Tipsarevic

In the 80s, shortly after Borg retired, there was a spate of young Swedish tennis players that dotted the top 100 players. This, from a country that barely has 9 million people. 9 million! The United States has something like 250 million people, which is over 25 times as populous as Sweden.

And yet, Sweden cranked out players like Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg, Anders Jarryd, Henrik Sundstrom, Joachim Nystrom, and perhaps half a dozen others. While these players claim to have drawn some inspiration from Borg, who was Sweden's star player from the mid 70s to early 80s (probably the height of tennis popularity, due, perhaps as much to an exhibition between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, as to anything else in the game).

But Borg was a loner. He played Davis Cup rarely, except at the beginning of his career, and kept his distance from most of the rest of the Swedes, who were all best buddies and rather modest about their considerable achievements.

This success was mostly confined to the men's game. You can hardly name any Swedish women players.

These things seem to go in cycles. The Spaniards have done well since the 1990s with players like Sergei Bruguera, Carlos Moya, and nowadays, world number 2, Rafael Nadal.

But the country du jour are the Serbians. The Croatians have done well, most notably, Goran Ivanisevic. However, their Yugoslav counterparts have only had a good player in Monica Seles, and she often hushed up about her heritage, as the Serbians, at the time, were into some ethnic cleansing, which is basically genocide.

But, you know, Americans barely register this kind of thing when there are no images being blared in their faces, and when it's, you know, over there, overseas. Americans are so American-centric that they barely pay attention to starvation in Africa, conflicts in Europe, atrocities in Southeast Asia.

Even as Americans have learned to become far more aware of the world, understanding this phenomenon called Bollywood, the burgeoning Indian film industry, being more PC, there's still a lot of the world Americans willfully ignore, with the news media more than complicit in this jingoistic fervor.

So, with these past events firmly in the past, Serbian tennis has enjoyed a resurgence. It's really hard to call it a resurgence given that Serbia was part of Yugoslavia, and Yugoslavia was the rebel child of the Communist countries, and many Soviet bloc countries avoided playing world tennis for many years, until the mid 80s, when players like Andrei Chesnokov, Andrei Cherkasov, and most importantly, Nathalia Zvereva, who famously waved a winner's check on national TV, a check she said she couldn't keep because of the Russian federation, which eventually yielded fewer restrictions, more take-home pay, and eventually, Russians back in the top ranks of tennis.

In those days, you had Bobo Zivojinovic and Monica Seles, and they were the forefront of Serbian tennis. These days, you have Novak Djokovic, but you also have Janko Tipsarevic who is giving Roger Federer all he can handle.

He looks a lot like a grungy Novak, with his funky glasses that resemble racquetball glasses, and his scraggly facial hair, almost as if Djokovic put on a disguise and came on court. Tipsarevic is three years older than his 20 year old compatriots.

Many Serbian players train outside of Serbia, having gone to Europe or the United States. (By the way, there have been a ton of challenges by Tipsarevic, who has won a surprising number of them).

While the men have fared quite well, the women have done even better for themselves. Ana Ivanovic is ranked number 3. Jelena Jankovic is ranked number 4. True, there's no other player til you reach about the mid 200s, but having two top ten players in the women's and three players in the top 100 (barely), with a population that's maybe a million people more than Sweden, and you realize that this is quite an accomplishment, especially as many have had to train outside of Serbia.

Occasionally, you have a player like world number 1, Roger Federer, who comes from a country (Switzerland), that is more famous for chocolates and cheese than for producing top players, and you wonder, where the heck are the other Swiss players? There's Roger, and that seems to be it (not entirely true, but other players pale in the glow of a dominant number 1).

But give this to the Serbs, they've got a lot of fight.

This is one reason (other than a nap late in the evening) that I'm watching a Federer-Tipsarevic match that has already gone to two tiebreaks, and one where Federer has ample chances to break, but hasn't fared really well.

Best Of Youth

A co-worker, whose probably about 30 or 31, noted that his sister was about 5 years younger, which would put her at 25. When you are an older brother, and your younger sibling is younger by that many years, there's, I'm sure, a perception that she's your baby sister, someone much younger. When you go to school, you note she's 5 grades back, and that's a lot of years.

He was telling this to another co-worker, just out of college, and figuring that
he is 7 years older. This, of course, means his sister is two years older than the recent college graduate. It's just that, after you reach about your mid 20s, then you look about the same age for some ten years, provided you don't lose your hair.

I've long since gone through that phase with my own brother who is less than two years younger. Given that I'm pretty old, my brother is likewise old, and so this exercise in age difference is even further pronounced. I'm starting to be in the neighborhood of twice the age of the college kid, so I don't even make the comparisons to my brother's age as this is now starting to be trivially different from my age.

I've been watching tennis since I was just a teen, which is now around 30 years of tennis. New players come around all the time, even surprisingly good players. The new player of last year was one Novak Djokovic.

Djokovic (pronounced, as best I can muster, as Joe-ka-vitch) looks pretty mature. Mature game, a bit of a joker, but ready to handle the pressures of being number 3 player in the world.

He's also 20.

Twenty!

I am pretty much twice his age. In some weird alternate universe, where I have some affair mid-college, and had a kid, that kid might be Djokovic's age now!

These days, I don't think about that age thing. I don't think about those college football players who seemed so old when I was an early teen are all about half my age.

And obviously, with these sports being a young man's game, it's only going to be more pronounced as I get older. But there's something that happens when you're closer to my age than 30, which is you start not to care. They are merely young, and you are merely old, and life goes on.

But damn, they're young.

Programming is Easy

I was asked recently whether I thought I was a good programmer. I responded, it depends on what you mean by a programmer. I talked to some folks who told me "programming is easy". Somehow, I think their definition of what programming means is different from mine.

In particular, I think they thought programming was knowing loops, arrays, pointers, and functions. Except for a few really gnarly bits, those parts are pretty easy (though you can find people who find those concepts, especially pointers, very confusing, so if it weren't easy, they wouldn't even be in the conversation).

But suppose they were told, this program runs slowly, find out why. Is that programming? They might argue, no it's not, because it's not about writing code. It's about something wrong in a nebulous situation.

Or how about this code doesn't compile? Is that programming? Programs might not compile due to a syntax error. Or a missing library. Or something much weirder. But they might argue "I didn't write the code!". You might retort "but programming is easy, so can't you read what this person tried to do?".

In fact, if you learn programming, you often don't hit these "non-programming" issues. Oh occasionally, you do, but you might say "it's not programming" and expect someone else to figure it out for you. Most people would say you aren't much of a programmer.

Programming, in its purest form, is basically about computation and memory. You have a bunch of variables. You have ways to compute, compare, move the data around.

But reality is different. In particular, most programs require inputs. That might be from a user typing in something. Or it might be from a file. Or it might be a file from some URL. The file might be a video file and you need to decode it plenty fast or it jitters or drops frames.

The input might come from a GUI button. But something goes wrong. Are you willing to read the nasty source code that makes up the GUI to understand what's going on? Or do you say "Why can't these people get their code written right?".

Even if you think programming is about syntax, most languages have some implementation that doesn't work the way you think it does. You assume one thing, but that assumption is wrong (like a compare function returns -1, 0, 1 instead of negative, 0, positive) or you think a compare function returns a boolean. Or you use OR when you meant AND.

Look at C++ templates, and things can get really hairy. It can be difficult to comprehend why a C++ string is a parameterized type taking three (count them!) parameters. Here was a case where someone wanted strings to be both containers and strings. While this has some advantages in unusual situations, it makes the common case a pain in the neck.

And tracing code that uses dynamic dispatch? A pain. And threaded programs? Evil. And tracking memory leaks? Horrors.

All these are beyond the simple assignment statement, the simple conditional, the simple function.

The universe, don't you know, is made up of atoms. And yet, these atoms can behave in an incredibly complex way. For example, all of life. Or skip that. What about stars? Or black holes? Or dark matter? Or how clouds form? Physicists try to come up with theories on how stars behave. All from a bunch of atoms.

Programming might consist of simple stuff, but people can put them together in incredibly complex ways, and because millions of little operations can run in a second, it can be really difficult to determine what's going on. How do you know what the code is doing? In theory, you can follow each and every step, but like tracking hundreds of kids in a school, it becomes an exercise in futility.

Next time someone tells you programming is easy, you probably are talking to someone that's not very good at programming, and doesn't even know it.

Or they're working with a much different definition.

Or they're a genius.

But probably not.

Perfect Day

The above are three videos. The first is a fan video. It's not spectacularly well-done, but would some people enjoy it because it's "real", that the people in the video could be some cute girls you saw in class? The second one, done by the original group shows more professionalism, as might be expected from a professional band.

The tune itself is rather infectious, and I happen to like it, though I can see where it might get irritating after too many listens (apparently used in Legally Blond).

The tune reminded me of the third clip from Harvey Danger entitled Flagpole Sitter which had some airplay when it was popular. I couldn't have told you either the artist nor the song title. I had to search it via lyrics.

Currying Flavor

Oh, punning on the word "curry".

I've decided, given there are a few Indian coworkers, that I'm going to give a hand at making some curry dishes. I've tried cooking Indian food in the past, but usually, to mixed success. Many years ago, when I first tried cooking Indian food, I had no idea what the result should taste like.

I did get some practice because I had a Muslim Indian friend (more Indian, than Muslim, but that is belaboring a point) who often would cook dinner for me and another friend, provided we'd help him cook. This usually meant dicing onions very finely. He was pretty fond of beef, but Indians, at least the meat-eating variety, prefer the meat gets infused with spices. They're very sensitive to "raw" meat taste (or presumably, even cooked meat taste) which Americans, I would guess, are fond of, as they tend to only minimally spice their meats (salt and pepper being this minimal set).

Alas, despite the many times I assisted, I never quite remembered what went in the dishes. Onions, ginger, tomatoes were as much I vaguely recalled, and that it took quite sometime for the meat to take on the flavor of the spices.

Today, I tried a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, which is a PBS show hosted by Christopher Kimball. He's also the editor of Cooks Illustrated, a magazine that looks like other fancy cooking magazines like Saveur, but is really far more pragmatic, and engineering-oriented in its approach.

In particular, these guys don't just give you recipes. They tell you how they arrived at the recipe, having experimented with 10-20 recipes before finally settling on the one they illustrate. Do these always provide the best recipes? Hard to say. But the innovation of this magazine is to make you realize that experimentation is worth the effort when it comes to finding the right recipes.

My brother gave me Season 6 and 7 DVDs of America's Test Kitchen (I suggested it to him that I wanted this series since we've mostly given up on surprising the other person and merely get something they would like). In one of the episodes, they did two curries: Indian and Thai.

You'd think the Indian curry might be more challenging, but the Thai curry was quite complex.

Oh, I suppose I should explain something I've known for a while. There's no such spice as "curry". Curry is an amalgamation of different spices. Indians typically refer to such spices as masala, the most famous being garam masala.

Masalas can be made from up to a dozen different spices. They can be selected from: cumin, coriander, fenugreek, cardamom (two kinds, green and black), cloves, cinnamon (which is mostly for savory dishes, not sweet), turmeric (which gives curry its distinctive yellow color), asafoetida (also known as hing), nutmeg, fennel, mustard seeds. This isn't even hitting chilis and salt! Or "wet" ingredients like ginger and garlic (which they share in common with Chinese cooking).

Most Indian recipes can be rather daunting. The spice list itself can be 8 or more of the ingredients.

I try to find simpler recipes that require maybe 10 ingredients total, and can be cooked in under an hour.

I tried the rudiments of a shrimp curry recipe, but replaced the shrimp with chicken.

Here's the basic outline of the recipe. Take an onion, cut it into slivers (but not diced). Heat oil, and brown the onions, about five minutes. Add tumeric (1t), cumin (2t), coriander (2t), salt (1/2 t), then add 1/2 cup of yogurt, and a garlic/ginger paste (4 cloves, 1.5 inch ginger, food processed with about 1/4 cup water or less). Once this cooks, add cilantro (coriander leaves) and water (a fair bit) and a jalapeno. Sit for 20 minutes. Add shrimp.

I asked Isha for her opinion. She suggested that I mince the onions because slivers wouldn't create a thick consistency (chopped onions can create a thicker consistency). She suggested frying the chiles at the same time as the onions so the spiciness would be sure to be in there. She didn't care for the garlic-ginger puree, preferring to mince them. She also noted that yogurt and tomatoes typically serve interchangeable purposes, in particular, adding a tang to the dish.

I tried part of her advice. I added two jalapenos instead of one, and fried them with the onions. I did the puree only because I was lazy, and for the most part, that was pretty quick.

The problem I ran into? First, the dish wasn't particularly hot. Even with two jalapenos, I found it to be pretty mild. Second, I added a half cup of water, and that made the result pretty watery.

I might try using the food processor to create an onion paste, and give that a try, instead of chopping and mincing. Furthermore, I might try a hotter chili like a Thai chili.

It tasted all right, but still, something was missing.

Faith and Hope in Charity

I have a friend who works at a company specializing in charities. Not in any one particular charity, but in many of them. It's a little bit like Esurance, that website that allows you to pick one of many insurance policy (from, presumably, multiple companies). The idea is pretty simple. You pick the charity you want to give to, and you give to it. They serve as a kind of middleman, providing some Webby widgets that can be attached to a blog or somesuch.

Here's the problem. People don't like giving to charity. I mean, not with the same passion that they want to give to other things, such as food, electronic goods, even presidential candidates.

I suppose the problem with charity is that people want to know it's doing some good, and yet, they don't have so much time to really pay attention to how their money is actually doing. Then, there's the fact that most people prefer things that benefit themselves first before it benefits someone else in some far away country.

People are, however, willing to contribute if it somehow combines something they care about. For example, Dulles Airport sponsored a plane pull. You get a team of twenty to contribute about 20 bucks, and they can all have an opportunity to pull a plane maybe twenty feet.

It's an odd task, but something a team could do, and there's some fun, despite the oppressive heat. And you can say that you are doing all this for charity.

Somehow combining something fun with charity works better than simply giving money to charity. For example, many people like video games. So why not have a competition on the Web (say, Worlds of Warcraft) where you play in a tournament, and part of the proceeds go to charity? Or how about online poker with charity?

For that matter, despite the fact that most charities try to maintain a wholesome image, why not work with the porn industry? People love porn, and spend money like crazy. Is there a way to combine the two? It seems like an odd combination, but why not?

The point is that charity, in and of itself, is not hugely motivating to most people, and that people can be motivated by other things, and then have charity as part of that. It seems like you just need a bit of imagination to make that happen.

Religion and Motivation

When I used to teach, I would notice a few students who went to church. In particular, I'd notice that there seemed to be a larger than normal percentage of Catholics that did well academically. It made me curious why.

I don't have definitive answers as I don't spend a great deal of time researching this idea, but one big idea in Catholicism is confession. I don't know how often one must confess, but the idea, as I understand it, is to go the priest (I never get the official titles of religious figures correct, so replace it with the appropriate one as needed) and confess sins.

Ah, sins. Sins are important to Christians, but only Catholics (so far as I know) are into confessions. So if you're a good kid, a good Catholic kid, then you're always feeling guilty. Should I do this? Should I do that? You look at other kids, possibly even other Catholic kids, who are, in your estimation, sinning, and you have to craft some worldview that makes you wary when you commit sins, and forces a sense of guilt, and presumably condemns those that aren't nearly as observant as you.

I have a friend who always seems to apologize for things, mostly things he didn't do. He was raised Catholic, and so I have to feel that this sense of guilt and sin still influences his personality, even now.

On the flip side, there are those who are raised in such an environment, and basically reject it, finding all this sin and stuff rather silly, but presumably after a phase of where they thought it was sensible.

The other religion that seems to emphasize guilt, but mostly through culture, is Judaism. In this case, it's the Jewish mother, who says she slaves at the stove to cook you your dinner, while you live a life of relative ease. Don't you feel bad for your poor old mother, and so forth.

Does guilt work as motivation? I mean, it would be nice if people accomplished things because they were inspired, possibly even divinely inspired to do so, but is guilt of eternal fire enough to motivate good kids to accomplish what they need to?

Now, I don't want to say that religion is the only source of motivation to get things done. Certainly, there are people who have accomplished a lot despite a lack of religion. Yet, I've also met people who have accomplished a great deal, who themselves aren't particularly religious, but whose parents are, and who, for a period of time, were also religious, before they rejected it.

Would they have been as successful had they not gone through that? Had they not been raised religious, and then rejected it?

Having not been raised religious, it makes me wonder how religion has affected people, in terms of personal accomplishments.

I know. It seems weird to combine two things like that. Religion is, one presumes, supposed to enlighten you, in some fashion. Personal (academic) accomplishments seem, for the most part, a secular pursuit. But that was a thought I had sometime ago, and only now have had a chance to write about it.

Thinking in Tennis

In most sports, you spend the beginning few years or so learning mechanics, meaning, you learn to be conscious of what you do. Some people care about mechanics, that is, the exact motion that you make to be most effective. Others simply do, and sometimes they get lucky and they don't think much anymore after that.

I fall into the category of folks that think about my strokes all the time. My forehand is all right. I can get good topspin on it. However, I lack any power on that side, so I've watched various pros from Federer to Blake to Djokovic to Agassi trying to see what I'm doing wrong. Watching pros can only take you so far because it's hard to catch the minutiae of what they do. It helps to see it live where the full 3D effect can be seen, but even then, the speed is so fast you don't catch many of the tiny things that happen, which they might not be aware of.

For example, maybe a pro holds the racquet incredibly steady at impact, or they are more relaxed, or something. Those are things you really can't see.

So my main problem with my forehand is getting enough power on the shot.

My backhand is more of a mess. I'd like a pretty heavily topspun backhand too, but that seems harder to achieve. I hit it fine moderately flat, but for some reason, I'm into the topspin.

The latest thing I've read is to treat the two-handed backhand as an off-hand forehand (for me, a lefty forehand) with the dominant hand (my right hand) as a support. When I was learning it, I did the opposite, treating it like a one-handed backhand with the top hand for support.

But in hindsight, that makes no sense. If the forehand is more dominating, then you should learn to hit a lefty forehand.

It's going to take some time to learn that, but I'm hoping it will yield results. And to think, I've been thinking about the two-handed backhand the same way for years. I've never really given the idea of a modified lefty forehand as the way to hit a two-handed backhand.

Now to get on the court and give it a try.

If only it weren't raining.

Backhand Blues

Most of the times, I'm happy enough with my forehand. My main complaint is that I don't hit it hard enough. This isn't usually an issue, except on the rare occasion I'm playing someone with a good deal of power.

But my backhand.

I used to hit a one-handed backhand, then I switched to two hands. And I've tried so many variations. I remember reading about the Mats Wilander backhand. Whoever was commenting on it pointed out that it was basically a one-handed backhand with the upper-hand for support.

The above video advocates the opposite. Think of it as an opposite-handed forehand, with the dominant hand for support. Since I'm a rightie, I'd have to imagine a lefty forehand, and use the other hand for support. I think I'm planning to give that a try.

This is really the amazing thing about tennis. There's always someone that has some advice, and something you can try on the court. So next time I'm out there, I'm going to give it a try.

On JavaSchools

Joel Spolsky is at it again. He's commented on so-called JavaSchools. He says that the transition to Java as a language for teaching programming is producing worse software engineers. Boo hoo!

He points to these other guys that do work on Ada, who are interested in finding coders that do systems programming and security programming, and wouldn't you know, they don't have the right skills to be hired for this rather specific kind of programming. And like parents who complain schools don't do a good job of teaching, but feel no inclination to do any teaching themselves, these companies whine that the graduates being produced aren't up to snuff, but aren't particularly interested in making up the difference.

Now I like Joel. I've met him, and he seems like a nice guy. He doesn't seem full of himself. I understand where he's coming from. He sees the programming world a bit like the NBA. In the NBA, only the very best survive. Many people can't cut it, and they do rather badly, scraping by, making a living playing in minor basketball leagues in the US, or perhaps playing in Europe. He knows that the best software is written by the best of the best, and lucky for him, he doesn't have to pay NBA salaries to get this quality.

I'm sure he's never had to teach an intro course, where he's responsible for getting the students to learn as much as they can, given that some lack the intellect, the drive, the tenacity to be great programmers, where, given this situation, he must still try to get these kids to be the best they can be, even if this is far, far removed from what he wants.

Would he scream to the heavens "Don't you understand you're incompetent? You can't slam dunk. You can't hit a reverse layup. You can't leap from the free throw line to make a dunk. You can't do a no look pass. You have no coordination at all" or the equivalent of this for programmers.

The fact of the matter is that programming is tough, and that teachers of programming want to believe this isn't the case. I've taught classes where students are frustrated learning about pointers and memory management and recursion and design of classes and linked lists and trees. It is so difficult, so challenging. And they spend so much time trying to track down bugs. It's as if they were learning to drive a car, but the car had all these kinds of issues that force you to actually look under the hood and do all sorts of adjustments, all sorts of repairs, instead of sitting down and enjoying the ride.

Say it, Joel! Go in front of those students at Cornell, at MIT, at Duke, and tell them that half of them (at the very least) aren't worth your time. Tell them to find a new major. Tell them they should not be programming.

Oh, perhaps this isn't the case. Maybe he is sympathetic to the programmers that aren't at the top of the heap. That they want to make a living too, even if they aren't brilliant. Maybe he feels they can have a job, just not at his company. But now the JavaSchools, as he points out, don't have the experience he wants, and now, darn it, he can't identify them.

So what to do? What to do? If the schools won't teach them programming, then he has to. Ah, but only one man! How can he possibly teach, because he might need hundreds, thousands to be taught, before he finds the few he cares about. Clearly a waste of time.

Well here's the news. There are enough professors, enough teachers, who saw the amount of time students wasted trying to deal with memory leaks, trying to deal with complex data types, trying to find errors that Java made literally trivial, so they could finally get on to actually programming something meaningful instead of dealing with arcane issues of a language that wasn't so friendly, that I'm afraid they aren't going to go back to C++.

Java, whatever its flaws, has managed to allow students to program something meaningful, and were it super efficient, maybe Joel would be using it too.

At least he's not clamoring for people to code in assembly. Remember when people wanted students to do that too? Students don't understand the machine! They need to code in assembly! What a travesty that they are so far removed from the machine! The horror!

Joel can lament as much as he want, but his solution is going to have to come from somewhere else because teachers aren't teaching to the best, but to the average student, and the average student is going to do more in terms of something rewarding in Java than in C++.

Vangelis

When I was in middle school, what was then called junior high school, I watched a PBS series called Cosmos hosted by Carl Sagan. Sagan was an astronomer from Cornell, who had a peculiar, punctuated way of speaking. There were about a dozen episodes of this series that talked about the universe and man's place in it.

For a science show, it was almost a religious experience. Sagan famously believed that there were alien beings on some faraway planet, and spent his life trying to find life elsewhere. His show also chronicled scientists who sought to understand the universe including people that were not well-known to me, such folks as Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Christian Huygens, astronomers that eventually showed that the planets did not revolve around the earth but around the sun instead (though to be technically accurate, then two bodies revolve around one another with the foci at the center of mass).

Though some of his stories were a bit hokey, such as his bicycle ride at the speed of life, it was still a key memory in my formative years.

As important as the visuals and Sagan's narrative was the music, which created an otherworldly sound. I was only to discover, many years later, that the music was composed by Vangelis who famously composed the music to Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner. For as distinctive as his music was and still is, and for as steady a work as he's managed, he hasn't penned music for many other films of note.

Indeed, Blade Runner, as visually fantastic as it is, becomes a complete experience because of its music.

The visual effects, crude by today's standards, have a painterly quality, not like the CG effects that have become commonplace among today's shows about space and the stars.

The poetic words that described a universe, the music that lifted the sights above the ordinary, which seemed awfully silly when I was in college, now seems quaintly nostalgic, some 20 years after going to college.

21

The Washington Redskins had devoted the rest of their season to the memory of Sean Taylor, shot and killed in his own residence in Miami. They needed to win all the games heading to the end of the season, and with Todd Collins, a veteran backup QB, a guy who hadn't started a game in ten years, they won 4 games in a row, and barely made the wildcard.

They earned a trip to meet the Seattle Seahawks, a team that had beaten them two years ago in the playoffs. This year, they seemed a lot more solid, despite not playing the elite teams in their streak. Matt Hasselbeck (which everyone seems to pronounce "HasselBACK") is a very good quarterback. But really, what won it for the Seahawks was defense.

The defense harassed the Redskins, hurrying, hitting, and knocking down Todd Collins. The offensive line wasn't giving him the kind of protection he's had the last few weeks. Two years ago, Clinton Portis was contained by the Seahawks, and they did a good job containing him again. Unlike the game with the Vikings where they ran against a very good run defense, Portis never quite got on track, and Collins ended up throwing.

Still, after a half, with Seattle up 13-0, there was a sense that if the Redskins could get momentum, they could still come back. Two scores isn't awful.

Then, they scored 7. And then 7 more. And pretty soon, they were up 14-13.

Then, a weird kickoff where the Seattle players couldn't handle the bounce. The Redskins picked up the ball and ran it in for a touchdown. Or not. As it turns out, you can't advance the ball in what amounts to be an onsides kick (though in this case, an unintentional onsides kick, i.e., a regular kick that the defense didn't get a hold of).

So the Redskins had the ball on the opposing team's 14 yard line, and this should be, for any playoff team, a gimme. Great field position should mean a touchdown, and at worst, a field goal. And yet again, the defense held stout. The Redskins had to settle for a 30 yard field goal, and Suisham was there to deliver a 4 point lead.

Only the ball hooked just a touch, and there was no score, and so the Redskins hung to their 1 point lead, when they had a great chance to make it 8 points and take control of the game.

Instead, buoyed by their luck, Hasselbeck drove down the field to move the Seahawks up 19-14. The decided to go for 2 points to move the lead to 7 points, or the equivalent of a standard TD and extra point conversion. That was successful, and they were up 21-14.

But it was simply one score now, and it looked to be a dogfight to the end. Except Collins lofted a long pass on a play that Santana Moss simply gave up on, figuring the play was broken, and figuring Collins wouldn't dare make the pass. Moss's defender didn't think so, caught the pass, and blazed past a befuddled Moss, and weaved his way to the endzone. 28-14. And that huge turnaround blew the momentum from the Redskins.

Let's face it, the Redskins had their chances. They blew it by not scoring, and then by turning the ball over. To add insult to injury, they turned the ball over once more for a touchdown, and the Seahawks were up 35-14.

As much as the Redskins saw their 21 point victory last week as a sign of their fallen comrade, Sean Taylor, who wore the number 21, the number 21 appeared again. This time, in a loss.

The Redskins lost by 21 points.

Stereotypes

I was watching The Sports Reporters this morning. It's a bit of a misnomer. Perhaps they should be the Sports Pundits. Four guys talk about sports moderated by John Saunders.

I've seen Saunders for years now. He appears to be African American, and if we take the term "American" rather liberally, than he still is. Indeed, Saunders is from Canada. And so his sports desires (many sports reporters were once kids that envisioned being professional athletes when the discovered either they had a greater talent to write, or that injury prevented them from continuing on a promising career) were decided Canadian. In particular, in recalling the hockey event held outside, with snow falling in the stadium, he recalled, as a youth, he and his brother going out on an ice rink, and winning the Stanley Cup.

My admittedly biased mindset generally thinks African American athletes want to either play basketball or football or on the outside fringe, maybe, baseball. But indeed, a few want to be race car drivers, or golfers, or tennis players. Heck, even lily white sports like figure skating or swimming.

Many stereotypes have more than a grain of truth. Interview 1000 African Americans and the numbers would likely bear the biases I have. But it occasionally makes you forget that not everyone is American, and that not every person is inspired by the same sport.

The Evolution of Tennis

The Tennis Channel (or now just Tennis Channel) has been showing old Australian Open matches. Right now, they are showing Chris Evert against Martina from 1982. At that point, Evert had not won the Australian (that was her first win, and she'd win it one more time, and reach the finals a few other times).

At that point, Evert was still using a wood racquet, though it appeared to be a midsize wood racquet. Martina had already started playing with her Yonex rectangular racquet, and she was probably the most prominent user of this Japanese racquet.

The change in racquets really affected women's play. Evert didn't hit particularly hard, and she wasn't fast, but she wasn't so slow either. To be fair, Martina didn't serve so hard either, though she spun the ball wide due to her left-handed serve. And let's face it, until Mauresmo won Wimbledon a few years ago, Martina was the last true serve and volleyer that was any good.

There are several changes that happen to the game, and it's a credit to Chris Evert that she stayed competitive as it was happening. In particular, with the racquet change, people started to hit a lot harder. Originally, this was Steffi, but then Monica, Jennifer, Lindsay, Mary, and the Williams sisters. The women now hit with more spin as well, though not the kind of topspin shots the men do.

Of course, even as I'm critical of their games, they were still awfully good, and far, far better than many players today. By many players, I mean the average weekend hacker, or even the above average weekend hacker. Indeed, while I feel the women have improved their games, Chris Evert and Martina would probably be in the top 30, if they played at their peaks. The power would make it tough for both women to be successful, at least, at the very top of the game. Neither were natural topspin hitters, so adapting their games would have been tough.

Last night, they showed Henri Leconte play Mansour Bahrami. Bahrami is a player from Iran and I believe never played professionally, or if he didn, he was never ranked highly. But the guy had good hands and was humorous, and certainly holds his own against seniors, so I think that's the reason you see him play seniors, which otherwise, prefers to not allow players that weren't highly ranked to play (one could imagine a college player that never made the pros who still is in great shape, being able to beat the stars of yesteryear).

Leconte looks really old, but he still has great hands. The intervening years haven't really helped his consistency though. You forget when players had such marvelous reflexes because they don't play the net anymore.

Leconte had one of those unusual builds. He was all chest, and not much legs or arms. Huge upper body. But he didn't think particularly, and he was very much a rhythm player. On a given day, more like, on a given set, he could beat anyone. But he wasn't so consistent. People forget that Lendl, as hard as he hit, could trade 20-30 shots with players. He eventually beat Connors by just being more patient, waiting for the error.

Connors wasn't even as inconsistent as Leconte. Connors would make 15 shots in a row, but push him to 20 or so, and those flat shots, with such little margin for error, were prone to break down.

The flat shot has pretty much disappeared. Almost no one hits it now. I remember loving to watch Kimiko Date play. She was one of the few players who hit flat, and she'd take the ball so quickly off the ground, and switch direction so quickly that people couldn't keep up. But she was also a head-case. She wasn't as mentally tough as Graf or Seles, otherwise I think she'd be a solid bet to be in the top 3.

Really, the flat shot disappearing, the harder hitting due to big racquets and the disappearance of good serve and volley players (or even coming into net) has been the key changes to tennis, some (especially serve and volley) are disappointing to watching the sport.

Equal Time

Do you realize how many countries have had women prime ministers? It may be because prime ministers are selected by the party, and not directly by the people (to be fair, technically, the President of the US is also not selected directly by the people, instead going through an arcane electoral college--but it comes much closer than the parliamentary forms of democracy). Pakistan has. India has. England has. The US hasn't.

Indeed, the US has never elected an African American, nor someone Jewish, and until JFK, not even a Catholic. It's only ever had one bachelor president. Reagan was the first (and only) divorced President (he had divorced Jane Wyman).

This year, the Democrats two leading candidates are a woman (Clinton) and an African American (Obama) and they represent the most serious, credible candidates ever. Geraldine Ferraro was selected as vice president. I'm sure some woman has tried to run, but no one would take it seriously. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have run, but they were, for lack of a better word, too black to be taken seriously by enough whites.

Indeed, the irony of Barack Obama running (the son of a white woman and a Kenyan immigrant) is that many perceive him not black enough. And perhaps that irony is rich enough to say that maybe skin color doesn't matter (though one has to say, it does matter, that there is still some latent liberal guilt, but to be fair, that Obama is, at the very least, a pretty good writer).

The Republicans, as usual, are far from this, never having fielded a credible African American or woman (they could have had both with Condoleeza were her reputation any better than it is, or with Colin Powell, if he had tried running) for President.

Indeed, rabble rouster Mike Gravel, who sounded more like the rant from that 1976 film Network: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!". He might have been more effective if he didn't look like some old coot from the 70s. It goes to show you that appearance matters.

Ron Paul, at the very least, sounds like he thinks about foreign policy, rather than blow off at the stack like Gravel.

Some people would complain "shouldn't we vote for the best person for President", meaning that we shouldn't vote for a person's gender or their race (meaning, they want to vote for someone white). The fact of the matter is that the best person to run is probably not running. Do we seriously believe that only these 16 or so candidates are the best choice to run the country? We might do far better off with someone who isn't so photogenic, or someone who isn't a politician of the usual order (senator, congressman, governor), even if the unlikely ideal of an economics Nobel laureate a la West Wing seems like so much fantasy.

Where are the idealists? Probably unable to muster the support of the savvy pols that are running, who know how to glad-hand, craft their words, kiss babies, and negotiate in back rooms. Indeed, Ron Paul, perhaps as uncommon as his ideals are, comes as close to anyone who sticks to some principles, even as they may not always be so palatable to many, and is single-handedly trying to reverse the neocon stranglehold of the Republican party, eschewing big-government intervention new world order for liberterian, stay out of our lives ideals.

And the public, of course, can't really be bothered to spend a few minutes learning about each candidate, perfectly content for the media to winnow the field so we can concentrate on two people rather than 8 per party.

This administration pushes the view of democracy, often hoping the word has meaning and inspiration to the grand masses, even as it strips rights in the name of security, and doesn't believe that the wisdom of the masses is often not particularly wise.

Even so, the US makes progress a little at a time. Let's hope that this trend overcomes, that two steps forward and one step back is still a net of a step ahead.

The Small Things

When it comes to elections, many of us focus on so-called "big issues". The war on Iraq (if it can be called that). Abortion. Equal rights. Universal health care.

I'd love someone who would focus on small things that could help individuals. For example, think about how I find out what my gas bill is or what my electric bill. They get some guy to go around and look up a meter once in a month. Why can't I go on the Internet and find out what my bill is at any moment of the month. Like the minutes in my cell plan, I want to know minute-to-minute what I'm spending on stuff.

And why is my heating so inefficient? Or AC? If buildings were built inside of another, I suspect it would save me even more money.

For any appliance, you can imagine it running more efficiently. We have cars with as good gas mileage as they do because California required it, and this forced the car industry to deal with it. Otherwise, many companies seem pretty happy being wasteful, doing what is profitable rather than what is right.

Look at how much we have to spend to stay connected: cell phones, Internet, television, and so forth.

There's a bunch of small things that would impact us more directly, empower the citizenry, but these issues strike at the oldest companies who enjoy profits, but don't necessarily see the benefit of making it better for us all.

Things might be better if we'd only care to make it better.

OBC

Steve Spurrier spent ten plus years as head coach of the University of Florida Gators football team. He only spent two years as head coach of the Washington Redskins. But it shows the difference between a big NFL team and a big college team.

Steve Spurrier grew up in Tennessee, but was not recruited by Tennessee. Instead, he went to Florida where he became quarterback of Florida. As quarterback, he won the Heisman Trophy, kicking a field goal(!) to win a game (he had done some kicking in high school).

When he came to Washington, people made fun of his Southern accent, as they seem to do throughout the country, except, of course in the South (and sometimes even there). Spurrier also brought two phrases that became part of the football vernacular. He brought "old ball coach" (he was the OBC) and "pitch and catch" using baseball terms for throwing the ball.

Even now, years after he left the Redskins, you hear the phrase "pitch and catch" to refer to throwing the ball. Much like "Mother of all X", the phrase derived from "mother of all wars", a phrase attributed to Saddam Hussein (now hardly ever heard, but in its time, a particularly evocative, though strangely foreign way of phrasing the Iraqi confrontation).

They just showed Heath Shuler in a bowl game introduction of the players. Heath Shuler was Peyton Manning before Peyton Manning, but where Manning had a career (to say the least), Shuler was a bust as a Redskins, and eventually decided to go into real estate and then into politics. He looks a heck of a lot like Roger Clemens though.

Today's New Year's and in addition to ringing in the new year, there's a bunch of bowl games (college football games) for teams that did well enough to qualify. January 1 games (and later) are considered the prestigious games. Tennessee plays Wisconsin.

Happy New Year, 2008!

Well, I had every intention of being asleep through New Year's, but it didn't turn out that way.

In any case, happy new year to all. It's 2008!

Movie Review: Private Lessons

Around 1980, a film (if you can call it that) called Porky's came out, and the success of this teenage raunch film lead to a series of other films following similar themes, mostly of teenage boys lusting after teenage girls. In Porky's, for example, teenage guys manage to sneak peeks into a girls showers, and hilarity ensues.

During the spate of such films, there was Private Lessons, about a rich teenage boy whose chauffeur has some plot to get money from the son while the father (the mother doesn't seem to be around, probably divorced) is out of town. He has a foreign woman (apparently a Dutch actress whose acted in a series of Emmanuelle films) try to seduce the teenage boy. There's something creepily unnerving about this

The plot itself is almost totally ludicrous, and seems to only serve to prop up the main point which appears to be to get the woman naked and have the boy sleep with her. The guy seems a bit like Fred Savage, and so it is awkward to see this happily smiling boy being seduced by an older woman, who, for her part, plays it sympathetically. Because it fit in with other movies of the genre, and because the rest of the film seems so sitcomish, it almost hides the fact that such a film could hardly be made today, given the backdrop of teachers sleeping with their students.

Indeed, were it not for its laughably dumb idea, it's perhaps one of the few movies that attempts to explore older woman, younger man relationships, if you can call it an exploration. Another film that somewhat explores this issue is Beautiful Girls, which, on top of exploring a town where no one much seems to leave, where people relive high school glory (an issue also dealt with in Friday Night Lights), explores the fascination of Timothy Hutton's character with a precocious Nathalie Portman who plays the teenager next door.

In movies like that, and, say, American Beauty, there's some sense that the guy knows that he shouldn't be attracted to teenaged girls half his age. Private Lessons, having the genders reversed, treats it as some adolescent fantasy, and is borderline sitcom about it. About the only realistic aspect is how scared he is to do it initially, which gives the film several more opportunities for he and she to get together.

European films tend to look at this rather seriously, say, The School of Flesh (though the male is a bit older in this film, and has a considerably darker history, than the wide eyed innocent of this film).

Fundamentally, it has the same appeal as Porky's, namely, teenage males that want to see nude women, and yet, wraps this in a plot that would ordinarily be far more subversive than what actually makes it on the screen, and while that hardly redeems the film, it makes it a little less than completely forgettable, and one imagines, under surer hands, it would be quite a bit more offensive or offending than it already is.

On the Edge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

History in the Making

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Echoes of Another Country

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

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

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

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

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

Why Starbuck's Isn't Evil

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

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

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

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

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

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

Searching for Wireless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have to see it for yourself.

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

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

Courier-Sampras

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time Travel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life and Times of Randall Munroe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charity Through Technology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re-review: Into The Wild

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re-review: Into The Wild

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Review: Into The Wild

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Future Tense

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that's tough to figure out.

District B13

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where On Earth Is Stuart Fletcher?

Here's an interview with Stuart.

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

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

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

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

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

Billy (Joel) Don't You Lose My Number

Funny.

Social Networking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Addendum: Linens and Beyond

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

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

Linens and Beyond

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

The two stores ARE THE SAME!

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

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

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