Mr. Clean

When i go to work, on my forty minute commute, I listen to sports radio. Once upon a time, I was good. I'd listen to NPR and fill my head with the wondrous goodness that is national public radio. NPR still gives the best five minute summary of news around. Those five minutes are better than the half hour dreck that national news provides. Why people listen to national news, I'll never know. Read an online paper.

Then, I started slipping to the dark side. I began listening to Howard Stern in the mornings. We all remember that fateful day, Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was heading to the university to attend a class, shortly after leaving the gym. It was probably just around 9 AM that morning, and I was tuned to Howard Stern. His faithful assistant Robin began talking about a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center. I thought it was some small little plane that got majorly lost, and wham. I wasn't even sure it was real, though it would be an odd thing for Stern to joke about, seeing as he prefers to talk about lesbians and such.

Then, at some fateful moment, I discovered sports radio, and I was hooked. This ended my journey to the dark side. Sports radio is, for lack of a better word, inane. Most of sports radio goes like "Should Ron Artest be banned from the game for fighting a fan? Call in. Give us your opinion". Day after day, sports radio is really sports commentary, and the closest analogy is political radio where opinions are spewed all the time.

However, sports radio is far more listenable, at least, if you listen to the right guy. Most of the times, the guy doing it (and it's almost always a guy_ is just as likely to be critical of the local sports team. Political radio, on the other hand, is always about spewing venom at the opposite side. Conservative radio is especially this way. Rather than talk intelligently about the topics, it's always criticizing Democrats (and to be fair, Al Franken does the same, but he sounds at least moderately reasonable).

In sports radio, people can often respect another person's opinion. One person may love the Redskins while the next person hates them or at the very least, is indifferent. This is why it's much easier to listen to sports radio.

My real topic is something I heard on the radio today. Roy Williams was the long suffering coach at Kansas. Two years ago, he left the Kansas faithful to go back to the University of North Carolina, where he server as assistant to the god of Carolina coaching, Dean Smith. Do I have to mention that Williams coaches college basketball? Two years at UNC, and Roy Williams finally wins the national championship beating an Illinois team that was lucky to be there. Three minutes and more than 15 points down, and Illinois claws its way back to victory over Arizona and Salim Stoudamire, one of the more accurate three point shooter in the country.

Kansas fan must have hated Williams when he left, and even more so, when he won the championship for UNC, while the replacement Bill Self, himself formerly the coach of Illinois (a bit incestuous these coaching moves), and his team lost in the second round.

Turns out that Kansas is guilty of giving money to some players, and one of the violation was under Williams' watch. Accusations were being made about how "clean" a program Williams did or did not run. His reputation is that of a fairly squeaky clean coach.

Now, what does it mean to be clean? Does it mean that you avoid providing drugs or steroids for your players? No. It's all about money. The NCAA has very strict rules on what money you can give to a player. Basically, the rule is, you can't give a player anything. Nor $100, not even $10. One kid was planning to come to the University of Maryland to play. He was considered a good player. His brothers played at Maryland. He was from Maryland.

One day, an assistant coach that was trying to recruit the kid hears the kid complain about wanting an Xbox. Parents say no. Assistant coach, wanting an in, gives the kid some money to buy the game. Now how was he going to explain that one to his parents. Well, the NCAA catches wind of this, and may slap sanctions on Maryland. Friedgen, the head coach, has to stop recruiting the kid, and basically fire the assistant coach, to prevent the NCAA from investigations from going onward.

Why must colleges be clean? If colleges were ever allowed to give money to entice players, then it would become one huge bidding war. Faculty would surely mutiny as they wonder where the priorities of the university are that would pay these student athletes so much money. Instead, this money goes primarily to the coach. Often, the highest paid state employee of many states is the head coach. A good head coach can command two million dollars in salary a year, much like Bob Stoops or Nick Saban does.

To me, it's funny when programs are considered dirty because of the miniscule amount of money that's often involved. Occasionally, you have a whopper of a sum, like in the Michigan scandal with the Fab Five, including future NBA players, Juwan Howard, Chris Webber, and Jalen Rose, where players, especially Webber, were accused of taking upwards of several hundred thousand dollars from a Michigan booster, all the while claiming how little money they had to feed themselves, presumably to throw off the scent. All this money didn't help Webber count how many timeouts his team had (ah, and that relates to Dean Smith's last national championship win as UNC coach).

I don't have a particular strong opinion about players being paid. I believe they shouldn't be paid, but mostly because I don't like seeinng the university waste its resources in such a non-academic way. I do believe players should be given scholarships for at least 6 years, so that they have a chance of completing their degree after their college career is over. I understand many don't even care about education, nor are they qualified to be students, but for the few who aren't good enough to graduate in four years, nor good enough to become pro or semi-pro, the university owes them some attempt at an education.

Frankly, I'd just as soon see college sports splinter away from universities, and run much like baseball. Basketball and football should have minor leagues of sorts. I'd even like to see the minor league teams separate from the major league, so that there isn't necessarily a farm system. I understand this may not produce well-educated people, being devoted completely to sports, but this is the sad reality of big time college sports. They want players to win, not necessarily to learn. It's not that they don't want smart, good players, it's just that way too many athletes give up their studies (not that they cared for them that much) to play sports full time (whiich they love).

The purity of college sports is pretty much a sham, and yet, so many college students love college sports. I like watching them too, even as I don't particularly care for them in principle. The networks are good at portraying the myth of college athletes. It's not exactly a myth. Division 3 players, and players from leagues like the Patriot League (Feinstein's favorite) and the Ivy League rarely have players that turn pro. Even so, there's some allure to going Ivy League sports, so that the Ivy League can get some talent that might not head to, say, the Patriot League.

Even more pure are intramural sports, played by your average college student who isn't that good. I don't mind sports at that level. The point, in any case, is to criticize what is called "dirty" in college recruiting, even if I believe the principle of why colleges ought to strive for being "clean". Consider it a necessary evil that prevents, IMO, worse evils from occurring.

Giving It the College Try

Somehow I find myself drawn to reading Creating Passionate Users blog, despite disagreeing with the tone it's written in. The latest article is moderately brilliant, at least, in the way modern journalism works.

Have you watched the news lately? Once upon a time, the news would report the ongoings of events in the US. News might even cover events internationally. Then, news had to fend for itself. It had to make profit. This was especially true of local news.

Television news organizations discovered Americans simply don't care. They stopped giving much international coverage, except when it involves a celebrity like Lady Di's untimely death. They focused on US news, and more than that, they focused on more personal stories, and especially in local news, news you can use, or at least "fear" news (do you know your fireplace can kill you?), all in the name of drawing an audience who simply turns blinders to what happens in Iraq. Even the recent events in London are, I'd suspect, seen as some distant event that happens overseas, and not worth worrying about.

When news wants to make a point, it finds someone to be the face of that point. If there's problems with unemployment, they find Ms. Jane Doe, who works at a megalomart department store, which used to sell American products, but now sells cheap imports. Workers are told to work more hours, with less pay. You see crying kids at home, as she laments about how she can't pay to feed her children.

You want to make a point? You tell the story of one person, and people will believe the story is typical, and true of many people. As news-telling goes, it's a sloppy inference, but it says as much of the lack of news savvy that the audience falls for this rather than use their noggin. This is what news organizations are reduced to when they want to get your attention.

Recently, in the article I linked to above, Kathy writes about whether college is all that important. Her big kick is passion. As she points out, she's an evangelist for passion. She's read about studies that show college isn't what it used to be, and I'm thinking, what is this woman smoking, but I'm intrigued.

Finally, she gets to the crux of her story. It's her daughter. She doesn't want to go to college. She wants to go to cooking school. She wants to cook. That's her passion. That's what she believes in. And she figures, it's not so different from her mom (Kathy) who got a degree in exercise physiology, or as the daughter describes it, a glorified aerobics instructor.

In the end, Kathy makes her point brilliantly because it's her daughter who convinces her that what she's doing is right, and she appears like the caveman in the story, clinging to old ideas, even though the daughter epitomizes Kathy's sense of passion.
This is great.

Except it's not. I mean, I feel happy for her daughter, and I'm sure she's doing what she wants, and that's fine. I don't begrudge that. However, just because her daughter isn't passionate about college doesn't mean college isn't necessarily right for many students who are able to go to college, and I'm even talking about those who are passionate for it.

To give you an example, how many people want to write books, or act, or announce for sports games. I have a housemate who is good enough to do sports announcing (I believe). He's insightful. He's personable. I also believe thousands of people are similarly passionate and skilled, but due to the few numbers of people who are allowed to make a living doing this, it makes no sense for my housemate to pursue this passion. It just doesn't. He's skilled enough to do a job he may not love, but will pay him plenty well, and give him time to do things he does love.

What if the thing you're most passionate about is something you can't make a living at. I know people who play poker for hours or video games for hours. Sorry, they can't make a living doing that, and it may not even make sense for them to do so. We'd all love to be passionate about something, but sometimes, people lose that.

And what happens to people who simply want to sit on a beach sipping drinks with little umbrellas ordering around poolboys (or girls) to attend to their every need. The thought of passion is the furthest thing from their mind. Are they out of luck? Are they the losers in our society?

Look, I want to believe in this passionate society that Kathy espouses. Clearly, it works for her (especially if she were into aerobics). But passion is a tricky thing, and is the equivalent, in my mind, of wanting a highly romantic marriage. It can be highly idealized, and therefore, extremely disappointing to those who can't achieve the fairy tale success.

Now just because I'm down on this idea of passion doesn't mean I believe people shouldn't try or shouldn't care. Just do it with your eyes open, and your brain still a thinkin.

What a Tangled Web

This is one of those posts that won't exactly appeal to anyone I hang out with. To them, it will seem trivially simple, and not worth talking about. I'd agree except I feel like teaching something on the Web, and this is something I found surprising when I first learned about it.

You're reading this blog in your trusty webbrowser. Have you wondered how the webpage arrived there? What is going on that allows you to see this page? A browser is a sophisticated program, but allows you to perform powerful operations rather simply. For example, if you know where my webpage is located, you type in the URL into the browser, and bam, you get a webpage.

What is a URL anyway? In a nutshell, it's a name for some location on the web. To find the location on the web, one needs to consult the equivalent of a directory service. Think of a phone book. It maps names to phone numbers. You use the number to call up whomever. Similarly, there's a service that converts, say, www.blogger.com to some "address" called an IP address.

Then, your browser attempts to connect (this is like making a phone call) to the server. Connect is perhaps not quite the right word. It sends a message to the server, such as, give me a webpage. If the server is a webserver and if the page is legitimate, it sends it back.

Now what's a server? A server is a program running on a computer, connected to the Internet. A server typically has a set of tasks it can perform, such as, get webpages. To understand your request, both your browser (which is called a client) and the server have to agree on how to talk to each other. For browsers and servers, they agree to talk to each other using HTTP which is a protocol.

Perhaps you've heard of people saying that computers are merely 0's and 1's. That's technically true. However, those 0's and 1's mean something. It's just like saying people who communicate only ever use the English alphabet, numbers, and maybe some punctuation. Yes, but you can combine them to make words.

Unlike people, computers are dumb, but extremely quick and precise. So, if you make a very precise request using an agreed upon protocol (such as HTTP), then a server who knows that protocol can respond back. Even if the server understands what is being asked of it by the browser, there's no guarantee that it can provide it. To give an analogy, there are some libraries, mainly university libraries, where you tell the librarian what books you want, and he goes and gets them for you. Suppose you give call numbers of the books you want.

It's possible that someone has already checked out the book, or the call number is bogus. Either way, even by following rules, the librarian, who acts as the server, may not be able to accomodate the result.

How many of you even realize there were servers? Before the days of online shopping, you could easily have imagined that your computer had "access" to webpages elsewhere, and somehow "retrieved" them. However, a more accurate model is that there is something (in this case a server) that processes your request, and sends them back.

Have you ever heard of a web spider? From the sounds of it, a web spider is some 0's and 1's that goes from computer to computer, like a paper boy delivering papers. That's not what it is at all. A web spider is much like your browser. It makes a request to get a webpage from some server. This webpage is sent back. It checks the links in the webpage, and then makes request to other servers to get the contents of the links. The only trick is to avoid getting the same pages over and over, which can happen if webpage A refers to webpage B which refers to webpage C which refers back to webpage A.

Thus, a webspider only ever operates from your home, and is more like a telemarketer who sits at a phone, and makes calls to other people.

A browser typically makes multiple requests per webpage. For example, suppose you request a webpage. The server is going to send something written in, say, HTML. The browser looks at the content and notices, say, images. The images aren't images. They are URLs of images. The browser must then make another request to get the images based on their URLs.

For example, suppose you have a webpage that shows your cat and dog. The files are called cat.jpg and dog,jpg, and you have some text describing the cat and dog. You give your friend the URL for your webpage. They type it in their browser. They get the file back, but it only contains text written as HTML. It doesn't contain images at all. Instead, it has URLs for those images. The browser recognizes this, and makes more requests to get the images, and then puts it in your browser.

It does this so quick, you often don't notice.

Webpages are often files stored away on some computer, which you can refer to by URL. However, there are times when webpages can't be stored this way. For example, think of Google. It can't know every single Google request you can make. When you ask it to locate information about baby penguins, it does a sophisticated search, determines which webpages are relevant, and returns a webpage that is made on the fly.

There's no close analogy to this. But I'll try to create one. Suppose you go to a CD store. You make a request based on feeling like "sad songs with piano". The guy figures out what songs fit the category, and burns you a CD with those songs. The CD isn't there ahead of time because you can make any unusual request, and there would be no way to have every CD of every possible request. It's more efficient to make the request, figure out the songs, and burn the CD.

These on-the-fly webpages are called dynamic webpages. It's not because they are "dynamic" and exciting. It's because the webpage isn't created until you make the request. And the webpage isn't even saved. There's a temporary page made, and sent to your browser, but it isn't kept permanenly on the server. If you make the same request again, it may have to recompute the webpage.

The kind of communication I've been talking about is called client-server. Your browser is a client. A client makes requests. A server honors the request. A protocol is used to let the client communicate requests to a server, so both sides knows what's going on.

The alternate form of communication model is called peer-to-peer. This is when it's not entirely appropriate to call one side a client, and one side a server, since the computer does both. Perhaps a useful example of this is Bit Torrent. The basic idea behind bit torrent is that you make a request for some file, often it's music or a video, but it can be anything really. As you make the request, some pieces of the file are downloaded on your computer, possibly from many different computers. In the meanwhile, if the request is suitably popular, then the pieces on your computer are being copied to other computers who also want the files you want.

Why is this good? Suppose, at any one time, there are 10,000 people who want to have an article about baby penguins. You are downloading this lengthy article. Since so many people are in the process of downloading it, you can get pieces of files in parallel from many different sources. Perhaps up to 10,000 people could provide you part of the file. Meanwhile, other people can get your pieces.

The great thing is that Bit Torrent does all this for you. You don't have to figure out how to break the pieces of your file down. You are also both client and server. You are requesting a file, but Bit Torrent is also serving it to others. This is what is meant by peer-to-peer.

What's just as amazing is the Internet itself. So you are on your browser at some point in the Internet. The webserver is at another point. What connects the two sides? The Internet! Fortunately, it's not so hard to understand because there's a great analogy. The phone system. You can talk to your friends or to a business or whomever. It's the job of the phone company to provide the service to connect you. It doesn't care what is being sent on the telephone wires (for the most part). Similarly, the Internet doesn't care what is sent along it.

The Internet, interestingly enough, does not have a central command. It is distributed. The reason for this had to do with something you wouldn't expect. War. In particular, nuclear war. It was thought that if the control of the network was not centralized in any one location, then an attack would not knock out the Internet. It could always reroute to sections of the Internet that were still working.

Since there is no central command, people love it, because they see the Internet as the freest kind of speech. This is one reason for the multitudes of blogs.

There's your lesson about the web.

Style vs. Substance

This is a followup to an article I wrote about
Teaching and Learning. As I mentioned in a previous post, I find the style of hard to deal with, even as I generally agree with what's said.

I read a followup comment that was intriguing, that I agree with as well. Many teachers just feel they must "cover" the material. They would cover this the same way regardless of audience. To effectively teach, you need a feedback loop. You need to know whether what you're teaching is making sense to enough students or not.

If not, you need to adjust what you do to be more effective. In all likelihood, you have to talk to students and see what's going on. Instead, what usually happens, at least with old school profs is that they blame students for essentially not being good enough.

On the one hand, students are what they are, and you have to work with what you have. If they aren't as experienced or talented or driven as you would like, you have to do more work (and many teachers are not looking for more work). On the other, students do need to improve their skills as students.

This means, as a teacher, you need to figure out what skills students have to have. You need to learn how students learn. Then, you need to adjust your teaching to maximize this learning.

Teachers often think of themselves (and I'm mostly referring to college profs, since high school teachers and below often have education degrees) as fountains of knowledge, and all they do is pass this knowledge on. They don't think about the student as being someone who learns and that the teacher bears some responsibility in helping students to learn, not just to learn the material.

Teaching is harder than people think. It's not simply a one-way transmission of information.

Cell Mate

How many ways do we have to communicate? Let me count the ways. First, people talk to each other face to face. Then, there was the letter. Technology provides us the three ways to communicate: by phone, by email, and by instant messenger.

Of all the ways to communicate, people seem to prefer, by far, to meet in person. You get to see a person's face, their body reaction. You can do non-verbal things such as throw a football or watch a movie.

The phone creates an interesting social dynamic. People are forced to talk on both ends. It's rare for the conversation to have a pause lasting more than 15 seconds. In fact, people get so uncomfortable with pauses in conversation, that someone needs to talk, or at least, to reaffirm that they are still connected. I know many people who can't stand using the phone. Guys in particular seem to use the phone primarily to arrange events, never just to talk to one another.

Women tend to use the phones more just to talk to friends. There's the stereotype of the daughter who has to talk to her friends for hours at a time, gossiping about guys and actors and singers that are cute. I'm sure there are some guys who also find themselves hooked on using the phone, but I suspect numbers are much smaller, because guys have a sense of homophobia. If they're going to talk to someone, they'd prefer to talk to women.

The reason people don't like using phones is because it's almost always an interruption. You can't tell if the other person is watching TV, or eating dinner, or sleeping. Assuming people have things to do, even dull things, conversations on the phone are a pain. And because of the need to keep the conversation flowing, shy people especially, avoid the phone.

I'm going to get back to phones in a moment, because there's a "new" technological development. At least, new relative to the time phones have been in popular use. You know what it is, but I'll speak to it momentarily.

Letters used to be much more popular than they are today. Sending letters is still fairly cheap, but it's the slowness of sending letters and the huge amount of effort it takes to deliver mail. In the old days, you had to write your letter,
and it was usually a few pages long, then find a stamp and envelope, and drop it at a mailbox or a post office. Later on, the mailman would come and pick up mail at the post box. After all, they were right there.

Mail would take 3-5 days or more to get to its destination. This meant turn-around time was slow. In general, people would write infrequently, but write long letters. These days, who bothers? I mean, can you even remember the last time you wrote a letter? We still get snail mail because folks who send out bills still seem to use regular mail. It's sad we
even get real mail these days. We should only get it for packages, not bills.

Email basically killed letter writing. It's much easier to fire off an email whenever you want. If you own a computer, it takes a minute to write it, and off it goes. What's more, you don't need postage, no stamp, and it's delivered near instantaneously. But because it's so quick, there's little need to write lengthy emails. Where, once upon a time, men and women of breeding wrote stylized letters filled with flowery turns of phrases, and thoughtful bon mots, an email might consist of a sentence or two.

Despite the speed of email, replies aren't always quick nor forthcoming. While neophytes to email believe that once you receive an email, you should reply right away, there are many people who let mail sit in their inboxes, possibly, never even replying to it at all. I have sent "invites" to friends, who decide, rather than decline the invite, simply not to reply at all. Certainly, people don't put a great deal of thought writing email. Only occasionally, when someone is trying to woo someone else does email get to be longer than a paragraph or two.

Ask yourself this. When's the last time you write email more than five paragraphs long? And not to complain about the quality of some service?

Some people like email, but unlike the phone, there's nothing compelling the other person to reply. On a phone, both sides must talk, or else the conversation is likely to be very short. On the other hand, with email, it's OK, if mildly rude, not to reply to an email. Response time for email is typically a day. Unless it's something urgent, two people are not likely to exchange 2-3 emails a day. Perhaps exceptions are made if they are romantically involved. I know, there are likely to be exceptions, but that's all they are---exceptions.

In between the immediacy of a phone, and the somewhat slow pace of email is instant messenger. It's a particularly compelling form of communication. While you would think it would have the immediacy of a telephone, people use IM when they use a computer, and people use computers to play games, watch movies, or surf. Furthermore, unlike a phone, you can be in multiple IMs at the same time. A person can be deeply involved with one conversation while ignoring another.

The protocol for IM is odd. People can leave the conversation at any time, and do. For example, I might decide to watch television, or do laundry, or talk to my roommates. I can leave IM conversations right in the middle. Now, a few people are polite and let you know when they are headed away from IM, and can't talk to you, but many don't. I must admit, I'm in the camp of people who don't. Furthermore, unlike phones and somewhat unlike email, you can block people on IM.

Again, some people dislike IM for conversation. They don't like the interruptions, and by it's very nature, it's not good for deep or lengthy thoughts or stories as letter writing is. In fact, letter writing and possibly talking in person seem to be the only two ways to discuss anything in detail, and that's only if you're good at thinking on your feet.

I find people don't like to IM much, and if they do, it tends to lean to people they're interested in, as in possibly romantic. Again, I don't doubt there are people who talk to their friends all the time in IM, and have conversations lasting hours, much as they have phone conversations that last hours.

I have friends, pretty much all male, who can't stand any form of communication except face to face. I know I like that better, but there are times, when you are not in close proximity to another person, and alternative means of communication must be used. Think about what you say in email, or IM, or anything compared to what you'd say as a person. You're far more likely to talk about even the most mundane thing in person.

The funny thing about being in person is that you're generally interrupting that person too, and often for an hour or so. I find that if I haven't seen a person in a while, I can find out a lot more about what's happened to them if I speak to them in person. What people are willing to say in person is often much more than what they're willing to say in email or IM. I think there's a social pressure in face to face talk that makes people need to talk, much like on the phone. While it's easier to be quiet in person, it's still not like IM, where you can simply walk always for half an hour or an hour.

OK, now i'll get back to the phone. This time, I want to talk about the cell phone. Gad, what an awful name. I much prefer the British term of mobile (pronounced as mo-bile as in the bile of liver). Cell phones allow you to do things that were once rather impossible. You're driving to visit someone, and you're lost? Call them up! Or you're running late? Call them up.

Or you're bored? Call up a friend! Or you're supposed to meet someone at a game, and can't quite find them? Use the cell phone to negotiate a common location you can meet. Cell phones provide an insanely convenient way to coordinate meetings. Yet, they also lead to people who need to call others whenever.

Consider this scenario. You're with your friends. You get a cell phone call. It's from a good friend. Do you answer? Some people find the act of talking to anyone on a cell phone while they are with others rude. Others find it rather natural, and go ahead and talk. Which one are you? If you see it's a good friend, and you're, say, waiting for food, will you leave your party and talk to this person? There's different notions as to how rude this is.

I do find that cell phones do not make guys any more likely to call others. Again, if they dislike calling friends on landlines, the cell phones are no better. Yet, there are those who are frightfully addicted to phones. Imagine the following scenario. You are without your cell phone. Your landline is down. Are you in a panic? Why do you need to talk to that person so much? Why are you so distressed? If it bothers you so much, then you're probably an addict. I suspect I'm a minor addict. I like talking on my cell phone, but usually to pass time while I'm travelling. Alas, that's the most dangerous time to use a phone.

Cell phones are right at the point of an interesting issue in etiquette. I've seen a restaurant that doesn't want its customers talking on cell phones when they are orderig food. Of course, movie theaters have long insisted on no cell phones on in the theater. How many of you can simply ignore your cell phone if someone calls. I mean, you don't look at the cell phone, not even to see who it is. This is how important the cell phone is to some of you.

The phone, email, IM. All of these are ways for us to get closer to one another. Some of us embrace this technology. We simply love it. Others can't abide by it. They insist on the traditional barriers of communication. No communication except face to face communication.

The only successful form of communication I see is two fold: the chat room and the interactive video game. In a chat room, you deliberately decide to go into a group for the express purpose of talking to others. I used to be addicted to this, but I found the conversation became repetitive and unusual. In particular, since the room was semi-anonymous, people pretended a great deal. Maybe they weren't the gender they said they were, or maybe they said they were 15 when they were 60. Or 20 when they were 15. Then, if the room permits private chats, you find people sending private messages to the most popular.

In a room where people can enter anonymously, and leave whenever, you see a great tempation to be someone you aren't. In real life, it may be tougher to make yourself taller, or stronger, or more beautiful, or more eloquent, but in a chat room, you can pretend, and people do. Rules about honesty seem to break down. Rules of etiquette too. People are rude because there's less repercussions for being rude. A person who would never raise their voice in real situations (out of fear) might chastise someone in a chat room.

The anonymity has an interesting flip side. Some people find themselves far more honest. They can reveal many personal issues. The people in the chat room won't necessarily throw it back in their faces. They act less judgemental, and best of all, if you are anonymous, you can just leave whenever. People who are closeted or simply shy can act far less shy in a chat room, because there are no repercussions. The rules of etiquette seem to break down, and it can eventually become this din.

If you've ever seen a busy chat room, it's not so much a conversation as it is many people yelling, trying to say one or two words here or there. If the chat room is sufficiently small, say, 4-5 people, and people are willing to talk, then it can actually be quite engaging.

I suspect there's something similar in networked video games, even though most of the conversation, I'd imagine, centers around the game itself.

I find the topic of communication in the 21 century compelling. Why do some people still reject these forms of communication? What does it say about their relationship with communicating? How do social conventions break down in chat rooms or over IM? We can now easily log conversations. What does that say?

You would think that alternate forms of communication would give us more ways to talk to one another, and to some extent, it has done exactly that. Yet, the quality and form of communication seems to have changed. It's not nearly as fulfilling as one would hope, and yet, it can, at times, be curiously addictive, and not necessarily in a positive way.

Ah, yes, then there's the blog, the one way communication to the world, where I stand on my soapbox (do they even exist anymore), and shout to the world. Does the world even listen? Does it even care? Do I even care? Maybe that there's some offchance that someone hears me is good enough. Go out into the forest, and listen to the trees drop, will you, my good man? Don't trip over that cat.

Strawberry and Pimms

You know you're a real blogger when you blog away from home. Ideally, you're in some cybercafe in some exotic city, uploading images, recounting stories of the day's adventure.

This must mean I'm a real blogger. I'm blogging from Seattle. Outside of the DC area and Tennessee, where I grew up, Seattle is the city I'm most familiar with (OK, there's Ithaca, but I haven't there in years). There are times I think I'd like to move out to Seattle, having lived in the Maryland area for 15 years. Most of the people I know live in Maryland, but I know quite a few people who've migrated from Maryland out to Seattle.

Seattle is a city, and yet, it doesn't feel as urban as other cities. There's less crime, the people are friendly, there's more of an environmental feel. Sure, there's the bane of all cities: traffic.

I've never been much of a vacationing type. It has, I suspect, much to do with my temperament of wanting to feel safe and secure, and by that, I mean to be around friends and people I know. I have a friend who likes the unknown, who would go to a place because it's new and there's no one there he knows. I don't know why people particularly enjoy that, but he does.

Ever since I became employed full-time and therefore vacation became a scare resource (go USA! ...and I mean that rather cynically), I figured I should take vacations. Except the only place I want to go is Seattle, and it's all the way across the country, which makes travelling to and fro a mini-ordeal.

I should put on my tourist hat and just venture to Seattle, and see stuff, but that kind of vacationing is stressful. I don't mind spending a quiet day at someone's place.

Today, I caught the ladies final at Wimbledon. This seemed strange to me. But before I relate that story, let me talk tennis.

The most successful sports in the world are team sports, because they take the sports out of sports. By that, I mean that a team sport relies on fans to support the team---not the players. The quality of play, the players, none of that matters, provided the team does well.

Washington loves its Redskins, and yes, it manages to love them even as they can't seem to win. But if they had to give up Arrington and give up Sean Taylor (is he even there anymore), but they could win, would the fans care? I mean, that's what it means to follow a team. The team represents the city. The team represents the fans. The team is an extension of the fan, and in the end, the fan doesn't care how the team wins, only that it does win.

Tennis, on the other hand, is personality-driven. You like a player or you like the way a player plays. As much as Billie Jean King wanted to bring a team concept to tennis, she couldn't attract the top-named players, nor fans, nor make it anywhere near as important as the big tournaments like the French Open or Wimbledon or the US Open.

Like golf, tennis fans like seeing player for years. This is why people root for Martina even though she's closer to 50 than 40. They want Henman to win. They want Agassi to win. Fans like players, Sometimes they like their looks (eg, Kournikova or Sharapova, but even Edberg or Roddick). This makes support difficult. People loved Steffi Graf and Monica Seles. Once both faded from popularity (basically through retirement), these fans may not feel the same passion for any other player. You have to look for new players. Teams, on the other hand, have some permanence.

For example, Redskins fans have supported their team for years and years and years. Much longer than anyone could support a tennis fan. Perhaps in golf, where a player in their 50s might still win (except these days, strength seems to be important it's become a game for the young).

In order to watch tennis, you need cable. Without it, you don't get enough tennis on network television. Even the major events are only covered on weekends. To get daily coverage of Wimbledon, you need ESPN. If you want to see the US Open, you need USA Cable. Networks tend to cover Wimbledon like they cover the Olympics. They understand that people don't just want to see competition, they want to know the people behind the competition.

This is why Henman has such popularity. Everyone knows he carries the weight of British expectations to win Wimbledon. And yet, he played at a time when players like Sampras or Ivanesivic played. Henman always played above his abilities at Wimbledon. He was not a great player, yet, he was a very good player. If he just had a more powerful serve, or a better return, that might have been enough to win just one Wimbledon. It's amazing that one of his closest attempts to win a major is last year's French Open, when he made it to the semifinals. A confirmed grass-court player, who would have thought he could win on clay? It would have been a story of a lifetime, and yet, it was not to be. The clay court specialists are just too good in this day and age.

Henman lost in the second round, his earliest exit since 1995. Henman was often good to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. In many ways, Henman was what the Brits did and did not need. For years, Britain had few good players. Remember John Lloyd? Chris Evert's husband? (Er, first husband). He was one of England's best players. For a long time, the criticism was that Brits were too nice to win at tennis, that they needed to be meaner, a la Lleyton Hewitt.

Henman had the kind of game that could win Wimbledon. He had a good serve. He had a good volley. He could hit groundstrokes all right. He also had the misfortune of playing when Pete Sampras played. It's not so much that Sampras was 1 and Henman was 2. Henman tended to play much better at Wimbledon than anywhere else, but he's more like a #5 player in the world at best. He doesn't have the serve of Ivanesivic nor the volley of Edberg nor the groundies of Agassi.
Year after year, he'd give Brits hope, and year after year, he'd bow out to someone better.

This year appeared to be the changing of the guards. Henman was eliminated in the second round, and the Brits wanted someone else to cheer. And that someone was Andrew Murray. Who is Andrew Murray? I had no idea until I watched the NBC telecast of Wimbledon. NBC devotes part of its telecast to introducing the new faces of tennis. It makes sense for them to do this, especially for the folks who only watch Wimbledon and US Open as their tennis fare.

Murray survived one round longer than fellow Brit, Henman, losing to one-time Wimbledon finalist, David Nalbandian, of Argentina. Since Murray is only 18, young by male tennis standards, and Henman is 31, old by tennis standards, there's new hope that Murray can accomplish what Henman couldn't. Still, I have to admire how well Henman played without winning the big one. He thrived, for the most part, under the intense scrutiny of British fans, in a sport that the Brits were never that good at, save, Fred Perry.

If I enjoy Wimbledon, or tennis, in general, I can squarely put the blame on networks like NBC. I know. True fans only care about the game being played, and not specials about players, but the networks are right to believe that fans want to know who the players are, want to like them, want them to follow fervently, wishing players well. Without segments telling us who these players are, you'd never get to know them.

And, for all of that, I do believe fans watch tennis more for the quality of the game than anything. Fans that are bored by tennis only need watch, say, baseball. I know, I know. Baseball has a thrill all its own, but only when the games matter. Regular season games are not worth watching no matter how tight the game. I found it exciting to watch the Red Sox come back from 3-0 down to the Yankees, then win two games in the 12th inning on David Ortiz homers. But if I didn't know about the many years of futility that the Red Sox had to endure, or that they were making this comeback over the hated Yankees, I might simply not care.

Tennis can be that way too, where you watch two players you simply don't care about. However, there's intense drama in tennis as well. After a highly disappointing French Open where Mary Pierce simply collapsed against Justine Henin-Hardenne, I could only hope that Venus Williams and Lindsay Davenport could play a great match.

Ah, Mary Pierce, you remember her. American dad. French mom. Grew up in Canada. Went to train at Nick's in Florida. Dad was a bit psycho, you see. Liked to rough up fans who didn't like her daughter. Made her practice in the rain when she didn't do so well. Poor Mary always looked so distressed. Then, Mom did the sensible thing and kicked dad out, and the WTA banned dad from attending tournaments, and Mary was happy and winning.

Except Mary, much like her psychological twin, Jennifer Capriati, is inconsistent. Both girls hit a ton. Both girls have had problems with parents. Both play well when they play well, and play badly, just as often. One day, Pierce plays well, then disappears for months at a time, and the next day Capriati plays well. Neither quite reached their potential, though one wonders whether Capriati's inability to deal with her personal demons had much to do with that.

Of the two Williams sisters, Serena is considered the more talented. Daddy Williams said it was so, and it turned out he was right. Yet, after the meteoric rise of the two sisters, who often played one unwatchable major final after another, the nerves of playing one's siblings often too much to bear, the two have had problems. Injuries and a possible downturn in interest in the game has meant neither player has won a major in a while.

Serena lost in the second round to one Jill Craybas. Who is Jill Craybas, you say? Never heard of her? Probably no one outside her mother and doubles partner had either. Craybas is 31 years old, and has generally never made it past the second round of any major. Her current rank is 85, and her highest rank is about 50. She's in the range of players that are solid, but never good enough to challenge the top players. In tennis, terms, she's a journeyman, the equivalent of, oh, I don't know, maybe a Luc Longley? Pick someone that sits on the bench a lot in the NBA, or is a role player.

85 is a respectable ranking. How many women can say that only 84 players are better than them? Yet, she might eke out a living, just making 6 figures. That sounds like a lot, but realize a player might have 10-15 good years of play time, if even that, and that travel costs and coaching adds up.

She had no business playing close against Serena, and yet close is how she played. Serena should have hit her off the court, overpowering her, and yet Jill stayed in the match. She eventually closed the match in a second set tiebreak. For a player like that, winning against Serena is like Serena winning the US Open. There's no chance Craybas gets even a whiff of the finals. Usually when a player like that comes out of nowhere to win a match, that's it. The next round, they're out.

The exceptions are rare, and usually budding talents like when Becker wins Wimbledon at 17, or Wilander wins the French at 17, or when Chang wins the French at 17. It's rare for a 31 year old who's never had much in the way of tennis success suddenly plays the tournament of a lifetime and wins. And Craybas was not going to be an exception to that rule. In fact, she had to answer to big sis, Venus.

Venus hadn't reached the finals of a major since 2003 and hadn't won since 2001. It had been a drought for someone of her talent, and there was questions whether she'd ever regain the form that lead her to two majors in 2000 and 2001. In the final, her opponent was Lindsay Davenport.

Davenport has a had a very solid career. She's won three majors, though never more than one in a year. She's maybe like Patrick Rafter. She's strong enough to make it to semifinals, but has a tough time closing the deal. She's a big girl, with big strokes, but never moved that well on the court. Although she shed a few pounds in the latter half of her career, her speed was not a big part of her game. She's never had the kind of adoration that Venus has. She's not particularly pretty, which hurts in a sport where fans go gaga over Kournikova and Sharapova. Even Steffi Graf had her admirers. Not so with Lindsay.

Both Venus and Lindsay are tall women, standing six feet plus. Both had something to show. Venus wanted to show she was back to top form, and Lindsay wanted to break through, and win one before her career winds down. Even at her peak, winning majors didn't come easy for Lindsay. And this was a great match.

Lindsay took the first set rather handily, and looked well on her way to winning the second. In the second, Lindsay had the match on her racquet: she just had to hold to win. Venus broke at love. She managed to take the tiebreak, and forced a third set. The third set was close, with Davenport serving up. Then, fortune broke Venus's way. Lindsay got injured around 4-all. She was hobbling, and it felt like if Davenport didn't break, Venus would eventually do so and win.

Lindsay knew this better than anyone, but it was so hard to break. In fact, she did quite well on her serve, holding it fairly easily, and even getting some chances to win it in the third. But Venus was resolute. As much as Davenport tried to stay in the match, she was hurt, and couldn't run. Perhaps it's good that Lindsay was never all that mobile to begin with, and the injury wouldn't have affected her as much, but it was clear that it was a problem. Rather than go for acute angles, Davenport began hitting shots up the center, if only to prevent Venus from hitting her angles.

In the end, Venus got her break at 7-all, and served out the match at 8-7. As much as some fans despise Venus (though most have warmed up in the many years she's played), there's no mistaken the unbridled joy that Venus gets when she wins. It was something she hadn't done in 4 years, and this didn't seem like the tournament where'd she'd hold up the gold dish that serves as the women's trophy, yet, there she was.

Lindsay has to be shaking her head wondering what if. What if she hadn't gotten hurt? What if she had played a little more solidly at the end of the second set. She can feel proud that she hung in the matches, even as she couldn't move as well as she needed to. She played smart, she hit good shots, but Venus played the big points that much better, and couldn't simply stop competing just because Lindsay was hurt. And despite the injury, fans were treated to a thoroughly wonderous match filled with power and angle, the kind of tennis that big racquets and big women now produce.

Wimbledon is a place of tradition and stateliness. While both women played unconventional hard-hitting tennis, they did so with grace and competitive fire, and made this wayward fan remember why he used to watch this game. The kind of emotional drama that a big tournament like Wimbledon brings is unparalleled by much of the rest of sport. It's as raw as one can be outside the brutal sport that is boxing.

It's still the one sport women play that compels men and women alike. Congratulations to Venus for her victory. Congratulations too to Lindsay, who made us believe that maybe, injury could be overcome, and the taste of sweet champagne drunk in the overcast lawns of Wimbledon.

Addedum: I started writing this on July 3, shortly after watching the rebroadcast of the ladies championships. However, the silly browser kept losing my changes. I didn't finally get around to finishing until over a week later, but here it is, as best as I can remember the feelings from a week ago.

Those Who Can't

I was just reading an article at Head First Blog, which is all about creating passionate users. I've already commented about passion. In a nutshell, while some people are naturally passionate, I think it's abnormal, and encouraged because we live in a society that expects excellence. You may think this is a good^TM thing, but I have my reservations.

Despite it's generally smarmy manner of presenting items, it has a few good ideas in it. I just don't particularly care for how they say what they say. On the other hand, I can imagine an annoying writing style being nonetheless effective.

If you've had a chance to look at the article, you know it's about teaching. It claims (rightly) that taking many classes doesn't make you a great teacher, that the emphasis of a teacher is really on learning, not on teaching. You're not trying to make the best presentation ever. You're trying to get the students to learn better. The two are distinct. Finally, it asks that teacher be passionate when they teach since students are less likely to be enthusiastic if the teacher isn't.

I've heard teachers complain about the last part. They just aren't enthusiastic personalities. For some reason, passionate people don't seem to understand how people can lack passion, and believe it's just as easy as turning on a switch. Yet, for many introverted people, passion is something that is hard to generate.

I should back up and talk a little more about passion. There are people who are clearly shy, and yet, they have a strong desire or will to get things done. Maybe they're obsessive compulsive. Maybe they just see answers. Maybe they're just plain stubborn. Whatever the reason, they do not have to show outward passion to get things done.

The flip side is also true. A person who exudes confidence and passion may make an effective CEO, but may not be the person who's going to win a Nobel Prize. One might argue that passion can interfere with this. Passionate people may not necessarily be patient people, and patience is often a more important character trait to success than passion. It's just that passion sounds so much more, well, exciting, and gosh darn it, don't we just love exciting people.

Having said that, students, for some reason, like to have teachers that are excited, possibly to the point of unnatural excitement, so happy that you almost want to puke. That excitement, sadly enough, can cover up for deficiencies in teaching. Being enthusiastic about teaching doesn't make you a better teacher, at least, when it comes to explanation, but given two equally gifted explanations, the one that is said more passionately is likely to get a better response.

Understand that our culture seems to value excitement over boredom. Students claim that they should be taught by teachers. At times, they don't feel the burden to learn. I've told students that there are going to be many times that you have what you consider a bad teacher, and yet you still have to learn anyway. To learn in the face of poor teaching is a powerful skill.

Good teaching can, ironically enough, lead to students who don't learn as much. I once had a teaching assistant who was quite a skilled teacher. He had passion. He explained well. Students liked him. If I had taken a poll of students to decide who was the best TA, he'd win hands down (not sure why "hands down", but I just wanted to throw that phrase in).

Yet, for two semesters running, his students had the worst exam average. Why, you might ask. (Go ahead, ask!).

The reason was two-fold. First, and possibly most importantly, the students thought they were learning. This meant (second), fewer students dropped in his class than in any of the other teaching assistants. This meant students who weren't really grasping the material, but thought
they followed what was going on struggled mightily in the exams. Those who had a poor TA probably considered dropping out, leaving only the "better" students behind.

The result? Fewer better students with the bad TA had a better average then numerous so-so (on average) students with the good TA. There's also something to be said about a bad TA forcing students to have to learn on their own if they are to pass the course. (You are about to come to a question, if you've been thinking, and ask where I was in this whole story. Are TAs the only ones who matter? Do students drop because of them and not me? I can't be too sure about that).

I bring this point up because I want to warn about the dangers of "good" teaching. This doesn't mean I advocate bad teaching (as if bad teachers somehow try to be deliberately bad). However, passionate teaching may not always yield the overall results you want, although it may yield happier students.

I recall a story told to me by my brother about some East European table tennis player, who had come to the west. As she was training, she was ordered to do drill after drill. She did not enjoy this at all. Once she came to the West, where she had more control over her training, she discovered that she wasn't improving all that much, and that despite being in a preferable environment, she had to reluctantly admit that the strict East European regimen she went through was actually much better for her game.

Now, as dire as it may sound, I'm not advocating strict teaching, nor bad teaching. All I'm saying is that the signs that you are teaching well is eventually measured by how well the students do. This isn't the best measure, but it's the most important one. You can have uninterested students, who, no matter what you do to excite them, simply refuse to learn or work, and be, in the end, a brilliant teacher. That is, brilliant if you were teaching highly motivated students.

My small piece of advice, at least for the entry, is to get students to do. Too often, I see teachers who explain things in such generalities that the students can't do anything with that information. For example, so often, I see a programming teacher talk about vague programming ideas like top-down design. And yet, they present no examples of such design, and then, on an exam, or on a project, expect the students to become experts.

Perhaps the single most important lesson to learn as a teacher is to use examples liberally. I know this can go too far, as examples themselves can be horrendously boring. Yet, no examples does the students a great disfavor. You want students to remain engaged, and to be involved in the problem solving process.

You'll have to forgive me if I assume you are teaching to science students, or in particular, computer science students. There are plenty of people who talk about how to learn or teach students in English or history, but I find few people willing or able to talk about teaching computer science.

In any case, I shall return to this topic in the future, as it interests me a great deal.

Read My Lips! No New Texas!

The average American has played cards, and most likely, has played some form of poker. The most common form, at least in recreational play, is five card draw. Now, I'm no card expert, so I'll do the best I can explaining the rules.

In five card draw, each player gets five cards face down given to them by one player designated as the dealer. From those five cards, the players can return up to 4 cards back. Sometimes, there are rules as to how many cards you can return. The dealer then gives them that many cards back. The player may only do this once.
Then, there is a round of bidding, and the player with the best hand wins. Sometimes cards are made "wild" (such as jokers, black jacks, and so forth). The player is allowed to change the card to any other card to improve his or her hand.

To be honest, this form of poker is rather boring. Few people ever got addicted to this kind of poker, and it's not even, as far as I know, played at casinos.

But an unusual phenomenon happened about five or so years ago. Texas Hold'em. This form of poker has become so wildly popular that people you thought would never gamble play the game.

Ah, gambling. I have a friend who tells me gambling is just taking chances, sort of like playing the lottery. The odds are completely stacked against you, and so your chances of winning are miniscule. He claims playing poker is not gambling, because it involves strategy and playing the odds. If you play correctly, you will, over the long term, make money.

Here are the rules of Texas Hold Em. Again, one player is designated the dealer. He or she hands out two cards, face down, to each player. These are called the hole cards. Each player has an opportunity to bet after this round.

The first two players (sitting to the left of the dealer) must start off with a preset bid. The first player puts down an amount called the small blind, which is usually half the ante, say, $5. The second player puts down the full amoutn, called the big blind, say $10. This money is put in the "center" of the table, and is called the pot. The purpose of the blinds is to put money in the pot, so there is some money at stake.

Each successive player (which moves left) must either choose to match the highest amount placed in the pot by any single player, or they must match it, then raise the amount, or they must fold (withdraw). For example, if the highest amount placed in the pot is $10, then either I must put in $10 (total), or raise (say to $15), or fold (quit). If I fold, then I can not get back any money I put in the pot. But then, I don't lose any more money either.

This round of bidding is called the preflop.

Then, the dealer deals 3 community cards face up in the center of the table. This is called the flop. Everyone shares the community cards. You make your hand from the two hole cards you have plus the three best community cards (for your hand).

A round of bidding goes starting at the dealer's left. Since there's money already in the pot, there's no need to start off with any more money. You can "check" (ie, don't put in additional money), or raise (put in more money), or fold. Bidding stops when each person has put in the same amount of money (not including those who folded).

Then, the dealer lays another community card. This is called the turn.

Again, another round of bidding.

Finally, the dealer lays the fifth community card. This is called the river.

Again, another round of bidding.

The player who has the best five card hand, made from his/her two hole cards, plus three of the community cards wins the pot.

The key to this game is to note what hand you have, and based on the bidding patterns of others, what hand they are likely to have. The better your opponents, the easier it is to predict, to some extent, what their actions mean. Bad players tend to play regardless of whether they have a good or bad hand. They're tough to bluff, but tend to stay in games even when it's prudent not to.

Because there are five community cards, you have a great deal of information, and this makes bidding particularly interesting. With five card draw, you have no information except perhaps what people bid, so this makes it boring.

I'm told that Texas Hold-em is more interesting than say, seven card stud, which is also popular, because you can win more money in a hurry. This also means you can lose more money in a hurry too.

This game, for some reason, has become wildly popular. An incredible number of people play it, and yet, before this phenomenon took off, you could only find a small fraction of those people who would admit that they could be so addicted to poker. I admit, I'm baffled by the psychology behind it.

If you can figure it out, let me know.

To View Again

I figured that if I wrote enough movie reviews, I'd get better at it, but blogging is simply not the best way to get better at writing. Sure, I get lots of practice writing, but good writing is all about editing. It's about getting feedback from those who write better. With such advice, you learn to avoid phrases and lines of thinking that lack power, sound trite, and simply don't make sense.

I don't think it's hopeless. I try to keep things in mind, even as I furiously scrawl out words. I choose words that are out of the ordinary. I understand Strunk and White would object. They wanted writing to be simple and direct. Mellifluous words and well-worned cliches made for poor wordscrafting, and yet, I discover I enjoy it immensely if I choose obliqueness over obviousness. It gives my writing a veil of sophistication, and even my thoughts lack substance, the frosting sure is good!

Still, at times, I feel my reviews are inadequate. I want to say many things, yet, find it challenging to transition from one observation to the next. I want to avoid using the word "film" and "director" and yet find myself unable to prevent these words from littering my reviews. I want to have a consistent point of view, yet, realize that meandering from one topic to the next is what makes my writing, well, unique. Can sloppiness of thought really be a style unto itself? I wonder.

Let me rewrite a little of my review of Batman Begins. I ought to be able to evaluate this film on its own merits, and yet I can't help compare it to the Burton Batman. If you read my previous review, you know I didn't like that Batman. Burton's far more interested in Joker than he is in Batman. You don't know much about why Batman is Batman, and you so desperately want to know.

And I didn't particularly care for Jack Nicholson as the Joker, nor Kim Basinger as Vicky Vale, or whoever the guy that played the butler. While I didn't think Christian Bale made for a much better Batman--in fact, no role particular stands out. Perhaps I like Gary Oldman. Michael Caine pretty much does Michael Caine, as does Morgan Freeman, but there's something comforting at watching old pros, even if they don't lose themselves in the role as much as Oldman does. Katie Holmes is perhaps a twee too precious, and with her being the object of Mr. Cruise's rather deranged obsession, it's hard to separate the actress from her role.

What makes Batman Begins hum is its story. It's the story of a tormented man who wants to do better, is brought into a strange world that teaches him the skills to fight those who oppress Gotham, and then realizes this world is also not quite right. You have to admire casting Liam Neeson to play a dark version of Qui Gon. Would his role be less effective had you not had this previous role to constrast off of.

Films are rarely evaluated on its own. You compare to other films like it, and other films not like it. You relate the actors who play roles to their real-life persona, as splashes by tabloids. At the helm, the director tries to imprint his vision, should he have a vision, using all the cinematic tricks and conventions he knows, to present a story that you can only partly appreciate, because you never fully know the depths at which the cast, crew, writer, director have presented what you see. Many ideas flow though any good film, and even though poor ones, and yet, we, the audience are only aware of the most gross ones, the ones that stand out. And even then, only the sharpest of us begin to see what the director was trying to achieve, how the music, the image, the plot, the characters, the sensations all come together in one dark, cavernous multiplex, with the lights brought down low, the sound of popcorn crunching, the audience clapping and gasping.

Who can write all about that or even a facet of it, using words that clarify observation, that entertain even as it enlightens? A good review can do all that, and perhaps one day, I can manage to write one.

Lost and Found

I'm missing a cell phone. This was my fault, really. I was using the facilities, and having little else to do, I was playing with the phone as a distraction. There's a little shelf in the stall I was at, so I put it there. I usually tell myself "make sure to pick that up afterwards", and yet somehow I didn't. Sad.

Unfortunately, the cell phone is so light, I didn't know I wasn't carrying it until much later, like 6 hours later. As this was a men's room in a business setting, there are others who are likely to use it, and then realize "hmm, someone left a cell phone". To that person's credit, there appears to be little attempt to abuse the phone.

Unfortunately, there's no standard protocol for returning a lost item. A building is unlikely to have a lost-and-found. I used to work at a university, and if you lost something, that was probably it. With no centralized lost-and-found, there's no way to find anything conveniently.

At a university, there should be one central lost and found, and several smaller lost and found sites. It should be convenient for a person who finds something to walk to the site, report the information, and have it properly registered. The key is having it properly registered, because places can "lose" something that they clearly have, due to poor bookkeeping.

Ah, I've now picked this blog entry much after I wrote it, so I have to explain what happened since then. I started this entry on June 30, one day before leaving on vacation, and resume it on July 10, three days after returning.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this tale, I lost a cell phone. I thought I lost in a men's room. I did not.

For you see, that day, it rained. And rained. And rained. It was, as the idiom goes, raining cats and dogs. I lacked an umbrella, and had little desire to be wetter than I already was. So I sprinted to my car. And still I got wet. Once I arrived there, I noticed my phone was missing.

The following day, I talked to a friend of mine. It turns out that the man who picked up my phone had been making phone calls. I figured he was calling some friend of his, perhaps a spouse. Once I found the number he dialed and dialed it myself, it was....the place I bought my bicycle. Ah, that makes more sense. He was using my history to find someone he could call and leave a message. He called two friends, but only left one message. Fortunately, I got that number, contacted him, and he told me the tale of how he found my phone.

I had thought, however, he'd work in my building. Alas, he was simply visiting the bank, and did not live anywhere nearby. He dropped by the following day, but I wasn't sure he'd actually do this, so I had to get a new phone (and since he told me he found the phone in the rain, I wasn't sure the phone was in good condition) since I was planning to go on a trip the following day (ie, the day he'd return the phone).

But, I digress. Really, we need a better way to handle lost and found items, and yet, there's often little organization when it comes to this. It often means that when something is lost, it's lost. Even when there's a good samaritan who finds what you want, they can leave it with someone, and the odds you get it back are slim, unless the lost and found makes some effort to find you, which they rarely do. In fact, the person who finds it often is the best person to deal with it since they have already made that first step to locate the owner. Lost and found simply does a job. They don't care to return the object since they have no idea how to return the object.

For example, suppose I lose something at a gym. Suppose the gym keeps track of who's been in the gym and when. In principle, they could inform everyone over a time range that a certain item was lost, and were they missing it or not. They could, but they probably won't. Too much work. Let the person who lost it figure it out.

So, the story has a happy ending. I was able to get my phone back. He didn't have to bring it back. I didn't particularly need it back either, but he brought it back, and so I did the best I could do that would involve the least effort on my part, and likely make him happy. I gave the nice gentleman some money for his trouble. He didn't have to call and leave a message. And yet he did.

While I wish to blame cell phone manufacturers for making poor phone accessories, which, were there better ones, this problem would have been completely avoided, or were there simply better ways to deal with lost items. And yet, we live in the world we live in, and occasionally, someone in that world still cares, still believes posessions, such as they are, are meaningful to the possessor (if possessions were meaningless, then I would not care, and that too would solve my problem), and make the extra effort to return it.

I can't help but admire that.

Author, Author

I want to write a book. I'd like to tell you that this book will reinvent some genre, or even what it means to be a fiction book, or that I'll have some keen insight a la Jared Diamond. I'd like to, only I can't, because the book I'm thinking about writing is far more mundane. I want to write a book about programming.

Thousands of books have been written about programming, and I'm sure thousands more will be written. The real problem with programming books is whether it adequately prepares you to program in a software development environment. Most books written are aimed at beginners. These books are the easiest to write precisely because there are so many out there to begin with.

There are economic reasons to write books for beginners. There are simply more beginners than advanced programmers. For every beginner that succeeds at learning programming, perhaps two fail. Of course, I'm completely making these numbers up as I have no stats to refer to. However, they reflect the intuitive belief that few people are able to master programming well enough to make a living at it.

Beginning programming books are intriguing for another reason. They're the first time you get to "meet" a beginner, to introduce them to the idea of programming. You can present programming to them anyway you want. Maybe you have the magic way that gives insight to someone, and they see the joy in learning how to think like a programmer.

There is reason to be discouraged. If programming were so easy, wouldn't more people do it? The answer is probably no because programming can be frustrating. Apparently, Donald Knuth, a "famous" computer scientist (he is famous within computer science circles, just not famous the way Ben Affleck is famous) claims that only a small percentage of people think algorithmically, which means, thinks in a way that they can solve a problem by writing a program. That percentage is something like 2% of the population.

I've been programming for a few months now in what seems to be a typical software company. Perhaps they assume a little more about what I should figured out, instead of providing me with the kind of guidance I want, but the point is not that. I'd love for my job to be all about developing algorithms. This assumes that the difficulty is not the programming language itself, but in the creation of the algorithms.

Perhaps an analogy is in order. An architect might design a building without too much regard for the materials the building is made from (although material has a profound influence on the way a building can be built, and these days, with computer programs, you can be even more creative with the material you do have---see Frank Gehry). You think about its design, and just design it.

In programming, you'd like to think of a solution that can then be translated easily to a programming language of your choice, be it Pascal, Lisp. Java, or even, Prolog. But algorithms tend to be about abstract things like graphs and sorting. What if you have to worry about sounds and images and wonder why you have to do such arcane things to get it to work. Do you have the correct drivers? The correct codecs?

This is, in fact, the thing that's most frustrating about programming. We're now able to do more and more with programs. People can write their own programs to simulate a Tivo, or to make some kind of interactive map, or even edit images or music, or what have you. Yet, to get these programs to work, you must know some arcane details that are often not well-documented.

It becomes less about algorithms, where you understand the language, and only need to solve the problem, and more about learning the language. Imagine you wanted to write a book, and every few chapters, you were told to use a new language. First, it's French, then Spanish, then Chinese, then Thai, then Hindi. Each time, you wonder how verbs can be conjugated in yet another way, and wonder why there are so many exceptions to the syntax, and why some languages insist on incomplete sentences while others insist on it. Why do languages have levels of formality, where you say one phrase to a peasant, and one to the emperor? You just want to tell the story, and you have it in your mind, and yet, you fight the language for no good reason.

Is that really algorithmic reasoning? Is it?

So, I want to write a book for beginning programmers, and yet, I'd like to give a sense of how far they need to travel before they get good. Understanding how to think algorithmically is only the first step. Dealing with the plethora of technology around you, and learning how to make sense of it, and use it intelligently is just as challenging, and has little, if anything, to do with thinking algorithmically.

The real problem with writing a beginning programming book is that many of the readers aren't even good at thinking algorithmically, even with lots of training, and yet, that's who you're teaching to. And many don't even like technology because it's filled with arbitrary and rigid rules. Arbitrary in that the rules don't make sense, they just are, and rigid in that if you fail to follow them, you fail to get a working program.

What do authors do? They simplify. And they simplify. No sane programmer (ok, few sane programmers) would use anything besides an IDE or at least a very good text editor to write their programs. Yet most IDEs are notoriously complex, offering hundreds if not thousands of options to set. Options for features you never knew existed, and never knew that you'd need them. The IDEs aren't even self-explanatory. You need a book, and then a tutor to explain which of the thousand features you should learn first, since books only offer a laundry list of items that exist, rather than tell you the important ones you need to know to get started.

Because of this complexity, there are some authors who say "Pish posh! That is so hard to learn, that students shouldn't learn it at all!". The expectation is that beginners, once they become suitably advanced, will choose to learn the more complex IDEs that they've been shielded from. Except most people don't like to become more stupid before they become smarter. This means that it's tough to wean experts of a simple text editor, and move them to a more complex IDE.

In fact, that's really the big problem with technology. Someone's always coming up with something new, that works so completely different from what you expect, that people, even very smart people, refuse to learn it. Because once the do learn it, someone will come up with a "better" idea, and the whole cycle begins again.

I talked to two guys who are writing a book and asked if they were going to talk about UML, or to talk about debuggers, or a version control system. Many of these are used every day in real software organizations. They said no, that you can't teach everything in a book, especially a book for beginners.

So why don't they write that book? Because it's technology. In order to make any sense of it, they'd have to pick a specific technology, like CVS, and then they'd have to hope that companies still use it years from now, which is perhaps less likely than a company using Java years from now. Furthermore, it's boring technology. There's not much in the way of algorithms or cool ideas. Yet, version control is not that easy to learn. It has the double whammy of not being interesting and fun to write about, and also not being easy to figure out (just explain branches, branch merges, diffs, and tools to look at a CVS repository, if you think it's easy).

There are plenty areas of programming just like this. Continuous builds. Ant. Make files. Maven. Debuggers. Profilers. These are tools needed by real programmers to write real programs, and yet the average programming book author doesn't want to touch these topics with a ten foot pole (why don't we use metric?).

Tools get obsolete. They're tedious. They're hard to learn. The new version won't work like the old version. Programming, as ephemeral as it may be, feels a lot more solid than the tools needed for programming. There's a sense that if you understand algorithms, you're going to be much more successful learning a new language.

And still, I want to write a book about programming, even though I should really write a book about tools, and how people use tools. I should see why people write buggy programs, and use that knowledge to create languages that are easier to learn, and yet this idea seems foreign to everyone. It's hard to create new languages. It's hard to make people want to use new languages. It's hard for new languages to do enough. Can you use your new language to play music, display video, play games, hook up to the Internet? Or can it only do calculations, and solve Dijkstra's algorithm? Is it enough to do "real" things?

I haven't even gotten to a major problem with teaching programming. We still use books! I love books, and yet I hate them. Teachers use books so they don't have to lecture for 20 hours a week, and so students can go back to the book years after the course ends (though these books are obsolete years after the course ends). Good books allow bad teachers to get away with it. Yet, books require a kind of patience most students don't have, and often teach in a way that students don't learn.

Most books are good as references. You want to learn about loops? Here's a chapter on loops. Want to learn about arrays? Here's a chapter on arrays. You could have a book that teaches you to solve problems, and then the book might have to cover a little about arrays, loops, functions, all at once. Maybe that would make sense pedagogically, but when you came back a year later, it would be hard to find anything in the book.

Thus, there is this dichotomy between wanting to find a pedagoically sound way to teach students (and that's assuming you can even find a one-way-fits-all approach) and yet make the book useful once a student is done learning the material. Ideally, you'd have two books: one to learn from, and one to reference.

And that's if we use books! Why aren't there more DVDs that teach programming? Why isn't it more interactive? Why books? And yet, why not? You might have a TV show on a DVD where an expert teaches you to program. That has some advantages. In particular, with students having short attention spans, a video format may make it easier to learn. On the other hand, when you need tables and charts, and tedious detail, text is more important.

I find it interesting how teachers feel pressure to make themselves understood to students, and that usually means they must remove technology barriers, because many students fear technology, and that fear makes them avoid learning about technology, which means they can't learn to program. Minimizing this frustration may help now, but what about in the long run?

I remember, once, sitting in a class. The professor was trying to present algorithmic ideas as simply as he could, trying to help the students along, and yet he completely rushed the technological parts, rushing over CVS, as if that part were easy. Well, open a book, Mr. Professor Man. Find me the chapter that explains sorting. And then find me the chapter that explains CVS. What? There is no chapter on CVS? I'll be! And you only spend two rushed (hurry, hurry, hurry!) minutes on it, while languishing slowly on how sorting works? Tsk. Tsk.

Look, I have no real answers on how best to teach programming, but I think I'm raising valid points about what's missing in programming. At times, I wonder how programmers have managed to survive this long. I yearn for the day when programming is about algorithms, but I think that day is long past. If we get back to that, it's because some area of computer science has become mathematics again, where the pragmatics of day-to-day use is not important, where tedious details are stripped away, where we can, once again, worry about what matters.

Music for Airports

Have you been to an airport lately? Doesn't matter. It hasn't changed that much in a few years, except for the additional security measures. Go into an airport, and you see a row of counters, one for each major airline. If the airport is not a busy hub, then those counters are mostly empty, and the experience is somewhat pleasant.

But if the airport is crowded, say, like Dulles, you see hundreds of people everywhere, and lines everywhere. Typically, what you do is go to near the counter, and approach a large touch-screen pad, and enter information. This information allows you to get a boarding pass (usually), and then you might talk to someone at the counter to check in your luggages. Except.

Except that if the line is sufficiently long, you go to the front, get your boarding pass, and then head to some line. Which line is never entirely clear, because, heaven forbid that there is someone to direct you to the correct line. This creates bizarre confusion. Once I was in a Denver airport, and in this line that was very, very slow. It was hardly moving, and we had no idea why. Finally, we saw one of these touch-screen kiosks, cut to the front of the line, checked the luggage in, and headed to security. We must have saved ourselves half an hour by doing that.

Here's the solution. First, when you enter the airport, there should be kiosks. You let the kiosk know that you have entered the airport, and it indicates which "room" to enter. Instead of having counters, there are rooms. It's like visiting a mall. As you walk, you pass by storefront after storefront. Instead, each "room" or store belongs to some airline, and you head to the appropriate room. There may be a line in the room, but you have to enter in the room.

Furthermore, out in the common area, there is "customer service", so you can ask questions about the line you are supposed to be in. There's nothing more frustrating than standing in a line wondering if it's the correct line. Worse still, why are there only 3 people taking care of you?

Think of a large airline, like Delta. They might be using, say, 15-20 or more gates. Each gates usually has 2 people attending to the gate. That makes for 30-40 people helping out total. It might even be larger than that. Yet, they often have, what, 3 workers helping people check in? Come on! Is this really the place to be stingy? Have, 6-7 people working there, or more! Checking in is a huge bottleneck, and it seems to make little sense to have so few people taking care of this, when so many are devoted to each gate.

And why are there never enough seats to sit at in a gate? If you have the potential for 100 passengers, should you not have 100 seats or more? Yet, I find that there are always 20-30 people that have to make do and stand around because there are simply not enough seats to sit.

And why do airplanes seat from front to back? Should they not seat back to front? Wouldn't that make it more efficient? But efficiency isn't what it's about, is it? It's about first class passengers that need to be seated first.

Here's my cool idea. The airport should have something like roller coaster seats. You get seated in them. When the airplane is about deplane, the seats roll out of the airplane like roller coaster cars. Then, you roll in. That way, there's enough seats, there's no delay getting in and out of the plane. Only issue is how to get a track that goes into the plane and out.

My point, and it's not particularly brilliant, is that airports suck at what they're supposed to do, which is to make it convenient for you and I to travel. They've come up with bad solutions, which cause aggravation. The sad thing is that no airline company seems to be able to make a solution that would force the other ones to follow along. It doesn't take genius to do this.

Love Actually

I've been thinking about something lately that I want to tell you about, and that is love. Oh, I don't mean the kind of love of fairy tale romances, although in a way, I do. I'm talking about the way some people finish their phone calls, especially calls to their parents with the common refrain, "I love you".

We all know that love itself seems to have many forms. To say, "I love pasta" is not the same kind of love as a man for his wife, or a woman for her dog, or a child for his parents, or possibly even a parent for his child. It's the "I love you" for a child to his parents (or vice versa) that I'm interested in. It's not that I doubt children love their parents. I don't.

I do question, however, the importance of saying it. On the one hand, consider people, such as me, who rarely, if ever say, they love their parents. When you rarely say you love someone, then perhaps, you don't, in the sense that you find it difficult to express emotions. Once upon a time, guys weren't supposed to cry. I was told once, that Taiwanese men were supposed to have a stoic demeanor, and I suspect many a society believes in the ideal of stoicism for males. Men don't cry. Men don't easily express love.

Yet, I now live at a time, in America (or the US, to be proper), where such emotions are now taken for granted. You're expected to show love. It's even become commercial. Ask yourself, do you buy your mom or dad presents for Mother's Day or Father's Day? Why do you do it? Because some florist or some online store tells you that you must honor your parents on this of all days? If there were no Mother's Day, would you therefore fail to honor your mother? In fact, outside of Mother's Day and your mom's birthday, do you bother to do nice things for mom? When it becomes a national obligation (combined with maternal guilt trips), is this really love? Shouldn't that be more spontaneous?

And still, the phrase "I love you" at the end of calls, well, it's more like saying "God Bless You" after a sneeze, is it not? A kind of reflex, like hello when you greet someone, or "I'm sorry" when you hear bad news or "Happy Birthday" when it's someone's birthday. Humans are like this, aren't we? We all know people that, when they see someone who, say trips and hurts themselves, are all "Oh my goodness! You hurt yourself! What can I do to help?". They go into histrionics. Is this genuine concern or merely a learned response, that over time, becomes like reflex.

Are such people more compassionate, or merely shown that this is how people should behave, and behave this way? How many of you know someone that would scream in orgasmic delight at seeing a friend they hadn't seen in a while? Does that show more passion than a person who just says hi?

I was once watching an episode of Dawson's Creek (I'm man enough to admit it), where Dawson is admitting to some female friend that he's been a bad friend to Pacey and forgotten about his birthday, and some such. I don't recall the details, but I do recall the sentiment. This show encouraged teens to ask themselves "how truly devoted am I to my friends?". Being a drama, they showed good looking teens angsting over whether they were good friends or not.

This, I'm convinced, put undue pressure on white bread teen America (as Dawson's Creek and shows of its ilk were primarily white) to act in this fashion, to tell teens that if you weren't passionate about your friendship, then you were less than someone special. How many teens now buy into this idea?

What's more disturbing, to me, is how Asian American teens, especially women, can sometimes put white American ideals as their own. Where Asians from other countries seem to be more sensible (in my mind) about career and goals, I've seen some examples of Asian women who effectively want to be cheerleaders, and almost feel the need to be whiter than white. It reminds me, oddly enough, about M. Butterfly or Stage Beauty, both of which deal with issues of men who portray women, and how women can only be themselves, where men can be the idealization of women (possibly, an idealized woman as thought of by a man, but I digress).

To me, such genuflection shows a kind of self-hatred as if one's own culture is not good enough to measure up. I remember watching Mean Girls which dealt with the "plastics", ie, the girls who are popular and bitchy, and decide who can and can't share their company. What might have made it more ethnically interesting is to show girls of different ethnicities trying to fit in.

Oddly enough, I find the portrayals of African American women in shows like The Facts of Life intriguing because they essentially wash any kind of blackness form the character. Now, I'd be the first to tell you that I don't think it's necessary for blacks to act "black". I'm just as happy to see blacks be the whitest person ever, and whites to be the blackest person ever, even if, the way they were raised may prevent them from fully realizing their racial aspiratoins.

To get back on point, do we bandy the word love far too much? I think yes, but is it bad? Sit down, and question your life. Ask yourself what it would be like in a different country, or in the same country with new rules, or new friends. Some of the ideas you hold so highly may blind you to so many other ideas. Take the time to see those other ideas, and perhaps embrace them, if they make sense to you.

Oh....love you!

The Tuxedo

What is it about the French and documentaries about animals? I went into March of the Penguins thinking it was the same folks that produced Winged Migration and Microcosmos. A quick perusal of IMDB shows that it's not. Three different groups of people did each of the documentaries.

Documentaries about animals can be challenging. People want to watch films where they are entertained. One form of entertainment is to be educated. Ask yourself, what do you know about penguins? Most would respond that they live in the South Pole, waddle around, swim, but don't fly, and are kinda cute. That's about it. Penguins seem so familiar that we don't think about them very much.

But think about it. Why would these birds live in the South Pole? It's frickin cold down there!

The answer, as it is, is that the South Pole wasn't always so icy and apparently it was green at some point in the past. Over time, however, it became icy, and most life no longer lives there, except these penguins.

And what a mad life it is!

To mate, penguins head to Antarctica, walk 70 miles over ice (that's walk), to a breeding ground. They pair off (somehow), and attempt to produce an egg. The egg must be kept constantly warm, otherwise it freezes. This is done by propping the egg on the feet and using the bottom of the penguin to sit on the egg.

Once the female has produced the egg, she eventually transfers it to the male to keep warm. The females then walk back 70 miles or more to the water so they can feed, and return back food to the child. The male must keep the child warm for a long time. Once the female returns, they have food in their mouths (somehow) and feed this to the hatched baby penguins. The male must then walk the 70 miles so he can feed. Each of them takes their turns walking to get food, while the other stays behind to keep the young warm.

Snowstorms cause these penguins to huddle together to keep warm, and some do not make it.

March of the Penguins presents the story in a dramatic arc. Although they don't pick any penguin in particular to follow, the story is about how these penguins go to the mating spot, reproduce, and try to raise the young over many months, often starving without food for months at a time. That these birds know where to go, then can go get food and come back, and find their mate again is nothing short of amazing.

After a while, you realize not only how beautiful and dangerous Antarctica is, you begin to realize how tough it must have been to make the film. Using close up photography, overhead shots, time lapsed images, you get a sense of how these crazy penguins live. The voiceover's done by ever-reliable Morgan Freeman, who reads a screenplay that injects some humor and drama at key points throughout.

Documentaries about animals succeed often when we, as humans, recognize human-like trials that animals go through. We see penguins mate in an unusual, almost alien form, and it makes us reflect on how we, as humans, mate. We see the kind of effort and devotion it takes for penguins to have their young survive, and we know that we would not be nearly this committed.

And certainly, we wonder how penguins could have evolved to such behavior. What makes them do such crazy things? Could it really only be in the last few centuries that penguins learned to do this?

If there was one thing, cinematically, that this documentary reminded me of, it was Lawrence of Arabia. In scene after scene, you see the band of Arabs cross a mighty desert. Lean often pulls back to show us the line of camels and men attempting to deal with the heat of northern Africa. Similar scenes are shown in the icy stark beauty that is the Antarctic. Icy winters are the equivalent of sandstorms, and where Lean shows the mad journey of a Englishman ready to help Arabs, March of the Penguins shows us the survival of a species. How they can depend on the same icy locale to be there year after year, and to find it year after year, is utterly fascinating and mind boggling.

Those penguins may be cute, but they lead a far harsher life than you're likely to imagine.

Dammit! Auto-save!

How many times has this happened to you in Blogger. You're writing. You're writing. Pages and pages, and then zap. It's gone. All gone.

Sure, this used to happen when word processors lacked auto-save, the most basic of features we all need in case the horrible happens. And yes, it's the one feature that Blogger lacks.

Please people, fix this problem.

Now!