On the Edge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

History in the Making

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Echoes of Another Country

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

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

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

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

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

Why Starbuck's Isn't Evil

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

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

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

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

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

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

Searching for Wireless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have to see it for yourself.

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

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

Courier-Sampras

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time Travel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life and Times of Randall Munroe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charity Through Technology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re-review: Into The Wild

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re-review: Into The Wild

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Review: Into The Wild

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Future Tense

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that's tough to figure out.

District B13

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where On Earth Is Stuart Fletcher?

Here's an interview with Stuart.

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

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

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

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

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

Billy (Joel) Don't You Lose My Number

Funny.

Social Networking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Addendum: Linens and Beyond

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

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

Linens and Beyond

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

The two stores ARE THE SAME!

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

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

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

Bowling for Bucks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just A Game

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

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

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

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

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

And the games will go on.