. The Harry Potter films really benefit from one idea, which is the characters age, and therefore there's the idea the characters mature. Watching, say, Star Wars, you don't get this sense at all.

In particular, you don't feel these are ten year olds, but teenagers. More than the previous films, this one puts Harry in close up, and he's angsty, isolated. Where you felt Harry, Ron, and Hermione were going to summer camp in the first film, here, Harry's just moody, and the other two don't seem to be able to figure out why.

The director handles this by isolating Harry from Hermione and Ron. I also get the sense they wanted the characters to be a touch more British than usual, pronouncing words less American.

The key character in this film is Imelda Staunton playing Dolores Umbridge in a wickedly slimy way. She smiles, but wants to put people in their places, and all you can imagine is that you wanted her blasted to bits in the worst possible way. She pushes all the buttons that kids hate, from the smug authority, to the fake smiles.

Well, I'll have to catch the rest of the film at some other time when I'm not having headaches and such, but my initial impressions was that it was the best so far (perhaps not saying much), mostly because of the evolving Harry and his maturity (or lack thereof).

Movie Review: John Tucker Must Die

While I'm getting complimentary movie channels, I get to watch films I wouldn't normally watch. One of them is John Tucker Must Die which is really an awful title for what the film is about, which is essentially a variant on Mean Girls.

Just as background, John Tucker is the star basketball player, and as such, he gets to be with any girl he wants. Played by Desperate Houswives' Jesse Metcalfe, he's every girl's fantasy, saying to each girl whatever they want to hear. Metcalfe is cast, presumably for his good looks, but also because he's not half as slimy as the character he's meant to play.

He simultaneously dates three high school girls (he's in high school too), which is noted by a fourth one who watches the action as a waitress, before she too gets involved. The three, who come different cliques (one's a head cheerleader, one's a braniac, one's a vegan), find out about one another, and plot revenge.

Despite everything they try to do (from saying he has genital herpes, to putting estrogen in his muscle builder pills, to getting him to wear a woman's thong) seems to backfire. He's clever enough to fight back from humiliation.

While the film centers around the women, especially trying to decide whether Kate, the waitress protagonist who's going to be remade by the three jilted girls to be the "perfect girl" that will dump John Tucker, is really going to fall for John Tucker or not, and whether, indeed, John Tucker is going to fall for Kate.

You have to say this film is charming without being particularly good. The girls are somewhat caricatures, coming up with a plot that no real girls would try. The lead guy is almost too oddly clever to be believable.

There's a subplot where her lab partner (is it John Tucker's brother? does it matter) has a thing for her, and you think the two might get together, but there's too much with the main plot to actually treat this seriously. There's also the subplot with the mother who dates one jerk after another, even though it's treated superficially and comically, and its primary point is for Kate to realize she's never seen a healthy relationship, and that perhaps as sensible as she thinks she is, maybe it's not been that healthy.

It's enjoyable in the way Mean Girls is enjoyable, which likable characters, but perhaps nothing much deeper than that (it's a bit more clever than other films of its ilk, but overall, not that great).

Movie Review: Die Hard

Yes, that Die Hard, not any of the several sequels, most of which are inferior to the original.

Made in 1988, a year after Lethal Weapon, this action film reflects the times it was made. Hair styles resemble those from the early 80s. But more importantly, despite its action roots, Die Hard has elements of modern America from the 80s (and the 70s, really).

In particular, John McClane is meeting up with his wife. They appear, at the very least, to be separated. She's a successful businesswoman, and he's a tough cop, who isn't thrilled with her career, nor her desire to keep her maiden name. His wife works for a Japanese multinational company, her boss being Japanese, who's portrayed as the noble boss (though he's alive for only a few minutes).

The comic relief character, who plays Holly's insufferable colleague, seems all hopped up on drugs, and plays an acquisitions guy, again, comically referring to the business of the times.

Like Lethal Weapon, African Americans play major (though not the main) roles, from Sergeant Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) to Argyle (the driver) to one of the special Agent Johnsons (there are two) to Theo, who plays the computer wizard (the only terrorist that isn't killed).

Admittedly, the white and black characters are caricatured (except for a few folks, including John McClane) from the very white reporter, the drugged up business colleague, the driver, even, to some extent, the nerdy computer terrorist. In this decade, it seemed important to put African Americans in key roles in action films. I'm sure the movie industry felt they couldn't put a non-white American in a lead role, but they were perfectly happy showing interracial harmony.

Even so, while films would have African Americans playing prominent roles in big budget films, members of other ethnicities didn't ever fare that well. One clever idea that both Lethal Weapon and Die Hard both use are the sensible African American, and the crazy white guy, playing against stereotypes (say, Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours or Beverly Hills Cop).

After watching this film for the first time in a while, I realized that the relationship between John McClane and Al Powell (the cop) is practically homo-erotic. During their dialogue, Powell says he loves him (admittedly, in the way, a fan loves their fantasy football start player), and is there to support him. Powell admits a sad incident in his life (killing a kid by accident), and when McClane finally succeeds, he comes out, with Powell smiling, as if it's really Powell that McClane has been doing this for, rather than to help his wife. It's shown far more lovingly than his meeting with his wife.

There are a bunch of elements that make this film work, none the least of which is a star performance by Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. Rickman plays the slimy German terrorist (he's British, folks!) and would use that role to lead him to others (these days playing a recurring role as Snape). As much as this made Bruce Willis's career, it really vaulted (relatively speaking) Alan Rickman from nowhere.

There's a lot of clever thinking, from the way McClane and Gruber meet each other and Gruber pretends to be an American, then reads a name off a directory, and eventually is handed an unloaded gun.

Sure, the action sequences are a bit much, but it's pretty clever, much like Goldfinger's fiendishly clever idea (to make the gold unusable in Fort Knox, so that it raises the value of the rest of the gold). In this case, Gruber wants to steal money while making it seem like a terrorist act (an idea that would become more relevant some 13 years later).

There's no sense that the Gruber is going to be completely evil (most films like bad guys who is not only bad, but completely devoid of any sense of fairness). He appears as if he's perfectly willing to split the loot (even as many of his sidekicks get killed off).

And perhaps one of the better ideas is the idea of John McClane as the action hero everyman, who tries to do his best, given the circumstances. Given his superhero survival abilities, there's always a sense he's struggling, he's in pain, and that he's never sure things are going right. He's insecure, at times, requiring his buddy Al to talk him through, to make him do the right thing, and eventually admits that he didn't treat his wife that well.

I had seen, for example, Lethal Weapon, which, to me, doesn't hold up at all well, leading from one stupid thing to another, in particular, how much they try to batter the idea that Mel Gibson's character is simply crazy.

As unbelievable as some of the action is, often telegraphed so the audience knows what to think and what to see, Die Hard still pushes the right buttons, perhaps none so inspiring as Beethoven's Ninth being played over the opening of the vault, once the power has been cut (to be fair, it's completely ridiculous having this vault in a place of work--heck, if it's a Japanese company, put it in Japan!).

Even so, still fun after all these years.

Caring About Cars

Cars hold a kind of nostalgia for Americans. In the 50s, these huge behemoth vehicles were considered the closest thing we'd come to flying, going to space. A machine that was an extension of ourselves, our freedom. Indeed, George Lucas, if anything, still marvels at his days of youth, when drag racing cars provided a rush, the kind he tried to duplicate in American Graffiti, and yes, even The Phantom Menace.

Since the 70s, when oil prices drove gas prices in the US to a dollar a gallon(!), manufacturers came up with ways to make cars more aerodynamic, lighter, smaller. Cars from a decade early might not even make 20 miles to the gallon, while their modern counterparts nearly double that.

But for all the innovations of cars, it's shocking how simple problems have no answers. People simply don't address them.

First one, and this one's a shocker: headlights. For years, I mean years, if you left the headlights on, and left your car, your battery was dead. It happened so often that people needed jumper cables to get a jump from a friend (and not the kind that involves the back seat) or a helpful stranger.

The biggest solution to this problem? Cars that beep at you when you fail to turn off the lights as the key is removed. Has no one, I mean no one, ever considered having lights that turn off when the key is out? Oh, I'm sure the answer is a bit of paranoia. If lights would automatically turn off automatically, who's to say it won't happen when you drive, accidentally? And that might cause an accident.

In essence, the automobile industry has traded off one problem for another, and doesn't seem to have any real solutions to this problem.

The second problem: heat. Every summer, people enter their cars, which roast like an oven. Every winter, it's freezing inside. I suppose there's not so much that can be done in the winter, but can nothing be done during the summer? Is there not some way to ventilate the car?

There are some problems that have better solutions. Once upon a time, it was awkward to move a car seat forward and backwards. That seems to be solved. Removing tires is still a pain, made just difficult enough that women generally feel helpless. There's a funny male/female divide. Clearly, if the task was too hard for men, then no one would (theoretically) be able to do it, but there are some tasks (removing tires) that require just enough strength, that many women are dissuaded. Surely, a sexist bias, I think.

There are other basic things like this that happens in other areas. Windows, for example, has an issue with deleting a file or directory if you are using that file or directory, but it's too stupid to tell you what application is using it. Sometimes you simply have to shut down everything to properly delete the file. Rather than solve useful problems like this (or the lack of true soft linking), Windows prefers to have snazzy interfaces. Thanks guys.

The White Couch

Many years ago, when I was an undergrad, or perhaps an early grad student, I saw a book, innocently titled, The Red Couch. This book was basically what the title said it was. It was about a red couch.

This red couch was brought all across the country. People of all sorts were asked to sit with it. From farmers to city folk. From poor to rich. From famous to obscure. The red couch was put on a boat. It was near a mountain.

Much like the garden gnome sent on flights in Amelie, this red couch, though inanimate, seemed to go through adventures, an artificial man-made creation, starkly red, set against natural backdrops all over the country.

I didn't think much of it at the time, the cleverness of the idea.

In the living room that I live, for the past five or six years, sat a large white couch. It was still in pretty good shape. David Hovemeyer, developer of FindBugs, a tool for finding bugs in Java code, would often spend nights sleeping on this couch. Another Dave would sleep on it as well. I spent a few days here and there.

It was probably six feet in length, and being less than six feet, I could sleep on it comfortably. I thought about bringing it to my new place, but it was pretty large, so I took a smaller loveseat instead.

Tonight, I returned back to house, to pick up a few more things. A father and son were coming by to pick up the large couch. The son was heading to Virginia Tech soon, the site of such tragedy last year. This couch, which had spent its inanimate life in our house was now making a journey down south, down to Blacksburg. It will see more of Virginia Tech than I've seen.

Perhaps I'm a bit nostalgic to point this out. I mean, for most, it's a couch. I just got rid of a bed I had that belonged to a friend, which I inherited (so to speak) from. I realized it was a crappy bed, but it was good for the time I had it. I still have the mattress, but it was kind of useless.

I have to really hand it to Jess for seeing that in all the stuff we'd accumulated over the years, that someone, somewhere would want our stuff, especially if we gave it for free. Several couches, a large dining room table, odds and ends all over. It's not all gone now, but a lot of it is.

It does make me think, from time to time, how much I simply buy things. Some people are very restrained. They don't need much. They don't want much. They are ascetic, spartan. On the other hand, I see something I vaguely like, or think I'll need, and there it goes. I've bought it. The lesson I've (kinda) learned over the years is that you must use the thing you buy as soon as possible. If you leave it around, it ain't getting used.

But as I'm undisciplined, I have stuff, and lots of it. I've gotten to some stage where I can get rid of stuff, but it's not easy. I'm hoping having my own place will do it. But it's a lot of stuff, and already, it occupies much of my open space, though I see that I haven't tried to organize it and make more space.

The white couch, I suspect, have it better. It is inanimate. It moves on. It lives its inanimate life in a new state.

May you see a new set of adventures.

Pressing Matters

I've been into garlic presses ever since the Frugal Gourmet (Jeff Smith) recommended the Susi garlic press (made by Zyliss) lo those many years ago. I had maybe 3-4 of these garlic presses. One of my former roommates once used it to prop something up in a pan and caused the garlic press to turn some odd shade of purple. But then, he did a lot of weird things. He'd make oatmeal, found it too hot to eat, stick in in the freezer, and completely forget it was there. He'd heat something up on the stove, and get bored, go to his room, and read until the pot was burning the food because he completely forgot he was cooking something. This happened not just once, but several times.

Recently, Cooks Illustrated rated garlic presses, and while the Susi press had been winners in years past, the newly declared winner was the Ruhn Kikon Epicurean garlic press. Now, this garlic press isn't exactly cheap. A relatively cheap garlic press might cost 7-8 dollars. The Susi press maybe 15 dollars. This one is 35 dollars.

Even so, it's really neat. The one huge problem with the Susi garlic press was cleaning it. It had a plastic insert you had to use to push the garlic pieces out of the holes. If you lost this piece (and it was easy to do), you'd have a hard time getting out the garlic.

Ruhn Kikon has a particularly clever solution. Most garlic presses require you put the cloves in a small bin, with the holes in the bottom. This bin is tiny, so it's hard to reach inside to clean it. The clever solution? Find a way so there's not a bin.

To give you an analogy. Think of a hallway. At the end of the hallway, there's a door. The door has large holes drilled through it. Imagine a large clove of garlic, big enough to fill the hallway, being pushed through the door with the holes. The garlic extrudes through the holes. But your fingers are huge too. They fill up the hallway, making it tough to clean the hallway.

Now, if the door would open up, then you could reach more easily reach the holes and clean up the press.

Although the mechanism isn't quite like that, it's close enough. Basically, the part with the holes swings away from the side walls, and makes it easier to clean. I still have to try it out mind you.

Oh, I got this mail order via Amazon through a company called The Handy House which surprisingly is about 40 miles north of here.

I had thought that it was lost somewhere along the way, and sent email to see what was going on. I had been used to sending stuff to my company where the receptionist usually lets me know it's arrived, and I picked it up. Instead, being US Postal mail, they did the "obvious" thing, which was put it in my "mailbox", which I rarely check since very few things end up there.

In any case, Ruthy, the person in charge, was very helpful, and was willing to send me a new one if I couldn't find it, but there was no need for that.

On the downside, I got one of the camera tickets. Apparently, I went through a red light and was caught. That kinda sucks.

Puff N Stuff

I had heard some pretty good reviews for a little known indie film called The Puffy Chair. It was said this was a more realistic Little Miss Sunshine.

I happen to like Little Miss Sunshine because the characters aren't so realistic. Greg Kinnear's character, in particular, is a bit exaggerated, but perhaps the entire family is.

What would happen if there was a road trip where the members were a bit more realistic, less amusing, and realistically dysfunctional.

In this case, the film starts off with a guy who wants to go visit his dad and give him a "puffy chair" he found on EBay as a birthday present. They had a chair just like it when they grew up. Initially, he doesn't want to take his girlfriend on the trip. He's meeting up with her when a friend calls, and he prefers to be all pal-y with him, much to her dismay. She can't stand that he spends more time wanting to be with his friends instead of paying attention to her.

He agrees to bring her on the trip. They drop by to see his brother, where they expect they will say hi, and that will be that. But he decides he wants to go along too, and the brother reluctantly agrees, as does his girlfriend, even though they expected to be with one another by themselves during the trip. This already ruins what personal plans they had, and you can already see the friction of the entire situation.

Anyway, after 10 minutes, I couldn't watch anymore. Not that I thought it was so bad, but that I didn't really want to see a realistic portrayal of a family about to implode. It could have been good, but I simply wasn't in the mood to watch it.

I'll probably watch it again later on, but more likely through something like Netflix.

Red Wines for White Wine Lovers

This is a note to myself for the following webpage, which I heard a few weeks ago on Splendid Table where some woman talks about food.

In it, some wines are listed for those who don't like red wines so much. The list includes:

• Mont Pellier Pinot Noir 2005. About $10.
  
• Rosenblum Zinfandel NV. About $10.
  
• Wolf Blass Shiraz 2005. About $10.
  
• Domaine Berrod Beaujolais-Villages 2006. About $11.
  
• Mommessin Beaujolais-Villages 2006. About $11.
  

Mostly a reminder to myself.

Fashionistas

I was watching the Today show this morning for a few minutes. There was an insipid segment on fashion, where women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s were wearing various fashions. I found this rather despicable for several reasons.

First, the women were all thin. Heaven forbid that there would be a plus sized women wearing fashion. They all have to be thin and look a lot younger than they purport to be.

Second, of course, is the fashion itself. On the one hand, I suppose I don't mind people wanting to look good, but fashion pushes itself to an extreme. In other words, certain clothing are popular this year. The notion being that you need to keep up with your clothing, dumping old clothing each year, spending lots of bucks for trends that last a few months.

Thanks, Today Show for encouraging this to the world.

Quality Waste

Companies want you to buy stuff. But if they can help it, they want you to buy more expensive stuff.

Once upon a time, a decent television cost about three hundred dollars. Now, everyone wants you go get a large HDTV. 19 inches gave way to 21 inch to 25 inch. Once HDTV came around, the numbers went to 27 inches, 32 inches, 42 inches, 50 inches, and 60 plus inches. Indeed, 42 inches or more is pretty typical (you'd think they'd go metric just to make the number even larger!).

But other thing have gone up in price. A few years ago, Dyson came out with a vacuum cleaner that cost several hundred dollars, somewhere near 400 or 500 dollars back when 200 dollars was pricey for a vacuum cleaner.

Want to know what has gotten pricey? Simply Human made a trash bin for 100 dollars, when typical ones costs 20 dollars, tops. It was metal. It was attractive. Was it really worth 100 dollars? Probably not. But everyone else realized, well duh, they could make a 100 dollar trash can too! And they did too.

Indeed, you can now imagine anything moderately cheap and make it high quality and sell it for at least twice the price. The key? Make sure people already want it. Beds? They have beds that cost two thousand dollars or more!

Frying pans? Knives? Yup, they are pricey too!

What are things that are still pretty cheap? Hmm, well, I bought a flatware/cutlery tray. Still pretty cheap, but who buys this often? Refrigerators? Washer/dryers? Sure there's room to be more expensive. Typically, it has to look good too, so industrial design is important.

I'll tell you what I want though, and I certainly don't want it pricey. Light furniture. I bought a few bookcases from IKEA, and they weigh a ton. They had a great bookcase that was really, really light. Too bad they ditched it. The other key is being able to easily disassemble and reassemble things. Sadly, IKEA (nor anyone I know) has furniture that comes apart easily and weighs next to nothing.

Some things, I realize, people don't really want to spend more. Computers, for example. Why spend more?

But there's a few products that someone, some company is willing to jack up the price, and people are willing to get on the bandwagon and get it.

Surely You're Joking

When I was a teenager, my dad had various books lying around. One was a bestseller, of sorts. It was titled Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. The book was actually written, or more precisely, transcribed by Ralph Leighton, who was the son of a colleague of Richard Feynman.

Who is Richard Feynman, you might ask? He was a Nobel winning physicist, though he himself hated the fact he got the award, not so much because he didn't deserve it, but he felt awards were meaningless. He did work in quantum electrodynamics and invented the so-called Feynman diagrams.

He probably would have languored in obscurity, except to hard-core physicists, were it not for this book.

Part of the appeal was his common man upbringing, and his knack for looking for adventure. Whether it was his desire to visit Tana Tuva, a country his father said was no longer around, where Mongolians do throat-singing, a style of singing where it sounds like two voices are being sung, when it's only one person.

He hung around biologists back when they were figuring out DNA. He helped on the Connection Machine, which contained some 64,000 simple processors. He wrote books on physics, and helped us look at physics in a different way. He played the bongo drums, painted art, learned to read Mayan writing.

Throughout his life, you see his child-like curiosity. It's likely he inspired many people to a career of physics. Even for those who didn't choose physics, he may have helped redefine what a scientist does. He simply wanted to have adventures and wanted to learn.

What's not so clear was how brilliant he was. Reading Surely, You're Joking, you find that he is curious, but not how he thought. I'm sure he didn't have any idea what he did. Is it one's ability to sit and think and think and think? Certainly, even as his father lacked scientific training, he tried to get his son to visualize things, and that may have been crucial in his development.

I can't say that Feynman has inspired me to new heights even approaching what he did, but I can say that reading about Feynman was formative in growing up, in some way. I wonder if I hadn't read this book whether I'd see the world differently or not? Of course, if the answer is yes, it makes one wonder what other books would have to say, even though it's been more than twenty years since I read this book.

More Sunshine

And yet another comment about Little Miss Sunshine.

I'm sure I said this in my original review, but as I rarely go back and re-read my old stuff, I don't know for sure.

Basically, except for the mother and grandfather, this film questions whether we should try to achieve goals in our lives. The father is a motivational speaker who can't get his career on track. The son wants to fly jets, but ultimately can't because he's color-blind. The uncle (Steve Carrell) wants to be the top Proust scholar in the world, but everyone keeps saying he's second best. The daughter wants to (sort of) win a beauty contest, though she's somewhat clueless enough not to realize what it really takes to win.

In a nutshell, the film points out that we all fail, and sometimes, we shouldn't compete, at least, not if it means our entire self-esteem is built around some notion of success. In the end, there's family, and family's there to take care of you.

As an aside, I was reading some review about Ecan Almighty and how Steve Carrell has become the new Jim Carrey, not so much because they are the same personalities. Far from it. Carrey has mad antics, while Steve has more of an everyman quality, and it shows in particular, in this role, which he underplays some, mostly because he's not generally the kind of person to go Carrey overboard.

Dysfunction Function

For the first few month of DirecTV, I get a complimentary set of movie channels. After watching it a second time, you realize just how dysfunctional this family is.

I pause for a moment for Justin's sake. This is a re-review of Little Miss Sunshine.

The film starts off with Frank who has tried to kill himself. He's sent to his sister's family. Her sister, who appears to be the most normal, mostly doesn't cook for her family (this is seen as a shorthand for people who've lost some basic family values).

The husband (Greg Kinnear) is a motivational speaker who preaches the power of positive thought, even as his career has not turned out well. They live with his father (Alan Arkin) who is a foul-mouthed, criticizes daughter and son, but at least seems to love his granddaughter (Olive) and helps train her for a beauty contest. Finally, there's the Olive's brother, Dwayne, who has kept silent for a year, basically a goth kid who wants to join the Air Force and fly planes.

At some point, the film becomes a road trip where the family wants to get Olive to a beauty contest, and while this is purportedly a comedy, it's a decidedly down comedy. At one point, they stay in a hotel, and the grandfather passes away. They take him to the hospital, and the hospital insist they take care of paperwork and thus they can't leave the body while they head to California, site of the beauty contest.

They steal the body, then their vehicle (a VW van) is falling apart (it doesn't start until they push it to start) and the horn is stuck, intermittently making a horn noise, attracting the police, who they think will find the body. But as it turns out the grandfather has porn magazines and they've placed it on top of body, and the cop, so fixated on it, doesn't miss it.

Then, as they ride some more, Olive tests her brother and they discover he's color-blind and can't be a pilot anymore. This is where he utters his first words "F***", and then curses off his entire family.

Indeed, as you describe the plot, it sounds more and more outrageous (they can't seem to get to the hotel, because the roads are funny, then when they arrive, they are told they are too late too sign up, but finally, they do sign up).

In other words, it's one disaster after another.

So why does it work? Ultimately, despite all the disasters going on, the family decides with all its dysfunctions that they support one another.

The title of the film is about a beauty contest for kids, and beauty contests generally don't fare well in films, and the film goes both way with this. On the one hand, there's disdain for the other shallow contestants. On the other hand, it is Olive's dream to perform.

Even the competition, which she has no idea about (and neither does her grandfather), where she does her rendition of "Superfreak", ought to be a point of embarassment, becomes a moment of defiance as well as family support, ultimately, the point being that they may do things weirdly, but they're still together. It's a particularly odd scene, with some families disgusted, and some finding it just as fun as everyone else.

The film finds its way with little touches from gags that continue throughout, such as the van that needs push-starting, to the horn noises that never quite work, to the basics of beauty pageants (or at least making some fun of it), to road-tripping, to hotels. And while you have no idea what will happen to this family, road-trips often work as a bonding experience, and so ultimately, if it works, it works as that.

And that's a bunch of spoilers!

No Wires Holding Me

When I think Internet, I think wireless Internet. Unfortunately, the phone companies have co-opted this word, and use it to mean mobile phones, which they call cell phones, which use wireless technology.

But I think of using wireless Internet. I've used wireless for, oh, maybe 5 years now? I moved in with a buddy, J.J., and he set it up. Then, I moved to Geekhouse, and they already had it set up. They had wireless when I was teaching too.

Let me tell you, it's nice. With the mobility of laptops, you want to be wireless. With the lack of mobility of desktops, wireless is an option you can forgo, though even there it can be nice.

The problem with wireless is: it's wireless.

If I don't need a wire to get connected, than anyone with a wireless card can get connected too.

Indeed, many people who set up a wireless router often fail to set up any security with it, because, surprise, surprise: it ain't easy to do!

I got Internet from Verizon for two reasons. First, it's a little cheaper than Comcast, even if Comcast has better bandwidth. Second, I've used it before, and been fairly happy with it.

Verizon supplied me first with a wireless adapter, which is a DSL modem plus a wireless router in one. Convenient.

Except, I had already bought a wireless router and wanted to use that. So I put in for a DSL modem, so I could use my router.

Except, you would think, setting this up would be easy as plugging in the DSL modem to the wireless router.

And it's almost that easy, except it isn't.

First, I called Verizon and asked them how to configure the Linksys router. I know. It's not entirely fair I do this, but there are some parts of the router that require some information from the ISP.

Strike one.

Already, this makes things complex. Linksys lists five different configurations you may have with your provider. They suggest you talk to the ISP to find out which. That's bad. I shouldn't have to know that at all.

I called Verizon, and they said I had PPPoE, or some such. They gave me my user name and password. That didn't seem to do the trick. Still, they were helpful.

I called Linksys. They were pretty helpful too. They sat with me for 30 minutes as we eventually figured out that I couldn't even get to the Internet on my wired connection. That is, connecting my laptop via Ethernet to the router, which itself was connected via Ethernet to the DSL modem, which was connected by a phone line to the phone jack.

That didn't work.

Eventually, the woman helping me figured out that the problem was that the Westell modem I had used the same IP address as the wireless router. Seems like all wireless router type devices use the same IP, which I don't recall off the top of my head. So, she had me configure the router so that it had a different IP. Once that was happy, the two components weren't conflicting with one another, and I was able to bot get to the Internet on a wired connection, as well as wirelessly.

Oh yes, when I talked to Verizon, they told me that I needed to set the DSL modem up as a "bridge" whatever that means (I should read some networking book for dummies). Didn't have to do that at all. (Strike two--shouldn't require a different mode).

And then, it wasn't necessary to set up PPPoE (I used some automatic DHCP, which is the default configuration). Note: the manuals suck in this respect. They could have said something like "If you use Verizon, you can just use the default setting, but you'd want to use the others if...). But again, they fail to explain this.

Ideally, they would explain why I need half a dozen options on everything, then how to go about finding the answers, and especially, how to find it for my setup. Ideally, I shouldn't have to do any of this!

In a perfect world, I attach the DSL modem to a router, and it just works!

Honestly, that's what they should all strive for. Certainly, if you had a wireless adapter, that would likely be what you'd want, right?

OK, so there should be one additional step. Once it simply "works", you should be able to configure the name of your router and pick a password.

Of course, I have five different options for this too. I have WEP, which I have to say, is painful. Then, there were four variations of PSK, two personal, two enterprise.

WEP goes through a phase where you pick a password, then it generates keys, then you type in the keys to get connected. Except these keys read like gibberish, so I can't properly remember them, and furthermore, the more secure one requires 26 of these hex values. It's maddening.

And I didn't have to do that before. Before, I typed in a normal password, and that was that!

Turns out there are two forms of entering passwords: WEP, the annoying (and I'm told insecure) way, and WPA, which of course, linksys doesn't even write in their manuals. Only when you hunt up the webpages, do you discover that the PSK options listed are really short for WPA-PSK. There's PSK and PSK2, which most people say is just WPA and WPA2.

Anyway, I set it up for one of these, entered in the password that I could remember, turned off wireless on my Mac, set it back up, punched in my password, and voila, back to being connected.

Now, I have a vague sense that I may not have set it up optimally. Certainly, like any piece of technological literature, the Linksys documentation doesn't tell you why there are so many different options, nor does it try to explain how to decipher it, nor take you down a likely path. And honestly, they should work with places like Verizon to come up with a plug-n-play option.

The one, somewhat-cool thing? Configuration on the router is done by connecting via Ethernet to the wireless router itself, then opening up the browser to a particular IP address, and then configuring it via web page manipulations. It's crude, but kinda clever, given that the average person doesn't necessarily want to open up a console to talk to the router, and type in commands that way.

Anyway, that took maybe an hour to an hour and a half of effort, and really, both Verizon, and especially Linksys were really quite helpful.

And to be honest, I was quite happy that it was all set up. This is the one kind of weird expense that the next generation of folks are finding it hard to live without. Oddly enough, they're willing to sacrifice the "must-have" technology that most people still crave: cable (or satellite) TV.

State of Grace

3m 32s

Click here to try the quiz.

Fifty, Nifty United States

I did the quiz in 4 minutes 6 seconds. I dropped the graphic, since this one interferes with the other one. Bad HTML from the guys who did this.

I probably could have done it faster if I could see which states I hadn't named. I recognize most all of them.

Science Fiction Films

Genre films have generally not fared particularly well. Westerns, once popular, are terribly unpopular now. Mysteries, once popular, are rarely seen. For a while, fantasy films fared poorly. Two series have helped revive fantasy: the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Harry Potter. Before that, you'd be hard pressed to find a really popular fantasy film.

Science fiction films have been there since the silent days. Metropolis, by Fritz Lang, envisions a city with skyscrapers and cars filling up highways, a prescient view, even if the film itself is a bit odd, about a woman who fights for some kind of freedom for the downtrodden, and a robot that's built to resemble her, or someone's wife.

Despite the long history of science fiction films, there are few that are considered great. Despite its slowness, people consider 2001: A Space Odyssey a great SF film, made all the more intriguing by its lack of real characters, except possibly HAL. Up there is Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, which might be as much horror or suspense as science fiction. There's also Blade Runner, still perhaps the best of Ridley Scott's films.

There are those that have been popular. E. T. the Extra Terrestrial and Star Wars tops the lists. There's also The Matrix, Alien, Mad Max, The Terminator, and so forth.

Most SF films are so different from science fiction stories that they almost don't fit in the genre. For example, despite the prolific technology in Star Wars, it can be seen closer to fantasy. Alien was more interested in the horror of a relentless alien being.

Philip K. Dick has seen a bit of a resurgence. Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Paycheck, Minority Report and a few others are films that have been made.

Sometimes, a small film like Shane Carruth's Primer shows that an SF film doesn't need lots of special effects.

Science fiction writers, being genre writers, often lack certain strengths, usually characterization. They have plenty of ideas, and some know a great deal of science, but otherwise, the characters are meh.

I once read a short story about a man who has injected himself with, if memory serves, some sort of nano-robots. The problem? They are starting to grow intelligent. After a while, he no longer needs food, as they can basically photosynthesize. He realizes he may no longer be in control, because once they figure out what's going on, that they live in a person, they will take over him. Stories of people losing control to technology have been as old as Frankenstein.

Another short story involves a guy who's a genius, part of some group of super-geniuses, who realizes he's completely paranoid. He knows somewhere, somehow, out there is someone just like him, and he has to find him and eliminate him before he is eliminated. There's not a great deal of science (except once he realizes his opponent has bested him), just paranoia.

This year, the best science fiction so far has been Sunshine, and yet, it doesn't dwell much on the science, nor much on characters. Still, it presents a compelling view of travelling to the Sun, which is a story, that Danny Boyle points out, has not been seriously treated (there was, he notes, a throwaway travel to the Sun in Lost In Space).

The Matrix deals with virtual reality, which is something more akin to Philip K. Dick novels where, perhaps due to his own experimentation with drugs, was near and dear to his own experiences. Many films of that era deal with such issues.

Of course, there are classics like 1984 of future totalitarian society.

Sometimes SF tries to speculate what will happen to society, how it will change, what problems will be faced. Sometimes, it's just to have a different venue, and have some special effects wizardry. Sometimes, it's other genres like adventure, horror, placed out in space.

Space films rarely are about the same kinds of topics as more "serious" films. How often do you set a romance in space, where space is somewhat incidental? A great book, Forever War, based on Joe Haldemann's experience in Vietnam, is not only a story about time, war, aliens, but also, a love story. But, to my knowledge, it's never been made into a film.

Indeed, many SF books that have been considered great haven't been made into movies. Isaac Asimov, widely considered a great SF writer, has never really had his books made to film, and I say that given I, Robot. His books tend to be talky and brainy, and less than cinematic.

They've been talking about making Ender's Game into a film. It's not terribly science-y as these films go, but it does extrapolate on the idea of a future where kids become geniuses in war.

SF writers and fans often criticize films for making films lacking imagination. Part of it is budget. Part of it is, perhaps, that films are not a good medium for SF. A good SF film should really be a miniseries, long enough to get you to understand the world that is being presented. Most films have a very little time to get you interested in the characters or the film. A series would give you time to follow what's going on.