Broil, Broil, Toil and Trouble

I've heard the term broil for a long time, but never quite knew what it was. It sounds like boil, but sound-alike isn't the same as being alike. I know there's a setting on the oven for it, but what does it mean?

And why do I care?

It turns out I have a recipe for chicken tikka masala, which, apparently, is a Westernized version of an Indian dish, something like Chicken Hunan is a representative Hunan chicken dish.

I don't mind that's it's not perfectly authentic, since I'm trying this for the first time. Here's the issue though. It requires-you guess it-broiling.

It turns out broiling is kinda like the inverse of grilling. When you grill, you are cooking meat with direct radiant heat, typically from charcoal. Ovens, on the other hand, use convection heat, i.e., heat from the air getting hot.

It's easier to understand broiling with an electric stove. At the top, there are coils. You move a broiling pan which is typically two very flat pans. The top pan has slits and lets the juices fall through to the bottom pan, which serves to catch this so it doesn't fall to the bottom of the oven.

You typically stick the pan as high as it will go, so it's near the radiant parts. The direct heat, unlike grilling, comes from above, instead of below, but otherwise behaves much the same as grilling.

Some ovens have a separate chamber below the main oven which is much smaller (so the heat is more direct) and serves the same purpose.

Here's a good article on the subject.

The key to broiling is to keep an eye on it, as you will only spend a few minutes heating it, as opposed to 20 minutes to several hours with conventional baking.

The things you learn on the Internet. It's really quite an invention.

No Country For Old Programmers

I was eating lunch today out, as I normally do, and oddly enough, the following question came up. "Why are there no old programmers?"

This was based on the following observation, which was, admittedly, rather limited. At our company, we have maybe 6-7 programmers around 30, perhaps 3-4 above 30 but within their early 40s, probably another 5-6 aged 25 or under. In any case, there aren't any programmers (well, maybe one) that are 45 or above. It's a relatively young company, and I'm on the older end.

Why is that? Why don't we find programmers above 45 or so.

It's not that they don't exist. I think one thing about "good" companies is that they do hire young, because, while older guys do have some experience, they have to continuously learn, and that's a new skill that's being expected in computing that didn't exist before.

Think about this. If you look at programming in the early 80s, it didn't require you understand databases (mostly), version control, reading incomplete APIs on the web, knowing about stuff like RSS or CSS or various protocols or learning a sophisticated IDEs, and then learning new stuff a few years later.

Indeed, many jobs require you do roughly the same thing over and over again, and use those skills over and over. For a programmer, at the time, that would mean learning a single language, learning the techniques of the day, learning to debug in a certain way. All that time spent getting good at that, and they need to learn something new again.

To give an analogy, think about MS Word. They just came out with Word 2007. This is supposed to be an overhaul of the system. All the time you spent learning how to do stuff in Word, may have to partially relearned. At the very least, you have the benefit that it's MS releasing the product, and they won't do something completely different. But it is different enough. You do need to do a fair bit of work to adapt skills you didn't think had to be adapted!

This happens all the time to programmers and worse. There are more resources to programmers, just as their are more resources to everyone--from the Web! You now have to find libraries and documentation and have to know where to find it. Scouring the Web has become a necessary skill. Before, you had a limited number of choices, if it wasn't obvious from the software you had what to do, then that was it. With the Web, there's always some search that might yield results, which is both boon and bane, good and bad.

Older programmers learned to program, but in a certain language, in a certain way. They didn't expect that they had to keep up with programming like some people keep up with Hollywood gossip.

The generation of programmers that learned during the 90s and beyond are starting to realize that the skill of continuous learning is needed. To give an example, recently, someone in our company found a nifty tool and suggested that people give it a try.

So what causes one person to think "Yeah, that's cool, I will try it out", and another to think "Well, I'm not required to use it, and I don't see a need for it, so why bother?". The modern programmer needs to look for new tools and try it out, and see if they can use it. It's like the person searching for that perfect diet, except where that search is typically futile, finding good tools is often not futile.

But why do people not learn new tools? First, they have to find it. Then, they have to install it. That may not be trivial. And imagine it takes a day of tinkering to get right. At what point is someone likely to say "Forget it. Unless I'm required to do it, I'm not going to waste my time, not even 20 minutes, trying to get this to work."

Then, you have to use it and get some value out of it. This may force you to work in a way you're not used to. Think of version control. Version control offers a ton of benefits, but there's work. You have to think about version control, what commands are available, knowing whether to branch or not, and perhaps fixing stuff up that's broken. Imagine what happens when you don't use version control. You don't have to deal with any of this.

And the downside? If you lose stuff, you lose stuff. And some people are content with that, because it means less they have to worry about right now.

And installation? Not all software installs easily. Some require hunting for libraries and such. Think about every computer science class you've taken. Most of them prepare all the software you need. That way, you don't have to deal with those headaches yourself. The good news is, over time, installation has become a lot easier. In the old days, you were left to figure out all sorts of things on your own, including, if you were on UNIX, what kind of UNIX you were on.

If you have the attitude that you want to use a new tool, even if it takes time to master, then you're likely to become better, to improve because you are willing to waste ten hours to save ten seconds. You're willing to force yourself to think in a new way because it offers benefits to you.

I'll give you another example. Since I went through academia, I became aware of TeX and LaTeX, which are the typesetting system created by Knuth and modified by Leslie Lamport (and since then, modified by a bunch of other folks). Knuth is not only a computer scientist, he's an aesthete. He cares about beauty.

He spent ten years of his life trying to preserve high quality typography. He cared that in good texts, ff, placed together, is replaced by two f's that overlap. That if you have the word Vast, the "a" sits underneath the "V", which doesn't happen with most word processors because each character is in a bounding box that doesn't overlap.

I know, for example, there is a different between left double quotes and right double quotes. Indeed, one of our data sources uses "TeX" style representation to represent left double quotes (two backticks in a row is considered a left double quote). I recognize this because I've used TeX.

But the average computer programmer graduating from college is not likely to have seen this. Indeed, they may have only learned about ASCII, heard about Unicode, and not realized that Unicode is not merely a 16 bit extension of ASCII (though at its core, that's what it is), and that this increase in characters allows a lot more punctuation.

Thus, the average computer science graduate might not have to worry about fonts, but someone out there does or they have to worry about some standard or they have to worry about Unicode. This often means spending a good deal of time learning about stuff they didn't teach you.

So this fella, who's actually pretty young, had never heard of this, didn't do that much research on the topic--didn't even know there was more to be researched (even as I pointed out an article to him), and probably finds all this rather tedious. Why study this when there's more interesting, more straightforward stuff to learn. Read about the world in a book, and it reads like a story. Let someone digest it for you so you can regurgitate it back.

To give you another analogy. At the end of every year, there's some sophisticated formula for deciding who needs to win and lose to get into the NFL (American football) playoffs. Most announcers have no idea how this is done, because they simply don't sit down and learn it. They figure they were bad at math, and so there's no reason to learn it, and they stop.

Or how the salary cap works. That's usually beyond most people, but once you study it and figure it out, it's not that hard.

So I posited that, unless there was going to be something completely different coming up, that the programmers of today might become old programmers. They're willing to spend the time figuring this out or figuring that out, even stuff that seems a complete waste of time to learn. It's this desire to figure new stuff out that will make today's programmers age gracefully.

It's not to say that every programmer will survive. After all, there's still a fair bit of programming that requires, say, debugging, and some people simply don't like debugging code, especially code they didn't write.

But these skills were skills that programmers of the past, even very bright people, those with Ph.D's didn't have. In math, you learn a notation and a system of proof, and that's it. They don't change notation on you just because it's trendy to do so. It means if you sent a mathematician through time in the future, they would have some chance of following a proof today, because the language stayed the same, but someone who wrote FORTRAN would find today's C++ code nearly indecipherable. The ideas involved, the sophistication used, and this is just day-to-day everyday programming, not genius code, would be hard to figure out.

We're still in the early stages of computer programming development, maybe comparable to Babe Ruth playing baseball. There's likely to be a lot more thought given to the craft of programming. In the meanwhile, we're still in the quagmire of today, where learning to program is still very hard, and learning to program well, requiring a philosophy, requiring us to care how the code is written.

The question is whether we want to grow old doing it.

Captcha

Luis von Ahn is one clever guy. I have no idea if he's smart in the computer science way, but he's clever.

He's a computer science professor at CMU, and his biggest idea is using humans as computers, that is, using humans to do things that computers have a hard time doing. He is most noted for captchas, which are those distorted text you enter to be sure you're a person, and not a bot.

The next new clever idea based on captchas is to digitize text from books that have been scanned in. Facebook has used this, where you type in two words. One word, they already know what it says. The other, they aren't so sure. The word they know is used to make sure that you, the person, is real, and if you enter that word correctly, it's felt that the other word should also be entered correctly too.

In addition to captchas, people can tag photos with relevant words. So the idea is that object recognition is hard in photos, but people can handle it easily. But you don't completely trust the people tagging, so you find a way to prevent the occasionally person who is trying to use bad tags.

Next time you enter a captcha, you may be helping a digitizing effort.

Full House

Columbo was a detective series from the 70s, and had the same basic premise, week after week. Within five minutes, you, the audience, were told who the guilty party was. Columbo wasn't so lucky. He'd spend the rest of the show trying to figure out who did it. What mattered was how he found out. As the devoted viewer, you'd see if Columbo looked like he was going off track.

Perhaps in the end, the reason the show survived is that people liked Peter Falk.

House is a series that has the same basic plot week after week. Patient comes down with a mysterious ailment. House and his assistants must try to figure out what's going on. Usually, their first or second attempt is wrong, and nearly kills the patient. Eventually, they figure out what's going on, and the patient is saved.

But why does it work beyond that? Is it possible that you, gasp, like the guy, or his assistants? I mean, you only learn a little bit each time, but maybe as time goes by, you like the characters. Of course, cast members are typically chosen because they are good looking, and sure, it helps if they can act some so you can feel good that you like the person for who they are, rather than because they happen to be hot.

Anyway, they were showing an episode where House is picking new assistants out of a cast of many, and he imagines he sees his former assistants, making you think he cares, underneath that irascible personality is someone that cares. Maybe it's that brief shining moment that people look for, that this impatient, smug, gruff individual who doesn't care, does indeed care.

Ikon Blend

A while back, I complained that pretty much every blender looked the same, and most were incapable of preventing an air pocket when enough ice was thrown in. I wanted to make a smoothie, and it should be done with the minimum amount of fuss. I shouldn't have to add a cube at a time or some mundane process like that. Smoothie King doesn't have to do that. Why should I?

I had noticed most blenders look the same, but there is an exception. Ikon Breville, a newcomer in the kitchen appliance space (one must use "space" to refer to the consumer electronics niche to be cool). And they have additional blades, including one that appears to sweep across the bottom.

The catch? The Ikon Breville blender is 200 to 300 dollars, or nearly triple of what my current (inadequate) blender costs. And I don't even know if that extra blade helps! But it appears like it would, and at least, they are coming up with some kind of novel design. I have to give them credit for that.

Blender companies have to realize people want to make smoothies, and their invention should make this as easy as possible, which means redesigning the blade mechanism to make it easy to make smoothies.

Way to go guys!

Authoritative Advice

Here I go again.

There are plenty of articles that assert advice on the authority of some expert, and yet the research that backs up the research is missing. For example, I just read an article about correct posture in front of a computer. But how much of this is real, and how much of this is "Well, this must be how it is". That is, the obviousness of why this is the correct way to sit makes it so. If your neck hurts, well, clearly you have the monitor too high, or off to an angle.

I agree some of it appears to be common sense, but then, there used to be tons of other remedies that really don't make sense except someone just felt the need to assert it.

Still, so many of us want to hear the ring of authority, so we listen, without questioning why. The funny thing is that when there is some scientific basis, then if someone argues against it (say, global warming), we feel there must be a debate, and thus we are willing to say there's not strong evidence, even when we don't explore the issues in depth.

If education teaches us anything, it should teach us how to assess "expert advice".

Monday Night Tony

Tony Kornheiser picked up what had to be a dream gig. Cohost of Monday Night Football. OK, so it's not the original MNF. That disappeared when ABC, which had hosted MNF since its inception, decided Sunday night was better, and swapped it with ESPN, which had been doing Sunday Night Football (To be fair, ABC owns ESPN).

Tony even survived the purge. Joe Theismann (who I can't stand as an announcer) was his co-host and had been doing football for ESPN for quite a while. But most people observed that Theismann and Kornheiser didn't get along. Tony would say, graciously, on his show that the two got along just fine. But Kornheiser felt constrained. In order to be nice to his buddy, he held back on critical words.

They eventually replaced Theismann with Ron Jaworski. Former Philadelphia Eagles QB, Jaworski (called "Jaws") is gregarious, gets along well with Tony, and studies the game fastidiously. He used to cohost a show where they went over game tape and break stuff down like coaches do. The kind of stuff that fanboys love. Jaws is not only a geek ( of a sports variety), he positively effervesces. And Tony is suitably deferential when it comes to Jaws's expertise. And Jaws is so active and non-egotistical, that Tony feels relaxed enough to be himself.

But here's the rub.

Tony's a guy made for radio. Every time Tony is on camera, he looks constipated. He's uncomfortable. OK, he's not exactly like Mary Carillo who automatically smiles when she's listening, almost cloyingly sweet (almost, but not quite).

Which is too bad because Tony can be brilliant on radio.

But anytime Tony has to sit down and wait for other people to speak, he looks like deer in headlight. Good thing this doesn't happen too much.

In Your Facebook

Facebook was originally aimed at college students. Indeed, you couldn't get an account if you didn't have a school account. Then, they let the floodgates open, and anyone could get an account. People began to see Facebook as a more mature MySpace.

I had vaguely entertained the idea of getting an account despite being out of the typical demographic. To be fair, ever since Facebook let anyone join, the average age has probably jumped 10 years, so the typical user is more likely to be 30 than 20 (as with many blogs, I assert this with only a scarce recollection as my only evidence).

But nothing much was pushing me to get the account until a former student signed up for one, and apparently used one of his IM clients and spammed everyone on the list, which included me. I hadn't spoken to him in a bit. I knew he moved and had gotten married, but since his IM was beckoning me to try it out, I set one up.

Of course, once you add one person, then you want to add another, and then somehow, it networks, and people you knew, find you, and they want to add you. It's worse than LinkedIn.

Indeed, one tends to spend time doing little things, trying to join networks to join a group, and so forth. There's still a little bit of elitism (meant to protect folks I suppose) and some hoops one must jump through to get access to certain groups.

I suppose the novelty will wear off, except, of course, your "friends" can ping you and then send messages and you can see them update their page, and so forth.

Makes you wonder how this generation of kids, the one that sits past Generation X (I probably fit in that generation, though I'm sure few of the adjectives that applied to that generation apply to me, which in fact, was probably a smaller generation than one might imagine, concocted by the media desperate to try to understand the most vocal segment of the youth population).

It's the Internet generation, and they've learned you don't need to be a programmer to use the Internet. And the desire to be popular has extended far beyond the confines of Ivy League campuses and far beyond the sea of lockers that line hallways of high schools throughout the country. You call people your friends that hardly know you. Oh you were the guy that was at this party that was with this girl who had the accident. You know.

Still, with those AJAX forms fading in and out, the Web 2.0 goodness that says not only are we cool among kids but we're cool among geeks too.

Will being a member of Facebook tell me what's going on in the world of college kids. Will new trends come out that the media once defined, and now might self-organize? We're connected in more ways than ever before, and yet, we may know each other less well than before.

Thus, social networking may be increasing asocial, as the average contact per "friend" decreases until this commodity we call "friend" is something like tag, a label we place on others, so we can have the most toys.

Pop 'Em

I made a trip to Virginia to visit Linens N Things. I had been down on them for a while, but I think they are competitive with Bed, Bath, and Beyond. However, the local Rockville site didn't have an Oxo Pop Container.

Oxo makes tons of products. They now make stuff to compete against themselves. Multiple can openers, for example.

The popup container competes against stuff like Click-Clack containers. You can put rice, flour, sugar in these acrylic containers. The key for the Oxo is that there's a button on top. Press it, and it creates a vacuum seal. Press it again, and it pops out, and serves as a handle. It's pretty darn cool.

Except it was a pain to find.

Google Maps failed me again. It took me to the wrong address for Linens N Things. It pointed me further up the road, and I was wandering wondering how any store could be buried far off the main road and not be visible. It didn't make sense.

I decided to go the other direction a bit, which took nearly half an hour, because I kept wandering around, and found it, by a place called World Market. It's hard to say what kind of store this is. It has furniture, kitchen stuff, mostly containers, and such, but also spices, coffee, tea, etc. I can't quite say what the store reminds me of. Pier One?

Anyway, I ended up getting a bunch of spices there for a dollar each. Then, they suggested I get spice jars, of which they had like 5 different kinds.

Then, I went to Linens N Things to find the Pop container. I didn't see it, at first, then finally realized it was on the shelf on the other side. The person who helped, despite being friendly, didn't realize it was sitting on the other side.

Then, I headed to look at Williams and Sonoma, which is generally overpriced, but tries to keep this air of sophistication.

Anyway, Oxo is generally hit or miss. Not all their products are that good. I just bought ice trays with the tops (they slide over the ice). The tops suck, but the ice tray is reasonably OK.

I could be buying stuff for a while for the kitchen, so I'm running into issues finding places to put everything. The usual kitchen dilemma.

I'm a Fanboy

Ever watch GalaxyQuest? It's a bit of a parody of Star Trek, with Tim Allen taking the role of the William Shatner. The basic idea is that the crew of GalaxyQuest, a Star Trek like show, a show which has been canceled, while the members of the show mostly make a living attending SF fan conferences, when they encounter real aliens who have modeled their existence on the television show (by intercepting TV signals).

In the film, there's a teen fanboy who eventually helps out.

You know who that fanboy is?

Justin Long.

You know. Justin Long?

He's the "Mac" guy in "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" commercial.

Yeah, that Justin Long.

Lesson in Love

I haven't taken tennis lessons since I first began playing.

Which isn't entirely true. I did take a tennis class a few years back. At the time, I could only sign up for a beginner's class, and the teacher didn't really know tennis all that well. It was as if she had "trained" to be a phys. ed. teacher and took tennis as part of that, but never cared that much about tennis. I'm sure I knew more about tennis than her and played better.

I decided to sign up for some lessons when a coworker did the same. It was at Rock Creek Tennis Center, and even though it's a bit of a hike from here, the nice thing is that they have a tournament held there, and so if I have to drive to there, I know how to get there.

The first lesson was a bit unusual. When I arrived, there were already three other people there and the instructor, an older gentleman who seemed pretty eager. The other three seemed to already know each other. That made four, even though the group should have been six.

It turns out the guys had been taking lessons earlier and they signed up for more. One guy in particular seemed to have signed up for lessons perpetually, having played their for years.

The instructor mainly spent time running through drills.

One thing about drills, and the thing I don't particularly like about it is that it's both speedy and slow. When you're hitting, the guy feeds you balls faster than you'd probably get them in a game. But once you're done, you wait.

That in itself is really not so bad because I was running around quite a bit and needed the time to rest.

I did notice that some of the other players lacked some footspeed, so I was able to move a little quicker in that respect.

Later on, I went to hit with Ravi, whose going to take some beginner's lessons with his wife, and this allowed me to both hit and think about hitting.

One thought that occurred to me was that I needed to think about my shoulders, in particular, my upper torso. I tend to arm the ball a fair bit, and that makes my shot weaker and harder to control. I also find the ball flies up on my, partly because the face of the racquet is a bit open.

Anyway, things to think about until the next lesson.

Unsmooth Smoothie

I want to make smoothies, and you do so with a blender. But here's the issue, and you'd think someone would have figured it out. The blades are meant to chop the ice up, but this creates an air pocket, and then it's useless. You would think that there would be some mechanism, like the fins of a washer, that would stick up and draw the stuff downward. Nope. You would think this would solve the problem. And yet, you don't see it. Why not? I don't know. The blade design for blenders seem unchanged.

Yet, it would solve so many problems, and yet, surprisingly, the design remains virtually unchanged.

Put a little brainpower into it guys. Maybe you'll inadvertently solve the problem.

Learning Cricket

I can't say I'm much of a fan of baseball. I find it too slow to watch. On occasion, say, when the Red Sox face the Yankees and they are playing a tight game, then I might enjoy it some. Otherwise, I don't care for it.

So it would make sense that I don't care much about cricket, which, outside of Indian grad students, isn't played that much in the US. But I figured I knew a little about baseball, so I should read up on the rules of cricket.

I'll explain it in terms of baseball figuring you will know baseball. I'm sure I'll have it partly wrong, but that's fine. This is why I write it.

In baseball, there are nine innings. Each team comes up to bat once per inning. For sake of example, the Red Sox bat, then the Yankees bat.

When the Red Sox are batting, a pitcher will pitch a ball (called bowling in cricket). If the batter does not swing, then the ball either falls within a range called the strike zone and thus is a considered a strike, or the ball misses this zone and it is called a ball.

If the batter swings, several things can happen. If the batter misses completely, it's called a strike. If the batter hits the ball and it falls outside the legal range, then it is called a foul. A foul is counted as a strike, except you can not foul out. I'll explain striking out in a moment.

If the ball is hit in the legal area, then the batter must run to first base. If the ball is caught before it hits the ground, the player is considered out. If the ball bounces, and an outfielder throws the ball to another player in the outfield, and they tag the player (touch the player) before they reach the base, they are also out. If the players hits beyond a certain distance (a wall defines this distance) in a valid zone, then the player has hit a home run. All players including the batter have each earned a run.

Three strikes and a player is out. Four balls and a player is automatically allowed to go to first base (if a player is already on first, he moves to second). Players are moved a base forward if there's no choice (two players are not allowed to be on the same base).

Three outs, and the batting team goes to the outfield, and the outfield becomes the batting team. When they finish three outs, it's considered an inning.

If players can continue to reach base, a pitcher may pitch many times. A pitcher continues pitching until there are three outs, or until they decide to replace a pitcher with another. If a pitcher is replaced, they can not return to the game.

In cricket, rather than have 9 innings, there is essentially one inning. One side bats completely, then the other.

Instead of four bases, there are two (it isn't exactly a base). A bowler in cricket bowls 6 times. After six times, the bowler has completed an "over". Someone else must then bowl.

During the bowl, the batter must protect the wickets, which are three sticks. There's no such thing as a foul, a ball, or a strike. The cricket player need not even swing at the ball, though if they fail to protect the wickets, they may become out. Even if they swing and hit the ball, they don't have to run.

If they choose to run, they have another person situated at the other "base", and they run back and forth alternating places. Each time they reach the other "base", a run is scored.

In cricket, it's quite difficult to get someone "out". In baseball, if a player is out, it is temporary. They can come back when it's their turn to bat again (9 players play, from 1 to 9, and when the ninth is done, the first one bats again). In cricket, if a player is out, they are out. They don't come back to bat again.

Since you need two players to run back and forth, when there is only one player left, the team is done, and the other team bats. However, that's rare. Usually, 50 overs are completed first (six pitches to the over).

There is an equivalent of a home-run (worth 6 points), but since cricket is very high scoring (100 runs is not uncommon), and since it's hard to hit, few people try to hit them. Unlike home runs in baseball, where players must run the bases, the 6 points are automatically awarded without any running required of the batters.

A baseball pitcher likely throws about 90-100 pitches a game. In cricket, the maximum number of throws is 300 (50 overs, at 6 pitches each). However, there are multiple bowlers, and no one would ever bowl all 50 overs.

Hopefully, I have that right so far. I'm sure someone will correct me if I've made a mistake.

Nom nom nom

Silicon Implants

In the last, oh, say two or three years, you can't avoid silicon. This ain't silicon chips that made Silicon Valley famous (well, I suppose it is). Silicon's first appearance in kitchen items occurred in silicon oven mitts. They looked like rubber, but apparently could prevent heat from getting through.

Once you saw them in mitts, they've shown up everywhere. Knife handles and pots and pan handles in particular. But I see them for collapsible colanders (a recent innovation) and even a drain cover for the sink (I bought one).

Most of these companies tout how comfortable these silicon handles are. But I find them slightly creepy feeling, like some kind of odd latex. I kinda like the feel of metal. I think I saw one for an ice cube tray which looks all rubbery and I wonder how easy it is to pry out.

Look for it the next time you explore the kitchen section of a store.

Speed of Internet

"Don't tase me bro"

On Monday, September 17, John Kerry was giving a speech at the University of Florida. A student, one Andrew Meyer, was heckling Kerry, when police started dragging him away. Meyer asked, rather loudly, why he was being taken away, that he had done nothing wrong, all the while his friend was videotaping the scene.

At one key moment, prior to the police attempting to subdue him (he was already on the ground), he yells out, rather infamously:

"Don't tase me bro"

After which, they proceed to tase him.

Any regular reader of Reddit will know that police like to tase rowdy people, even as some have complained they enjoy it too much, that the amount of pain inflicted doesn't justify the frequency that it's used. Indeed, sometimes police, with little provocation, certainly none like Andrew's heckling, still insist on using a taser. It's been suggested that each time the police use the taser, a device meant to send high currents of electricity to incapacitate an alleged perpetrator, they should have it used on themselves, so as better to understand what they are doing to others.

But the key is this. In a time before the Internet, before YouTube, this incident would have had little ripple in the news. Now, you can buy t-shirts and other memorabilia less than a week after it happened.

Literally, this phrase was popular days afterwards, with people seeking to cash in literally Wednesday, two days after the speech. Columns have already sprouted about how to handle the police if caught in a similar situation (advice: don't say "Don't tase me bro").

Heck, I'm writing a blog entry about this.

But mostly to remind myself about the incident.

And who uses bro anyway?

So seventies.

Bro.

Stuff

George Carlin, the comedian, had a routine where he'd talk about people and stuff. We have stuff. We have stuff to store our stuff. We have stuff to carry stuff.

I recently read about an interesting exercise, except, of course, it's not an exercise. This guy moved from one apartment that was plenty spacious to one about two thirds the size. The exercise, such as it is, is to get rid of 1/3 of your possession.

Now imagine you are asked to do this. Get rid of 1/3 of what you have. Could you do it? Could you part with 1/3? Would you have made the decision this guy made? Or would you have insisted there's no way you can live with less than what you have. This furniture means too much. It belonged to a beloved relative. How much does your stuff define you?

George Lucas Meets Star Trek

I was watching an episode of Star Trek (the original) that I hadn't seen in years. I've seen every episode of the original Star Trek (from the late 60s) several times over.

So imagine, to my surprise, watching something that I didn't recognize. In particular, additional CG effects of the shuttlecraft. For those whose memories are a bit rusty, the shuttlecraft Galileo has crash-landed on a planet. The Enterprise is called away for a rescue mission.

On the planet, there are oversize ape-like creatures bent on, well, harassing the crew. One of the character dies, and they must try to escape the planet or be killed by these creatures. As they use the boosters to escape, they realize they will burn up on re-entry. They realize they can only go one orbit before the ship goes back down and burns up.

Spock decides to jettison and ignite the fuel, to use that as a distress signal.

It's here where you see the shuttle from the back, as it burns fuel up, and where I was thinking "um, that wasn't in the original".

I checked out the SciFi channel. They've digitally redone some of the episodes, and this is the first weekend they are televising it, though I see it on DC20 which is not the SF channel.

So apparently, there's some effort to modernize the effects. The odd part of the effects is that they don't look that realistic. Indeed, it kinda looks like the illustrations that you might see in an SF book. It makes it look even more 60s, which I suppose, is not such an awful artistic direction to take.

I don't know what I think of the effect, but it is a bit different. I suppose it's not as awful as it could be. I wonder if Adam's more of a purist when it comes to these changes.

Lethal Weapon

Here's a film that had one good idea. The crazy white guy paired with the sane black guy. After a bunch of films where Eddie Murphy played the street smart cop, here was one that flipped the conventions.

But, honestly, how can you watch this film? It's so painful how much underlining this film does. Basically, the first hour or so of the film is basically showing how nuts Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is. I mean, scene after scene after scene, is devoted to telling. How. Crazy. Martin. Riggs. Is!

He's crazy! He wants to kill himself. He's willing to grab a guy who's about to commit suicide and jump down with him. The resident doctor says he's crazy (but he's a good cop, so who needs to listen to what she says?).

In that respect, Die Hard is (sadly) far more intelligent.

Navel Gazing

Sex is Comedy is a film by Catherine Breillat, which is a somewhat fictionalized account of her making a previous film.

In this film, the female director wants to film a crucial sex scene, that's particularly difficult. She sleeps with the male lead. The female lead isn't getting the scene right.

Next time you watch a film that has nudity, watch when it happens. Almost always, it's in the middle, or possibly early on. Rarely does it happen in the last 10-20 minutes of the film. Boogie Nights was famous for a scene where fallen porn star, Dirk Diggler, shows off the reason he had a career in porn movies. It's considered a pathetic display of a guy who used to have it all.

Sex is Comedy which is hardly a comedy breaks many of the conventions of films, placing a nude scene at the last parts of the film. It, like Boogie Nights, features a guy with a prosthetic, though in this case, the purpose is for him to maintain an erection.

Yeah, that's right. Indeed, perhaps the only way to have something resembling an "R" rated move with a guy that has an erection is for it to be a prosthetic and the guy to joke around about his prosthetic, er, penis.

But as silly as that is, this film, which had mixed reviews, really seems to expect a lot from its actors. What's harder to film? A sex scene? Or acting in a scene that's about acting in a sex scene?

All I can say is that the twenty or so minutes I watched the film, I thought that it was incredibly difficult to achieve this scene about a film scene, and how the actors really had to do a lot of work to pull off the scene. That, and how such a scene is rarely the climax (pardon the pun) of the film.

Poker Nights

During vacations, when I'm at my parents, I typically find myself watching TV, and lots of it. A while back, I watched the 2005 World Series of Poker. About ten years ago, poker, specifically, Texas Hold 'Em Poker went stratospheric.

Normally, card games were of the spades/hearts variety, the kind college kids played, but the kind you didn't see in real casinos. Those card games were considered, well, a for people who couldn't control themselves. But for some reason, Texas Hold 'Em captured the imagination-and addiction-of many who would never have thought of it anyway. They had a taste of why gambling compels people like a form of drug addiction.

Perhaps it was the film Rounders, which was about a law student who used to play poker, but has now gone away from it to lead a straight life, until he meets up with a former buddy of his who needs his help. Maybe it was The Travel Channel showing these matches on television that sparked the interest.

The World Series of Poker has to be the most open of open tournaments. Anyone can play provided they put up the entrance fee. Six thousand players started off the tournament in 2005. This means players, even great players, have a difficult time making the final table. While there's skill, there's a great deal of luck.

And skill? Many can pick up skill by playing online, or against a computer. When you play online, you can play several games at once. Games are played at a rapid pace. You learn to play the cards more than play the person.

One unlikely guy to make the final table, who wasn't so unlikely after all, was a guy named Brad Kondracki. Kondracki, announcers would tell us, was a law student at Penn (presumably, University of Pennsylvania).

It's less well known that Kondracki did his undergraduate degree at Cornell, and even less well known that he majored in computer science. Apparently, Kondracki spent a year after graduation playing poker all the time, getting good, good enough to place eighth overall.

But as I said, it's tough to do consistently well. A player may do well one year, then you never see them again. Do a Google on Kondracki and you don't much see him, except references to his 2005 success. I suppose it's odd to think that the guy knew something about NP completeness as much as betting on the river.

There's perhaps some irony that this thought, which hasn't crossed my mind much since that vacation day, would come on a sleepless evening, when ESPN would rerun the 2005 event.

One wonders what Kondracki does these days, after a brief, shining moment, where he was at a final table with a chance to win it all.

Impressed

OK, Tennis Channel, you may not be perfect, but you did one thing that was almost amazing.

You covered the boys US Open. Given how rare it is for any junior events to be covered this is impressive, especially since it was one day after the US Open finals (tape delayed).

Ricardis Barankis, who had been asked by Roger Federer to practice with him in Dubai, won the tournament despite being something like the 15th seed. He reminds me a bit of Chang. They had shown a picture with Barankis with Federer, and Federer seemed at least a head taller.

Turns out Barankis (he's from Lithuania) is only 5'6". Why, Justine Henin, who's considered short, it about that height. It'll be interesting to see whether Barankis can go to the next level and play in the pros. Height is still a big advantage in tennis, and to be this short means a lot of work.

In any case, I was impressed they showed this almost live.

Indian Chinese

Chinese food is undoubtedly flavored by where it's cooked. The Chinese food in the US is said to be Americanized--that is cooked to American tastes. Similarly, the Chinese food in India has an Indian taste. It's a bit spicier to be sure.

The most common way to have Chinese food is "Manchurian", thus you can have mushroom Manchurian or chicken Manchurian. So distinctive is this style of Chinese food that Indians who have visited the US craving this kind of accented Chinese dish have been sorely disappointed.

I only had a chance to have Indian Chinese once in India. Funny enough, however, is that you can, at some select Indian restaurants, get Indian Chinese food. It's not so common, but with enough searching you might find one nearby. There's one near where I live called Madras Palace, which, as the name might suggest, is South Indian food, decidedly of the vegetarian variety.

There's two words I can use to describe Indian Chinese food. Spicy ketchup. Yes, it's slightly red, slight tangy, and quite spicy. It's a bit unlike any Chinese food I'm used to eating. The closest might be sweet and sour, but it would need the extra kick of spiciness.

Here's an example of an Indian Chinese dish. Another aspect I forgot to mention is that the food is often deep fried, then the sauce added on top. This recipe certainly falls in that mold.

So next time you're at an Indian restaurant, look out for Indian Chinese dishes. And make sure to ask for it spicy.

Choke-a-vic

Roger Federer's average play is usually so high that even when he's not playing his best, he can win comfortably.

And boy, did Novak Djokovic have his chances. In the first two sets, Novak had chances to break Federer or broke him only to be broken back, and win the set. He could easily have been up two sets to none and making Roger sweat. In the first set, Djokovic hardly struggled with his serve. When he finally broke Roger, Roger promptly broke back. Not without struggle, but even so.

Instead, Federer calmly won the points he needed to win, and once it headed into the tiebreak, he took comfortable leads in both. Even the third set, which Djokovic was not outclassed, one game where his concentration loses focus, and Federer has the match.

Adam noted that it isn't so much that Federer plays so much better than everyone (though I think that is partly it), it's that most players can't focus 100% the entire match. They play sloppy games here or there. Federer doesn't lose focus, so his play his generally high throughout (even if he makes lots of errors, he still seems very much in the match).

I suppose this bodes well for Djokovic. He had set points to win, and pushed Federer, and one can only imagine that a guy who's only 20, and whose made progress by leaps and bounds, can start to challenge Federer. This doesn't bode well for American tennis as Djokovic looks like a solid number 3.

And Federer. Does it go without saying that what he does is amazing? This is his tenth consecutive Grand Slam title. He's catching up to Sampras quickly. Adam points out that Federer wasn't as far in his title hunt as say Nadal. Federer started winning when he was 23, while Nadal and Djokovic were more successful at 20 or before.

Plain Pull

Dulles Airport has been sponsoring a plane pull for around 15 years. This sounds cool, and it sorta is, and it sorta isn't.

Here's the idea. A company sends twenty people to pull a plane. The plane, this year, is a FedEx plane. Now, you wonder, if you're pulling a plane, how does it get back to its original spot? After all, many, many teams will try to move it? Perhaps each team moves it alternately forward and then backward? Perhaps they slowly move it down a runway?

Ah, the answer is that a machine pulls the plane back to its original spot.

Now I had expected the plane pull to actually be pulled some distance, say, 50 feet or 100 feet. Something that would take at least a minute to accomplish. But with 30 companies, many sporting half a dozen teams, something that long would not only be tiring and time-consuming, it would probably create some logistical issues.

So you only pull the plane for about 10 seconds, which is maybe twenty feet or less, maybe even ten feet.

Why pull a plane? Other than the obvious--to raise money for charity, it's because you can. You can tell folks that you pulled a plane.

Of course, any time there's a competition, there's people trying to win the competition. The key to winning is typically sheer weight. When you get a bunch of folks that's two hundred pounds or more, well, that probably has some advantage. Last year, the top three winners where sheriff's offices.

They don't apparently try to take weight into account. After all, that would involve formulas, and sheriff's offices would be unhappy. The formula could be tweaked in a way that anyone could win. You could, for example, divide time by total weight. This would favor light, strong teams. But would it be fair? So ultimately, they stay with something that is patently unfair, because they can't think of anything else.

Oh did I mention that yesterday was freaking hot?

The good news, and I have to credit the plane pull folks for this, is that they did have food and water and did not inflate the prices like crazy. Water was a dollar, which is about what you'd get in a vending machine. Food was around two dollars to three dollars. Overall, pretty nice.

The parking was a small pain.

And the directions to and from Dulles? Horrid. Just horrid.

There are ramps with no obvious signs right on the ramp. There are so many ways directions could be improved, and yet, people don't even bother.

So when someone asked what I did this weekend?

I pulled a plane.

For ten seconds.

Tennis Review: Henin vs. Kuznetsova

Justine Henin is unusual in women's tennis. She's about 5'6" which used to be more typical in tennis. Nowadays, you have Serena, who's like 5'10" and Venus, who's over 6 feet. Big, tall women now play tennis.

Justine, however, hits pretty hard, is very tough mentally, and is number one in the world. The problem with modern women's tennis today is that there's no Seles-Graf.

Back when Graf was number one, she became the dominant power much like Martina was dominant. Martina used to win matches in under an hour. No one could hit past her. She had a big serve. She volleyed amazingly. Chris Evert, who wasn't the same kind of athlete, found it hard to keep up. She tried to get in better shape, and could only match up against her at the French.

Graf then stormed on. She hit her forehand a ton, and would go for the lines. She hit so much harder than any woman that few could keep up. It took a while for other players to heat up their groundstrokes to even compete against Steffi. And the first real person to compete was Monica Seles.

Seles wasn't the same kind of athlete that Graf was. However, she moved well enough, and with two hands on both sides, she could hit the ball hard on both sides. One time, during the middle of a tough French Open final against Graf, Seles broke her strings. Usually, you lose complete control at that point, and a player will cut the point short and get a new racquet.

Seles managed to play another ten shots, and while she (I think) lost the rally, she still played amazing shots afterwards.

And the matches these two played were amazing that one really despises and out-of-work Graf fanatic that stabbed Seles, and let her out of action for nearly two years. Seles was never the same after that. She got to the finals of the US Open nearly right away, and lost to Graf. It wasn't quite the same after that.

But the matches were built on great shot after great shot, and women's tennis has often struggled to get to that stage. As much as Federer dominates the players he plays, there's a sense that they are trying, that they aren't just making errors, but that Federer is hitting great shots.

So that lead to last night's match. You generally know what you're going to get with Justine. She hits hard, both forehand and backhand. Indeed, her power off the backhand makes it tough to beat her, because you try to power it to her backhand, and she does it back to you. And for a woman her height, she serves pretty hard.

Indeed, it's amazing to see the women hitting 115 mph serves. At his best, McEnroe only flirted with that kind of speed usually hitting just under 110 mph. Not that speed is everything. McEnroe used his lefty spin and accuracy and that made it challenging for his opponents. Even so, women during that era served under 100 mph. Martina routinely served in the mid 90s.

And that was hard for a woman.

Kutznetsova, on the other hand, is this completely streaky player. She managed to play a semis where she played awful in the first set, and her opponent, Chakvetadze also imploded. And Kutznetsova is like number 4 in the world.

But she struggled plenty in the final. Even when she had chances to break, Henin would hit another good shot, or Svetlana would dump another shot into the net or out wide and shriek with every miss.

There was an odd moment during the match. Billie Jean King is asked about Svetlana, and she says she's a great gal, someone who is likable, who speaks Spanish (in addition to presumably Russian), wants to learn new things. Indeed, these are all great for women that spend their life thinking about tennis. It's one thing you don't think about though. There are likely many great individuals who play great tennis, but they aren't necessarily the top players.

In any case, Svetlana lost the match just as much as Henin won it. Henin played steady, solid, superior tennis.

Oh yeah. For some reason, probably due to a taped pronunciation, everyone pronounces Henin's name as "Enna". The second "n" is not pronounced. The "i" is pronounced like an "a". Given that "fin" (meaning "end") is pronounced like "fan", I can see that, but it is grating not to here the second "n". So for some reason, accurate or not, hearing her name pronounced like "Enna" sounds like nails on chalkboard.

Well, I expect the Federer-Djokovic match to be far more entertaining. Hopefully, it lives up.

Tennis Channel Second Thoughts

Now that I've watched The Tennis Channel a bit more, there are a few things that it does all right.

Unlike Tennis magazine, which used to have problems covering the stars, and so devoted its time covering places to go vacation and tennis instruction, which appeals to some, but not all tennis fans, TTC (The Tennis Channel) focuses more on tennis's stars, admittedly, leaning a bit to number 1's and the American stars of yesteryear (meaning, ten years ago).

There are interview shows where guys like Chris Meyers talks to Pete Sampras and tributes to Andre Agassi, so at least, it takes care of one segment of the tennis population, which are tennis fans that like to watch tennis stars, and learn something more about them. They recently had a special about Federer that was decent.

One thing that's sorely missing, and you know money has something to do with it, is a regular "this week in tennis" show. Right now, there's a one minute summary covering the US Open, which is crucial, if a kind of week substitute. Honestly, what's really needed is a SportsCenter just for tennis. The problem?

The biggest problem with a tennis channel, and it hurt the magazine as well, is that tennis is expensive. Players who run across the world have to spend a lot of money flying to and fro. The second problem is too many matches. Let's say, for example, there's a first round match at a typical tournament. There are 32 players, so maybe 16 opening round matches.

Now, is anyone going to assign 16, well, even 5-6 people to watch all the matches, take notes, and report on it? Probably not. Many of these are matches between two people no one's heard of. And that's no one from the perspective of those who watch tennis regularly. These are people that have heard of Davydenko, Djokovic, Kuznetsova, and so forth.

Even so, a regular show talking about the game now is important. You want to spot new players coming up. You want to see how the best players have done the last few weeks. You want people to understand who they are good against and bad against. Why does Davydenko have a zero for record against Federer even as Davydenko is like fourth in the world?

So while there are several shows that are pretty good, having something that's truly timely is also key.

There should be shows about tennis equipment (a touch subject to be sure, as it's commercial). There should be shows about how to improve your tennis, how to stay in shape. There should be a commentary show each morning about the matches played the previous day, which means there needs to be access to the world's tennis matches, somehow, or a world roving reporter at the very least.

Given all its shortcomings, what the channel has done does show glimmers of being watchable, at the very least.

Signature Wins

It seems, at least among the best male tennis players, that there is an early win that shows that they are going to be very, very good.

For Boris Becker, he won Queen's and Wimbledon in his first and second tournament. For Wilander, he wins the French Open the year after Borg won. For Sampras, when he won the US Open, he knocks out Lendl and McEnroe, when Lendl was still playing pretty well, and McEnroe was on a bit of an upsurge.

For Roger Federer, a key win was beating Sampras at Wimbledon. Although he would lose in the next round and then lose early the next year, this showed that he would eventually win big tournaments over and again.

Will this be Djokovic's signature win? He's come out of nowhere to skyrocket to the top of the ranks?

We'll see.

Joker-vich

Over the years, you've seen a few Croatians, most notably, Goran Ivanesevic. But the most famous Serbian was someone who preferred to call herself American, and that was Monica Seles.

Now, out of nowhere, comes the remarkable Novak Djokovic. Often left unsaid during the Rafa-Roger matches where the two guys met each other in the French finals then the Wimbledon finals was Novak Djokovic was in the semifinals. Had Rafa managed to win, he might have meet Djokovic for the third time in three consecutive Slams. But now Djokovic gets a chance to move forward to meet Ferrer, who gave fits to Nadal, running shots down.

And, much like Andy Roddick, one way to endear yourself to the crowd is to impersonate the ticks and mannerisms of other players.

It's rare for post-match interviews to go beyond the basic questions about how the match went, what turning points there were. But Michael Barkann is a bit of a goof, and asked Novak to do his impersonations, first of Sharapova (I wonder if Roddick has women in his impersonation), followed by Rafael Nadal, including his famous butt picking wedgie that everyone seems to know, with Djokovic playing it up to big effect.

Indeed, it's pretty heady for a 20 year old to do this, and not get too embarassed.

And the guy plays good tennis, too.

Automation Frustration

Raise your hands if you like talking to an automated system? I'm sure you didn't raise your hand. Because, of course, you don't talk to one. Its voice recognition sucks. It never has the options you really want. You just want to talk to a person.

And yet, still, companies don't like expending human effort to customer support. Yet, without fail, each time I want to call customer service, I'm forced to jump through hoops, which ought to upset me, except every frickin' company does it too.

Companies must know their customers hate it. And yet, they've invested so much, and want to pinch pennies so much, that they are willing to put up with the ire of customers, who can't navigate the system to talk to someone.

The funny thing is they'd never put up with you putting them on hold, because, yeah, there's so few of them, and so many customers. Just like the repair folks who can't tell you they will be there at a specific time, but will leave in five minutes if you aren't there in this huge gap of time they want you to be there.

Larry Craig Reenactment

This is not only funny, but the song is James Bond, 1960s, tawdry great, and it teaches a valuable lesson about cruising.

Why Star Wars Worked

They're showing a pretty silly show on Star Wars technology. It's about whether the technology used in Star Wars could exist today.

It had me thinking about why Star Wars was so successful. It's hard to believe, but it had lots of good ideas. Let's run through them.

Lightsabers. After science fiction movies had blasters and deathrays, it was pretty amazing to have a laser sword. This alone was ultra cool. But there's more.

Darth Vader. Looks cool and evil and billowy.

Death Star. Planet destroyer.

The Force. A pseudo-religion that made kids believe in it too.

The Millenium Falcon. Looked great!

Landspeeders. Floating above the ground. How did they do it?

Robots (or droids). C3PO and R2-D2. Weren't they cute?

All these things were put together in one film that had a quest story, a coming of age story, and a decent bad guy to boot.

None of the sequels (even Empire, which is generally acknowledged as the best of the series) has so many new ideas.

And that's why it worked.

Haas Has Last Laugh

You have to give it to James Blake. He makes all his matches interesting.

James Blake had taken a two sets to one lead, and it seemed that Blake would take the fourth. Except it didn't happen this way. Haas went on win a 6-0 set, and especially at 4-0, it seemed Blake wanted to skip the fourth and run to a fifth set.

And when Blake fell back one break, the strategy seemed in doubt. However, Blake tried to go for his shots more, and it took a while, but he eventually got the break back. More than that, Blake had a chance to break for the match, but Haas stayed in the game, and managed to push it to a tiebreak.

If anything, Blake's aggressiveness lead to errors. Had he not made a few errors, he'd be the one going to the quarters. Instead, Haas took a lead in the tiebreak, then eventually stretched it to a 6-3 lead. Blake then returned a shot on the line, and despite the review, it was point to Blake, 6-4. Still, with two more points to win the match, and one more point on his serve, Haas's chances still looked good.

Then, he served an ace out wide. At that point, Blake might as well review, because the match is over if that doesn't happen. The review held up, and Blake was out.

If anything, Blake's game resembles more Michael Chang than, say, Pete Sampras. Blake is very quick, and relies on a pretty decent backhand to get him out of tight spots. Blake doesn't overpower people, though he can play aggressive returns. He just does a few things a little better than other folks, and that's essentially what happened with Chang.

Blake, for instance, doesn't ace his opponents very much. He doesn't overpower his opponents very much. But he can retrieve really well, and hit decent shots when under pressure. I'd have to imagine most opponents feel they can keep up with Blake, but find it hard to put him away.

This was the kind of match that eventually fell to mental toughness. Haas really did almost choke it away, losing the break, and nearly losing the match. Were Blake a bit mentally tougher, hitting a few shots better, he'd be victor. As it is, the heir apparent to the Becker legacy is off to the next round.

Simple Man

I bought my first simplehuman product. This company, I have to admit, is pretty clever. Its name is interesting. People who get stuff want to be organized, lead a simple life. Thus, simplehuman in its lowercase lettering has an inviting name, that suggests simplicity.

At a price.

The first product it's noted for is a metallic step wastebasket for a whopping hundred--even nearly two hundred dollars. It looks nice. It works well. It's the Dyson of wastebaskets. But is it worth 10 times the cost of a cheap plastic trash can?

simplehuman encouraged a bunch of other companies, from Oxo to Polder to iTouchless, selling expensive trash cans has become the new expensive vacuum cleaners (which had prices upwards of five hundred dollars).

I wanted to get a "nice" dish rack. I got one, and it was moderately cheap, looked nice, but didn't hold dishes up very well. I realized that it's mostly an exception. I brought my Crate and Barrel squarish dish and tried it out on several dish racks at The Container Store and at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I hadn't planned on spending forty bucks on something that normally costs 15 bucks.

What made it easier was that my previous purchase wasn't so good (and I returned it), and so I was willing to spend more to get something nicer. I should have decided on size. My kitchen isn't all that big. This dishrack is huge. And I don't have that many dishes. Having said that, it is nice. And what made it nicer was the prodigious coupons that Bed, Bath, and Beyond sends like every week. It gives 20% off any single product. That's pretty good if you have a big item purchase.

And I put a 40 dollar dishrack in a big item purchase.

In any case, I've succumbed to the allure of this company. It's still plastic and metal made at a bargain. It's not meant to last through a sledgehammer or even a hot car. But for now, it's giving me a modest amount of happiness. Next time, I'd get something smaller.

Gentleman James

There's one facet of James Blake that doesn't get a lot of mention. He's a pretty sporting guy. He gives credit to his opponents. He's very polite. It's almost the kind of thing that gets a person unnoticed.

Recently, after a match with Fabrice Santoro (who's French, despite his likely Italian heritage), he complimented him afterwards on Fabrice's hustle, that he comes to play each time, and he really respected it.

Sports commentators love praising guys who win "the right way". Occasionally, you get people like Tiger Woods, Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong, Venus Williams, and such, who weren't particularly nice, even had a rough edge to them, and people defend them, nevertheless. Why?

Because they win. If they were middle of the pack players, they may get no press attention at all, or they'd be derided for bad behavior. Surprising how winning forgives all that. Michael Wilbon is usually pretty guilty of this. But then, he tends to cling to winners, and they give him access. It's not surprising that sportswriters gravitate to star athletes. Many sportswriters were failed athletes, who, like Salieri, recognize genius, but lack the skills to be genius.

They often do the next best thing, and try to hang out with star athletes, and are willing to defend their excesses because they win. And, it goes without saying that many of the athletes Wilbon has a strong fondness for are African American, and that he sees these athletes as breaking their way into public consciousness, possibly ridding the world, or the US (which is the world to most Americans) of bias against African Americans. Perhaps rid is too strong. But like prideful Italians post famous Italians in their restaurants, prideful African Americans look to their athletes.

James Blake, a bit like Tiger Woods, is of mixed parentage. His father is African American (he passed away a few years ago). His mother, who's white, was an athlete in England, came to the US as a teen. Perhaps that's one reason that he's not perceived so well, despite his slow rise up the rankings. He's not had the kind of press that Andy Roddick has had, nor quite the success.

But James Blake, like Barack Obama, may increasingly become the face of African Americans. In a way, a very odd way, this can be seen as a form of equality. For years, many would find the thought of African Americans marrying white or Asian or anything outside of African Americans unthinkable. Now, it raises far fewer eyebrows, and it's likely to continue (much as Asians intermarrying outside of Asians is likely to increase too).

Hmm, well, this entry, which was going to be about Blake's sportsmanship has turned into a stream of consciousness writing about race, and the evolution of African Americans in the US.

Strange.

Before Famous

Back before Russell Crowe came to the US, and began acting in films like Virtuosity (a Denzel Washington virtual reality thriller), LA Confidential and eventually Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind, Crowe began his career with two films that made a little buzz in the US.

One was Romper Stomper, a film about skinheads. On the flip side was The Sum of Us, a light drama about a father who tries to get along with his gay son. That was on TV this morning. I've seen bits and pieces when it's been on TV, so I know basically what it's about.

When I read about it, I had heard that it was the kind of film you didn't see in the US, and in many respects that's true. For one, although it's often branded as a comedy, it's not. It's more of a slice of life film, and eventually tells the story of the father's own mother, who had a female lover, back in the times when people chose to ignore it, and due to her old age, they separated the women, sending the mother's lover to a home, while the mother joined the family, and eventually died, days later, despondent.

In a way, it's a bit cheap to introduce that bit at the end, even as it provides motivation for why the dad tries to do right by his son.

Even so, it's quite a varied career by Russell Crowe prior to what he did in the US. He underplays the role, playing it rather matter-of-factly. The rest of the cast does more "acting", and he comes out (so to speak) as just himself. The topic is also matter of fact, and really, it's mostly (at the end) about taking care of an infirmed father.

Speaking of natural vs. artificial, I was just watching a Star Trek: TNG episode, where Wesley is about to go to the Academy. In hindsight, the story's pretty weak to do what it wants to do, which is to get Wesley to save the captain's life, and that, mostly, so he can get a few things off his chest that he's been meaning to say, and that because the writers that be want a dramatic ending.

Here's how it goes. Somehow, Wesley and the captain join a mining captain as they head to a colony. At some point, they lose control of the ship and must crash land, in, surprise, a desert. In the meanwhile, the Enterprise has discovered a garbage scow that is bleeding radiation all over. They plan to send it to the sun, but, surprise, there's an asteroid belt in the way.

There are several things going on. First, they need some excuse to prevent the Enterprise from mounting a rescue mission. Thus, radiation from a barge that threatens a planet, and the Enterprise, and add to that, asteroids. Second, they need to crash the shuttlecraft because well, we need danger. And then there's how Wesley saves Picard's life.

Surprisingly, despite how bad the plot is, the story seems to be passable, partly because the actors have been acting a while with one another, and you forgive such horrible convolutions to make it happen.

Worse than that, there is the famous Trek plot device that's simply awful. At one point, Dr. Crusher says the radiation is going to be lethal (in 30 minutes). Not only is this precise, it's a step function. Everyone, all the races on board, are equally affected. 30 minutes and they're all dead. 29 minutes 59 seconds, and they suffer no problems at all. Convenient. And conveniently stupid.

Review: Rocket Science

Jeffery Blitz directed 2002's documentary, Spellbound, about eight kids trying to win the national spelling bee, held in Washington DC every year. Most people haven't given this competition that much thought. It's not like people think of it as particularly nerdy, even though that is what it is. It's kids put to the test of pure memorization.

I say directed, even though it's a documentary. Perhaps directed isn't quite the right word as much as edited. The director still needs to decide which kids to show, how to portray the kids.

It's easy to tell that for any successful spelling bee kid, there's almost always a parent that's deeply involved. The documentary shows that women are as successful as men, that people living in the country can have as much success as those in the city, and that immigrants, particularly those from India, can be better spellers than white Americans that most non-Americans think of as American.

To be a spelling bee champ, you have to devote effort to what, in hindsight, seems like a silly task. Memorizing words. With hundred of thousands, if not millions, of possible words, this task is daunting, and on the surface, downright silly. One could argue that as silly as sports are, there's some remote possibility of making money. There aren't really professional spellers (well, there are Scrabble competitors), so people are competing just because there's a national championship.

Spelling, like many "nerdy" endeavors (I find it far less nerdy than most since it's basically brute force memorization), attracts its share of people, some less socially well adjusted than others.

You have to imagine that Jeffrey Blitz saw, in the many kids he interviewed, an angle he could write about, tell a story about.

Instead of focusing on spelling, the venue is high school debate. More than like, Blitz participated in debate. At the very least, Rocket Science, a film ostensibly about debate shows solid knowledge of this field. This is no Balls of Fury, where the sport is mocked, and likely little real research was done in this "comedy". Blitz shows he understands how debates are run.

But, like the spellers in Spellbound, this film is not just about those who spend their high school years in the pursuit of debate excellence, it asks why. Although the film does not focus most of its attention on Ginny Reyerson, the determined female debater who is also the object of Hal Hefner's awkward affections, nor with Ben Wekselbaum, who Ginny was trying to win a debate championship with, but ultimately does not when Ben reaches an epiphany about life, and decides life spent in the pursuit of debate excellence is wasted, and thus chooses not to continue the debate at the moment of victory.

Instead, it's the story of Hal Hefner, a shy kid with uncontrollable stuttering, whose parents have split up and whose older brother torments him, even as he advises him to have "agendas". He is spotted by Ginny who thinks she can form him into an expert debater.

If this were a more popular film, rather than the indie film it is, you might see Hal overcome his awkwardness, his stuttering, and reach for success. And yet, indie films learn from their more popular brethren how to build up expectations, but rip the cheap thrill we'd get from a satisfying conclusion away. It's the kind of movie that wouldn't play well in India, because it chooses a (somewhat more) honest way to deal with Hal's personal issues.

Films have the unenviable task of making you understand a story and care about the people in less than two hours. Understandably, characterization often takes a backseat to story, and Rocket Science is no exception. Hal is, by far, the most well-developed character.

Everyone else is a bit of a caricature, even if somewhat unique. Ginny, who is the second most developed character, is something of a cipher. You know she wants to succeed as a debater. Winning awards means a lot to her. It's suggested that she's willing to use her knowledge that she's a good looking gal to her advantage, that in society, ambitious women use whatever resource they have.

She's something of a fantasy character for Hal, a teen who's not only beautiful and smart, but also willing to point to the awkward guy, and feel he has something to offer. Anna Kendrick, who plays Ginny, does an excellent job in what would have to be a difficult role. First, she has to master "spreading", the fast speaking that debaters master to fill in as many points as possible in the limited amount of time given in a debate. She has to make fairly technical points, which often leaves most actors dazed, given their lack of technical background.

Blitz pays attention to the smallest of detail to make her attractive to Hal, from the backwards hand-wave, to the small tug of her rather tight jeans. You know Blitz has done this intentionally, because later, in a flashback, he repeats this scene in slomo and closeup.

Also well-cast is Nicholas D'Agosto, who simply looks the part of the debater, Ben Weckselbaum, down to a Tucker Carlson bowtie. He's smug, self-assured, a guy who has mastered the nuances of debate. He was cast in Election, a film this has been compared to.

Oddly enough, this film has been compared to Napoleon Dynamite. Where Hal Hefner is awkwardness personfied, Napoleon seems vaguely unaware that he's a complete dork. He continues plugging on, making up stories about himself and how he's this stud.

Meanwhile, Hal's life, up until he meets Ginny, is missing. His stuttering has meant he hasn't met anyone, hasn't done much with his life. He's smart, but no one, saves Ginny, sees this. And even then, does Ginny really see it? Ultimately, you feel Ginny wants to help Hal because her "breakup" with Ben has left her vulnerable, and she's a woman who wants control. By finding the worst person to debate, she hopes she can mold a nobody into a champion, and show Ben that she doesn't need the best--she can make the best.

Blitz, at least, tries to play honest. There are many tiny details showing a great master of continuity, from Hal always carrying a carry-on suitcase with him, to Hal sitting in the janitor's closet, to Hal leaving school in the middle of the day to find the locket that his brother stole, and bringing that back to Ginny's mother (and she asks "Aren't you supposed to be in school?"). Furthermore, he doesn't create a miracle with Hal, even as he leads you to think he might.

Blitz doesn't develop many of the characters. Hal's parents are ciphers. Hal's mother's boyfriend, a Korean-American judge is there for comic relief. The judge's gay son, Heston, is hardly addressed, nor is Ginny's cross-dressing neighbor, Lewis, whose parents are working their way through odd sex/marriage therapy given much detail. However, these quirky characters are at least not terribly stereotypical.

And, as many indie movies, this movie is a product of the times, recognizing that there are Koreans and Indians in American society, making references to the Kama Sutra by picture, if not by name.

Ultimately, as hopelessly awkward as Hal is, as implausible as his life is, the film is amusing and fairly honest to itself. Hal personifies many a geek who wants to catch the eye of a beautiful girl, who does crazy things hoping to win her over, and who must learn that life isn't always going be as pleasant as you imagine. Often bright people feel there is a kind of destiny for their talent, and figure the answers to life are complex, and require complex actions to achieve.

If his film works, it's partly because Reece Daniel Thompson plays this role so well, and partly because it takes a topic you never see in a film (debate) and asks questions about what people want out of life, what people are prepared to do, and whether, in the end, it's worth taking part of your childhood to push yourself to a kind of success.

It's funny and touching and well worth watching.

Angels and Demons

There are a few things in our society that seem so offensive or disgusting, that we can't imagine, just utterly can't imagine, why anyone would do this. There's stuff like rape, incest, scatalogical turn ons, dogfighting, and so on.

Just underneath this must be cruising in men's bathrooms. Indeed, if you followed any of the discussion (if you can call it that), nearly everyone, to a person, found the thought totally disgusting.

And yet, it doesn't take much thought to think someone must do it. Of course, if you find it disgusting, you can't even begin to rationalize why people do it. You can't tell yourself that there would be some thrill, some excitement, going to some place where you could get caught, and meet with someone totally random, and being a US senator to boot.

Instead, the people who find it disgusting demonize.

The people who cruise must be sick. They must be complete perverts. There's no sane way any rational person would do this. So disgusting! I can't even relate to it!

But people are into S&M. People are into rough sex. Is anonymous sex really much worse? Is it because we associate bathrooms with scatalogical functions that we don't like thinking of sex (or probably, just a quick peek or feel) in these terms?

While we can point out that Larry Craig was a complete hypocrite (which I agree) and due to his actions, closeted individuals must resort to cruising bathrooms, it does hide any intelligent discussion that some people find this exciting. Most news firms are unwilling to treat this as a serious subject, to find out what people might be interested, just as many people never found people who love to watch dogfights when Vick has dealing with the scorn (and, does PETA get the biggest boost out of this, or what?)

Too often, we demonize, because we are unwilling to believe, unwilling to imagine, that somewhere, somehow people might have a reason for doing things that the rest of us find objectionable.

The Slight Tennis Channel

I thought it would be great (not really) that they would have a Tennis Channel, all tennis, all the time. But what I find more fascinating about this channel is not tennis, but squash.

I'm watching an HBO documentary about Billie Jean King. It's this kind of documentary that should show up on The Tennis Channel. Instead the channel is much like Tennis Magazine, which seemed non-offensive. It would tell you how to get to faraway retreats, assuming you had money.

Sports Illustrated would still cover tennis in better depth than Tennis.

While the channel is nice, it's just that--nice. It could be a substantive channel too, and likely, it won't ever be. With other channels claiming the actual matches, and with no desire to stir the pot, it will be pleasant, and no more.

Larry, Quite Contrary

If you listen to the radio, you hear about Senator Larry Craig and his efforts to pick up an undercover cop in the men's room of an airport. Because of this controversy, he's been pressured to step down as senator.

Many gays have been pretty thrilled as one homophobic closeted gay Republican Congressman or senator has had to step down. They find the hypocrisy beyond belief. How can these closeted individuals vote against gay rights? Perhaps out of some deep seated guilt, they vote against what they feel is wrong, but feel utterly helpless, falling to what they see as their personal failings.

It's not really been mentioned, however, why undercover cops still go to men's rooms looking for such solicitations. While cruising in men's rooms may disgust some, is it really worth the effort of cops to try to trap guys so they can be arrested? No one seems to question this or why the men feel compelled to use this as a means of meeting people. Certainly, the danger and anonymity must provide sufficient thrills to overcome all sorts of issues.

As famous a person as George Michael was caught, and this seems nothing new to Larry Craig, who had been accused of making moves on pages as long ago as 20 years ago.

Republicans, too, show a hypocrisy, often knowing the sordid backgrounds, and yet tolerating it because of the expediousness of another Republican vote.

As they say, truth is sometimes far stranger than reality. You could almost not make this up, and yet, here it is.

Squashed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe some day.

Monkey Ball

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caan Job

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

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

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

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

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

Shake and Blake

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

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

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

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

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

But don't count on it.

Conditioned Response

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

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

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

Smile

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

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

You'd think it would be easier.

Oh stop it!

Bourne Again

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

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

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

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

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

Smart Enough to be Dumb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words Fail Me