The Politics of Being President

Americans aren't nearly as political as others in the world. Sure, you, personally, may care about Presidential politics. Maybe you think that Hillary's vote for war against Iraq automatically disqualifies her as President. Perhaps there are more subtle issues, such as their views on monetary policy.

However, many Americans find, as long as they can get on with the merry day-to-day lives, that politics can wait.

At one point, there were about eight candidates each on running for the Democratic and Republican nominee. These numbers seem too large to care about, and yet, many a fan of American Idol manages to track, in two hours a week, at least as many singers, already singling out who they like, and hoping their favorite makes it one more week.

In the meanwhile, the media also tries to find who is a front-runner. For the Democrats, it was Hillary, Barack and John Edwards. For the Republicans, the field was larger, and included Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Huckabee, and Fred Thompson. When McCain was left for dead a year ago, and each of Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee has flaws, Fred Thompson joined the fray, hoping that another former actor would rise to the top of Republican favorites, only to be cast with the image that he simply didn't care enough.

Huckabee also came from nowhere to do quite well in Iowa, then mainly did well with the evangelicals.

But let's go back to Hillary and Obama. Both vote nearly the same, except, of course, with the war on Iraq, which, for some, is enough to swing their opinions to Obama. But those that love Obama and equally despite Hillary see personality as the separator. Obama insprires. Hillary does not.

It goes to show the kind of President you have to be when television follows you everywhere. Once upon a time, you could have the social skill of an anteater, but if you could make solid decisions, and show enough leadership, then it didn't matter if most of the people in the country barely knew what you looked like, and certainly didn't know what you sounded like.

These days, it doesn't hurt to speak well. Of course, it didn't help Romney, who look well-groomed, and very polished. Somehow, perhaps due to Huckabee, McCain managed to get back to the stage where he had been so many years ago, when he battled George W, only before a smear campaign left McCain wounded, and eventually out of the race. So McCain bided his time, did what the Bush-ites wanted him to do, and even as it looked awful for him, he came back, and now looks solid as the Republican nominee.

Of course, in the meanwhile, a few devoted fans rang the praises of Ron Paul, hoping his Libertarian message would be heard far and wide, found that if the media chooses to ignore someone, they will be ignored. Were there special articles about Paul showing his support? He raised more money than his Republican co-runners. But, the media rather exacerbates the difference, trying to push the leaders far ahead, and sweep the insignificant to obscurity.

Why should the media, in their estimation, help out a candidate that's barely registering name recognition? But is not the goal of the media to give votes the best information they can, rather than handicap the horse race the presidential election always reduces itself to? Apparently not. They, too, get caught up in numbers. Who's leading? Who's dropping out?

And why? Because they understand the average person cares only about the race, and thus, the Presidential race. The positions on this policy and that, they don't think about so much, which is why the Republicans have always favored a pretty naive platform of "Don't raise taxes!". Year after year, this bankrupt ideology trots out the same idea, and it appeals to folks a lot, because dadgum, no one really knows how to save.

We all spend to excess, unhappy if we can't have the goodies our neighbors do. Possessions becomes our elixir, and Americans are plenty caught up in it. So tax relief seems good, except the truly wealthy want it even more. They know, so they think, how better to spend their wealth, caring very little for those who make it on paycheck to paycheck.

Let's not forget that politics is all about trying to cast your best face forward. Ron Paul has a tough time doing that. He's trying to stick to his principles, and when you do that, it's tough to say yes to everyone. When Hillary is asked if she's ever thought she is losing, she says she never thinks it. The media wants her to show weakness, and yet, the candidate must show strength, and so she yields no ground. Of course, she's never thought she would lose. We Americans won't stand for anyone who doesn't have confidence in themselves.

Once upon a time, we said politicians all lie, and to some extent, they do because they want people to vote for them, and it's hard to have a policy that everyone can agree to.

Stances don't seem to matter much. Once someone is roughly what you want, then it becomes the intangibles. Their personality. Their vision. That seems to matter a lot, perhaps more than it should.

Stephen Hawking is the new Albert Einstein

Stephen Hawking may not have a convenient equation that everyone can remember, but he is rapidly replacing Albert Einstein as the canonical genius. For decades, the vision of genius was a guy with a large shock of white hair, and a moustache to match. Einstein not only came up with lots of groundbreaking theories, he also became the face of science during the second World War, lending his name to a key letter sent to the President of the US encouraging nuclear research (for bombs, of course).

But there's something oddly compelling about Stephen Hawking. For one, here's a guy who, in most any other situation, would be severely unemployed. And yet, because he can keep a lot of things in his head, he's able to do a lot of physics. And while he's not able to type very quickly, he's able to type enough to write books. His synthetic voice adds to his otherworldly persona.

Already, there have been some imitators. X-Files had an episode about cockroaches that combined Stephen Hawking with Rodney Brooks (Brooks believes in evolutionary machines, and is well known for his insect robots, with what he claims is emergent intelligence made up of simple rules). My brother said that Christopher Reeve (his being in a wheelchair was due to a horsing mishap that had him thrown off) played a Stephen Hawking like scientist.

There's MC Hawking, where some guy does "nerdcore rap" using the synthetic Stephen Hawking voice. (Apparently, Justin finds some of the lyrics hysterical and eminently repeatable).

People know even less about what Stephen Hawking has done, as a scientist, than what Einstein has done. At the very least, they know he had a theory of relativity. They may not know what that theory states, but they know it exists. Hawking? Do people even know about Hawking radiation? That he is a cosmologists who studies/models black holes?

Even if they don't, they have some idea what he looks like, and that he's one smart dude.

And in this day and age, sadly, it will have to do.

Gibbs to Zorn

Daniel Snyder has always looked for the big name. When he bought the team (with others), he had Norv Turner as coach. He got an aging Deion Sanders, who didn't want to stay more than a year. Then, after Norv had a bad run of games, he was fired. Snyder really wanted Steve Spurrier, who he hoped, could bring his fun-n-gun style to the NFL and make it work. When the running game fared better, Spurrier decided he didn't want to win with a style he wasn't comfortable with.

Then, Snyder landed his biggest coup: getting Joe Gibbs back. Gibbs had won three Superbowls. He had been gone since winning the Superbowl in 1991. He had gone on to a very successful career in Nascar racing, owning and managing a team. When he came back, it was a bit rough going. In his four years at Washington, he made it to the playoffs twice, but in both cases, required a string of wins at the end just to make it in. He decided not to finish his fifth year, a decision partly prodded by the health of his grandson.

It was thought that Gregg Williams, the defensive coordinator, would take over as head coach. However, when he had to interview four times with Snyder, it was thought that his chances weren't good. They had had four years of watching him coach. If they wanted him, he'd be their man. Four interviews was something of an insult. The defense wanted him, if for no other reason, then to retain continuity.

The Redskins braintrust looked at a variety of coaches. They liked Jim Fassel, formerly coach of the Giants, and top contender the last go-around. They interview Steve Mariucci, former 49ers coach, and former Lions coach. They interviewed Ron Meeks, the African American defensive coordinator of the Indianapolis Colts. It was thought they might interview a coordinator from the Patriots. This didn't happen.

Then, they fired Williams and Al Saunders, the offensive coordinator, and then hired Jim Zorn, and promoted Greg Blatche to defensive coordinator. It seemed like a strange set of moves, hiring a staff before hiring a head coach. The last person the Redskins looked at seriously was Steve Spagnuolo, fresh off a Superbowl win, as the Giants defensive coordinator.

There were other possibilities, but it was never seriously entertained. Bill Cowher, former Steelers coach, wasn't ready to un-retire. Marty Schottenheimer probably wouldn't come back, even if Snyder could admit he wanted him back.

So it seemed strange that the choice went to Jim Zorn. Zorn was the quarterbacks coach for the Seattle Seahawks. People had thought he'd be a serious candidate to be an offensive coordinator, and so the Redskins tried to snatch him while they could. Then they decided he interviewed so well, that they would make him head coach.

This isn't so unusual. There are several new coaches in the NFL without previous head coaching experience, and even without coordinator experience. Still, for a guy used to making big hires, Snyder's choice of Zorn was weird, and to many fans, probably disappointing.

Still, you had to admire Snyder for this decision. While many people thought it despicable the way he ran Williams out, given that he appeared to be the players' choice, he made it clear that he (and Vinnie Cerrato) make the big decisions, not the players.

Zorn is remarkably down to earth for a head coach. While folks like Sally Jenkins, in her Washington Post column, told Spagnuolo to stay home, mostly because she felt the Redskins were dysfunctional, and that his career would get derailed going to the Redskins, I'm not so sure that Snyder and Cerrato made a bad decision.

Even if Zorn turns out to be a complete bust, it shows some maturity to pick a guy that isn't a name guy, and see if he's likely to be the next big one.

Racquet Testing

I haven't play-tested racquets in maybe ten years. RnJ Sports in Rockville, however, loans out a good set of racquets for 3 dollars each, which can be reimbursed for the cost of a racquet. The main problem with RnJ is that they only carry three brands of racquets: Head, Wilson, and Prince. Undoubtedly, these are the three big companies in racquets.

However, there's now a few other brands out there that deserve note, but I can understand how a place that primarily specializes in running, and then does tennis as an afterthought (though not a trivial underthought-what they do, they do pretty well).

In particular, there are a few new brands out there that were nowhere, but now are somewhat recognizable. In particular, Babolat, which had, for years, made strings, has now gone into the racquet making business. This isn't so weird. Technifibre is another company that makes strings, but now also makes racquets. And, look at Prince, which used to make tennis ball machines, or Rossignol, which used to make skis (Rossignol doesn't seem to make racquets anymore).

Some companies have gone by the wayside. Slazenger is no longer around. They probably couldn't make the transition to non-wood racquets. Tennis Warehouse, a large tennis racquet company, sells Avery, Boris Becker, Fischer, Vokyl, ProKennex, Dunlop, Donnay, and Yonex racquets.

My current racquet is a Yonex RDS-003, which is red, midplus racquet, which is a hair over 11 ounces. It's a decent racquet and I like it, but I want to try out a new racquets out.

The main racquet I wanted to try was the KSix-One 95, which is somewhat bigger than the one Federer uses, and a bit lighter.

Ah, let me go through a bit of tennis racquet history. The original racquets were wooden. They were all uniformly about 66 square inches. When oversized racquets came out, they were 110 square inches. Prince was the first to popularize these racquets, and Pam Shriver, the first player to make a splash with an oversized racquet.

Most pros found, at the time, difficulty adjusting to the huge racquets. They weren't used to the power. Racquet companies started making midsize racquets, most of them around 85 square inches, or some 30% larger than the old ones. Lendl grew up using the original sizes, so his racquet was a modest 72 square inches.

But the midsizes weren't that much more powerful than the oversized, so racquet sizes started getting bigger. Racquets started creeping towards 95 to 100 square inches, and were titled mid-plus racquets.

However, many pros learned to play with one of the most popular racquets Wilson ever made: the Wilson Pro Staff Graphite. It was about 85 square inches, which was typical of midsized racquets. In particular, Pete Sampras and Stefan Edberg used this racquet, and for that matter, so did Roger Federer.

The other huge innovation that came out in the late 80s was the Profile racquet, called widebodies. Nearly every company created a widebody racquet. Here's the unusual thing. They're almost all gone. Maybe a racquet is a hair wider than it used to be. Dunno.

So anyway, I tried (I think) the Ozone Pro Tour MP, which is an orange-ish racquet. I didn't like the feel of the racquet. It felt a bit light (even though it was at least 11 ounces or more) and more like a metal racquet. I also tried the racquet that was a bit larger than Federer's. It was good to serve, was decent on the forehand, nice for slicing, but not easy to get power on the topspin, and the grip was a bit short for a two-handed shot. Nice, but I'm not sure I'd switch to it.

So two racquets down. Might try a few more.

A Matter of Interpretation

Sports pundits do it all the time. They interpret the game. They tell you how the game went. How the winning team won. How the losing team lost. But the tale of the tape comes from the final results. The same events are interpreted one way if there's a win, and another way if there's a loss.

Last week, for instance, Eli Manning was brilliant. No interceptions. But we only remember it that way because the Giants won. To be fair, they should have won. With the Giants kicker missing two field goals, they relied on a Favre turnover in overtime and a suddenly steady kicker to win by a field goal. If Favre goes on a drive to win in OT, how brilliant is Eli? Instead, it's how much did the kicker choke.

This week, Tom Brady had a drive in the fourth quarter that might have lead his team to victory. Had that been the final score, people would have said that Brady does what he does best. He wills his team to win. He scores when he has to score. Even if the score would have been 14-10, they would have called this Patriots team the best ever, and that drive would have shown how Brady and Patriots simply find a way. This was how they mostly played in the playoffs. Not dominating football, but finding a way to win.

Instead, it was Eli Manning making that final drive, and while Brady's drive was important, in the end it was Brady's last minute (last 30 seconds, really) hail Mary that mattered most (and Moss had the ball in his hands, if only for a brief instant). He almost made it happen again.

But the penultimate drive? Irrelevant. Brady wasn't himself. He was a choker. His team couldn't produce the offense they had all season.

The funny thing? Both statements are true. Brady did not have a good game, partly because the Giants did. But had his last scoring drive been the last drive, then he would have come back, willed his team to win.

Those same events take a different look when viewed through the lens of a loss.

And that's how sportswriters think, or frankly, don't think.

The Last Drive

To get a sense of how improbable the last drive by the Giants were. On a 3rd and 10, a pass to Toomer, to make it 4th and 1. A run by Jacobs to get the first down.

On a 3rd and 5, with Manning about to get sacked, he breaks free and makes a 32 yard pass to Tyree, who catches it by wedging the ball between his hand and helmet and falling down.

On a 2nd and 11, he makes a pass, which is in the receiver's hands, but eventually drops it. The advantage was that the clock doesn't tick, which is important, since the Giants are burning timeouts to keep this drive alive (they had all three timeouts, plus the two minute warning, effectively a fourth timeout). The next play is a pass to Steve Smith, who is a little short of the first down, takes two steps to get to first down, before he is shoved out of bounds. That one was also key, since it's 3rd down.

Finally, a lovely deep lob to Plaxico Burress to give the Giants the 3 point lead, leaving the Patriots with a little over 30 seconds to make it across the field and score the winning touchdown, which, by the way, never happened.

In general, while the two-minute drill is the one people remember, of teams that come back at the last moment, it's generally pretty hard to score. Teams with leads at the end of games usually win. It's better to be up and have to prevent the other side from scoring than down and try to score. The defense, needless to say, came up bigger for the Giants than the Patriots.

This was a nice game that wasn't determined by last minute field goals, but by the majority of the players on the field. And the win was all due to an improbable drive at the end.

People say the Patriots looked vulnerable, and they did. But people would still have penciled in that team as the best ever if that last drive doesn't succeed. They would have said fans were whining if the final score had been 14-10, a score that would have signaled victory, but not a definitive one.

So, the defenses kept this game interesting all the way to the end, which is as much as one can hope for in a Superbowl.

Brother Where Art Thou

At the beginning of the season, both Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning were happy to still be on the Giants. To be sure, Manning was the likely one to stay. The management decided to keep Coughlin. The team started 0-2, and there were more cries to release Coughlin, and Eli was looking like a bust.

Then, they won 6 games in a row, and, for a moment, such cries were let silent. New York continued to play unevenly, winning one week, losing the next, and managing enough wins to sneak in as a wildcard. They would play on the road throughout the playoffs, but the Giants had a particularly good road record, and would prove that during this year's playoffs beating Tampa Bay, Dallas, and Green Bay to become the improbable representative of the NFC for the Super Bowl.

The key, of course, was the defense. If the defense couldn't keep New England in check, to keep the score close, then Eli would probably not provide enough magic to matter. When the Patriots only had a 7-3 lead into the half, and this score held until the Giants managed to score a TD with 11 minutes to go, making the lead 10-7.

At this point, it looked like the Patriots would do what they do so well. Win. Another long drive to a touchdown, punctuated by penalties that kept the drive alive. It left the Giants with a little over 3 minutes to have to score a touchdown because they were down 4 points, not 3.

It didn't look that good. After a first down right away, Eli struggled trying to make completions, going to a 3rd and 10, then a 4th and 1. Then, on another 3rd and 10, Eli looked like he was going to get sacked, when he managed to wiggle out, make a long toss to Tyree who literally wedged a catch between his hand and his helmet.

Eventually, Eli tossed a high floater to Plaxico Burress, and that gave the Giants a lead, giving the Patriots only 30 seconds to have to get into field goal position. Despite one long throw to Moss that just fell out of his hands, the Patriots were done.

The funny thing is that if that catch were made, or if Eli gets sacked, then the Patriots win, and we say, despite the close score, just how good the Patriots were. Of course, the games against the Ravens, the Eagles, the Colts, and even the Giants showed the Patriots were vulnerable, but they still won, and had they won, they would still have been undefeated despite these close calls.

So Eli manages to do in four years what it took Peyton 9 years to do. He has to hand it to his defense that kept him in the game.

Peyton may still go down as one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, but sometimes it's good to have a great team, a great defense, and a little luck. And Eli will take that win any way it comes.

The Zen of Tennis

Today, it was just warm enough to play tennis. Warm is a bit of an exaggeration. Despite being as warm as it has been for about two weeks, it was still chilly. Let the sunny skies not fool you. Still, who imagines playing tennis in February outdoors? It could be worse. It could be the midwest where the weather really is cold.

I wanted to try out my revamped strokes, which, I'm sure, to the untrained eye, doesn't look significantly different from the way I had been hitting it. And, honestly, it isn't so different.

I've been working on a few changes, which I'll outline, at least so I can look back at it, if need be.

Usually, I imitate various professionals when I try to learn to hit a shot. In the early days, the forehand was based on all the baseliners of the day. Mats Wilander, Bjorn Borg (especially Borg, despite the fact he had pretty much retired when I first started to play), Guillermo Vilas, and Ivan Lendl. I tried hitting a whippy shot like Lendl, but these days I don't do that so much.

Recently, I was watching the new sensation, Novak Djokovic (I was thinking that he's two years younger than the youngest guy among the engineers, and he's been really good for at least a year already). Djokovic has an odd hitch at the start of his forehand which seems to serve very little purpose, but I was trying to imitate that hitch too.

I know, it sounds kinda silly to imitate the pros, because even if you could analyze in slow-motion, what they were doing, you could probably not really get the true sensation of what their body was doing. Still, if we don't learn by imitating, then how do we learn?

When that wasn't working so well (it wasn't working badly, mind you), I went to the gold standard of players. Roger Federer. Compared to, say, Nadal or Djokovic, Federer's stroke is a bit simpler. It's not Agassi simple, but it's getting there. Indeed Agassi, for a player who hits his forehand as hard as he does, has one of the shortest preparations in the game, compared to how elaborate Djokovic is. This probably explains why he was able to return serve so well. His normal motion was so economical.

It's hard to explain, but Federer seems to use his forearm more when he swings. The other thing I'm imitating is that Federer sometimes puts his left arm in front of his body. I think this forces him to turn his shoulder more, so I'm trying that out as well. So far, it's working all right. I just saw some more slow-mo videos of Federer, and there's a huge acceleration that he makes just before he hits. Federer can also hit shoulder-height shots with quite a lot of velocity too.

The other shot I'm working on is my backhand. I can hit an OK one-handed backhand. I used to hit it before I switched to two hands. I still slice one-handed. However, many of the recent videos I've seen have emphasized hitting the two-handed backhand like a lefty one-handed backhand. One way I can make myself do this more is to clench my left hand tighter, and leave my right hand looser. I think I'm getting a touch more spin this way too.

Finally, although I was never a baseball kid, I've been thinking of the serve as more like a pitching motion, and seeing if that visual will help me serve better. The serve needs more work still, but at least I have more consistency, and can hit the second serve with more than a simple push. It almost takes a leap of faith to hit the second serve with that additional spin. The reason most people push their second serves is because it takes a rather quick fluid motion to make it consistently reliable. If you have hitches in the motion, it's bam, double fault. Pushing it lessens the pace, but it also limits how hard you can hit a second serve too.

I'm also trying to hit some drop volleys, especially to deal with quicker players. It was an idea I picked up from watching Tsonga, who, of course, is far, far more talented than me, but you can sometimes try a few ideas out from watching the best play, and I've been doing it all of my tennis life.

Bowling for History

Tomorrow is, as they say, a moment of destiny. On the one side, is the New England Patriots, seeking to win its fourth Superbowl under Tom Brady's leadership, and more importantly, to wrap up a historical season, one that hasn't been matched since the 1973 Dolphins went undefeated in the regular season, then won the Superbowl. This New England team, were it to make good on what it seems certain they will do, would have won two more games than the Dolphins, as the regular season is now 16 games, not the 14 games of the '73 Dolphins.

On the other side is the improbable New York Giants. Most people thought that we'd be seeing the Cowboys play for the Superbowl, or had hoped that Brett Favre had one more hurrah in him, in his best season at Green Bay in a long time. On the verge of retiring with a subpar record last year, Favre lead a young team to a 13-3 record. Both lost to the Manning that most people didn't expect. Eli.

Peyton's Indianapolis Colts were the defending world champion. World. Of course, that's mostly because no one else in the world cares to play this most violent of sports. We love our superlatives, indeed, the pinnacle of the sport of American football is given the name Superbowl as if it were emblazoned with a big "S", cape fluttering in the wind, hair coiffed with a perfect curl.

The Colts faced their nemesis, the Patriots, as both were undefeated, and gave them the closest challenge they had had up to that point. The Colts would go on to a second loss against the Chargers, and then to a third meaningless loss at the end of the season, where they rested key players, only to have the Chargers knock them out again during the playoffs. Everyone felt certain the Colts would win that one, but that is, as they say, why we play the game.

Peyton had a rocky start with the Colts, having a record of 3-13 that first year, but playing every snap, and even setting records for touchdown passes by a rookie. The next year, the team was starting to turn around, and after a few years, the Colts were about as steady a team as one could expect, typically a shoo-in for the playoffs, only to find frustration against the Patriots.

Peyton was the brainy one, the one that would coax his receivers to practice during the off-season, the one who grilled his coordinators to ask the how's and the why's of what they were doing. Tee Martin may have brought UT its most recent national championship, a year after Peyton left, but it's Peyton that UT fans remember, because everytime Peyton does well in the NFL, UT fans recall that he went to Tennessee. They forget he didn't win them a national championship, and often struggled to get past Florida. It doesn't matter. His consistent success in the pros are a source of Tennessee pride. The Tennessee Titans may be the state football team, but the Colts resonate as much with Tennesseans as the Titans.

Eli was the one that followed in dad's footsteps, headed to Ole Miss, where his dad, Archie is still revered. Dad labored as a QB for the New Orleans Saints, where he was the best player on an awful team. Without free agency, he spent his career doing the best he could with no chance of finding another team.

Eli's not nearly as tall as Peyton, not the kind of workhorse that Peyton is, and of course, faces comparisons to his more prolific brother. Nearly everyone makes the comparison, and wonders why Eli isn't as good. Giants fans remember the Superbowl loss to the Ravens when a primarily defensive team with a dont-lose-the-game quarterback in Trent Dilfer still did enough to get the Ravens their only Superbowl, and they remember Phil Simms and defeating the Buffalo Bills juggernaut, who four times made it to the Superbowl, and lost each time, the closest one being the first time when Parcells' Giants eked out a win over the Bills.

New York fans, used to feasting on the success of the Yankees, are tough fans. When the teams are not winning, they are frustrated, as many fans can be. It's just that New York teams expect to win. Calls for booting Tom Coughlin, the Giants coach, and finding a new QB to replace erratic Eli were heard early. And yet, the Giants had a spotty record.

After starting 6-2, they lost to Dallas, and then came the see-saw of win one week and loss the next. In the last game, the Giants would face the Patriots. The Patriots had long since wrapped up the season, having gone perfect. Would they rest their players? Or would they go for history? The Giants also didn't need the victory. Eli had, however, played inconsistently, often tossing interceptions, his completion percentage not comparable to the elites of the game.

Of course, the Patriots decided to go undefeated and make history, and the Giants, for their part, felt Eli needed another game to gain more confidence, to play freely, not to overthink, to be overly cautious. On a game that was televised on three networks to maximize the visibility of this historic game, the Giants gave the Patriots all it could handle, and despite the loss, Eli played well, and the confidence from this game appears to have buoyed him through the playoffs.

The New York naysayers are now whooping it up. They saw that the Giants gave the Patriots trouble. Plaxico Burress is hurt, but plans to play, and their success seems to depend on how well he can play. Most people still think the Patriots will win, but hope the Giants can at least play competitively until the half. Of course, some feel the Giants will pull off the upset, that the pressure of finally having to finish a perfect season will be too much, that the ghosts of the '73 Dolphins will conjure a hex that will leave the Patriots stunned.

And that, as they say, is why they play the game.

But, in case the game is a blowout, there's always the commercials.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

I must have been around ten when I first saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I had watched pretty much all the episodes. At that time, of course, there was no other series (other than the animated ones-ick), no other series. This would, in Bond-like manner, lead to nearly a dozen other Star Trek films, and finally one more that is scheduled to break the usual creative control (which lead to pedestrian TNG films).

I recall this being a rather spooky film, a bit scary. Now I realize that much of that was inexperience watching films. The more you get scared, the harder it is to get scared.

This was Star Trek as inspired by 2001. Of course, some fans point to the episode The Changeling about a robot that is to destroy imperfections, which is a small-scale version of what the film is about. (The joke goes that the film is called "Where Nomad Has Gone Before", playing on the name of the robot, Nomad, and the famous Star Trek phrase "Where No Man Has Gone Before").

As much as it tries to deal with heady plots and themes of God and what the meaning of life is, it is still, at its heart, derived from a television series, and as ardent as its fans were and are, you can't be too experimental, too way out there as Kubrick was in 2001. Indeed, Kubrick was perfectly happy having drones as characters, where the strong character is HAL, and by a long shot.

ST:TMP (as the original is known) has both too much exposition (Spock has to explain everything) mixed with long stretches of nothing. The opening of the film is a starfield with music lasting some five minutes. The entrance to the Enterprise in dry dock goes on about ten minutes. The Enterprise maneuvering into V'ger's interior is one special effect shot after another, with the crew mostly looking agape at what they're seeing, and that last minutes too. Perhaps half an hour of the film has no dialog.

Despite that, these long sequences are pretty brave for a film that decided to put all its special effects on the screen.

There's also a lot of funny things you notice. For example, there's a ton of wardrobe changes. Kirk easily wears half a dozen outfits, as does Spock and McCoy. Dekker alternates between wearing a one-piece gray uniform to a two-piece uniform. And, man, does everyone look spectacularly young.

The film is more of a visual feast for the eyes, than something that is particularly awe-inspiring. There's the final scene where Dekker unites with V'ger. I suppose I should give it credit that it almost makes sense (but not quite), especially with his desire to unite with Ilia.

There are a few things that don't hold up so well. One is the big distinction the film makes between machines and people. Indeed, there's a ton of "mechanism" bias. Dekker, who is about to have feelings for the Ilia probe, is informed she's just a mechanism. The crew is amazed V'ger has achieved consciousness, even if plenty of idiot humans have achieved it just fine, thank you.

Surprisingly, I thought Ilia had a lot more lines. She barely has any before she becomes a probe.

There's a particularly silly scene where Spock decides to journey into the interior, and somehow, in random wandering runs into, well, another Ilia probe? That looks like a mannequin. And then he's tossed back to the Enterprise, where Kirk is in a spacesuit outside the ship, what, hoping Spock comes back?

There are some gaps in logic. McCoy who's been out of Starfleet for a while knows the name of an ensign (to be fair, one would imagine, in the future, there would be something that would automatically tell you the names of other people as you meet them). Nurse (sorry, Doctor) Chapel seems to know Ilia, even though she's only been aboard barely a day.

The Enterprise alternately can and can't communicate with Starfleet when inside the cloud. It flits this way and that way, as the whim of whatever the plot requires.

There's a ton of tiny missteps (the oddly blurred scene when Spock first comes aboard, where half the background is blurred out, to odd effect, where one of the bridge officers has his arms crossed doing nothing in particular, except giving the background some interest).

It's decent, but not quite as awesome as I recall.

Making Stroganoff

It's been a while since I made beef stroganoff, the last few times, I suspect it was chicken. The problem with using beef, at least beef from Whole Food's is that it's very expensive. By buying any reasonable amount of beef (a little over a pound), I've already made a dish that's ten dollars or more, for a dish that's considered, well, not the highest end.

The few times I've made it, the sauce has been too watery, and nor particularly thick. I used a trick by essentially making roux, but was still moderately unhappy with the results. I decided to follow a recipe from Cooking for Engineers.

Cooking for Engineers is run by one Michael Chu. Most food blogs illustrate the ingredients with pictures, showing step by step what to do. It's funny how, even good cookbooks often lack pictures, and how the average Joe can do something better than the pros.

The standard recipe in Joy of Cooking and also the one in Cooks Illustrated essentially also opt for the roux approach, requiring butter and flour to thicken the result.

Chu takes a different approach, and it works remarkably well provided you don't mind the amount of fat involved. In particular, the recipe from Joy of Cooking asks for 3 tablespoons of sour cream. Cooks Illustrated asks for 1/3 cup (that's about 5 tablespoons). Chu opts for an entire cup! that's 3 times as much as Cooks Illustrated, and more than 5 times used in Joy of Cooking.

However, sour cream isn't all that sour, and I feel that beef stroganoff needs a pretty strong sour cream taste. Plus sour cream is pretty thick, and you can mostly avoid a roux by using a lot more sour cream.

The one drawback of the recipe was the way I made the beef. In particular, it came out pretty hard (it might be the cut of beef I had) and kinda bland. I believe that I should have lightly salted and peppered the beef either prior to cooking, or slightly after.

I'm likely to try it with chicken again, just to see how that works out.

So, the trick, such as it is, is to use a ton of sour cream (one cup) instead of the roux. Oh, Chu also suggest adding a tablespoon of Dijon mustard. Also, a good idea, as it gives a nice mustard tang. Cooks Illustrated opts for a lot of additional ingredients including tomato paste, brown sugar, wine, etc. I might give that a try, but the recipe is more complex (by just a touch) and I hate dealing with tomato paste, because even if I have a tiny can, I only ever use about a tablespoon at a time. I might use it more in my Indian cooking though, since I never seem to get through even a tiny can.

So lessons from this? Get a little less beef. Add salt/pepper to beef to season it.

But it is quite pricey, so chicken might be a better alternative, even if it lacks as much flavor as beef.

What Not To Wear

I don't know what I think about this show. It's really borderline offensive. The show is a bit like Queer Eye except mostly focused on how a person is dressed, most specifically women.

In this particular episode that I stumbled on, it was about a slightly heavy-ish, very busty blond. In particular, the show was making a point of how to dress when you have larger than average breasts. She had left Oklahoma and headed to New York, but wasn't happy with the way she looked. The hosts of the show were going to give her advice on how to look better from clothing to haircut to shoes.

Of course, the real problem with this is price. They let her go on a shopping spree in New York, and she spent over a thousand dollars getting clothing, while pretty much jettisoning out all her clothing. In other words, she probably went from clothing that was 40-50 dollars up to 150-200 dollars, easily quadrupling the cost of the clothing. And that's not all. They suggested she have most of her clothing tailored, which, alas, in the US, ain't free. This can be a significant percentage of the clothing too, likely to boost it another 10% or more.

While the hosts seemed a little surprised how much she spent (though they probably gave her quite the budget to spend), they probably did so to seem concerned about the clothing's cost, even as they, themselves, wouldn't bat an eye on the expense of clothing.

In fact, the only place I've seen it worse is watching Kornheiser and Wilbon on their Washington Post sports segment (called Talking Points), were Kornheiser frequently talks about how much Cindy Boren (a sports editor) is spending on her clothing. She frequently has clothing in the several hundred dollar range. Meanwhile, Wilbon, being the well-paid man he is, dresses even more expensively. He commented that he hadn't spent less than three hundred dollars on shoes in a long time, and has a fondness for Italian leather.

Now, it certainly makes sense that more expensive clothing would make you look better, but shows like these encourage people who already spend a lot of money on clothing to take it up several notches. I understand the feeling. I buy kitchen equipment. The average cost of this stuff is relatively cheap, in the forty dollars or less range.

But the really good stuff is really expensive. An affordable knife might be 10 or 20 dollars. A top-notch one, more than one hundred dollars. A whole set can put you back several hundred dollars. On the other hand, if I bought that, I would likely never have to replace it. At the very least, I could keep it more than a decade.

This clothing is likely to be old in 2-3 years, and again, the spending goes on.

I will say that they didn't mention one thing that would have been a sensitive part. She probably could lose weight by doing more exercise. However, the show realizes its audience doesn't always have perfect figure, and that it's easier (if more expensive) to wear "better" clothing than to get in better shape (indeed, if some of this money went to a personal trainer--but I digress).

Indeed, most clothing experts are generally out there not just to improve your look, but to up the cost of your look, to push how much you spend to outrageous amounts (amounts they consider acceptable to look that good).

The show is, of course, between a rock and a hard place. They want people to look good, but they don't care if this puts them in the poorhouse. And the people who watch see it as a kind of fantasy, that spending money will make everything work out. It's an attitude not shared by a lot of the world where feeding yourself is as much as one can hope for. Such shows encourage that people look bad, and thus, spend the money to look better.

I can't say I'm completely immune to this, because I'm certainly not, but certainly people look at spending money to fit in their social crowd. And is that a message we should be sending?

20 and Terrific

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had something of a coming out party at the Australian Open. Once the number 2 junior in the world, next to Cypriot, Marcos Baghdatis (who has had a pretty successful career since turning pro), Tsonga has had a wide variety of ailments, from shoulder injury, abdominal injuries. His career had been stalled for years.

Only now, has Tsonga gotten himself fit, over injuries to finally play the kind of tennis that his junior career had promised.

After a thorough whipping of Nadal in the semifinals, where Tsonga was keeping up toe-to-toe from the baseline, at times, outhitting Nadal, certainly outserving Nadal, coming into net to hit drop shots and drop volleys, it seemed Tsonga might give Djokovic, the surprise finalist, a challenge.

For the first two games, both Djokovic and Tsonga looked nervous. Even as both settled down, Tsonga kept more to the baseline, not sneaking in as he had against Nadal, possibly because Djokovic plays pretty good defense. He can especially hit a good backhand, when he's out of position. I suspect Nadal stands further back from the baseline than Djokovic which made it easier for Tsonga to attack.

Now, Novak was also a bit distracted. The Djokovic family was out in full force. His mother, his father, two younger brothers, and another row of friends behind them. But a row or two behind them was a rowdy pro-Tsonga French group, painted in the French colors, and cheering wildly. The two groups got to jawing with one another, eventually requiring security to sit near the two groups. During this time, Djokovic seemed visibly bothered, not able to play his game. He struggled especially with his second serve.

On set point, Djokovic hit a strong approach, and Tsonga barely ran it down, tossing up a lob then went up and in, and he had the set.

But the next three sets all went to Djokovic. While Tsonga didn't play badly, often serving well in games, he started lacking the movement he had earlier on. Winners that were going in were now occasionally spraying long or wide. Djokovic started taking more charge of his groundstrokes, and Tsonga was mostly trading strokes.

By the fourth set, however, Djokovic looked as if he might be getting hurt, much as Tsonga was looking tired in the second and third sets. Djokovic had a trainer come out, and Tsonga looked more inspired. Even so, he found he couldn't break Tsonga (he had no opportunities in the second and third set), even as he was, for the most part, holding serve easily.

As they went into tiebreak, one advantage Djokovic had was his tiebreak record, which is pretty fantastic, and this tie break was no different as he took a minibreak, then two, to finally go up 6-2, and then, after several semifinal Grand Slam appearances and a US Open final appearance, Djokovic took the next step and won his first Grand Slam event.

At the age of 20.

But perhaps just as big, the Muhammad Ali look-alike, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (the commentators: Patrick McEnroe, Dick Enberg, Mary Carillo, and Pam Shriver running with the boxing analogies and puns all day long) might be ready to take that next step. Already, he'll move to the top 20, and he's got the game that might move to the top 10.

This was certainly a career starting move for Djokovic. But was it also the same for Tsonga? Are we witnessing the proverbial changing of the guard?

Free Credit Report Guy

Remember the free credit report guy? In one commercial, he's a pirate at a restaurant playing a guitar. There are several variations to the commercial. He's living with either his parents or his girlfriend's parents.

Anyway, you'd probably think he's, well, American. But he's not.

He's French.

Well, French-Canadian.

It's this fella, Eric Violette, probably used to singing in French more than English (though the commercials do seem lip-synced).

Are You Being Served?

It's almost 4:30 AM on a Sunday morning, and they are showing the men's final of the Australian Open. When I was growing up, I watched a lot of tennis on TV, especially through my teenage years. Once college rolled around, I saw a lot less, especially in grad school. Watching the Australian, I've probably watched more tennis than I have in a very long time, no doubt, due to having "cable" (really, satellite).

Having come back to tennis, I now see a few things I didn't see. In particular, the serve is very useful in gaining advantage, even when you don't hit an ace or a winner. It can lead to a weak response, and give the server advantage hitting off the ground. It's not always obvious, and sometimes the rallies do turn neutral, waiting for one good shot to turn up.

Right now, the quality of tennis is pretty high. Both sides were really nervous opening the match, but the hard hitting has come quickly.

Key to Tsonga's success is his serve, as he's one of the hardest servers in the game. Djokovic returns well, but Tsonga has played some heaters. What you see in Djokovic's game is the ability to hit really solid shots even out of position. Indeed, this skill is what makes the best pros the very best. It says something when you can hit a shot with plenty of time for preparation.

It say something quite a bit more when you can hit a shot when it seems you should be on the defensive. This is, ultimately, what makes Roger Federer so good. You are only as good as the shot you produce while on the defensive. On a good day, your opponent will put you on the defensive, from time to time. If you can take those shots and hit a good shot in return, it can completely deflate the opponent.

Both Tsonga and Djokovic have these skills in spades, which is one big reason both are in the final.

Now back to watching more tennis.

Star Trek

I know some people, including my friend Adam, who have a strong affinity for the original series of Star Trek (often called TOS, for "The Original Series"). Indeed, without this series, none of the films, nor many of its spinoffs would have occurred.

The first serious followup to the series (no, I don't include the animated series) was the series of 6 films, starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country. Then, came the films based on TNG (Star Trek: The Next Generation).

Now that those film series have been over many years, I can now rank the films in the order from best to worst, and this ranking is likely to be different from what it would have been, say, when the last of the 6 films came out.

In order,

1. Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan
   
2. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
   
3. Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock
   
4. Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country
   
5. Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
   
6. Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier
   

I'll explain the order, but will pay particular attention to the second film first.

Of all the films, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (also ST:TMP), was the most different. When Star Wars came out, people expected science fiction to be a romp, with great visual effects, a simple mythic story, and a lot of fun.

Oddly enough, perhaps due to the lack of good special effects, Star Wars lead to very few science fiction movies of note. Indeed, the only major movie to compete with Star Wars, from that era, is the very different Alien, which one has to admit, was far more influential that even Star Wars. There was Close Encounters, while very Spielberg, was not that much influenced by Star Wars. Perhaps Superman: The Movie was the closest in spirit, even if you couldn't quite call it science fiction (to be fair, Star Wars doesn't fit tradition SF themes either).

ST:TMP looked backwards to the most influential SF film since, hmm, Metropolis, namely, 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's a pretty heady movie to be inspired by, especially considering the series cared more about social issues of its day (i.e., the 1960s) than deep science fiction issues (to be fair, genre fiction is often inspired by modern issues, cast in unusual settings, especially science fiction).

Guess I'll go over the basic plot. A strange cloud has been heading to Earth, and destroying things in its way, including some Klingons. The Enterprise has been sent to investigate with their recently refitted Enterprise, which makes it the best ship in the fleet (they never explain how Starfleet has this kind of money, but oh well). The ship is lead by Robert Redford look-alike, Stephen Collins, who plays the captain, Stephen Dekker. He's had a relationship with the very bald and sensual, Ilia.

As they head to this cloud, Ilia gets transformed into a "probe" (an android), as they head to the interior of the cloud. Eventually, they discover the secret of the cloud. The satellite, Voyager, sent in the 20th century, was captured by a planet of robots who discovered its mission, which was to seek and gather all information, and return it back to Earth. These robots fitted the robot with power to assimilate planets (thus, the prototype to the Borg) and their technology. At some point, it became so powerful, it gained a conscience. It wanted to find "God", which it assumes it at Earth, and in particular, feeling it is missing something, it wants to assimilate God.

To do this, the response code needed by Voyager (called V'ger throughout) needs to be transmitted by hand, which is where Dekker comes in. Having lost Ilia, Dekker (who's captaincy has been yanked by Kirk) seems ready to give his life to be part of this super being. He sets the connection, Ilia's consciousness returns, and the two, plus Voyager, become one happy super being, and transcend into some higher dimensional enlightenment.

The complaints of the film was, much like 2001, it was chilly and slow. It also had a pretty intellectual idea, which is the search for God, by a robotic entity. This is matched by Spock's storyline. Spock is going through a ceremony to exorcise his human half, which fails, and he decides to return back to the Enterprise. But he's become chilly, a robot. Thus, one of the major characters in the series has become weirdly distant, which had to disappoint fans, but in hindsight, is a pretty bold move for the character.

And, at the time, ST:TMP had really expensive special effects, which still look quite good over the years (unlike, say, The Black Hole which looks like a movie made in the 1960s, despite being made in the late 70s).

Despite being completely different from the series, and any movie that followed, it really was perhaps more influential to Star Trek than any other movie. In particular, Dekker and Ilia became Riker and Troi. The cloud creature was essentially the Borg.

It was slightly odd to see Kirk wearing a short-sleeved shirt, as if space were all nice and warm, but other than that, I have to say that the film still holds up, compared to the rest.

Let's quickly hit the rest. Star Trek 2 is still the best because it has the one big thing. Spock's self-sacrifice. Spock is back to being the Spock of the series. This film delves into Star Trek's own canon and picks out Space Seed and wonders what happens to Khan. Ricardo Montalban, at the time, was at the height of his popularity, starring in Fantasy Island.

This tells a revenge tale. Khan, who had been left to conquer a planet, with his band of 20th century genetically engineered super-humans, has been struggling to live, because the next planet over exploded and caused the planet he was on to shift orbit. Since then, Ceti Alpha 5 has been pretty much uninhabitable.

In the meanwhile, Checkov and his captain have been sent on a mission. Carol Marcus, Kirk's old flame, has been creating a device called the Genesis device, that will terraform a planet. The downside? It kills any life that was already there. They need to find a dead planet with certain requirements (no life being one). The Reliant has been searching for a long time, and stumble on Ceti Alpha 5, which happens to be where Khan is. He's got these tiny animals that have killed most of his crew (including his wife) and uses these to take control of the captain and Checkov and the crew.

Khan wants to get a hold of the Genesis device, but more than that, he wants revenge on Kirk. He does this despite the better advice of his second in command who tells him that he has power (though, you have to wonder) and doesn't need revenge. But Khan has been seething all these years, and now he has his chance.

This film has four pretty good ideas going on at once. First, there's Khan, who is a great villain. At the heat of ST2 is this revenge tale. Then, there's Kirk and his former fling and their son, who he's ignored for years (as she wanted), a modern comment on having children. There's the Genesis device, which gives the film its threat. Finally, there is Spock giving his life in the ultimate cat and mouse game at the end of the film. Oh, and I completely forgot about Saavik. It introduced a credible Vulcan (yeah, she's half Romulan) to the series.

While many people say this was a return to form for the film series (in a sense, it was), it represents a far superior film than any episode in the series, having far more story elements and intrigue. But more than that, it has McCoy being irascible, Spock debating with him, i.e., things people liked from the original series. Most of this was missing in the rather chilly original film. Indeed, series succeed because people care about the characters, which is what the producers of the first film failed to understand.

That made the first film a bit of a failure from a fan's perspective, but more fascinating as a film when you look back at it historically.

I'll quickly go over the other four. I put Star Trek 3 in third. It's kind of weak, but really plays to the one strong idea it has: what the crew will do for its friend. Even as Spock is hardly in the film, his is the central plot point driving the film. A few things are a bit silly, and Christopher Lloyd makes for an odd Klingon, so it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Star Trek 6 was seen as the third best, but honestly, it's not much more than a bad conspiracy film, mixed up with the fall of the Soviet Union. Star Trek 4 really ruined Star Trek by introducing humor, and bad humor at that, to the series. It was one of the more successful films, being a fish out of water idea. But 6, despite being better than 4, is still, in my mind, weaker than 3 and 1, and 3 is kinda weak already.

Of course, Star Trek 5 is dismal. Oddly enough, it had perhaps one of the headiest idea since Star Trek 1, but its execution was so horrid. Shatner was apparently fascinated by evangelists, and does a 23rd century equivalent of it, and it really is kinda lame. Part of the problem is just how casual Shatner, Nimoy, and McCoy take the whole thing, from its rather narcissistic intro (Kirk is climbing up some mountain face, a la Tom Cruise, showing he's a man's man) to an oddly-happy Luckinbill playing Spock's half-brother who has abandoned logic for emotion.

I write this because I just bought Star Trek 1 and want to go back and watch this, to see how well it really holds up. Easily the most eerie of the 6 films.

I don't even want to his TNG, which made a bunch of interchangeably forgettable extended episodes. There's some hope that the new Star Trek film being done by the Alias guy, JJ Abrams will be, at least, sophisticated and intriguing. As the creator of Alias and Lost and director of MI3, he's at least shown the kind of sophistication that's missing in many ST series, and so it's likely to look quite different and have a different flow from the ST films so far, and that, to my mind, after the TNG films, will be a welcome relief.

This is why I also like ST:TMP, because it pushed the series into areas that were unfamiliar, and occasionally, that's where it ought to go.

End of an Era?

For a while, it looked like Federer would roll on to yet another major final. Up a break, and ready to serve for the set, when Djokovic broke back and broke again to win the first set, and pretty much, all those errors that Federer was making was coming to hurt him. Djokovic started to hit with confidence, especially on serve. His movement was fantastic, and he was incredibly steady.

Federer, on the other hand, was having a hard time moving to his right, and Djokovic was taking advantage of it. Federer's forehand flew a bit on him. And whenever Djokovic was down break point, he'd come up with a big serve, something Federer was unable to do.

Djokovic looked so good, that I wonder how Tsonga, who utterly demolished Nadal, will fare. Yesterday, I was confident that Tsonga would give a huge challenge to either.

In the press conference, Federer didn't feel so bad losing. He didn't feel 100%. I think he feels that had he been 100%, he would have done fine. Indeed, he felt that losing the first set allowed Novak to hit more freely, something he wouldn't have done otherwise.

People are already, minutes after the match is over, wondering if the days of Federer's dominance is over. Federer doesn't seem to think so, and probably plans to retool and think about what happened, and head back to the drawing board.

Dumbing Down?

Joel Spolsky has been complaining about the dumbing-down of computer science education. He's not the only one. Suddenly, out of the woodwork, you are getting folks who are agreeing with this. Is this problem specific to computer science? Do all the other disciplines have great teachers, and computer science awful ones?

There are a plethora of problems with computer science education, and I'll hit some of them myself, but the solutions are, frankly, very hard. Some of the issues are institutional, mired in the way academia views computer science education. Some of it is merely the mission of the university, seeking to educate as many students as possible, and the resulting mediocrity that's sure to come from that. Some of it is due to the incredible faddishness of the industry that pulls everyone in a million directions, and declares that their one obscure area of expertise is what every student should learn (a recent article proclaimed everyone should learn compilers--pretty soon, you hear everyone should learn algorithms or type theory or AI or network security or linguistics).

Let's begin with computer science education itself, and why it's causing problems. Perhaps the first problem with programming is that it's gotten quite complex. Object-oriented programming may seem particularly cool especially when it caught fire in industry in the late 80s, and universities struggled to keep up.

Object-oriented programming is tough compared to the simplicity of C or Pascal (and C isn't that easy either). But we continue to teach programming as if it were C or Pascal because academia doesn't want to admit that programming got difficult, and that two courses aren't enough.

Indeed, traditional CS had two courses for programming: CS1 and CS2. CS1 was learning the basics, which honestly, was control-flow (if statements, loops), arrays, and functions. No classes, and maybe a touch of pointers. CS2 was data structures: stacks, heaps, trees, and pointers. That was all you needed.

CS courses then often taught assembly, which has disappeared (and to be honest, if it returned "as is", it would not give enough insight into low-level programming as some would imagine).

One could easily argue that object oriented programming requires at least a third course to fully comprehend programming in it. A third semester alone is useful for a horrid language like C++ where templates, virtual functions makes reading and debugging a nightmare (and memory management).

And we haven't even talked about threads!

The other part academia hasn't particularly cared for is that software engineering has become a discipline. True, many a department now have software engineering professors, but academic software engineering is a strange beast, often divorced a bit from the reality of real software engineering, and then further lacking the respect from other more mathematical disciplines that have been around longer.

Indeed, many other computer science research areas look at programming as a mere tool, useful as a means to an end, and not an end to itself.

Software developers have to deal with a lot of issues these days. Let's hit a few of the basics. At the very least, you now need to know version control. There used to be RCS and SCCS, which both sucked. Now there's CVS and Subversion, and now a whole spate of distributed version control systems. It takes a while just to understand how version control works, especially the nastiness of branching and merging.

Academics who haven't dealt with version control (fortunately, fewer and fewer) find this subject painful. What does this have to do with programming? And, in a very real sense, they are right. It has very little do with programming, and everything to do with software development. And because it's tool-based, and because we still haven't fully gotten it right, people are going to come up with one system after another, and as soon as you master CVS, you waste time trying to learn git and other bits of arcania just to get by.

But then, there's the new trend (and it is a trend now) towards agile programming. That means unit testing. That means test driven development. That means behavior driven development. And, oh the plethora of tolls. Programming has become so convenient to the masses that the best of them produce wonderful tools. And now, people have to pay attention to their existence! If you were doing Rails development, you might play with RSpec or autotest, tools that are only about a year old, and you'd have to keep your ear pretty close to the ground to keep up. That's tough when an academic wants to do research rather than keep track of the tabloids.

Software development has lead to people using terms like "requirements gathering" and "test document" and "test plan". Documentation has gotten big, even if people routinely do a bad job of it.

Let's briefly talk testing. This used to be something a programmer does. Indeed, it's still something a programmer does. But now, there are separate folks that handle quality assurance, so much so, that it's given the name quality assurance, and there's a whole spate of terminology and tools surrounding testing! And the mentality of testing is quite different from coding. What was considered something a conscientious programmer would do has now become its own discipline, almost worthy of a major.

Speaking of tools, what about usability? The web did a marvelous job exposing the need to write usable software. The average person doesn't understand software so much, and can quickly leave one webpage for another. A webpage has to be visually appealing, yet easy to use, and preferably both. Once upon a time, people figured the only people using programmers were other programmers. Thus, beauty, comprehensibility, and all those things people now care about were a complete afterthought.

Did we mention how faddish the industry is? Right now, dynamic languages like Python and Ruby have caught everyone's fancy. And while those languages make great strides towards wide acceptability, people are already looking for the next great panacea of a language. Whispers of Erlang, Haskell, O'Caml, Scala abound. Even if we stick to Python and Ruby, both have enough magic in it that you can do a lot of non-obvious magic.

And, one of Java's downsides is that it's so verbose that people need a good IDE to write code in the language. You simply didn't need a decent IDE for languages like Pascal. Eclipse itself is so complex, you need hundreds of pages to scratch the surface of what it can do. It's integrated with tools to test, use version control, refactor(!). Things no one much cared about 20 years ago, so that people could focus on, you know, programming (I know--it's all programming, isn't it?). Thus, a good programmer now has to master a complex IDE, and one that's not likely to be around 20 years from now.

Once upon a time, most programs didn't play well with each other. But now, people extend languages all the time. Thus, people write tons of libraries for Python and Ruby. You have to worry about what libraries exist, and how to use them. There are people that now link in other people's code. A good programmer has to locate all sorts of software, and evaluate them and decide whether to use it or not. In the good old days, you'd simply write the code yourself (badly) or simply do with a bad solution (your own).

Oh, what about open source? Want to explain the gazillion variations of open source licensing and what it means to the average programmer?

It's a big world out there. Want to explain internationalization, and how it affects your code? Is your code ready for the world market?

How about handling all those timezones and dates? That also falls under internationalization. As does, of course, Unicode (and that it's not just one code, but a family of codes).

How about databases? You don't talk about all those web frameworks without databases? And web frameworks? And XML? These are now part of the day-to-day toolset a programmer needs to know.

And that's outside of all the usual stuff academics generally care about, like algorithms, compilers, computation theory, AI, bio-computing, numerical analysis, and so forth, most of which, the average developer knows little about.

All of these topics could fill courses and course and courses that a typical computer science department doesn't even want to tackle. Why? Because five years from now, another new trend will sweep in, and people will have to learn again. And will those changes be an improvement? More than likely, not enough to offset the headaches learning it.

Now, here's what I'd love all the critics to do. Teach an intro course. Decide that everyone is an idiot, and tell it to their faces. Then, be told that you still have to get them to learn something, and feel what it's like, what it's really like, to have to get people to learn that don't want to learn. If it will make the visualization easier, imagine it's your own child, refusing to learn, wondering why it's so hard, and why there's so much crap, rather than that superstar you just hired who can't get enough of this new stuff, and can take anything you throw at him or her, and turn out magic.

Spolsky complains about the dumbing down of the curriculum, but it's only because Java doesn't do it for him. He knows that to get the speed he wants, he's dealing with languages that will give it to him. Even he's not crazy enough to believe that coding in assembly will offset the productivity losses coding in something that horrid. Don't you think that if Java ran ten times faster than C++, he'd be hapier to give up all the crap associated with C++. But because he needs stuff that runs better, runs faster, he realizes that his coders have to know these grungy details.

Compare computer science to math, where irrelevant details are left out, and where people learn deep concepts, to computer science, where dealing with complexity has lead us to fads of the day, as good as we have now, but likely to be replaced with something new, and more and more and more code out there that we have to deal with.

Now, let's take a step back. Breathe.

We can teach as much of this as we want, but learning isn't simply a bunch of concepts that you teach. It's a worldview. When you are given a problem, what do you do? Suppose someone tells you to port a device driver. Do you even know what a device driver is? Or what it means to port? And yet, some people can take something that vague, and get code to work, and someone else will say that they were never taught that in college, and how are they supposed to deal with this?

And the fact of the matter is that, as much as the industry complains, unless they are prepared to head into academia (itself, very territorial, and having its own idea about what students need), academia can basically ignore what is being said. First, academia is so distributed that most professors couldn't even tell you what courses are required for their own students to graduate. They barely care about their own class, and don't even think about how their class fits in the overall plan. To get them to work together and make such changes, especially changes that are likely to come every five years, is to against their nature that knowledge shouldn't be a total fad.

And it's contrary to the mission of universities which is to graduate students. Most software pundits would have 90% of computer science majors jettisoned, despite the fact that mediocre programmers are often needed to do a lot of work. They would have their other courses jettisoned, because there's no time to worry about all those humanities and such. If every major took that attitude, most students would not even be in college. Since most universities are in the business of graduating students, then each major has to worry about how to get students who don't understand pointers very well to do well enough to get out.

Imagine it's your job to educate all the students who want to be computer science majors. The mediocre ones and the brilliant ones. Then, your view of what they should learn changes, when you realize that it's hard to even get the basic programming down, beyond all this other crap you have to learn to be decent in the field.

Tsonga

There is a time when the top players look invincible. They play at a level that seems far above the norm. Even the occasional interloper who manages to play even makes enough mistakes that the occasional advantage won is offset by the silly errors, a case of one step forward, two steps back.

Such an event happened to James Blake who has had no success beating world number 1, Roger Federer. Blake has improved his game a bit, but he relies on the ability to overpower his opponent. No doubt, he was able to get a few good winning shots, especially his newfound down-the-line backhand which gave Federer all kinds of problems. Just not enough for Blake to win. Missed first serves compounded the issue.

Blake has been around for a few years now, and so people are looking to see if he can make that leap up. He's made gradual improvements, but it's tough at his level.

People often say that the players that beat Federer or Nadal will come from the junior ranks. They will learn to hit harder, to hit more bizarre shots, to have more mental resolve. They will draw inspiration from the best, and learn to beat the best. And, at the very least, the human body falters as it ages, and so youth may be served. Witness the surge of one Novak "Nole" Djokovic. Buried in the epic meetings of Nadal vs. Federer at the French and at Wimbledon was Djokovic making the semifinals of both, showing his versatility as well. Again, Djokovic is in the semifinals, and at the age of 20, may be the one that breaks through.

Occasionally, you get someone like Courier. In his case, he had a powerful game, on the same league as Agassi, but he was intense, had to hit all-out, and when things got bad, he hit harder, and missed more spectacularly. It took Jose Higueras to calm him down to harness that energy, so he could play his best.

Such players need time. It's usually more effective to harness a player that has wild talent than for a player who lacks talent to become a better hitter. Easier to teach smarts and fitness than to teach physical coordination and talent.

So it goes with Jo Wilifried Tsonga of France. The last Afro-French player of great note was Yannick Noah, who was mostly seen supporting his son, Joachim, a 7 foot tall NBA player, after his career in reggae singing. He won his one and only Grand Slam title at the French, his home country, and while he continued to play well, his game, for the big man he was, was not enough to challenge the best players of the day.

Tsonga is said to be distinctly Gallic, showing the flair of Noah or perhaps Henri Leconte, another talented Gaul whose inconsistent brilliance was never fully harnessed. With the decline of serve-and-volley, Tsonga's game of sneak and volley might be the modern day replacement.

Tsonga hits powerfully from the baseline and serves with enough power that Nadal found himself being outdueled from the backcourt. But rather than hang with Nadal when he was in trouble, Tsonga would head to the net, and time after time, show his delicate touch. Drop volleys so short that you might as well call them stop volleys.

Or as Bud Collins used to say "Eyedropper". Nadal had had his way with the best Finnish player ever, Jarkko Nieminen, which I suppose is like calling someone the best American soccer player ever. It's good, but still not the best. Where Nieminen managed to use his quickness and hustle to confound Kohlschreiber, the German youth that knocked out Roddick, he was being dealt body blows from Nadal, who pushed him around at will.

Nadal, on the other hand, was barely able to contain Tsonga. When Tsonga would rip an inside out forehand to Nadal's forehand (Nadal, a lefty), Nadal might discover, on his wild attempt to reach the ball, that Tsonga had reached the net, and was volleying his shot out of reach.

It's said that fitness training has made the difference. Tsonga used to rush into the net on a prayer. With stamina, he can now trade rallies, set up, and come in on his own terms.

To be fair, Nadal has never been that comfortable on hard courts, but no one expected Tsonga to play so well. Now he's in the final. Can he handle Federer or Djokovic? Or has this Frenchman made such strides that the question we should be asking is: can they handle Tsonga?

On Breakfast

Americans have been skipping breakfast for years. In the rush, rush to get to work, and not wanting to prepare anything elaborate, breakfast has become the forgotten meal. Breakfast has become simpler than ever.

The "traditional" breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast, has given way to cereal and milk. Not nearly as appetizing, but really convenient.

Except it isn't. There's still many a person who jets out the door, and head to a McDonald's or a Starbucks for the bare minimum coffee to get them going in the morning.

This, after all the ads that used to tell people how you should eat a healthy breakfast before going out, that it helps you get through the morning. Everyone, in theory, understands this is so, but finds the necessity to head to work right off the bat as a time-saver.

But, in other countries, such as (the only country I ever bust out) India, breakfast is still seen as vitally important. People just don't feel right if they don't eat breakfast. And, rather than being the same repetitive cereal, day after day, Indians will often expect variety in breakfast, and not just for weekend changeup (typical Americans opting for pancakes if they choose to make it).

My feeling is that the decline of cooking in general has also affected breakfast. If you don't want to spend 30 minutes to an hour cooking, and would rather pick up something fast in 5 minutes, then even the effort to make cereal might feel too laborious.

In fact, Americans who do eat breakfast don't even think of variety. Too early in the morning. So, they make the same thing each morning. Variety, if it comes at all, might be in the choice of cereal, or the choice of flavored oatmeal.

If you had to reimagine breakfast, what might you do?

Heath Ledger RIP

Celebrity deaths in the US aren't the way they used to be. At some point in time, Americans were more innocent, or at the very least, more in awe of movie stars, and saw them as larger-than-life. While that's true, to some extent, today, people are likely to express surprise, rather than profound sadness or depression.

Heath Ledger, unlike say Bobby Fischer or Edmund Hillary, was still pretty young when he died, at the age of 28. Generally, people assume that actors that die young do drugs or have committed suicide. Since most of us don't know the actor as a person, we don't know what happened.

Some argue, perhaps quite rightly, that many others die, whether in Iraq, or other countries (why pick on countries that Americans are involved in) are treated with no fanfare. Clearly, this has to do with the sheer number of people who pass away, and that most of them are not that well-known, and in any case, we'd be terribly depressed if we cared about each one. So, we elevate celebrities. When they pass away, we pay attention.

There's not quite an equivalent of a female starlet of the 40s, especially on the male side. Heath Ledger seemed to fall in this category. When Mel Gibson came across the pond, there was suddenly an infatuation with Australians (although, as it turns out, Gibson was born in the US, but raised in Australia).

Then came a spate of Australians. Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Cate Blanchett, Hugh Jackman, and yes, Heath Ledger.

Despite being rather handsome, Ledger opted for roles that stretched his acting skills, while occasionally taking more conventional roles of a starring lead. When he was selected to be in Brokeback Mountain, many thought he'd be the weaker actor compared to Jake Gyllenhaal, when in fact, Ledger was the far stronger actor.

He recently played Joker in the lastest Batman installation, which has yet to reach the theaters.

Presumably, in the upcoming days, we'll hear more, and some people will be curious, and others will be disdainful of a mere actor that got newsplay because he died too soon.

Even so, it doesn't hurt to pay respect to his body of work, and to wonder what might have been.

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

Perhaps the one thing that separates man from immortality is food. Well, that and air, and a few other vital necessities. After all, if one is immortal, food is no longer necessary, right?

But so long as people need food to survive, there's a sense that we might as well make this a pleasurable experience. Historically, women seem to do all the cooking. This doesn't prevent guys from cooking, and certainly great chefs of the world tend to be men, at least, when cooking moves beyond the perfunctory need to simple feed one's family, to an art form meant to satisfy kings.

I've been pondering a few things lately. One is arranged marriages. The first reaction for many Americans to arranged marriages is the shock that you'd let anyone, let alone your parents, decide who you should marry. Within traditional cultures, having your parents decide makes the most sense, however. They raised you, they tried to do what's best for you. Who else would even do a good a job as your own parents? One of the commandments say "Honor thy mother and thy father".

Still, many an American teen finds that they argue with their parents, who they feel have an old time view of the world. And what criteria would they have to pick a wife or a husband.

Indeed, that's an interesting question. To answer it, let's ask what criteria people normally have when they are trying to find someone to marry, or even minimally, to date. Usually, one highly desirable quality is attractiveness. It's perhaps no surprise that celebrities, whether they be athletes or actors, seem to pick women that are more noted for their beauty, almost to declare to the public at large, that they've acquired someone stunning. This can be determined by a simple glance.

What if they weren't so attractive? Perhaps a bit heavy-set? But they had a, you know, great personality (when anyone says "great personality", the implication is the person is borderline ugly--after all, why not get great personality, and attractiveness).

And those basic qualities, attractiveness and personality pretty much win out over a lot of things. Sure, you might prefer intellectual compatibility, and often that happens just because you are likely to meet people of similar backgrounds in whatever station of life you're in. But it doesn't have to be a necessity. Indeed, I find people who date where, say, the guy knows a ton about some subject, and his SO knows almost nothing of that subject. It doesn't seem to affect the relationship.

Let's now move this decision making to parents. What might they decide? For a parent of a son, it might be compatibility. Did she study what he studied? If he's an engineer, it might make sense that she is one too. Similar religion? Similar income level? Can she cook? Will she be nice to my son?

Indeed, if parents make the decision, than issues of politeness become far more important, and parents begin to place a premium on politeness for their kids. After all, if the kid is short-tempered, likes to argue, likes to criticize, this will make them far less attractive as mates (especially if women have such traits). Women must, therefore, bear the burden of modesty, yet show grace.

But what parent would want their son to marry a woman that couldn't cook? Surely, cooking must be a minimum requirement!

Throughout the 50s and 60s, with women gaining more independence, being able to take jobs beyond secretary and teacher and nurse, another side effect was that women found themselves working 9-5, and at the end of the day, feeling fatigued, having to cook for their husbands after the daily job.

There was an industry set up to take care of these issues for women, from those who made frozen dinners, to canned foods, to fast food restaurants. And women began to embrace these ideas. It wasn't so important for women to know how to cook, and so many women simply didn't learn. In the meanwhile, as women gained some equality, this meant a larger rate of divorce, and a generation of men scared to get married, and also men who felt it was fine for a guy who knew how to cook.

All that to get to point I wanted to make, and that was my journey to cooking food.

A few weeks ago, when I was at my parents place, I watched a segment off a DVD of America's Test Kitchen. The episode was about two curry traditions: India and Thailand. I decided that the Indian curry wasn't so hard to make, at least, the way they showed it.

The basic recipe went something like this. Cut up some onions in slivers. Fry until brown. Add a ginger-garlic paste by using ginger and garlic in a mini food processor, then add that to the onions, add spices (a cumin, coriander, turmeric, salt mix), add yogurt, add water, and the meat (chicken, shrimp, or beef) and cook. Add cilantro.

When I tried this, the curry was pretty watery. So I got some advice to do things in a different order. Instead of simply creating onion slivers and cooking til brown, mince the onions very fine so it can be the thickener for the curry.

I took this one step further, because I'm lazy. I used a food processor to chop this to a paste as well.

So the new basic recipe I have is to create a garlic-ginger-chili pepper paste by using a food processor (next time, I'll use less water so this paste is thicker). Fry this up, then create an onion paste, and add that to fry up. After five minutes, add spices, then either yogurt or tomatoes (or both), and eventually add the meat to cook.

That's basically it.

The difference between what I did (based on a coworker's advice) was to first, move the frying of the garlic and ginger and chili peppers earlier on. The reason given was to make the garlic taste less strong by frying it longer. A second key was to make an onion paste. Traditionally, one would mince this up by hand into small bits, but it's so much quicker to use a food processor. I suppose you could still keep some parts of the onion as sliver so you can see it in the final result. I've yet to do this.

The only issue after that is what kind of spices to use. Minimally, the spices are cumin, coriander, turmeric, and maybe cayenne pepper (and salt, of course). Certainly, you can add up to another dozen different spices or herbs. You can get away with about 4-5 spices if you want your life simple.

I figure that's a reasonably good base to start learning Indian cooking.

Now, this isn't spectacularly quick, but it's probably quick by Indian standards. I can have something basically ready in 45 minutes. To be fair, a quick Indian dish would take that long too, but I'd say it take closer to an hour and a half to make proper dishes.

Hopefully, I can take that, and make some other variations.

Noah's Arc

Noah Hathaway was perhaps famous for two roles. He played the only kid in the original Battlestar Galactica, a science-fiction TV series, no doubt inspired by Star Wars. Taking bits from Christianity and the formation of the United States, it told the story of how the Cylons (robot creatures) destroyed much of humanity in some remote part of space, leaving (so it seemed) one battlestar (a battleship) and smaller ships running from destruction heading to Earth, hoping they'd find salvation there.

Hathaway was typical of kids cast in TV shows in the late 70s and early 80s. He had a moppet style hair, looking more girl-ish than guy, probably due to the fact that most casting directors are women.

He had one other "major" role: The Neverending Story.

They're showing a rather slow-paced fantasy movie from 1986 called Troll, which was made two years after The Neverending Story.

And, as many child actors, by the time they got to be less than cute, their careers ended.

What's the amusing part?

The name of his character in Troll.

Harry Potter, Jr.

Words Speak Louder

Here's an article by local Washington Post columnist, Michael Wilbon.

Some people who read my blog (so very few of you, overall) aren't much into sports. Americans are said to love sports as much as the folks of any other country, but that's not entirely true, and partly, I'm guessing, due to several factors. First, and perhaps most importantly, sports has been a divisive factor. People classified as "jocks" often make fun of people who aren't good at sports.

"Jocks", now that I think about it, is a pretty unusual term. Colloquially, a "jock" is also known as an athletic supporter. This is a weirdish undergarment contraption whose purpose is to prevent a man's reproductive organs from moving around too much during athletic endeavors. It's probably easier to make an analogy and point to a sports bra, which serves a similar function and prevents a woman's breasts from moving too much.

Presumably, if a man has larger than average testicles ("balls") such movement tends to cause pain if jostled around too much.

Having said that, people (at least, not me) don't think of jocks (athletic types) as "jocks" (athletic supporter underwear devices).

The stereotype of a jock is someone who is on a sports team, most stereotypically, American football, that has some dreams they might make it to the college level, and possibly to the professional level. Stereotypically, they only care about sports, and not about academics, and because of that, many are none too bright, and find harassing those who have less athletic skill amusing.

The point?

The point is that because of jock culture, and because they are many other outlets, from being a geek, to being a theater geek (someone who likes to do plays or the support work behind plays, such as lighting, etc), to yearbook, to a whole host of other activities find they can do perfectly well without sports.

Culturally, India is far more into its only major sport, cricket, and seems to not have a jock culture. Despite a large number of males who love to play cricket, none of their families generally think they can make a real living out of playing cricket, as only those on the national team make money, and the national team is maybe 10-20 players, out of a billion plus Indians. Without a jock culture, and with the average Indian more than happy to ignore work and take an unofficial holiday whenever an important cricket match is up, it's perhaps no wonder that the average Indian (male) is far more intently interested in cricket than the average American male is into, say, football.

But I digress.

My point is the article, and the article has to do with some reporter that talked about lynching Tiger Woods in an alley, meant, presumably jokingly. After all, what does a white woman who probably grew up middle class know anything about real lynching? Mike Wilbon puts down his credentials, saying he knows, first hand, well, second hand through his dad, about the issues of lynching, a term that still burns in his memory. One wonders, in another generation, when lynching is two generations back whether such terms will sear as much as they do for Wilbon.

Indeed, it's often because of this cultural disconnect that white Americans use this term and wonder why African Americans revile at it so much. To one group, it barely registers as anything, perhaps as something historical, and certainly doesn't have the visceral impact. It's just like how some people say "you almost gave me a heart attack" without realizing the full seriousness of such a thing, or "You're a retard" often without truly knowing anyone with mental retardation.

Presumably, the thought of actual lynching is somewhat abstract, as if read in a history book. And the actual word seems to matter. Tiger Woods being lynched as opposed to mugged or beaten up or some other word. It's not even the more evocative "string him up on a tree", though apparently, a noose was pictured. So it feels that these actions are fairly deliberate.

Funny enough, many African Americans have come to defend Kelly Tilghman, the white woman who uttered the phrase, especially many who know her personally. A picture of Tilghman graces the article, and, by American standards, anyway, she appears to be a rather attractive woman, which seems to be a huge asset in the sports reporting world. What's sexier than a woman that knows sports, can speak intelligently about it, and is borderline hot? What sports reporter, who often, more than, say, their hardcore news brethren, have to announce their sexuality, wave it like a proud flag, announcing, that yes, Tony Romo was right to go to Mexico with one-hot-what-does-she-do-exactly Jessica Simpson because testosterone is always a good motivator for male actions, what person like that might not introduce herself to Kelly Tilghman, get to know her personally.

Oh I don't mean that such reporters would do anything disgraceful. Do cops that pull over beautiful women and let them go with just a warning do so because they think they will bed them? In reality, they're happy with something much more mundane. They're happy to do a beautiful woman a favor, that this brought some happiness to them, and therefore brought some happiness to themselves.

Wilbon's careful to shove the blame to someone else to protect the person he cares about, and places it on some corporate entity. Maybe they wouldn't have been so insensitive if they had some African Americans working as part of their staff vetting such comments. What does it say that Tilghman, a person I've never heard of, who apparently counts many African Americans as her friends, didn't have the same advice. "I just didn't know". Is that the excuse? Perhaps she knew the firestorm it would bring, and that it would make her name more well-known, perhaps vilified for a while, but that's why it's good to have friends in high places.

But the point is not that either.

It's down to some retort that many of us grew up hearing.

Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words will never hurt me

We say it, but it certainly isn't true. The "N" word is still potent enough that people feel the need to call it the "N" word, as it must be left unsaid, despite the fact that, in its ultimate irony, it makes the word even worse. I suppose there's even the "F" word (for "fag"), but not the "S" word (spic?), and so forth.

Dalits (the PC term for untouchables) are often derided in a culture that still permits those of higher castes to denigrate those of lower castes, showing the human propensity to de-humanize other humans (towel-heads, and such).

Do words matter? Indeed, they do. But it's a sad commentary that people can't get beyond words and claim it doesn't hurt them. The real issue is the insult hurler who feel the words can hurt, and often use them to hurt folks.

It's funny how this most revolutionary of human inventions, language, has the power to inflict as much pain (albeit of an emotional type) than sticks and stones, and in its own way, possibly moreso.

R-Fed

Janko Tipsarevic now knows what it feels like to be Alex Corretja. Alex Corretja had a chance to beat Sampras in the quarterfinals of the 1996 US Open, with Sampras puking his guts in the flower bed at courtside.

Tipsarevic showed nearly no nerves in five sets. Going down break point after break point, managing to fend off 15 break points, hitting big serves and big groundstrokes, trying to knock of Roger Federer. He took the first set, then the third set, and held even with Roger Federer.

Federer, for his part, often generates far more unforced errors than one might expect. He hit some 80 winners, but was offset by 60 unforced errors, many off attempts to hit backhand winners.

Still, Federer was holding his serve pretty easily, and you felt that Federer, despite not having much success breaking Tipsarevic (except the fourth set), felt supremely confident holding his own, only having seen three break points all match.

The final score read 6-7, 7-5, 5-7, 6-1, 10-8. Tipsarevic had the game up in the fifth set, and at 8-8 all serving for 9-8, Tipsarevic went up 40-0, only to have Federer pull it back to deuce, and eventually achieve a break. Federer played a somewhat nervous game to win 10-8.

The fifth set looked like it would go on forever. Federer generally holding much easier than Tipsarevic, but having a hard time hitting good shots against Tipsarevic.

Still, this has to give Tipsarevic more confidence that he can play toe-to-toe with the best in the world. Still, you have to feel Federer didn't play his best, but still won. In particular, he made a ton of errors, despite serving a ton of aces (around 40 aces), the most ever in his career (he's no Kevin Curren or Andy Roddick, but can crank out a decent number).

This is where being number 1 helps. You have the kind of confidence to keep hitting good shots even when a player is playing as good as he can and not buckling until the end.

All in all, a fine match and a fine debut for the second best Serbian male tennis player in the world.

When I'm 64

It seems like so much ancient history.

Searching for Bobby Fischer came out in 1993, which is now 14 years ago. And that was some 20 years after Fischer battled Spassky in an epic match in 1972. People forget that he was only barely 30 when that match was contested.

It was the height of cold war. The US was trying to play catch-up, with the Soviets having dealt with the first blow with Sputnik, leading Kennedy to famously issue a challenge to put the first man on the moon. And the Russians, were they ever good at chess! Americans weren't even really so competitive against the powerhouse Russians.

But Bobby Fischer was an unusual one (did he even go by Bobby, or was it some holdover from Bobby Kennedy?). He was a star junior player, the youngest American to win a junior chess title (at 13). Fischer played good chess throughout the 1950s through the early 1970s.

His victory over Spassky was symbolic, giving Americans hope that during the cold war, when it looked like the US had the weight of the free world on its shoulder, that somehow Americans could beat the Russians at their own game.

Then, he disappeared. Not literally, but certainly from the chess world. He grew increasingly paranoid, and frankly, bizarre. He rarely stayed in the US, eventually becoming an Icelandic citizen.

He only surfaced once again to play Spassky in 1992. Spassky! Was the man still alive after all those years? It probably said something that he challenged an old competitor rather than the best the world had to offer. He didn't try to play Kasparov and any of the top competitors of the day. It only showed that he could still beat someone that was his contemporary after all those years.

And he'd go back to obscurity, where he'd tried to evade the law. The US, apparently, had a law, passed by Bush senior, that said its citizens couldn't visit Yugoslavia, where this match against Spassky took place, and the US wanted to arrest Fischer for this. While visiting Japan, the Japanese held Fischer waiting to extradite him to the US. At this point, Fischer appealed to Iceland to become a citizen, which did eventually succeed because they felt the US and Japan were unfairly persecuting Fischer (which in hindsight, it seems very true).

As much as Fischer was initially criticized for his remarks about Sept 11 (where he noted that the US got what it deserved, partly because of its actions in the world) as being a unsympathetic and un-American (and perhaps the reason the US government seem so intent on having him arrested), his observations, deemed a bit crazy at the time, seem to be much more mainstream (although the sentiment of his views still stick to this day).

And he was only 64 when he passed away, with the vast majority of the career he was so famous for, more than 30 years ago.


Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?
When I'm 64?


It seems, now, there's no longer a need.

Rest in peace, Bobby Fischer.