Stud

There's a noun applied to men that are considered sexy: stud. He's such a stud! In fact, it's so overused that people may have forgotten where the term first originated.

It has to do with horses.

Horseracing is an unusual sport. Only the very rich can afford to horserace, as horses are worth in the millions of dollars that can race well. The idea is to breed fast horses so they can be raced. People claim that genetic engineering for superior humans is immoral, but they've been breeding horses as long as there was horseracing. People breed all sorts of animals, especially if there's money involved.

A horse may have value by winning races, but a horse can also have value as a sire, being put out to stud, basically having sex with mares. Thus, Big Brown, the winner of two of the three events in the Triple Crown may find more value as a stud, if the offsprings are fast horses.

To put a horse to stud, is essentially making a male whore out of him, and having him bed as many female horses, the horse equivalent to Wilt Chamberlain, the star basketball player who claimed to have slept with 20000 women.

So next time you say someone is a stud, or you declare yourself a stud, take a second to remember where the term came from and what it means.

Luck and Fortune

They were showing Joy Luck Club this evening. I probably hadn't seen this in quite a while. It's about 15 years old, covering the stories of four Chinese mothers and their daughters in the US. It's basically a tear-jerker of a film, about the suffering of mothers, and the wishes they bestow on their daughters for a better life.

This film was directed by Wayne Wang. As perhaps with many directors of Chinese descent, it's not particularly profitable to make films about the Asian American experience. As well know as M. Night Shyamalan and his films are, they've never really chronicled the Indian American experience. Ang Lee grew up in Taiwan, so he would not properly be considered Asian American, even though he studied film in the US. He's made one film that is vaguely Asian American, which is The Wedding Banquet.

There was some commentary afterwards, where a Chinese American man laments Chinese men were generally not portrayed as well as white men, which he felt perpetuates some stereotypes. Having said that, I'm sure Amy Tan thought, at the very least, she was covering stories that were not generally told. Her books were bestsellers in their day, and so allowed readers to find out more the Asian American experience.

One key part of the story is luck. It's interesting how luck plays an important role in the more ancient societies. Both Chinese and Indian societies rely on the importance of luck and fortune, to the point that there are experts in the society that determine luck.

For example, Americans generally pick wedding dates hoping the weather is nice, and the desired location is available. Indian wedding dates (and presumably Chinese weddings at some point in the past) are picked with the assistance of fortune tellers who indicate which dates are auspicious and which times are auspicious. Apparently, such help is even taken to naming of children, at least, from those who believe in the luck of a well-chosen name.

Now, when I say Indian, I should be more specific, and say that this refers to Hindus, though I suspect, at least from the choice of wedding dates, that Hindu traditions rub off onto Christians and Muslims who may also pick their dates based on auspicious times.

Indeed, males are generally given a name, and lack a family name, instead, taking on the name of the father. Sometimes, names refer to locations. Sometimes to a caste designation. Lest this seem unusual, think about names like Anderson, Johnson, Thompson, etc. These names suggest that even Europeans followed the tradition of giving a boy a name, plus his father's name, and only, after time, did a name like Anderson become a family name.

This isn't to say Americans don't believe in some luck. Some are superstitious against bad luck, whether this be avoiding black cats, not walking under ladders, and so forth. Many athletes, especially baseball players, have a lot of weird habits that come from thinking that they will have good luck in a game. Though rather than having good luck, they are trying to avoid bad luck.

There are certainly well wishes of "Good luck", even if, on most occasions, the person would rather not have luck, but good preparation. Thus, if you take an exam, should you be wished luck? Should not your study and knowledge preclude the need for luck? Should you not wish, instead, for a fair exam? But since such exhortations are particularly difficult to phrase, a simple "good luck" is given, for lack of anything more reasonable to say in its place.

There is also the "deals with God", where people say "if I get some thing I want, then I promise to do X for God". Thus, if I get into Stanford University, I promise that I'll go to church more often. It seems every faith has these kinds of luck deals. In India, a similar deal might involve shaving one's head if one gets admission into an IIT, a prestigious university with very selective standards.

Some people take their chances with things like lotteries, mostly because they don't realize just how bad their odds are at winning lotteries. They figure their chances are zero if they don't attend, and not zero otherwise.

There are also people who believe in various conspiracy theories. This isn't so much about luck, but about speculating some weird theories that isn't given real evidence, but only because they feel certain things seem suspicious. It feeds the need of some to find that there are grand plans behind certain things.

Is it considered progress in society where notions of luck are considered quaint or not even thought of at all? Or is simply a cultural difference?

Artificial Relationships

People can probably find all manners of excuses to have some connection with other people. For example, so-and-so went to the same college as you did. And, yet others will find that completely artificial, and more than that, a disincentive to meet the person.

For example, suppose you're visiting a country. Say, India or China. You're a foreigner there, and someone local says "I know another American". Is your inclination to think "Wow, someone I can relate to!" or is it "So? Why should I talk to them? So what if we come from the same country".

Much of that, I suspect, has to do with how introverted you are. The more extroverted you are, the more likely you might talk to anyone. So such commonalities might simply be that excuse to talk.

The funny thing is that people seem to prefer meeting others in situations that force folks to work with one another. This could be a job setting. And even then, it has to be pretty close proximity. There are people literally 20 seconds away that we almost never talk to, because they belong to a different group. It has nothing to do with them or us being mean, but that any tiny barrier can cause a person not to talk to the next person.

Indeed, more people are introverted, and getting them to talk to others is something they simply don't like. I can see that, even if offered millions to be really outgoing, they may choose not to do it because they are so painfully shy and it would create distress.

Anyway, the point of this was to find relationships based on some commonality that may or may not make sense where being an alumni was number 1 on that list of things that people may or may not feel kinship.

Silliness of Racquet Selectors

In general, I love Tennis Warehouse. They have a huge supply of racquets and other accessories (could do better with their variety of vibration dampeners, but I digress). They have a great forum where many people participate.

The one thing that's totally bogus is selecting a racquet. The reason? This is a mistake people make all the time. They pick the parameters that are easy for them to make a decision on, but is otherwise useless to the average person picking a racquet.

For example, they want you to specify the racquet length, width, weight, and balance. That's not how people pick racquets. They think "I want to serve like Roddick, hit groundstrokes like Nadal, volley like Federer, what racquet do you have that does all that?". They have no idea how to translate all that into something you can put data in for. Do you think the average person knows what weight they want for a racquet? How it should be balanced?

It should be like going to an ophthalmologist, except there are lots of variables to tweak. While the ophthalmologist has easy ways to modify variables, it's hard for someone to pick racquets this way, even if the variable is, say, racquet type.

The reason the racquet selector is picked that way is because they have numbers for those things. Thus, you can write a program or some simple database query to get what you want. But the results are meaningless.

One problem is that one size doesn't fit all. A racquet that feels like a great serving racquet to one person might feel off to another. One person might say a racquet is too light while another says it's too heavy. The problem is the average person has no convenient way to find what they like, and so they have no convenient way to use these selectors to do anything.

Fortunately, places like Tennis Warehouse have alternatives. They both have customer reviews and a forum where players discuss these things, so from that, you can at least make an educated guess (short of getting a loaner) of what you want.

Intelligent Lights

You know, the biggest innovation in traffic lights are the sensors in the ground that detect if a car is around. Surprisingly, there's not been anything new that I can see.

This is what I want. It would be nice to have a camera aimed at the traffic, and estimate how much traffic has arrived, and to adjust the lights based on approaching traffic and crowdedness rather than a simple algorithm based on time. Admittedly, there might be some kind of equilibrium that you reach by using timed lights.

But whatever. It seems like we should be able to get more intelligent light changing that makes people wait less on average.

Forehand Woes

I've been trying to retool my forehand for several months now. Ever since I got a camcorder, I've been able to tape my strokes and realize I have a particular hitch. No matter what I do, my body seems convinced it needs to have this hitch. I've tried to come up with all sorts of ideas to deal with it, to very little success.

In particular, I created a weird device made of a tennis elbow brace and shoestrings. That didn't work. I had chairs set up so I could shadow stroke. While I shadow stroke fine, the brain does something different when I have to hit a real ball. I was thinking of putting a large lightweight stick so I could see what I was doing, or a string with a weight on the bottom.

But, I just thought of another idea, which is free, if a bit awkward.

A two-handed forehand. I mean, of the Bartoli, Santoro variety using the non-dominant hand on top (i.e, a crossover forehand). The second hand can prevent the racquet from twisting. I'm looking forward to giving that a try.

Shock Block

Back to a tennis post.

I've used all sorts of vibration dampeners lately. I used to never use it because I liked feeling vibrations. I'd get some idea if I hit the ball wrong by the vibrations. Even so, over time, it's nice not to feel it either.

The most common kind of dampener is a tiny logo. These are also the "worst" of the dampeners. They do their job fine, but they aren't the best. The best ones are made by Gamma called Shockbuster. These deaden vibrations like no one's business. I don't use this.

Why not?

The Shockbuster has two plastic tubes filled with some sticky gel. No matter what, you are going to hit the tubes, and eventually, they rupture and slowly leak. So, despite being a great dampener, I ditched it.

I then took Adam's suggestion to use the Head Vibrasorb and a similar competitor called the Forten worm. The problem, for me, with these is that they don't stretch out well enough over the strings. Furthermore, if you hit the dampeners, they can become dislodged.

The dampeners I like best are either the Prince NXT Silencer or, lately, the Wilson ShockTrap. Both of these are a bit hard to put on, but once they are on, they don't fall off easily.

So my recommendation is the Wilson ShockTrap (again, a good knock can cause it to partly dislodge).

I've yet to try the Agassi rubberband which would, at the very least, be the cheapest option, and if it worked well, I'd be thrilled. I just need to remember to go to Office Depot and buy one of those supersize rubberbands.

Party People

Last night, I'd been invited to get pizza and drinks, and as usual, I was observing other people.

The standard for going out is that you wear appropriate clothing, and for guys, that's mostly shirts. A work shirt might be a button down shirt that's white or blue. For programming types, you can get even more casual, and wear t-shirts with funny (or not so funny) sayings.

Going out is a little like going to church. You want to wear something more appropriate. So button down shirts are pretty common, but you can't wear Oxford whites. In fact, the rule seems to be darkish clothing to slightly gaudy clothing. These are the kind of clothing that, if you were at work, people would say "what's the matter, going to a party?". Women, who generally have to play down their sexiness at work, can play it up. Fortunately, clothing for parties and clothing for going out is the same, so there's no need to do anything different.

OK, that's the first step. Dress up to look the part. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't like to think about these things, but even so, I put on a stretchy black shirt to replace the sweaty white tennis shirt I had on, which seems find on the casual front, but not so good for going out. No white t-shirts!

The next step is conversation. Assuming your goal is not to woo someone you want to sleep with, the idea is to keep the evening going with stuff to say. And while going out entails conversation, otherwise why bother going out (watch a movie instead), the question is what to talk about.

What to talk about depends on your level of education and how well read you are. For guys, you might talk about sports. Is Kobe the greatest ever? Is he done for? There are people who can opine about sports topics forever, admittedly, for some, talking about something besides basketball is very painful as they have nothing intelligent to say about golf.

I've heard people talk about technological trends. If you're suitably geeky, you might ask whether Apple's move with the IPhone is going to change the world. How about Microsoft trying to acquire Yahoo. How about technology to deal with the rising price of gas?

Foreigners often feel good about talking about the history of their country, and that seems to have some fascination with some Americans who want to hear new stuff, as someone discusses the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

I suppose, if you're not going to discuss more academic topics, the next thing to do is gossip or talk about what happened last week, i.e., tell anecdotes, name-drop, and such. This is assuming you have a life so interesting that it's worth recounting to others.

But I tend to hang around more geeky types, and it seems the goal there, is to read up on everything, and no, I don't mean APIs to some sockets or the awful Java I/O libraries. While some people are so ill-equipped to talk about anything besides how they did in their last WoW quest, or worse still, the Java I/O libraries (at least, have the decency to talk about why Erlang is poised to revolutionize the programming industry, and sound elitist).

By everything, generally, topics include economics and/or history. So, you might show your savviness by saying how giving money to the poor in Africa is not helping matters, and folks like Bono are doing it wrong. You might discuss whether ethanol is a good use of corn. You might point out that digging for oil locally makes less sense than simply being more efficient, or that it's China's increasing need for oil that is causing prices to go up, or the weak dollar against nearly every currency.

This kind of education, while not necessary for most day-to-day existence (say, you're a programmer--you can be completely oblivious to how the real world works, and certainly you don't need to know it to do your job), is useful for party talk. The problem? You need another person who's willing to talk at the same level, otherwise, you're blowing hot air by yourself.

Fortunately, there's a useful way to handle this. Find a European! Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans, seem full of opinions on such topics, and it seems cultural to be well-versed in all manners of economics and history.

Underlying all of this is that there is something distinctly male about any kind of party talk. It's sufficiently erudite that women often wonder what's going on. There's bound to be some women that prefer hanging out with guys more than other women, if for nothing else, than it raises the level of conversation they have to deal with which is often which starlet actress suddenly put on weight and looks totally hideous.

Women are then typically forced to talk about something else or nod their head approvingly. Lest you think this happens when the subject of conversation goes to nation building in Africa, it also happens when people want to talk about sports. Men love sports, and they love it so much that they want to talk about it all the time to other men, that women are excluded, and not only are they excluded, women who have some savvy about sports are made fun of, giving little inclination for women to care about sports. Men get intimidated. They want to know that they have more knowledge than women, or at least, they can yell louder.

Women, I imagine, have these kinds of conversations far less, though I'm not sure why. I suppose it interests them less? Do men make women anti-intellectual? And if women are too intellectual, do they emasculate men?

Anyway...


With the great resources of information out there, you can always start something like "I heard on NPR that", or "Did you read this wonderful book by X? You must read his opinions, he's really done the research, and while I disagree with his main premise, his methodology is impeccable". Conversations like this can head to the contrarian views of desiring gas prices to go up, to re-invest in nuclear power, and so forth.

I imagine the typical redneck conversation would simply spout the same angry tirades heard on Rush, that says we need to repeal a 17 cent gas tax on gas prices that just went up 17 cents in the last month, or that we need to get more domestic oil, assuming that would miraculously cut the prices in half. These are the kinds of rants that have far less to do with research, then general anger.

To that end, it's more interesting to listen to people who've read a lot, even if, the currency to play the game is to read a lot yourself. Some people like to deck out their cars with lights around their license plates or socially conscious bumper stickers, and others like to tell you about the carbon tax and whether it makes sense or not as a way of combating global warming (but have you heard about global dimming which ironically is how emissions have actually helped decrease the temperature of the world more than global warming would have predicted due to the increased reflectivity of the clouds?).

So get your nice shirt on, and read up! There's a party to go to and some conversating to do.

Lost and Found

Here's an article complaining that GPS makes us dumb.

The assumption is that most people memorize roads and know about spatial relationships. However, I find GPS and tools like this to be quite convenient. Before this, I didn't want to travel anywhere because I'd get concerned about getting lost. Now, I get far less concerned because I have a GPS.

I have mentioned before that GPS has a problem which is a bird's eye view of what's going on. You are given a series of directions, but it's hard to tell what's nearby. However, that's not so much a deficiency of GPS because, over time, this should get better. A computer monitor allows you to see the entire map, and zoom in and out as needed. There is starting to be a convergence of computer, GPS, and phone.

I suspect, as time passes, we'll not only know the paths but be able to see the relative locations of these paths. Perhaps locating things on a real map will seem as quaint as using a slide rule or performing long-hand square root computations. A neat trick that's time-consuming and not productive (on the other hand, it would be nice if people could do basic arithmetic like computing change faster than they do now).

General Paranoia

Americans are notorious for getting scared of everything. They don't know how to estimate the likelihood of something happening, so they elevate even the most minor of things to danger levels.

Here's a few examples. A few years ago, there was the DC sniper (turns out there was two, but only one did the firing). There were about 7-8 people shot or killed. This sent the entire greater DC area into a panic. Reports were that the folks were in a white van (they weren't) and they had attacked gas stations, so everyone got really nervous about white vans and gas stations.

One woman was killed near some place like a Home Depot. Consider how many other people may have been nearby that weren't shot. The odds of being the next sniper victim were really tiny, even if you were so unlucky as to be in the immediate vicinity of the sniper. Even so, people were scared, because they didn't like the idea of something random happening to them.

Or for something less scary, there was the spinach scare a while back which caused almost every food service to stop selling it for a few weeks. Or the more recent tomato salmonella scare. It seems far easier to simply ban the guilty vegetable than to do testing to be sure that the vegetable is fine.

Most recently, there was a water main break in Montgomery County, and the county advised boiling water and limiting water usage for three days. Was this number obtained from some reasonable science or engineering? Or was this randomly picked as to be paranoid safe, but not to be so crazy inconvenient (e.g., a week or more) that people would really be upset. Can't they test the water supply? Obviously this would take time, and they need to give advice right away, so better to give the paranoid advice rather than have everyone complain.

And why is it that people can't do their own testing? I'm assuming it's either difficult or expensive or something.

Remember when there were no seatbelt laws, no child seats? I'm sure there were kids killed because there were no such laws, but how many accidents have you gotten into lately? Sure, you don't want to be the one parent that gets into that one serious accident where you regret not having the safety seats in place, but at what point do you decide that it's better to take the kids and risk the accident and when is it better to leave kids at home?

Now, some of this is simply the cost of inconvenience. Baby seats aren't so costly. So parents buy them. And I suppose there's probably some law about their use in any case, just in case parents want to be more cavalier with their chances.

The dumbing down of America manifests itself most greatly in the panic people have over dangers with tiny odds.

Mark Margolis

I was watching an episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation very loosely based on the film, Rashomon. The episode was called A Matter of Perspective about the explosion that occurs on a space station where a lead scientist, played by Mark Margolis dies. The whole episode involves a trial, held in the holodeck, where each person's testimony is shown via the holodeck.

It wasn't the greatest episode, and certainly didn't even come close to comparing with Rashomon.

Later on, I was watching The Directors, a series on Reelz Channel and it was on Darren Aronofsky. Aronofsky's breakthrough was his first major film, Pi.

Now, Pi was made nearly 8 years after this episode of Star Trek. Who plays the professor of Pi? Mark Margolis.

Guess it's one of those coincidences where you watch one show, then another, and you recognize someone (in the Star Trek episode, Margolis is heavily made-up, so he was hard to recognize, but his voice is so distinctive that it wasn't hard to tell it was him.

The Rise and Fall of Pete Sampras

Pete Sampras came out of nowhere to win the US Open in 1990. This could have been a fluke win or, much like Wilander, it could have ushered the precocious start to a brilliant career. In that run, he beat McEnroe and Lendl and also Agassi in the final. It turns out that it was the second, and Sampras was to have one of the best careers ever.

Sampras relied on a huge first serve, which he could produce aces seemingly at will, or at least whenever he was in danger of losing his serve. His biggest rival was Andre Agassi, but Agassi often fell short to Sampras, unable to have a serve that would bother Sampras nor able to handle the Sampras serve. Agassi's accomplishments would have been even greater if he could have solved Sampras.

Sampras played his best at Wimbledon, winning seven Wimbledons. Despite his powerful game, Sampras's body seemed rather fragile. More than any other player, Sampras focused on the Grand Slams, often losing warmup tournaments, never having the kind of domination on the tour that, say, McEnroe had in 1984, when he lost only 3 matches all year.

Perhaps the indication that Sampras was unable to deal with the punishing rigors of the tour was a change in strategy. Sampras, who was a reasonable baseliner, at least as long as the rallies didn't get too long (he was known for a memorable 21 stroke rally against Agassi at the US Open, which he won), began to serve and volley more and more.

2001 was basically the beginning of the end for Sampras. He reached the US Open final but otherwise lost early in the other Grand Slams, including the one and only meeting with Roger Federer in the fourth round of Wimbledon (a sign of struggle may have been a five set win by Sampras in the second round, a long match for a player that was so dominant on grass). The following year, the US Open was his last hurrah, as he won the US Open over Agassi. Again, he lost early at Wimbledon, this time to unheralded George Bastl.

While Agassi's ups and downs in his career may have actually allowed him to play much longer, Sampras's continued excellence took a toll on his body. He found it hard to keep his speed up as he got older, and eventually faded having not won a tournament (other than the US Open) for two years during 2001-2002.

Agassi also faded, but at least it could be attributed to a nagging back injury that eventually forced him to retire in 2006, having had a longer career by about 5 years than his rival Sampras. And unlike Sampras, Agassi had a career Grand Slam, having won all four majors.

Sampras only reached the French semis once, usually losing early in the French. The year he got to the semis (1996), he lost in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon. Sampras may have made a deliberate calculation in his mind to not try to win the French so that he wouldn't tire himself for Wimbledon, giving himself the best chance to win he could. One never knows. He might have won 8 Wimbledons in a row had he tried to lose earlier in 1996 at the French.

That year, Sampras played three tough five setters winning one over former champ, Sergei Bruguera, then fellow Americans, Todd Martin and Jim Courier. He lost tamely to Yevgeny Kafelnikov who went on to win the French that year.

Basically, Sampras's game collapsed in 2001 with his one bright moment at the 2002 US Open. His falloff was nearly as dramatic as Wilander, who had a brilliant year in 1988, coming short of a Grand Slam (he never was competitive at Wimbledon, though) and then fading badly, though still staying on tour for another 8 years, playing mediocre tennis for half his career, as the power tennis style of Agassi, Lendl, and Becker became the norm and Wilander was unable to handle this new style.

Perhaps the rigors of playing at the top can take their toll on the body and mind which is why some players don't simply fade into mediocrity but dive headlong into it.

Why Team Sports Matter

I was on my way to hit some tennis balls against a wall, and I wanted to listen to the US Open on the radio. The sports commentators, despite knowing the heroics of one Tiger Woods, preferred to spend their time talking about basketball, in particular, game 5 of the NBA finals.

I wondered why.

To be fair, despite the dominance of Tiger Woods, the average American sports fan just doesn't care. To an average African American, are they going to find the NBA finals, with athletes that leap around, that play a sport that they can play in the gym or on the playground more enticing, or a sport that requires someone to pay for the golfing, with expensive clubs, that's spent more on your own than with other people, where trash talking doesn't matter so much because you against the course?

What did the commentators spend time on? Speculating whether Kobe should take over the game. Should the league's MVP decide to do all the scoring? How well were the Celtics playing? Could the Laker's play defense? How was Lamar Odom doing?

With team sports, you have at least 5 players you can talk about, maybe more. You can talk about how each are doing, you can talk about how the star is doing, you can talk about injuries and whether they'll play a factor, you can talk about home court advantage, you can talk about the coaches.

Now exactly what can you talk about for golf. Everyone knows it's a hard game. No one expects that Tiger can always pull out magic every single time, though this is one of those more magical moments where he does the seemingly impossible day after day after day (which would lead to him to clear victory if he would not start out so poorly each day).

Can we talk about how Tiger will deal with Ernie Els? Or Stuart Appleby? Or Rocco Mediate? There's no team to talk about, no co-operation, no head-to-head. It's really hard for commentators to talk about what might happen with only one person. When you have a team, you can talk about many people, and even people that don't play.

Commentators have to fill up minutes often spent talking about how many points a player should score, or how come this other player didn't come to play, or what have you. I'm surprised they can meaningfully talk about baseball for minutes on end given what seems to be an individual sport wrapped in a team sport.

So although commentators could agree that this US Open was amazing, they could not talk intelligently (or unintelligently) about it. They can merely state the awe they find themselves with Tiger Woods, but realize that it's such a difficult sport to win reliably that even Woods, who wins at a prodigious rate, isn't guaranteed any particular win. This isn't tennis, where people can predict Nadal to dominate the French as he has done now four years in a row. Tennis is played head-to-head, and so there ought to be some drama, except as an individual sport, the top players are significantly better.

With a team sport, even a top player needs teammates to help out, otherwise they can't shine by themselves. Thus, you don't expect, say, an NBA final where one team sweeps the other 4-0. It has happened, but usually a team can get one or even two games, and once they get two, it's a six game series, and interesting to watch.

If you had to look at individual sports, what's the most popular one in the US? I guess it would have to be golf, followed by tennis. Well, there's auto-racing, that's an individual sport. There's the Tour de France, but Americans love winners and without an American leader, they lose interest.

Maybe only Serbia cares more about an individual sport, tennis, than team sports (though if their football team were highly successful, I'm sure people would care more about that than tennis), mostly because they have so many successful players now.

Most countries care about team sports more, ultimately because the team represents the country or a city, and people can support the team, even as individuals change. In an individual sport, the player is only as interesting as his or her own personality. If you don't care for that person, that's it. But if that person is on your team, and you care about the team, then you can like that person because he or she is your guy (or gal).

Even so, individual sports have a hard time embracing the team concept. There's Davis Cup and Fed Cup for tennis, and Ryder Cup for golf. Players may treat it seriously, but the Grand Slams are still the big deal.

It's weird, the national socialization behind team sports and why it ultimately does better than individual sports in most countries.

Dude, Where's My Phone?

Why is it so hard to find a cell phone? I really should call it a mobile phone. Or maybe a communicator.

There should be an easier way. Fortunately, I generally leave it well-known spots, but I can easily see someone losing it all the time.

Tiger Time

This time, I'm going to talk about golf.

I've been watching golf for maybe 20 years or more. It's an easy enough sport to watch for a novice. I certainly don't know all the rules, or which clubs to use when, but the scoring system is pretty simple.

In case you don't follow golf, there are 18 holes, numbered 1 through 18. Each hole has a recommended number of shots a good player would be expected to sink the ball. These are always between 3 and 5 shots, and it's usually based on distance from the tee (where you start) to the hole. Thus, a par 5 means a good player would take 5 shots to get the ball in the hole.

If you make the recommended shots, you make par. Thus, on a par 5, you would need to get the ball in the hole in 5 shots. If you make it in one fewer shot (say, 4 shots on a par 4), that's called a birdie. If you do it in two fewer shots, that's called an eagle. If you do it in three fewer shots, it's called a double eagle. There's not a triple eagle because the distance is prohibitive. Typically, eagles occur on par 5's. You can also make a hole in one, but that score is based on the par. Mostly, they occur on par 3's, so a hole in one is an eagle on a par 3.

If you make one over par, that's a bogey. Two shots over par is a double bogey. Three shots over par is a triple bogey. And people make worse bogeys than that.

If you sum all the par shots over 18 holes, there's usually between 70 to 72 shots. This year, the US Open is par 71 over the entire course.

You start your own score at even. A bogey adds 1 to your score. A birdie subtracts one from your score. An eagle subtracts two from your scores. You want as low a negative score as possible. Weekend players usually complete a course in 100 or more shots. Good weekend players score 90. Great weekend players score 80. For example, Justin Timberlake, amazingly, is a great golfer and can apparently score in the 80s.

For a golf tournament, the score accumulates over four days. Thus, if you end the day at +2 (meaning two shots over par for the entire course), you start the next day at +2.

After the second day, there is a cut. About half the players are eliminated. For a while, Tiger had some amazing number of consecutive cuts made. Michelle Wie has yet to make a cut in a men's professional golf tournament.

So let's get to Tiger Woods. Tiger is acknowledged as the best golf player in the world. In this year's US Open, he's had three great days. Which is to say, he's had three poor starts and three great finishes. For three consecutive days, he's had double bogey on the first hole. Realize that Tiger can play entire tournaments without ever hitting a double bogey.

He entered the finals with a one shot lead, but that double bogey meant he was behind one shot. By the 11th shot, he hit a birdie, and was at -2, which put him in the lead. Tiger has this rather amazing record of winning every major tournament (there are four majors in golf, just as there are in tennis) that he's held the lead going into the fourth day (and similarly, he's lost every time he hasn't had a lead going in the final day).

But Tiger bogeyed 13 and 15, to go even par. Rocco Mediate, who had a lead or a share of the lead, was ahead of Tiger and finished at -1. Tiger was left to the 18th hole to get a birdie. The last hole was a par 5. He hit a shot in the bunker, but then got a decent second shot. That lead to a third shot that landed about 12 feet from the hole. His playing partner, Lee Westwood, also hit to about 12 feet, but his angle was worse. The putting green has undulations, and you have to "read" the greens to predict which way the golf ball will roll, whether it breaks left or right, whether the speed is quick or not.

Tiger fell back early on Saturday, but had a great birdie, plus two eagles, and an eagle on the 18th, to get the lead by a shot. He had put himself in a bad spot, and hit some great shots to get out of the mess. It was so miraculous that people were gushing how good he played. And yet, everyone knew that Tiger's knee was hurting, and it was affecting his play. The pattern on Friday and Saturday was to fall back in the first 9 holes, then to play really well on the second 9 holes to recover from problems in first 9 (there are also called the front 9 and back 9 respectively).

After Westwood left his shot short, he knew that either Tiger or Rocco would win, and he'd come in 3rd (as there would be a playoff to decide first and second).

Although Tiger had sunk a shot from 30 feet or more to get an eagle, a 12 foot shot is no gimme. Westwood had missed a similar shot.

When Tiger hit the shot, it honestly look like it would be short, but it kept rolling and rolling, and then barely made the hole, almost lipping out (to lip out is to hit the ball on the edge of the hole but it rolls out instead of in the hole). The crowd cheered because Tiger just made a very difficult shot at the toughest moment.

Still, over 3 days, he's had a tough start, only to recover at the end. Rocco has been incredibly steady over the last 3 days. Rocco had the better score on the first and last day (that is, the score if you ignore the other days), and Tiger had the better score on the second and third day.

Most people buckle under the pressure of playing Tiger head-to-head. Even so, Westwood played as well as Tiger the whole fourth day, rather than crumple as many of his playing partners have done (usually, they pair two players per hole, and stagger the starts).

It was an amazing shot, and I was glad I managed to make it back to see it on TV.

Smart Volume

When you switch channels, you will hear the volume at different levels. Commercials are louder. Certain channels are louder. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to run some algorithm that would adjust the volume automatically so you wouldn't have to? Just a thought.

Commercialism

Typically, an American television show will run 22 minutes for each half hour. That's 8 minutes of commercials for 30 minutes. It's not quite 1/3 of the show.

But here's the thing, every time I switch channels, I almost always land on commercials. Why is that? My theory had been that the commercial tend to occur at the same time. Thus, in a 30 minute show, it might appear every five minutes, or it might appear every 10. As you switch, most every other show is also having their commercials on then too.

Still, I tend to watch lots of sports, and their commercials are a little more unpredictable, so why do I still keep bumping into commercial after commercial. You would think my odds are 2 in 3 that I won't hit one, and yet, I feel it's nearly 8 in 10 that I will hit a commercial.

Do you get the same sense too?

Top Google Searches

There's a feature on Firefox where you type in a character or several characters, and it fetches from Google the best matches.

Here they are for one letter of the alphabet: amazon, bebo, craigslist, dictionary, ebay, facebook, gmail, hotmail, imdb, jobs, kelly blue book, lowes, myspace, next, orkut, photobucket, qvc, runescape, sears, target, utube, verizon wireless, wikipedia, xbox, youtube, zip codes.

I think the one that surprises me most is runescape followed by utube. I'm sure this has an American sland (mostly because of Lowe's, Sears, and Target).

Raiders

It's been a while since I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark which came out in 1981, and was the first of the Indiana Jones series. Compared to the latest one, the first one is both more serious and more satisfying.

Even by the second film, Temple of Doom, you see Spielberg with more whimsy, from the meal with the monkey's head, to the improbably landing with a lifeboat on the side of a mountain. There's much less of this nuttiness in the original Raiders.

The enemies seem more credible as people, from Rene Belloq, the rival French archaeologist, to Arnold Toht, the Nazi torturer who seems a bit too good at his job. Sallah and Brody also serve as good secondary characters, and Karen Allen is far feistier as Marion Ravenwood.

The final opening of the ark is also much creepier than anything in Indy Jones 4, which is a lot of things flying around but without the emotion of the first, or for that matter, the second or third film.

It honestly feels that Spielberg was saddled with a bad story, but Harrison wanted to make some money on this, and so as a favor, they made a new movie. They should have waited for a better plot.

Mobility

In places like Europe or China or India, places that are old, where the ability of the population to move very far was constrained, different cultures and languages arose. However, the United States, built from a conquering nation that used manifest destiny as its mantra to go from east to west, grew in a span of less than a few hundred years (if we count the first appearance at around the 1600s to its westward expansion in the mid 1800s).

It's perhaps no surprise that the locations that are most distinctive are the oldest. New York City, Boston, and to a lesser degree, New Orleans, where displaced French lived.

Given the greater mobility (and a unified country), there's far less regionalism than in Europe, India, and China. Effectively, Europe is how India and China would be if there hadn't been some attempt to unify the entire country, as a confederacy of different cultures and languages.

These older countries deal with both old and new. A language and culture to preserve, yet the mobility to move to anywhere in the country. Interestingly, this has not had the effect of moderating the culture, because to do so would mean the culture or language are not that important, and people seem to cling strongly to that.

Indeed, despite a kind of pressure, various Southern dialects in the US survive (as do Boston and New York accents) with far less cultural pride evidenced in states of India or China.

Mobility has something to do with all of this, but it's not everything.

Gabe and a Muppet

Somehow this seems borderline offensive as if he were being interviewed by Jar Jar Binks. Even so, Gabe seems pretty happy.

Timothy Lynch

I'll write a short blog entry now since it's late.

When I was finishing up college, I happened upon Usenet. These were so-called "newsgroups" that contained very little news. Prior to ubiquitous spamming and prior to the AOL newbies flooding Usenet, Usenet use to have discussions broken up into subject area.

One newsgroup of note was the Star Trek newsgroup, which mainly discussed Star Trek: The Next Generation. This show started around 1988 and lasted for 7 seasons.

Three of the more famous reviewers of the group were Atsushi Kanamori, Michael Rawdon, and Tim Lynch, from progressively pessimistic about TNG to progressively optimistic (there were a few other reviewers, but those come to mind).

Tim and I both went to Cornell, but we didn't know each other. He majored in physics, and I in EE and CS. He went to Caltech for grad school in physics before dropping out to teach. I think he continues to teach at a private school in California to this day.

It was interesting reading the reviews because TNG was the only decent science fiction series of the day. Babylon 5 wasn't out yet, and many of the less than memorable SF series had yet to make it. Perhaps the fans thought too much of how good the show was. It lacked the kind of emotional sophistication of the new Battlestar Galactica, but still had a few gems as stories.

I haven't read some of these reviews for maybe 10+ years, so it's nostalgic looking back at Tim's old reviews. I wonder what he thinks of them now, and his role in a period of time before the Web became the behemoth it is now.

Not Quite Innovative

I had this problem that I observed when I recorded myself on the camcorder. I tend to flip my wrist so the racquet is upside-down. I was thinking of making a contraption that would correct it.

Here's the idea. I'd take a cup. I'd attach it to a vibration dampener (the Head SmartSorb). I'd put a hacky-sack in the cup. If I flipped the racquet upside down, the hacky-sack would fall out.

Here's the problem.

Have you ever filled a bucket with water? Then you swing it in a circle? Due to centripetal force, the water stays in the bucket, even if it's upside down.

The other problem is the hacky-sack was too large, and filled the cup, and so it had a tendency not to fall out. I put in a much smaller, bright pinkish-red vibration dampener in the cup. The problem? The follow through caused the vibration dampener to fall out of the cup (I think I could use dental floss and tape to prevent it from completely falling out.

However, the first problem is even greater. If the forces keep the dampener in the cup even if it's upside down, then it doesn't help.

This means, I think, that a superior technology is needed. It has to detect the relative position of two parts of the racquet, and somehow give feedback (probably through some noise) to let you know what's going on.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to figure this out some other way.

WristAssist

So I finally broke down and decided to buy a WristAssist from SquareHit Tennis. This is a device that looks like a wrist brace (sorta like what you might wear if you broke a bone in your forearm).

Here's the idea. A lot of players "break" their wrists when playing tennis. No, I don't mean literally break it. What I found out, a few months ago, was that the racquet and the forearm should be at about 90 degrees. Some players play with the angle nearly straight (i.e., 180 degrees). Some move from a 90 degree, and try to flip their wrists on impact. Now, in reality, that does happen (that is, there is a kind of flipping, of a controlled sort, happening).

The device is a wrist brace with a cord attached to the throat, that forces this roughly 90 degree angle.

The first thing I noticed, when wearing it, is that it is a pain to wear when it's hot. You sweat all over, and the brace gets wet too. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it feels very constraining. For example, with this device, it's hard to bounce a ball and pick a ball.

Having said that, the idea is use the wrist assist for maybe 10-20 minutes, then play without out it, hoping that, even without the wrist assist, your brain and body will react as if it had it on, and hold the wrist properly.

I let Shrini try it out, and thought I thought he hit better with it, and controlled the ball better, he found it terribly constraining, and couldn't wait to get it off.

I wish there was some kind of quick-release, that would allow the cord to be removed easily, and reattached easily too. I'm not sure how you'd do it, but that would make it a little more comfortable.

Overall, is it worth it? Um, I don't know. I think it is a useful tool. It won't work miracles, but it will make you more aware of how your wrist should be, and while it's pricey for what it is, I think it was a reasonable purchase, that is, the device is useful.

The Surprising Rene Lacoste

I grew up in the 1980s, which is to say, I had my teenage years in the 1980s. I went to high school then. I finished college then. There was a book titled The Preppy Handbook written by one Lisa Birnbach that came out in 1980 and influenced many a high school student (and those just outside that range). Having never read this book, I'm not sure if she wrote it seriously or more tongue in cheek, in some kind of anthropological distanced manner.

At the time I was vaguely aware of the term "preppy", I still had no idea what it meant. With hindsight, I realized that "preppy" referred to someone that went to "prep" school or preparatory school. These schools were mostly popular in the northeast, and was effectively college before college.

If you've ever watched Dead Poet's Society or I suppose School Ties, these are prep schools. You pay tuition. You may live on the campus. Rich kids go there. And because they're rich, they dress rich.

So in those days, this preppy style meant polo shirts, sweaters tied around the neck, boat shoes without socks. It was a look that bespoke casual wealth.

Key in that attire was the Lacoste shirt. These are those shirts with alligators on it.

Except they weren't alligators. They were crocodiles.

And who was this Lacoste guy anyway?

If you had to point to the most influential men and women in tennis, not the best players mind you, but the most influential, who would you pick?

On the women's side, it'd have to be Billie Jean King. Billie Jean King's influence far exceeds her considerable contributions to the sport of tennis. Of the many matches she played, it was a match that was an exhibition that was her most important.

Bobby Riggs, who has been considered a number 1 player during the 1940s (the ranking system that is in place now wasn't around then), was already in his mid 50s in 1973. He challenged the top player of the time, Margaret Court, and despite being 20 years older, he crushed her easily. While Court was a great player, she sometimes lacked the mental toughness we expect from our best athletes.

Once she lost, Billie Jean felt it necessary to play Bobby and win, to legitimize women's tennis. She won in straight sets, and her win was key during the women's lib movement, and title 9, which opened up opportunities for women in college sports.

Her influence was wide and pervasive.

On the men's side, who would you pick? You might pick Arthur Ashe, but his influence as an African American player wasn't nearly so influential. For one, baseball had made the bigger stride, many years earlier with Jackie Robinson. Athletes like Muhammad Ali made bigger noise.

I'd pick Rene Lacoste. No, he wasn't a political person.

Instead, he was a thinker, an inventor.

Remember those Lacoste polo shirts? The shirts that fueled the preppy revolution?

Lacoste was the top French player, back during the 1930s, when France built a stranglehold of success. He was the leader of the four musketeers. Along with Jean Borotra, Jacques "Toto" Brugnon, and Henri Cochet, these four men would represent the height of French tennis.

Even during his playing days, Lacoste was innovative. The leading American tennis player of the day was "Big Bill" Tilden. Though Tilden stood merely 6 feet tall, he was considered dashing, larger than life, even as he hid from public his homosexuality.

Lacoste tried to figure out how to beat Tilden. Lacoste was a steady player. In those days, there were wooden racquets, and heavy balls. Muscle-laden Spaniards hitting heavy topspin were a thing of the future, and so it was possible, with great training, to simply get the ball back, aiming it side to side. Lacoste used this strategy to take advantage of his superior ball positioning, over Tilden's power, but lack of good movement.

But Lacoste innovated elsewhere. In those days, it was common for players to wear long white shirts and long pants to play the sports. It was difficult to play when the weather was humid. Lacoste discovered that the shirts were ill-suited for tennis, and began to design what would now be called a polo shirt. Given how ubiquitous this shirt is, you might be surprised that a tennis player invented it.

Lacoste also invented the predecessor to the modern ball machine. You'd feed tennis balls down a tube, and then crank a wheel, and it would play the ball well enough to practice volleys. Even a person who didn't play could set it up and help players to practice.

Lacoste invented one of the most distinctive racquet ever. In a day when wooden racquets were popular, Lacoste realized wood was heavy, wood would warp. He invented a steel racquet. But it wasn't merely a wood racquet. It was a steel racquet with two wires, one wrapping the other. This was not something you'd think of out of the blue. Jimmy Connors used this racquet throughout the 1970s. Even Billie Jean used it for a while.

Lacoste continued to invent. Guy Forget, a tennis player of the late 80s and early 90s, used one of his last inventions, which was a guitar shaped racquet that was bent on the inside, and lead Forget (pronounced for-zhay) to a top 5 ranking, and one of the most stunning upsets in Davis Cup history, when a ragtag team of Forget and over-the-hill Henri Leconte beat the team of Agassi and Sampras, with top doubles team, Flach and Seguso.

To be fair, both Agassi and Sampras had yet to reach the peak of their careers. Agassi was certainly the more accomplished player, with Sampras only having his surprising 1990 US Open win to his resume. Sampras was not nearly as dominating as he was to become in the mid 1990s.

Even so, the surface was carpet, and France, with Leconte and Forget should have lost. Yet, Sampras lost to both the magician Leconte and to Guy Forget who seemed nervous, but had one of his best years in 1991, won the match. The French duo also paired to beat the Americans. Coached by Yannick Noah, the 1983 French Open winner (still, the last win by a Frenchman in the French Open), this Gallic team produced an amazing upset.

Forget played with Lacoste's unusual racquet, which, alas, never caught on elsewhere.

So, Lacoste, with his influence in modernizing the game through clothing, racquets, and tennis strategy, was a unique oddity in all of sports.

An inventor, who was also an athlete.

Bee Good

Each year, there is the National Spelling Bee hosted in Washington DC. Recently, they crowned a new champion, Sameer Mishra who spelled guerdon. Earlier, he had been given numdah (I believe, at least, there's a definition of it), which he misheard as "numbnuts".

There was a mail sent to the Tony Kornheiser show where the listener asks Tony if he had seen the National Spelling Bee, or as they call it at home, "Indian Thanksgiving".

That was one of those hilarious comments that only makes sense if you follow PTI. Tony Kornheiser cohosts that show with Michael Wilbon. Wilbon has referred to the NBA All-Star Weekend as "Black Thanksgiving", as the weekend African-Americans look forward to as a show case of African American basketball talent.

The joke has to do with the fact that the Spelling Bee is now being dominated by Indian Americans. The runner-up was 12 year old Sidharth Chand of Michigan (Sameer was from Indiana).

Very funny indeed.

Fuzzy Duck

I've been using Luxilon strings for a while. Yesterday, on a whim, I decided to get my racquet restrung using a combination of Luxilon and Wilson Sensation using low tensions. Ack. It's awful.

Anyway, one thing I noticed about Luxilons. It never gets tennis ball fuzz in it. I was wondering whether this was because I was just not hitting with spin or what. Now that I have these combination strings, I realize that when you pound a ball, the fuzz gets embedded in the string.

That's right, embedded.

I think Luxilon must be made of stuff that prevents the fuzz from getting embedded in it. It's a weird observation, but somehow that must be what's happening.

I guess I'll give the string job another chance, but I don't like the way it feels on the serve.

Ack!