The Need for Speed

Perhaps no sport has undergone such a radical change as swimming. For years, the standard outfit for male swimmers was a sliver of fabric that became known as Speedos after the company that manufactured it. Then, about 10 years ago, new suits came out. At first, these suits covered from the waist down. These suits were supposed be more slippery than the Speedos. Times came down.

Then, full body suits came out, and times fell even more. Recently, Michael Phelps did what had been rather unthinkable. He lost. The winner bragged that his suit reduced his time by 2 seconds. Phelps's coach was furious and floated the idea that Phelps would boycott future events. FINA, the governing body of swimming, wanted to ban these full body suits.

The technology is problematic. With athletes getting paid money to sponsor products, a company may fall in the quest for the fastest suit, and it becomes more about the suit and less about the swimmer. To be fair, few complained when these suits caused record after record to fall, and only because it affects Michael Phelps are we hearing a bit of uproar.

But it goes further than that. These suits are expensive, and it is affecting the pocketbooks of would-be swimmers. Parents are having to shell out bucks to pay for their kids swimwear so they can stay competitive.

Although FINA is willing to have the suits go back to the waist-down variety, I think they should all head back to the Speedo days where the material provided only enough for modesty, and the rest was up to the swimmer. Admittedly, companies like Speedo or Arena that have benefited from these pricey suits would suffer, and they are, undoubtedly, the first to object, much as the health industry has sought to protect its own interests under the cloud of a health care reform movement.

This is undoubtedly the reason FINA did not decide to go back to the small trunks swimmers used to use because then, the competing companies would only have fashion to distinguish themselves, and would lack the profits that several hundred dollar suits have vs the sub hundred dollar swim trunks.

But then, the sport would be back to the people who swim rather than the suits they wear.

How We Communicate

It's funny. With all the technology to let people communicate better, it only works on a handful of people. Most people find the oldest way of communication, face-to-face, so much more pleasant than any of its alternatives.

I have friends who hate IM, who hate email, who hate the phone. All of them, to one degree or another, interrupt, especially the phone, but even IM. You'll find people who are pretty friendly when you talk to them in person, but get them on the phone, and they are suddenly distant, wondering why you want to talk, etc. Admittedly, these are generally guys, because the stereotype is that women love to gab on the phone and will do so ad naseum.

Face to face communication has one "advantage" over other forms of communication. It limits how many people can interact. In principle, if you have 100 friends, they can all contact you on the phone simultaneously. And that would be interruption. So someone might call you while you are watching TV, or driving. Someone might IM you while you are surfing the web. Although face to face communication is also an interruption, it limits the kind of interruptions that might occur.

Ideally, someone would want to figure out a way of communicating that is as acceptable as real life communication, but we haven't figured how to do that. The only way is to have some sense of what we're actively doing now, and many would prefer not to do that.

And no one has figured that out.

The Curious Case of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

This has been in the news. Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., professor at Harvard University found he was unable to open the door to his own home after a lengthy excursion. With assistance, he tried prying the door open. However, someone believed his home was being broken into and called the police. One Sgt. James Crowley came to the scene to see what was going on.

Depending on whose version you listen to, either Gates was fairly calm and this was a rogue cop that didn't like black folk, or Gates was verbally abusive, claiming racism, refusing to cooperate, and the cop, being calm, finally decided he was a nuisance and had him brought downtown.

For most news organizations, this boiled down to African American professor who had made it in lily-white academia being harassed by cops who can't believe there are well-educated black men.

Whatever.

The point, to me, isn't who is right or wrong, but that these two became figureheads, representing the generic. I believe they call this synecdoche.

NPR, to its credit, did something so simple that it puts most news organizations to shame. And the reason it puts it to shame is because most news organizations are really editorial organizations. They peddle opinions, because actual investigation was too much work. NPR wondered "who is this cop" and just found some background information.

It turns out that he has been involved in racial sensitivity training and had a brush with "fame". He was the guy that unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate Reggie Lewis, a Celtics player that died of sudden cardiac arrest, back in 1993.

Much like Rashomon, which does not really postulate that truth is unknowable, but suggests that people bend truth to make themselves look good, there are good reasons for both Gates and Crowley to take their stances, and therefore good reason that both may have bent the truth to make themselves look good. In particular, if Gates had been wailing like a mad-man, he'd ironically reinforce every stereotype that says African Americans have anger issues and believes the man is against him, and therefore, it's best to peg the nameless cop as the crazy guy, and similarly, many a cop has excused their bad behavior by outright lying and claiming they didn't do anything.

The point is, people form opinions, especially news organizations, and use it as a launching pad to all sorts of race relation rhetoric, but little to actually trying to determine the "truth". The truth, of course, may not matter that much, because it is framed in the context of race relations. Were this a quarrel between two unknowns, we wouldn't care, but because it's Gates, and because the opinion doctors quickly put this out for public consumption, it becomes news.

And it's not really even news.

Why Teaching is Hard

Teaching is one of those things that can be very hard to do well. The first step to teaching is to know what you are talking about. There are people who are "experts" on a particular topic, but they've never organized their thoughts in a way that would make sense to a newbie.

Teaching is story-telling. It's telling a story that makes sense to you and hopefully makes sense to your listeners. Experts sometimes reach a level of unconscious competence. That is, they know what to do, but they can't explain it. Teaching is about moving that expertise into conscious competence, that is, to explaining what you know in a clear, cohesive way.

OK, but that's not all of it. If you're an expert at something, then you will make assumptions about your audience. This is very important. Without assumptions, you will most likely assume they know as much as you do, and so they may struggle with an explanation. For example, if you know statistics backwards and forwards, you might assume that everyone knows the basics really well, which may not be correct.

Some people try to explain ideas using analogies. That only works if the analogy makes sense to the audience. Some people won't get the analogy you are making. Once upon a time, people figured you knew baseball or boxing and they'd make an analogy figuring, for sure, you had to know this.

This isn't to say analogies aren't useful, but only that you have to be careful about it. Analogies are often good at making something concrete that seemed very abstract otherwise. It takes something that lacks familiarity and makes it more familiar.

The key to effective teaching is to understand the worldview of the people you teach. Because students are individuals, you may have a hard time conveying information that will work for everyone. However, since most students generally have similar backgrounds heading into a class, there are some commonalities.

To discover where students are coming from, you need to talk to them. It's surprising how one-sided communication between teachers and students are. Teachers spouting out information, but not engaged in a dialog where the teachers tries to understand why students get confused. To me, this is still the single best way to learn how to teach. Too often, teachers imagine themselves to be something like TV performers with students as the audience kept at arm's length away.

Indeed, one might argue that the lecture format is not the best way to teach students. At the very least, most of us learn by doing.

To sum up, good teaching requires understand the material, being able to tell the material as a story so it makes sense to yourself and to others, to be adaptive to what the audience needs, adjusting the level of difficulty as needed, and to interact with students to better understand how they view what is going on.

Review: Moon

Science fiction movies, at least those set in space, have been influenced primarily by three films: Alien, Star Wars, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of the three, Star Wars may be the least influential. Indeed, it's hard to call it a true science fiction film. There are elements of "science" in the film, from Death Stars to light sabres, to ATATs and myriad vehicles. However, they are mostly treated as part of the scenery. They look cool, but the society merely uses these advancements without questioning where it came from. Better to call it science fantasy, as it appropriates elements from Lord of the Rings and other ancient tales.

Alien is perhaps the film that is mimicked the most. A crew that is somewhat military in nature works on contract for some nameless faceless mega-corporation that seeks profit through dubious means. In general, these corporations seem to scrimp in some ways (few people are used) and are extravagant in other ways (the ship itself, androids, etc). It depicts the isolation and danger of space and the people that serve as its pawns.

Finally, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of the three, 2001 has the best pedigree. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, the look of the film still holds up quite well after 40 years. Lacking traditional CG special effects, it's one of few films that depict weightlessness and the slow movement of space.

Although 2001 has been imitated many times, many are afraid to imitate it too faithfully. In particular, Kubrick didn't care that much about the main characters, Dave and Frank. They are ordinary in every sense. You aren't meant to care about their plight. Other characters are similarly shown as less than human, cogs in a military machine.

Indeed, the one character that has personality is not even human. It's HAL. HAL turns out to be quite a menacing character. Designed to be "perfect", HAL gets in a conundrum. He is instructed to lie to the crew about their mission. Only those in suspended animation know the true mission and they stay asleep during the trip. In a perverted sense of logic based on "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a noise", HAL figures if no one is alive to catch his lie, it didn't happen.

All throughout, HAL believes it is perfect, but when Dave disassembles HAL, in a sequence that takes many minutes to complete, HAL slowly loses his mind and desperately begs not to be killed off.

Ever since, such AIs have been used, and it's not clear whether they are there serving human needs (see Aliens) or not (see Alien).

Kubrick would probably be saddened by the amount of homage paid to 2001, a sign of lack of creativity. Smaller SF films seem to prefer the Kubrickian vision of space from Danny Boyle's Sunshine to Duncan Jones's Moon.

The lack of imitation to 2001 lies mostly in character development. In a film ostensibly about the next stage in humanity, the most human character, perhaps a kind of Satan, is HAL. The rest of the humans are made out to be rather bland, perhaps reinforcing the notion that humans need some evolution.

The sequel to 2001, namely 2010, chooses, as many films do, to develop characters. Unlike 2001, where Kubrick only wants you to care about the characters enough to see that they are recognizably human, mostly so you can imagine yourself in their place, and to serve as a contrast to the panoramic weirdness of Dykstra special effects, a scene that is meant to represent a kind of New Age awe, 2010 wants you to care about the characters of the film. It's hard to sell a film where you don't care about the characters, and perhaps that is where Kubrick's genius lies. He's able to grapple a deep issue "where do we come from" without resorting to normal characters.

Moon's trailer reveals what seems to be way too much information, but turns out not to be. Sam Bell, assigned to do repair work on the Moon, for harvesters that provide limitless energy for the Earth (hard to believe, but anyway) is alone, in the last few weeks before he is scheduled to return to Earth and reunite with his wife and newborn daughter. He discovers, while checking out a failed harvester, large tank-like objects resembling Jawas moving vehicles, that there is another man still alive, and surprise, surprise, it's him.

Well, a clone.

This information is revealed in the film's first 30 minutes because to reveal it late means to have spoilers that wouldn't be kept secret.

The film doesn't mind looking less than sleek. The spacesuits still look circa 1960s. The rover still looks much like a rover. A laptop that makes an appearance is humongous. Like 2001, communications is delayed enough that there is no live interaction. Sam's hair is cut by a flowbee-like device. The future still has homages to the past.

Like 2001, Sam is kept company by a HAL-like AI named Gerty who uses smilies to indicate his emotion. Most of the time, Gerty wants to make Sam food.

Moon, in its way, explores what it means to be human. It doesn't explore it too deeply, to be fair. It doesn't intend to be a philosophical treatise. Indeed, the interaction between the clones is not what you'd expect. There are signs throughout that the film wants to fake you out and become menacing, but it never chooses to go in that direction.

The film doesn't answer a lot of questions. For one, if there is AI technology, what's the point of Sam? Given all this money the company could be making, why not run the operation legitimately? Sam isn't shown as being particularly gifted. He's meant to be an ordinary Joe.

Indeed, Sam doesn't fully question life as a clone. Indeed, he barely questions it at all. There are nods to other films too. There is the notion of a megacompany using people to its advantage, as in Alien. There is some similarity to Gattaca where Ethan Hawke plays an ordinary human who imagines he'll go to space. It's almost an inverse of that. There's nods to Blade Runner and their notion of replicants.

So although one feels the plight of Sam, and even to some extent, his relationship to Gerty, the ideas never feel that fleshed out, and the ideas never seem that deep. Indeed, if anything, Gerty should have been a more interesting character. What is the purpose of Gerty? To be the real communications to Earth, instead of Sam. And yet, Gerty is alone, always having to lie to each Sam clone. Gerty has grown to care for each incarnation of Sam. But this isn't fully explored. It's much closer to HAL in 2010 who is talked into self-sacrificing for the good of the human crew.

I'd like more movies to be made like Moon. But it seems thin on ideas and thin on characters too.

A Bit of Humor

Wow, it's been a while since I last wrote something.

I was watching a short comedy sketch from The Whitest Kids U' Know, a comedy troupe. I generally don't watch them, so I don't know that much about it.

The sketch went something like this. A guy comes to a cube, and asked the person working there how things went the previous night. The guy said he had a pretty quiet night. He hung out with his girlfriend.

Then, the guy asks "did you do your girlfriend"? This is probably a thought that occasionally comes across people's minds but one they don't say in polite company. The guy says he feels uncomfortable answering this question, and in any case, the guy asking is his boss, and his boss never hangs out with him, so why is he asking.

The boss then says he better tell him or he'll be fired. The guy says "this is weird, but OK, OK, yes, yes, I did have sex with my girlfriend". The boss is enjoying the answer to this question, and then asks him to draw what happened.

Now comedy works in a number of ways. There's comedy of recognition. Sometimes it's shameful recognition. For example, some comedians noted that, as kids, one was asked to climb a large rope, and that in the process, this rope might actually turn a person on, given its proximity to certain parts. Most kids imagine they're the only ones that go through this, but once they realize other kids have too (usually as adults), they can mine it for comedy gold.

Then, there is the escalation of some idea way beyond what is perceived as normal.

This sketch heads in that direction. I changed the channel because the routine was getting a little uncomfortable to watch, but switched back out of curiosity. The boss is sketching out on a white board. He is drawing a picture of himself in self-pleasuring. The employee is shocked. He draws a picture of the couple in bed.

He then draws a window, and the employee says "You were watching us last night?", and the boss is telling him to shut up, and he's not done yet. He then draws himself imagining he's sleeping with his employee's girlfriend. "You were imagining yourself with my girlfriend?!".

The boss tells him to shut up, that he's not done. He draws additional people. The employee goes "you invited other people to watch?". He again tells him to shut up and draws a camera. "You filmed us?!". Again, shut up. He draws the word "Internet". "You put us on the Internet?!".

Now the idea for this sketch has at least two parts to it. One is the idea of asking someone something personal, and seeing if they'll react to it. The other is the idea of escalating this craziness by sketching the idea on a board. The sketching part is pretty impressive because you have to imagine how to reveal the various parts. Of course, the employee screaming incredulously helps explain what is going on.

Ultimately, a lot of this edgy humor comes from humor of recognition. It explores darker sides of the human psyche and pushes the notion into absurdity, but almost recognizable absurdity.

If humor succeeds, especially sketch humor, it often keys in on insights of people. To be fair, much of this humor is cultural, and cultural humor may make sense (in a way) in one culture, but not in another.

What seems shocking, in hindsight, is rather clever, requiring a kind of perverted insight.