Silence of the Lambs (Spoilerless review: Killer of Sheep)

All the more remarkable given that it's both a student film and shot in the 70s. It doesn't have to feel like it evokes the period because it was made in the period. Feels much older than its thirty year age, probably because it was shot in black and white, and probably because the 70s seem so long ago.

Rather than push a narrative plot, the camera is content to observe, and yet, as naturalistic as some shots are, there are unusual scenes that tell you a film is being shot. The timeless quality may say much about how certain things haven't changed, including attitudes between the genders in African American culture.

Doesn't really try to explain why this family is poor, or why they struggle just to get by. Like the sheeps, Stan and his family don't realize the direness of their situation. Early on, he's asked why he doesn't kill himself, one nod the film has to explain what keeps people moving on.

Though life doesn't seem to get better, people seem content. Kids figure prominently, even as they aren't major characters. Their play shows self-destructive tendencies, and that being tough is often a mere bluff.

Music plays a crucial role in this film, with classical music, ironic songs about what it means to be an American, and a song about "this bitter Earth" which is played twice.

Though the film drags, it is nonetheless fascinating, as the message is so subtle that you are left piecing together what you've seen.

And the sheep. So lyrical, so mindless, and eventually, so unaware what is lying ahead of it. Much like the people that fill this film.

Beet It

Is Gabe really 34 already? I guess I'm a few years older so it shouldn't be so surprising.

When I knew Gabe, I wouldn't have thought he'd be so interested to be in the public limelight as he is now. Gabe used to be far more hesitant with his speech as if he were thinking about what he was saying and saying it at the same time, with his brain occasionally reining in his speech, so that the result was half-stumbled, half-said. If you hear him in early interviews, you get that sense.

You can see, even in the interview above, that Gabe is often on the verge of cracking up, as if there's some inside joke that he's in on, or perhaps he finds the tie the person is wearing oddly amusing, before he goes back and tries to answer the question. You can tell, of course, that Gabe is pretty guarded about how he does Techmeme and related sites. That makes sense, I suppose, since it is how he's currently making a living. Would someone, hearing just snippets of what he does be able to piece together something comparable?

I'm sure Gabe would think "no", but even so, he's not going to spill the beans on how it's done.

Techmeme, in case I haven't mentioned it, is news headline aggregator. As Gabe points out, it's a bit like Google News because it's automated, but where Google applies some other algorithm, Gabe uses blogs to determine what is newsworthy.

For some reason, every interview he has seems obsessed with finding out how he does it. Perhaps it's because there's not that much to ask? If you check out Flickr, you'll see that Gabe apparently gets kissed a lot. Lipstick and Gabe's cheeks seem a perfect match.

It's surprising to me, given his interest in photography, that he hasn't posted more to his Flickr account.

In any case, Gabe seems to be improving his interview skills. I doubt he'll ever get to that super polished stage (the guy who is interviewing him is almost slimy smooth, not like, say Steve Jobs who somehow surpasses that, and doesn't seem quite as slimy).

Next time you meet up with him, ask him about dwarf tossing. He probably won't get it entirely, but it's a bit of an in-joke.

Baa Baa Black Sheep

I vaguely recall this show from the 70s starring Robert Conrad. It was set, if memory serves, during WW2.

But that's not what this is about.

It's a review of Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (I call it KOS from now on).
In KOS, Charles Burnett, the director, chronicles the life of Stan and his family. To give you a sense of the history, this was a student film running about an hour and a half. This was filmed in 1977, when a little film called Star Wars came out.

The film has a timeless quality. Because it's in black and white, it feels, at times, much like it's the 1950s or the 1940s instead of the mid-70s.

There is no plot, per se. It shows snippets of the life of Stan, a hardworking man, whose trying to do well for his family, but in the end, struggles in poverty. After some time, you see that he works in a slaughterhouse where he slaughters sheep. Among the few white characters (with no speaking parts) are the other folks in the slaughterhouse.

These scenes occupy very little screentime, but have a lyrical quality, as the sheep don't realize they are being slaughtered. I suspect, with Stan working there, that Charles Burnett lays some blame of the plight of African Americans (effectively, the sheep) on African Americans themselves.

Burnett is not at all overtly political. It doesn't give a particular reason why these folks are struggling, merely that they are. The characters don't ascribe much blame, not to the white folks, for their situations. Indeed, by spending most of its time in black communities, you see kids that seem on the verge of destroying themselves, though mostly in the name of play.

Early on, kids are tossing stones at signs, at railcars, at one another. We're not even to the point where they imagine they'll be NBA stars. All the while, they lack the means to get ahead. The choices seem to be: stealing, killing someone, gambling, and working hard. Working hard, while given some credibility, is contrasted with its general ineffectiveness. To be fair, the other ways (gambling and stealing) don't appear to work well except people seem to be dressed "better" (at least, in a 1970s urban sort of way).

Most of the times, we observe. Kids are pretty anonymous, but may indicate the cycle of doing nothing. The parents do nothing. The kids do nothing. In one scene, the kids are playing, two older girls are doing disco, hips colliding, when a kid rolls in on his bike and insults the girls. They knock him off his bike, and he begins to cry and runs off, the front tire of his bike having also fallen off. The girl yells at him to get his "raggedy bike".

Another scene has a kid sitting underneath a train, as other kids attempt (unsuccessfully) to push the train so it rolls over the kid. The kid seems to think it's all in fun. Another scene has kids throwing stones at one another, like a scene from 300, with improvised shields.

Kids play in abandoned buildings as if it were a war zone. And yet, the tone isn't very bleak. Other than the taunting, the kids seem to be having fun. They may represent the innocent sheep that are being sent to the slaughter.

Many of the observations made then seem to hold true now, the grumblings of trying to make it in the world, the isolated view of the outside world, women who yell at their men, men who yell at their women, worrying about being presentable (scenes of men picking their afro, women trying to put makeup on).

Burnett overlays music from pieces of the 70s, to older pieces, including a song about "What America Means To Me", which seems ironic (the usual virtues of America, overlaid with the empty lives people are leading), as well as some classical music.

If anything, the sheep represents an innocence that is perhaps mythical, innocence being destroyed.

Burnett has a delicate touch. He lingers on many scenes letting us watch the struggle (one scene where two guys bring a heavy engine down the stairs to a truck, until, due to injury, they don't push the engine far enough in, and it falls and cracks, making the entire effort futile--it's done with such a light touch, you don't think it's symbolic, even though it is).

Burnett also creates bizarre scenes that jar the otherwise naturalistic feel. The daughter that wears a dog mask. Kids coming out of a hole from a house. Long shots of kids running, throwing stones, standing on roofs.

You feel, at times, that the film is going to burst out into violence. Someone's going to get killed. In one scene, kids jump across rooftops, and you think that yeah, this is how urban kids might play, but no one gets killed, no violence. It's all the more amazing as many a director falls to the temptation of violence because they can get great impact (Scorsese, Tarantino). Much harder to make a film that seems to suggest there will be violence, but doesn't have much of it.

I suppose one could point out things that don't appear. Remember when Spike Lee made a film without drugs and was criticized. There isn't really much drug use in the film, nor, as mentioned earlier, criticism of white America.

Even so, it portrays a society that tries to make do, but in the end, is living without much hope, and yet, somehow, it's not relentlessly downbeat. As much as their lives are bleak, they go on living. Indeed, it's suggested early on "why don't you kill yourself", and yet, they don't. The pain of living is not so great. But perhaps, like the sheep, they have no idea they are being slaughtered.

He Works Hard For the Money

You know, when Donna Summers came out with the song She Works Hard for the Money, it came out with a picture (did she have a video too?) of a waitress being exhausted. Years later, I heard this was really a song about prostitutes (I'm told a slang expression for this in Hindi is "randy" or "rundy" or somewhere in between). I think the waitress idea works better.

But that's beside the point.

A while back, a guy from India said, over dinner, that he believed hard work could overcome talent. He claimed Einstein was not so brilliant, that hard work could overcome all. Several of us argued against that point.

I've come to the conclusion, much later on, that even if we could quantify what being smart or brilliant or talented meant (something that's quite difficult, I'd say), the argument assumes that hard work trumps all. You work hard, and you will figure out things that the brilliant folks figure out. Slow and steady wins the race.

But here's the kicker. Not everyone is willing to put in hard work. Hard work, by its very name, is hard.

To be more specific, we had him do some stuff with databases. Now, he hadn't done anything with databases in a while--since college really. No need, I suppose. And he had either forgotten a great deal, or never properly learned it the first time around.

Now, it's hard to become really good at anything. It helps if you already know someone bright. Even if you try to teach yourself (some people are great at this), you don't know what you should be learning. I was watching a person practice serves. It looked all wrong (from my view), and all the practice in the world wasn't necessarily going to tell that person they had to fundamentally change the way they were doing things.

Even if he had gotten a book on SQL and read it cover to cover (money became an issue there, so he wouldn't even consider that idea), he'd not know how best to, say, make the queries run fast.

Here was a guy who claimed hard work would pay off, but it's not like he goes home and learns how to do this the best he can. He doesn't read source code of implementations. He probably doesn't know that some SQL implementations allow you to inspect how the queries are executed. Indeed, lacking the money for his own computer or an Internet connection, he would have a hard time, I imagine, trying to explore this on his own.

It's not to say you can't learn this stuff without a computer or without the Internet, but the Internet is now becoming the way to conveniently learn, provided you know where to look (which is tough too).

The point is that this didn't interest him. He wasn't willing to spend a great deal of time to become an SQL master, and probably didn't even know how to get to that point. It would be so much easier, don't you know, if someone simply told him. This is how many people (including myself) would like to learn. Why bother actually finding the information? Let someone else do the hard work.

But this is not what Einstein and other hard-working guys did. They spent a great deal of time thinking, really thinking, about the problem at hand. When they got stuck, they learned how to get around it. Perhaps they studied something else for a while, realizing that would help them get better.

Indeed, one might argue that talent and hard work are linked. To have talent is to be able to work hard. Each can be a limiting factor. Working hard can push talent further. But you can't be amazingly talented with no work at all. You have to devote some time to it.

So you might ask, why are talented people more likely to succeed? One reason is that it comes easier. Let's say, within a day's worth of work, you can figure out the basics of some complex math theory, that would take someone else a week. It's a lower threshold to cross. What would cause the person to want to spend a week?

Part of wanting to spend this effort is interest. If you're not interested, then why bother? Look at Google's main page. It is considered the model of economy. But it has to do with laziness. Sergey Brin didn't want to learn HTML like an expert. He thought it was a useless thing to learn.

To tie the example back to this guy, what causes a person to work late? He might argue that if he spent far more time, he'd catch up. OK, I could buy that. But would he spend that many more hours at work to keep up? Probably not. Again, money, transportation, fatigue, all work against him. But finally, it's interest. Suppose you had a brilliant person who could get all his work done in four hours a day. Suppose a less brilliant but harder working person would require 14 hours a day to accomplish the same.

Would they spend the 14 hours a day? Or would they stretch that time out. That extra time costs money. You'd have to stay longer at work. You wouldn't be able to enjoy life. And frankly, you might be miserable. Those who work exceedingly hard give up a lot to spend this kind of time.

But I have to give credit to this guy for making me think about it. After all, it's given me a lot to blog about :).

In Your Facebook

A year ago, we were besieged by MySpace. It seemed like every kid wanted a MySpace page. Most of these MySpacers had the artistic talent of a hyperactive monkey in a room of paint-filled balloons. The resulting backgrounds were garish. Entering the page caused tunes to play, and you had to hunt around to turn the damn thing off. But it made it easy for kids to write a webpage. Unlike, say, Livejournal, it didn't have to be about blogging. It emphasized getting your friends to declare you as a friend. All the kind of high school popularism that infects who desperately crave this faux attention and care, treating friendships like merit badges. The neediest guy of all being founder Tom Anderson. At one point, everyone, by default, had Tom as a friend.

Did I also mention that MySpace is ugly?

The "grown-up" counterpart to MySpace is Facebook. Now, for a while, you couldn't easily get a Facebook account. It really was aimed at college students, and you were supposed to be invited, or something, to enter a Facebook network. Eventually, they let high school students create accounts, then everyone.

Everyone seems to say Facebook is a far cleaner version of MySpace, but it's become something of a social networking Web 2.0 darling. Check out TechMeme today and you'll find several articles about Facebook, most likely (I haven't fully checked it out) because you can write plug-ins for Facebook, and this has lead geekdom to do so.

Now, you might think that having a site that permits plugins is awfully geeky. Who would ever use such a thing? But here's the key: you don't need that many people to write plugins. A few is enough, and it allows the geeky part of the community to contribute to this online community.

Of course, I'm plenty late to the Facebook phenomenon. Heck, I'm still writing on Blogger! But I like to point this out to people even more lost about the trends.

Over time, I figure that's what I want to do. Check out trends and write about them. Normally, by the time I notice, it's already a trend. After all, you have to see it a lot, and by then, you know it's too late.

Even so, it's a good record for me to note it down.

Road to Nowhere

NPR is just chock full of good stuff.

Here's a question for you. Do you think computers in the classroom is a good thing? Many people do, and have pushed for computing in the classroom. The Web was supposed to bring the world's information to your desktop. Ah, if the world were only so virtuous.

What the Web brought, in addition to all this information, was porn, stuff to buy, sports scores, blogs, and all sorts of time wasting activities. You can download software to talk to others, work on your Myspace page (please let it be Facebook). In other words, many, many, many things that have little to do with learning, and everything to do with distraction.

Indeed, being hooked up to the Internet means savvy students can simply ignore what you're talking about. What educators want is a way to restrict students' access to the Web. Indeed, a better approach may be to limit or restrict access to the Internet, instead only permitting access to limited information.

Perhaps a different protocol for education websites that don't link up to the usual ones.

How many schools thought that just having computers would solve their woes? How much innovation came from teaching people to use computers? It would be something, at the very least, to give presentations, since many students lack good speaking skills.

But how many news organizations would even think about this subject matter? So often it's serious news like Iraq, or inane news like Paris Hilton. NPR, even more than PBS, seems to hit great topics that lie just on the side of news. They want to know what's happening to society, how it is evolving, and not simply cover what people think is important, but actually cover what is important.

Interpreters vs. Compilers

When I was first learning computer science, I used to wonder the distinction between a compiler and an interpreter. Honestly, it helps to write one or the other to know the difference.

I think it's easier to explain a compiler. A compiler takes a (mostly) human-readable program written in some language and (typically) translates this to machine code. CPUs , at its lowest levels, execute machine instructions. Typically, people compile code because running native machine code is faster than handling interpreted code.

Here's an analogy. Suppose you want to write an instruction manual. You have it written in English, but you intend for it to be used by Japanese folks. So you have the stuff translated to Japanese.

What's an interpreter? An interpreter is a program that understands a program you've written, and runs it on the fly. Let me give you an analogy, although this is a programming analogy.

Suppose you want to write a "robot language". You can tell the robot to move forward, turn left, turn right, etc. You can either convert this robot language directly to machine code, or you can write a program that incrementally processes it. When the user wants to robot to move forward, you call some code to move it forward.

Typically, interpreters are used in an "environment" where the user can make decisions on the fly, and the interpreter can offer commands to the interpreter as well as run code. The code it runs may not be converted directly to machine code and optimized, but is run though high level programming language code.

Wow, this is really hard to explain. Hmm, I think the closest analogy I can think of is that a compiler is like having a series of detailed explanations completely worked out and sent to someone. They can't ask you for more help afterwards. An interpreter is more like having a person answer your questions as needed. In other words, the interpreter is a program that serves as a kind of middleman, being able to handle commands as you type it in, while a compiler expects all of its input to exist right away, and makes a complete translation to lower-level code.

There's a software engineering analogy. A compiler is closer to the "big design up front" while an interpreter is more like agile design, where the customer can make changes along the way.

Fundamentally, they share stuff in common (basic parsing and such), but the goal of n interpreter is interactivity between the user and the interpreter where as a compiled program is meant to just run (it can have interactivity too, but not with the developer).

Ugh, I wonder what's a better way to explain the difference.

French Open

Many years ago, I'd watch an entire French Open from beginning to end. These days, I'll catch a set or two, here or there, and do something else instead.

I watched the first set of the women's final, between Justine Henin and newcomer, Ana Ivanovic. Ivanovic looked, for all the world, like she was going to pummel Henin. She broke Henin's serve to start the game, and went up 40-0 on her own serve. But, if anything, Henin is plucky. She'll fight, play smart, hit hard when she has to. Henin won that game and the rest of the set.

When people say tennis is mental, this is what they mean. If Ivanovic had the fight of Henin, if she believed she could keep up, pressure Henin, she might have won this match. Instead, nerves affected her, and she was unable to control the shots she used to demolish Maria Sharapova in the semifinals.

The bigger story surrounding Henin was how she was trying to reach out to her family. To be a successful player, Henin cut off her family, who she felt did not understand the kind of dedication a person needed to be a top player. Even as she won her first French, she did not receive any congratulations from her family--and she was happy they didn't bother her, claiming she wanted space to be herself.

But as she separated from her husband a few years ago, she decided to reach out to her family, her brothers and sisters and her father. Her mother had passed away some years ago. The siblings were tense, hoping Henin would be able to hang in there, but eventually realizing that Henin was going to have her way.

The men's final seemed much more inevitable than the women. For the last year, the story had been Federer and Nadal, Nadal and Federer. Federer was the best player in the world. Nadal, the best on clay. Federer had even recently beaten Nadal on clay, and had to feel great confidence as he made the finals.

But Nadal also fights. Unlike last year where Nadal came out nervous and was blown away in the first set, Federer and Nadal played a tight match. It says something that in the first two sets, Federer had some 16 break opportunities and broken only once. Nadal frequently fell behind two, three break points, and played long deuce games, but never cracked.

Nadal's basic strategy was to run around his backhand and basically punish Federer's own backhand. Federer seemed content to exchange his backhand with Nadal's forehand (Nadal being a lefty player). Surprisingly, Federer didn't try one of two things. He didn't serve and volley much, nor did he chip and charge much. To be fair, this is clay, and you don't expect such tactics, but still, it would be nice to see Nadal have to pass more.

Federer also didn't try to do the same to Nadal. He could have tried to force his own backhand to Nadal's backhand, and then try to attack Nadal's backhand, or he could have tried running around it (which he did more of in the second set).

I only saw Nadal go up 3-0 in the third before I went to lunch, so I can't say I know what happened.

Nadal's strategy had one interesting effect. By hitting to his backhand so much, Federer's tendency was to lean to his backhand, which meant Nadal had chances to strike into the open court to Federer's forehand.

Perhaps what really did Federer in was his unforced errors. Nadal played generally error-free tennis, while Federer went for more on his shots and missed more as a result. Federer served pretty poorly the first set, so it was amazing the set was as close as it was (Nadal did break twice, though it's hard to tell with a 6-3 score).

Still, Federer can view this much like Sampras. There's always Wimbledon where his serve is much more of a weapon. Can Nadal make it to the final again? Players like Roddick should do well, but he has a tendency to lose early. Nadal should be the wildcard again, and is more likely not to make the Wimbledon final than Federer.

Three more weeks til Wimbledon!

Review: A Dirty Carnival

Hong Kong films, especially those by John Woo, defined the Asian gangster movie. Films like The Killer and Hard-Boiled gave a new vision of gangster life. Woo peddled in cool. Slow-mo, double-fisted gun play, evil and good mirroring each other, doves flying in churches.

Woo liked the idea that good and evil weren't so clear-cut. Gangsters could have ethics, even as they were blowing people away ("but they were all bad!"). There are ludicrous moments such as the Chow Yun-Fat being in love with a blind woman who doesn't know what he does, or the rescue scene at a hospital where babies are being brought out as the body count hits double digits.

Like many Asian films, women don't fare well. Even as many of these directors are married, they seem to lack much understanding of women, so they keep them to stereotypes, helpless or pure.

Korean cinema has taken Hong Kong cinema and added a gritty realism to it. They aren't completely immune from a bit of silliness, mostly related to nostalgia. I'm reminded of the odd film Battle Royale whose conceit is that parents, tired of their rebellious teens have them sent to an island where the last remaining survivor gets to live. Meanwhile, each person is armed with an odd weapon, and slowly, the group descends into a kind of chaos, though not exactly of Lord of the Flies proportions. There's something unrealistic about the whole proceedings, because we're lead to believe that these teens are really on the verge of killing each other (OK, beyond the actual crackpot idea of putting teens on an island, playing Survivor, literally).

In the midst of this mayhem, there are flashbacks to a more innocent time, when the teens were all playing basketball. This scene is played in flashback, where the relationships are hinted at, and then you see what happens.

A Dirty Carnival is pretty sentimental, recalling a time when they were all kids and things were much more innocent.

Hmm, I'll briefly summarize the story. Byung-du is a mid-level gangster, of the sort that occupies GoodFellas. His mother is ill, and he can barely make ends meet. He plays a heavy, extorting money, but getting to keep very little of his own. The gang leader wants the DA offed, and it takes a while, but Byung-du, whose the leader of a tiny gang of his own, decides he must do this, so he can look good.

In the midst of Byung-du's trying to be a better gangster, he meets up with Min-Ho, a childhood buddy, who wants to make a film about gangsters, and needs to interview some real-life gangsters. Byung-du had always had a longing for Hyeon-ju, who is (amazingly) single working as a bookshop worker.

The structure is similar to Spiderman, alternating between Byung-du's life as a gangster, and his courting of Hyeon-ju, who's nervous dealing with a guy that's a gangster, even if he has a heart of gold.

Western music plays a central role in this film. Tango music is played throughout, and much like Hong Kong films, key characters sing songs that have meaning beyond just lyrics, including the Byung-du, Hyeon-ju, and the head gang boss.

What places this film beyond the typical Hong-Kong equivalent is what makes Spiderman more intriguing than Superman or Batman. Byung-du struggles as a gangster. Even as he leads his small group, he can't seem to move up the ladder, without drastic action that leads to drastic consequences.

The relationship between Byung-du and Hyeon-ju is worked out in more detail, much like Peter Parker and Mary Jane. Even so, women tend to be idealized in such films. Hyeon-ju is practically the only female, and she's generally a good person. Would it be more compelling if she weren't so good (she has no discernible faults other than being poor)? This is always a problem when men make movies. They don't want to write about women that they don't want to deal with.

And of course, there's the problem of having gangsters having a conscious and feeling sorry for what they do. It's a matter of circumstances, don't you understand?

Scorsese, for instance, doesn't really peddle in good and evil, but mostly in the weaknesses of men. He doesn't mind making characters that aren't all that likable. In GoodFellas, there's no ideal women. (I've heard, in earlier films, there are guys who imagine women to be alternately saints and sinners, the so-called Madonna-whore complex, but these are views held by the men).

In this view of the world as flawed and good, A Dirty Carnival owes far more to Hong Kong gangster films then say, a Scorsese film. Kim Ki-duk doesn't fall for this. Samaritan Girl has a kind of idealized female, but she's basically a teenage hooker, and even then, she's a bit eerie, smiling all the time, thinking she is trying to achieve a higher goal.

A Dirty Carnival also doesn't kick you in the gut quite like GoodFellas. It lacks Scorsese's intensity, but it also is far more sentimental than Scorsese ever would be. But the violence that does exist is far more intense than the stylized Hong Kong violence. Early on, scenes with gangsters battering each other with poles border between cartoonish violence (how can they be his so often) and something a bit more realistic. Korean cinema doesn't try to achieve wire-fu mastery like the Chinese films where fights are more like kinetic ballet, but attempt to make things more visceral, while still not being perfectly "real".

Why Korean cinema has evolved this way, I'm not sure. Perhaps the history of South Korea with corruption? Or with real riots? Maybe these things inform their films where such events may not have occurred in Hong Kong, so they imagine a kind of violence that's different.

It's not nearly as stark as, say, Takeshi Kitano's work, where he juxtaposes sharp moments of violence with moments of peace and artistic beauty.

I will say, for a film I had not heard of, it was pretty entertaining, even if I thought they could have aimed to be more realistic (how the filmmaker betrays his gangster friend almost doesn't make sense to me, except that he's desperate to be a filmmaker too). Ha Yu, the director, like Kim Ki-duk is able to hint at what people are thinking. As a group, Korean directors show a great affinity for wordless dialogue, getting you to figure out what's going on without words having been said.

As I think about how Korean films continue to garner more attention, I wonder what's happened to Japanese, Chinese (mainland) and Hong Kong cinema.

Passion 8

I think passion is overrated. This is a myth on par with living happily ever after. I'm sure there's a select few couples who are so in love with one another, that it feels like this mythical magic perfect relationship that movies and fairy tales espouse that simply want to make you gag.

Kathy Sierra, for example, believes companies ought to create passionate users. The idea is both fascinating and mildly repulsive. On the one hand, she stresses the idea that companies should make the best stuff they can that make users want the product so much, that they can't help but brag about it to their friends. This would, presumably mean not only better products for us all, but also happier customers. Who wouldn't love that?

But then it suggests that we, as consumers, became slaves to the consuming. How many people, ten years (or less) of living in the same place, staring at the same furniture, the same walls, want to remodel, redecorate? They're tired of living in the same place, seeing the same things. Their friends are remodelling. They want to remodel.

You know, this has rarely affected my parents. Many, many things are twenty years old. We have wallpaper dating to the 70s. It looks as tacky now as it did then, but they never think about replacing it. Why bother? They don't need to show off the house. They don't need the snazziest furniture. Why waste money?

And yet, having companies make these snazzy products that allow users to "kick ass" means you're asking people to spend money, to consume. Ipods are great, I admit. But I have a friend that's broken everyone he's had. Why do they break so much? Indeed, I bet most of the business of the genius bar is trying to fix broken Ipods.

There's something vaguely distasteful to me about trying to get consumers to get products, something akin to brainwashing. Having said that, I have to agree that if I am going to be consumerist (and alas I am, far more than my parents), I'd rather buy "good" stuff.

Although I cringe at the word passion for this reason, this time I'm going to write something positive about passion.

I was reading an IM message sent a few days back from Ken. I had somehow missed it because it was sent to my home computer, and I wasn't paying attention to it until yesterday. He said, why yes, he did have lots of books on running, even some on physiology. This, to me, is a kind of passion, though one could call it obsessive-compulsive.

Obsessive-compulsiveness is a trait that many software guys have. Who else would sit hours poring through code, searching for bugs. It's not particularly fun (even if some sick people seem to relish the challenge), and yet there you are, trying to figure out which, of many hundreds of lines of code, caused the problem.

I'd have to think Ken, as much as he likes programming and such, is more passionate about running. I wonder if he worries about getting older, about not being able to train like he's able to do now. I suppose you try not to worry about such things, and just do what you do, and adjust as needed. One could argue that any activity that one does while young might no longer be possible when one is older.

I'd also imagine that if he could simply make a living running, maybe he would. There are people I know that have hobbies that they really enjoy, but society makes it difficult to make a living out of it. Heck, there are plenty of video game players that enjoy playing video games, and some who wish they could make a living out of it. But then, you'd probably have to compete against others, and that might make it less fun.

But the point I want to make is not whether one could make a living doing a hobby or activity you really enjoy, but to think about what drives a person to want to excel. Now, Ken, I figure, isn't the fastest runner, or the guy with the most endurance, or what have you. In all reasonable measures, he's not in the "elite". But where he does excel is that he knows a lot about what he does. He tracks it, he reads about it, and he tries to maximize what he does for himself, without causing injury.

It's a bit like the commentators and columnists in baseball who realized they lacked the physical skills to play professionally, but had the acumen to understand statistics, and began cranking away, trying to use their superior math skills to compensate for athletic talent they weren't born with.

It makes me wonder, how passionate are people? And I don't necessarily mean that people are on some emotional, ecstatic high when they do stuff, but how much they feel compelled to push themselves to do something as best they can? I suspect a large number of people are not passionate about anything.

Some people loving shopping, and I suppose it can be considered a passion, though as a non-shopper, I can't begin to imagine how to quantify this. With Ken, I could probably ask him a bunch of questions, look at the various stats he's collected. I don't know what I'd do with all that information, but it would give some quantification over being passionate.

I remember many years ago, I knew this guy who was trying to finish a computer science degree? Anyway, he used to spend a tremendous time trying to get good at tennis. When he was young, he used to train in martial arts. Perhaps that gave him discipline to learn tennis, realizing he needed to learn the "right" technique, so he could master tennis as quickly as possible.

He would take lessons, read up on tennis, get videotapes (I think) on the subject. He'd devote at least three days a week to tennis, even trying to cut back on work so he could play. His wife thought he was taking tennis way too seriously, that he was completely obsessed about it. And perhaps he was.

But I figure most people would find being too obsessed about being really good is better than not caring about anything. Our society, in general, prefers people to excel rather than to be average. Indeed, sports is all about this.

Now, to be fair, we work in a company where most of the developers are pretty good, better than average. I could say we all have a passion for software development, but, at least for me, that's not quite right. Perhaps because I don't know what that means exactly. Perhaps when I see a sliver of what Ken does, I can more readily recognize that as a kind of passion, and wonder what that must be like.

I could point to my prodigious blogging as a kind of passion, but it would be great if I had more interesting things to say more often. I don't mind, as I find practicing writing useful.

Well, that's it for now. Ciao!

Chemical Brothers

A series of ads are making their way on the air, and they have me thinking.

Once upon a time, two people looking to meet might have to rely on parents or friends or their own initiative to find someone, then go through the usual courtship rituals, and if all went well, get married (assuming the goal was marriage).

But this is the 21st century, and web has sprouted up businesses that languored a bit in other mediums, including online dating. Of the dating services, perhaps the best known is eHarmony. eHarmony has some restrictions, its most notable is they don't accept gay relationships.

They claim that they have not focused their complex algorithms in that direction, and have no particular desire to do so. This can be viewed in several ways. First, a company doesn't have to cater to everyone. If you want to run a dog-sitting service, you're not compelled to run a cat-sitting service, a babysitting service, and so forth. Maybe you like dogs better.

But it does say something interesting about eHarmony. It suggests that the powers that be that run the company don't approve of gay relationships and want no part of it. That may be false, but given that eHarmony's apparent value is in the way it handles matches, the public isn't privy to the real reasons why they have this policy.

But this being a capitalistic society, someone's gotta want to fill the need, and already you see ads for this. I was watching the French Open's women's final (well, the first set, before I got called by a friend who wanted to talk at some length, thus I missed the rout of a second set) and an ad for chemistry.com came on.

It's pretty humorous. A guy is looking at a magazine. It appears to be a Playboy magazine of sorts. He says "Yeah, yeah" as he turns the magazine on edge to show an ostensible centerfold.

"Nope, I'm still gay".

Followed by "Rejected by eHarmony". It's a pretty clever ad striking at a deficiency of eHarmony.

That had me thinking about India.

Again.

Bollywood films usually center on romance. Indeed, if you were to watch Indian films, you'd think that love marriages were the norm. Love marriages are in contrast to arranged marriages, which are still very common in India. I've seen maybe three or four Bollywood films, so my sample size is small, but you rarely ever see people in arranged marriages where parents play a significant role. Indeed, these films seem to model relationships on the West.

But, much like American films which feature a lot of shooting, or highly erotic love scenes, or people who are crudely funny, the vast majority of the viewing public does not imitate what they see on film. If pressed about the issue, they might say "well, that's just the movies--it's not real life".

Yet, take that same American viewer, have them watch a Bollywood film, then immerse them in Indian culture, and you might exclaim "The women wear skimpy Western clothes. They sing songs proclaiming their love for one another. The parents are hardly visible. Why doesn't the public have more love marriages?"

The answer might be the same. Those are just movies. Arranged marriages don't make for good drama. They involve parents trying to vet families. Conservative families still prefer to marry within the caste, even as there have been marriages outside the caste and outside the religion. Typically, love marriages have had some more flexibility.

Now, how do the two topics relate? Love marriages in India vs. dating services in the US?

In a sense, the dating service is a kind of matchmaking, though modernized. Computer algorithms allegedly figure out compatible personalities, a thought that would have seemed utterly ludicrous years ago. It's the same kind of belief that arranged marriages are utterly ludicrous to Americans. Most Americans don't trust their parents to pick someone they would like, though many Americans (I read an article that 1.5% of the public is ultra-shy and never get into any relationships) make an effort to meet people, so they have at least some nominal skill and desire to find someone to, at the very least, date.

Given how shy the average person is, finding someone to date is challenging. It would perhaps surprise the typical Indian, used to speed of arranged marriages, that
couples can date years before deciding to get married (though dating can mean living together and engaging in sex, so it's practically marriage, but not in the legal sense).

Let me back up some. Why are arranged marriages so quick? Let's do some role-playing. Suppose you have a daughter or son. You've been spending some time trying to decide who they should marry. As a parent, your considerations aren't quite the same as, say, the children themselves. A typical American might decide based on a number of factors, including, how hot is the other person.

While parents may take appearance into consideration, a bigger key is the (for sake of example), the bride-to-be's family? Are they a good family? What do they do? Are they of a suitable caste (if you're Hindu)? And so forth. Arranged marriages have always been more about marrying families rather than finding the person your offspring would like to be with most.

This goal may indeed make Indians more friendly. If you're a crazy family, full of trouble, no one will want to to marry into your family (or they might--who knows?).

Let's say you find a perfect girl for your son. You make negotiations with the girl's family. Both sides agree the other side is acceptable.

Now, the key is the wedding itself. How long do you want to spend for the wedding? Several years? Since it's not you that's getting married, you probably want to get it done as soon as possible. Thus, have the whole thing arranged and done within six months. To wait years seems futile since you've already made your decision. It seems more like a decision to purchase a car than a decision that you might regret if you don't spend years trying it out.

Once it becomes your own decision, that decision may not be so final after all. And if there's high rate in divorces, then you may want a trial period deciding whether this will work or not.

Americans might be surprised about arranged marriages and their speed, while Indians may scratch their heads wondering why Americans take so long to get married (especially, once they realize that they do things that married couples already do). They may even be more surprised that a couple, dating years and year, living together, having sex, would decide, after all that time, not to get married. The concept might be shocking (well, those not that accustomed to Western decadence).

I look at India and wonder, are they where Americans were 50-60 years ago? Will they begin to go to love marriages? If so, will this cause the "breakdown" of Indian society, where divorces might go up, where drinking and casual sex become the norm? Or will the society, which has never gotten rid of the caste system, be able to maintain itself, with its emphasis on family and tradition, even in the midst of Western morality (or lack thereof).

And is America thinking that having others do some of the arranging isn't such a bad idea, even as algorithms try to find compatibility, at least as a first step? This idea which would have seemed so bizarre years ago is wrapped up in words that don't suggest machines (like eHarmony's emphasis on harmony, a non-technical word evoking idealistic relationships).

What amounts to be something of a chemical process (falling in love) and something of a biological imperative (the success of the human race) has created many different solutions, and those solutions have impacted how societies form and what their beliefs are. It is perhaps very prescient of Isaac Asimov to note that perhaps people's aggregate behavior can be predicted. While he left these equations completely nebulous, as you look at societies and how they run, you get a sense that certain global belief systems may drive people to act the way they do, and that throwing in new variables can change how societies behave.

Fascinating, really.

(What about the lolcats!)

Geek Celebrity

Ever heard of Richard Stallman? How about David Heinemeier Hanson? Maybe Linus Torvalds? Donald Knuth? Joshua Bloch? Joel Spolsky? Michael Arrington? Kathy Sierra? Bjarne Stroustrup?

These folks are geek celebrities, which means if you aren't in the computer business, you've probably not heard of them. Every field seems to have its own celebrities that are basically unknown except to people in the brotherhood (sadly, often men and not too many women).

Unlike the other fields, these celebrities often do act like celebrities. They go out to give speeches at O'Reilly conferences and tour around like minor rock stars. Not everyone, of course. Donald Knuth acts like the academic that he is. But David Heinemeier Hanson? He's got his hip arty crowd clothing (is that a dragon?). You can't have a Rails conference if DHH doesn't speak. He went from just another Dane, to Rails rockstar.

And more than that. The computing industry is hooked up. On the web! With blogs and reddit and Digg, there's an avenue for geeks to look up information on their favorite geek guru. Got Twitter? You can follow the willing celeb minute to minute.

How about watching live feed of Justin from justin.tv who takes The Real World to the next level (ah, but I don't think any of the roommates are getting kicked out).

Even geek cartoonists can be celebs. Why, just the other day, I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt with TRex, the start of the Dinosaur Comics, penned by one Ryan North. You can write a Ruby tutorial with cartoon foxes and that makes you a celeb ("Why" of "Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby").

What's the effect of this celebrity? Income. People will pay to listen to the gurus of the computing industry talk. You can have Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. I'll have DHH and the ukelele-playing Chad Fowler, thanks.

The Heat Is On

I suppose this is technically the second week of running for me. I ran on a Friday, and it was warm. I didn't run on Monday because it was raining. Ran Tuesday, Wednesday, both cool days, and then today, a warm day.

As anyone knows who's been out in the heat, it's easy to get exhausted when it's warm outside. This is probably not the best time of year to start running, but I figured what am I waiting for. If it gets too warm, I'll start running earlier in the day, probably at the beginning.

Currently, I'm running about a mile, which, I admit, is kinda short. I hope to double this in a few weeks, maybe as soon as two weeks, though the heat will make that challenging.

This isn't much of an entry, but it's mostly to mark how I'm doing.

On Adsense

I have no idea if Adsense is making me money. Likely, no. I don't edit myself much, so what I write can come off as jarring. Do those two sentences go together? Did he just switch tenses?

I also don't stick to any particular topic, so Adsense gets confused. For example, I had a blog talking about running shorts, and another about tennis, so Adsense now gives me entries on tennis shorts. I had two blog entries on Lebron James, and so there is clothing stuff with Lebron.

When I was blogging about Ruby on Rails, I had a bunch of entries on Ruby. I had an entry on mimosa, so there were mimosa recipes.

I have to wonder how well Adsense works. When you read my entries on mimosas, are you ready to go and click on Adsense on mimosas? I mean, literally, every few days, you see the content changing.

And I wonder, much like Schroedinger's poor kitty, and I changing what I write because Adsense is sitting there, analyzing my prose, trying to piece together what I'm writing about (through, presumably little semantic understanding) and get you to buy something?

And why would Blogger care whether I make money this way? I suppose, as bloggers, we're some weird audience that drums up support for advertisers, and advertisers don't care if people buy their product due to TV commercials, radio commercials, print ads, or, well, bloggers.

You know, I read there are millions of blogs out there, even some actively kept up. But given the pigeonhole principle, how many are really read? I mean, I assume I have fewer than ten readers. That's fine by me, although making gobs of cash from blogging would be cool. But I even exhaust those who read my blog because I'm both prodigious in my content, and also rather content-free.

If you read me, you must have lots of time on your hands, and given that I'm not Dave Barry, what the heck are you doing? Don't you have work you could be doing instead of reading what I write?

Blogs, as I've said before, appeal to some because they offer a window into a person, even if the person isn't completely honest, or even if the person isn't completely accurate (they may feel they are honest, but we're all biased about ourselves). Sometimes, you pass by a person, and you don't think that much about the person. Then, you read their blog and you say, gee, that's one f***ked up person. Or, wow, they really think deeper thoughts than I thought they were capable of.

Not every blog is that way. I could read a blog and not know a person was married, had two kids, had an argument that morning with their spouse, spilled coffee on themselves, had to turn back to the house, get changed, got caught in traffic, got late to a meeting, got yelled out by a superior, and had a generally crappy day. Instead, they may tell you about some cool piece of code they wrote, and not air dirty laundry.

Those blogs are good too. Not as exciting. How many people write blogs that read like a bad (or good!) soap opera who totally mismanage their lives and the people they meet? Not too many, I suppose.

Anyway, take that Adsense, try to sell something based on this blog entry!

Beyotch!

(Adding that makes this blog entry humorous, and that's why I did it)

Ben Folds Live

Ben Folds is perhaps the heir apparent to Billy Joel and Elton John, a guy who makes piano music. A lot of his stuff is pretty catchy, and so it's not surprising that if you like either Joel or John (note that Folds doesn't work as a first name), then you'd probably like Ben Folds.

Ben Folds used to have a band, which was called Ben Folds Five, which, given the verb-like nature of his last name, had me thinking he was doing origami (or making a fist). It didn't occur to me, for a long time, that Folds was actually his last name.

Anyway, I had a few Ben Folds CDs, but not his live album, which I just received today. Amazon reviews say it's an amazing CD, even if you don't like Ben Folds.

But the question is how can it be that amazing? Especially if you don't like him? Did he play the piano like Rachmaninoff? Did his voice become the male equivalent of Celine Dion? Did he just do covers of bands that people like better?

Spoilers ahead if you want to be surprised at what Ben Folds does on this CD.

Ben Folds...interacts. That's it. His fans love his music so much that they know how to sing along, providing a choral effect. This audience participation, almost unheard of in most bands, can be captured on a CD more readily than, say, a stage performance with laser lights, and precision dancers, and moonwalking.

The effect of listening to the audience sing along is absolutely captivating. It's impressive how he's able to do this. He even does an impromptu song based on comments from the audience.

Folds is a bit of a manipulator. Some of his plunkings head to discordant territory, as he presses random notes, realizing that it causes a cringing effect, then heads back to a catchy melody. But that's probably the key to any pop musician. You try to write tunes people will like, and a large number of people at that.

And Ben Folds does something that no popular singer outside of, well, rappers do. He swears in his songs. Hmm, that may have something to do with why he isn't heard more often, even if it seems to enhance the listenership by rap fans. But it's almost like being a geek, and hanging out with other geeks, and most of you are good kids, but this one guy, who seems like a leader swears, and you think, yeah, that is so cool. Even if it isn't.

And of course, since his song is so catchy, he gets the audience to sing along, and that's grand manipulation, but heck, that's what makes his CD so good. They join along, and for a moment, you don't care that he's doing what he does because you are in the moment, you are willing to be lead, you're falling under Ben Folds' spell.

The funny thing, I suppose, is that as good as Ben Folds is, he's still practically unknown. Billy Joel and Elton John are far, far, far better known than Ben Folds. Why that is, I can't quite say. In my mind, his tunes are at least as catchy, his piano prowess as accomplished, his voice as melodic as either of them. I'm sure his fans would agree.

Anyway, if you want to get a live album, or haven't heard Ben Folds before, pick up his live CD, Ben Folds Live.

Followup: Bjorkman

The mantle of the oldest man left in the men's draw at the French Open no longer resides with Jonas Bjorkman. In a match where he was mostly statistically better than Carlos Moya, Bjork succumbed in straight sets. Bjorkman had fewer unforced errors, about as many winners, but really couldn't handle Moya's serves (or at least, his service games).

Moya will now have the joy of facing number 2 seed, and fellow Spaniard, Rafael Nadal. Moya is now the oldest remaining player. Nadal should still be highly favored, though Spaniards tend to be confident playing one another.

Nadal, for his part, beat Lleyton Hewitt in straight sets and has yet to drop a set. He's doing his part in a collision course with Federer. The two seem certain to meet one another.

Finals this weekend.

Hype and Circumstance

I was listening to some sports commentator saying how, back in the day, he had felt the hype surrounding Lebron James was too much, but now that he's seen what Lebron can do, he's man enough to retract his statements. Lebron is that good.

But why? Why must he retract any of what he said?

Somehow, among sports know-it-alls, winning allows us to forgive all. Was it so long ago that Kobe was accused of rape? But then he began scoring 50 point games, and the subject seemed like a distant memory. When you win, people don't seem to care.

Even if Lebron is a good guy, even if he's the next Magic Johnson, we can still say that any hype, no matter how good the person is, is undeserved. Sports pundits like to be prognosticators, and as is often the case, people guess wrong far more than they guess right.

So people might have guessed wrong about Lebron. The sentiment expressed then should not depend on whether Lebron was a successful player, and a person people should emulate, or whether he is a flameout, or a malcontent, where commentators layer scorn upon them like Pac-mac Jones.

Don't let success get to your head when making judgements in sports.

Tennis Comedian

How funny you find this depends on how much you watch tennis. Andy Roddick impersonate a bunch of players including Boris Becker, John McEnroe, and Pete Sampras.

Sweet 16 at the French

I've lived without cable TV for so long that I rarely follow tennis anymore. Occasionally, curiosity strikes, and I'll check out some scores. Currently, the French Open is heading into week 2. The two top men's seeds are still on track to meet each other, namely, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

But right now, in the fourth round, there's an unlikely player playing. Swede Jonas Bjorkman. Bjorn Borg ushered in the era of really good Swedes. Following his stellar example, Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg, Henrik Sundstrom, Kent Carlson, Joachim Nystrom, Mikael Pernforns, Anders Jarryd all played decently good tennis. These days, though, there isn't a top young Swede. Jonas Bjorkman is one of those journeyman pros who plays well enough to get to a fourth round or the quarterfinals, but is old enough to have been among the last Swedes from the era that brought Edberg and Wilander.

Bjorkman was born in 1972. He's reached the semis of Wimbledon last year, a surface better suited to his serve and volley talents, and made the semis of the US Open back in 1997. He's in the fourth round, and he's 35 years old. It's true Jimmy Connors made the semis of the US Open when he was 39 years old (his birthday always fell during the Open). However, no one expects a player that age to win anymore. And let's face it, while Connors goes down as one of the best players ever, Jonas Bjorkman won't have that distinction.

There's something cagey about this veteran player. Of all the players who made it to the fourth round, only three of them were born before 1980. Guillermo Canas of Argentina was born in 1977, when Guillermo Vilas had his best year. Carlos Moya, a very solid Spaniard, as born in 1976. Bjorkman, his fourth-round opponent, was born in 1972.

The vast majority of players were born in 1981-1982, making them about 25 or 26 years of age, which seems to be the peak age for tennis.

Andre Agassi is two years older than Bjorkman, and retired last year at the US Open, though he had been struggling throughout the summer. It's all the more impressive that Bjorkman, who is likely to be forgotten in the history of tennis, can produce this quality of tennis at his age. He's no freak of nature like Martina, who was still chugging along at 40 and continued to play sporadic doubles til she was 50.

So cheers, Jonas. You're the old man of tennis, showing that a crafty Swede can still take it to the young'uns.

Run, Lola, Run

(I don't usually edit my writings much. This is my third pass at it. Don't know if it will improve much).

Oprah seems to have been around forever. I remember vaguely hearing about her from The Color Purple where Oprah received a nomination. She'd eventually take her local Chicago show nationally. Originally, more of a Jerry Springer show, it became the show it is today, a kind of self-help show, and it resonated with women everywhere.

For those who don't follow the show (and I include myself among them), one thing we remember about Oprah is her diets. Her show evolved due, perhaps, to the way she handled her weight issues. She'd lose weight, then gain it back, then try to lose it again. Her battle is not so dissimilar to many others. We live in a society that values being thin, and Oprah discovered, like many others, that it's work to stay thin for most of us.

Of course, Oprah is filthy rich, and she can afford trainers and cooks and so forth. Even so, she wasn't immune to the cravings of food. She even admitted, later on, that she suffered from abuse as a child, and that may have had something to do with issues with food and weight.

While I can't relate at that level, I found myself caring about weight when it was the furthest thing from my mind when I was in college. I was pretty thin in college, weighing around 130 pounds. I'm not particularly tall, but even so, that's pretty light.

My weight went up to 150 pounds when I went to grad school, attributable, really to lack of exercise. I used to walk about two miles a day from my dorm to class and back, and carried a backpack weighing at least twenty pounds. Cornell's meals were generally healthy, and in any case, I didn't gorge out on that food. I gained 20 pounds by eating out and driving a car everywhere in grad school.

I tried exercising then, but not without a great deal of vigor. My weight stayed mostly fixed, even as I tried running and weights.

Once I began teaching, the weight started up again, mostly because I ate out more, and was even more sedentary. My weight went up another 20 pounds topping out at 170. It's then I seriously tried to reduce my weight and got down to 135 pounds or so, or nearly my college weight. At the time, I wasn't working, so I could devote a great deal of time to exercising.

Since working full-time, my weight's gone from 150 to 160 and then close to 170 or mostly back to where I was before. While I've exercised some throughout, it's not really reduced my weight. I know how much work it takes, and it's a lot. And worse still, it's probably harder to lose weight now than when I did it the first time.

There's a mental war going on, and it's sad. Sometimes I think I should not worry about it. Some people are large and in charge, and they aren't particularly worried. America's getting fatter, don't you know? So many people live with their extra pounds (oh why didn't we go metric?) But I think it's better for my long-term health, so I worry about it.

But I didn't do that much because, well, the weight gain was somewhat gradual. I think it's like that story of putting a frog in water and raising the temperature slowly. Pretty soon, the frog is in boiling water, when it could have saved itself if it had known.

I had been like this frog. My weight went to 165, but then I got braces, and because I was basically eating baby food (puddings and yogurt), I dropped down to 160, and had hoped to go down even more. However, once I started eating food again, that weight came back up again.

To me, the boiling water alarm occurred about two weeks ago.

A few weeks ago, I was in Portland. I had made what I thought was a conscious effort not to eat that much, though I had thought I would exercise while I was there. Due to crappy exercise equipment at the hotel, that didn't happen. But I thought carrying a heavy backpack and walking around was exercise enough. Nope. I was barely eating lunches, though I'd get a decent breakfast. The dinners were light enough. The last evening, I ate a huge meal at an Ethiopian place. Mistake, but tasty.

Once I got back from Portland, I discovered I was actually 1-2 pounds heavier! And I thought I had lost weight. Ah, how much weight has occupied my mind the last ten years or so.

I try to exercise at work. I really do.

I use an exercise bike at work (kudos to the building for getting a quality exercise bike) and had been upping the time I spent biking from 10 minutes to 15, and now to 20, and thinking of going higher. But it is work time, and in any case, I'd rather not spend 30 or more minutes on the bike. Having said that, exercise bikes have one virtue. I can read while exercising. Almost no other equipment keeps my body still enough to do that comfortably. And I want to read more often.

But biking is not a particularly efficient way to exercise. You only exercise your legs. Running, even if more difficult on the body, burns more calories than biking. While you use your legs, the entire body weight is being used on your legs.

I wanted to run again. I was never a serious runner, but I had done some before. In college, I took a running class, which is now starting to be 20 years ago. Back then I was wiry thin, not even 130 pounds, wearing 30 inch waist jeans. I was thin, thin, thin. I started college at 125 pounds. I ran mostly to get in better shape and to keep alert (it didn't help so much there), not because I really wanted to lose weight.

Since then, I've run sporadically. I tried to do when I hit 150 pounds in the early 90s. Then, I read that building muscles helps with weight loss and started doing that (after taking a class). It never really helped, but I did get stronger and have better endurance because of it. Still, without much success, I didn't do it regularly.

For a long time, my exercise was confined to playing tennis and racquetball and occasionally biking or getting on an elliptical at the gym. I even cut back on that when I was teaching, which consumed a ton of my time, so much so, that I rarely exercised.

At the end of 2003, years of sedentary living and bad eating caught up to me. My weight had ballooned to 170 pounds (I know, my brother would love to get to that weight!). I wanted to be closer to 150 pounds, and 170 was too heavy. I was wearing 36 inch waist pants when I used to wear 30 inch pants.

So I decided to get serious about the weight loss at the start of 2004. I exercise-biked 45-50 minutes a day, sometimes twice a day, 6 days a week. I also cut back on what I was eating. Every time I weighed myself, I was losing about 0.4 pounds, which means I was losing about 2-3 pounds each week. This was the first time I tried to lose weight and was successful. It was pretty encouraging, I can tell you.

This weight loss continued for three months. Eventually, I lost 35 pounds. My pants size reduced from 36 inches down to 31 inches, basically what I was wearing nearly 20 years earlier. Losing weight, while gratifying, was like a full-time job. I was spending maybe 2 hours a day on this, and there was getting to and from the gym, and that I wasn't always up to do a lot more the rest of the day.

But once I started to work full-time, the exercise stopped, and eating out for lunch started up. Guess what? Yeah. The weight came back. Not really fast. Initially, I was around 150, then it crept to 155, then 160, then 165. The weight gain happened slowly, over about two years of time.

Now that I'm back to where I was before I lost all that weight, I figure it's time to do something again.

In such a situation, I find myself looking for a "drastic" solution.

I talked briefly to co-worker, Ken. Everyone knows Ken runs a lot. He tries to run around lunchtime every day. Ken's no casual runner. He's serious without being super-serious. This means he likes to track his progress, see where he runs, measure his heartrate, and so forth. He's got all sorts of gadgets to help him figure out how he's doing. I don't think he's trying to "beat" anyone in particular. Runners, I suspect, tend to race against themselves, because there's always someone faster, more gifted at running.

Like many sports, runners like Ken dress the part. Remember the 70s? Tennis was all the rage. And you had to dress to play tennis. In those days, it was wristbands and headbands and Fila shorts and shirts and nice tennis shoes. That was fit for the 70s. Runners have their own gear, and Ken's not bucking the trend with what he wears. It's what runners wear.

A typical Ken outfit is a muscle t-shirt (but it really is used by runners since it wicks away sweat) and short shorts. All of this clothing is optimized for running, at least, that's how it's advertised. Serious runners wear this stuff. It's good that running is such a solitary sport, because the rest of us are laughing.

Ken's also a programming type, and programming types are obsessive-compulsive by nature. I figured this meant that Ken might not be the most talented runner, but he was going to be a smart runner, who knew a lot about running because he read a fair bit on it. And of course, the fabulous running gadgets!

I knew he was just the kind of guy to talk to. (My housemate has likewise studied running, and used to run a fair bit, but we like to call him the crazy Romanian for his maniacal laughing. He'll read books on physiology of running and probably reads about how the body deals with lactic acid, and such).

To be fair, even though I've never run seriously, I've read some stuff about exercising, so I wasn't totally in the dark talking to Ken.

I had arranged to go out on a run with him, even though I was going to look rather foolish. Ken's been running since, well, a long time. I don't run with any regularity. I'd run some with Jaime, but it was hardly regular. But I was plenty prepared to look silly. I just wanted to figure out where to run nearby, so I had a path to follow, and Ken had already done the homework for me.

Did I mention how hot it was last Friday? It was frickin' hot! One thing about heat. It fatigues you quickly. I knew this from tennis. Cold weather tires you out far less. I had hoped I could run maybe a mile. I knew I wasn't in great shape because Jaime, who's nowhere near the same shape he was when he ran in college, could still run circles around me, and he'd freely admit that he's way out of shape (though he's exercising these days too).

The run was complicated by another issue. With the warm weather, I knew I needed some shorts. I had some shorts, but they were pretty tight. You know. Weight gain. So I thought I'd get some shorts. But I wasn't really ready to get Ken shorts, the really short running shorts. But I needed looser shorts. So I went to Kohl's with David who was returning some clothes. I got some shorts there, but they were basically khakis, and had a bit more waist room than the ones I already had.

I was ready for running.

Or so I thought.


While my shorts seemed to fit OK at the store, they were a touch loose. But, as I ran, I found they were more than just a touch loose. My shorts were literally falling off as I ran, and I had to keep holding them up, while struggling to keep up, and trying to catch my breath. I spent the first half-mile grasping onto a belt loop, wondering what the hell I was doing.

Fortunately, Ken was savvy to my misery, and suggested I cut the run a little short, since it was hot. I took his advice and began heading back to the office, while he meandered on for a serious run.

I walked back to the office. As I walked to the gym inside, I realized that I didn't have my card-key. Ah, Ken did mention that didn't he? He said the back door, where the maintenance guys go in, was open, and I could go in.

Except it wasn't open.

It was locked.

I knocked at the glass door. Inside, I could see a TV on. I figured someone was exercising, but I couldn't see anyone, and no one was answering. So up the elevator I went. I started knocking on the door. No one was there. Then, I went further down the hall, and knocked there. No answer.

D***. It was lunch.

And most people were out.

I tried across the hall. Dave opened the door, but most everyone was out, and his cardkey didn't open up the gym downstairs.

Finally, I found Dan who rarely eats out, and borrowed his keycard, got a shower, and got back to work. The next day, when I got up, I was sore. I wondered why. Ah, the running.

Since my casual clothing attire didn't work well on Friday, I decided to kick it up a notch. Time to get some more appropriate clothing. Step one for me was to get better shorts to run. The shorts at Kohl's didn't seem like the right thing for running.

Before I tell you about my adventures in trying to be a running geek, I want to recount an interesting social trend.

If you watch basketball in the early to mid 80s, you'll immediately notice something. The players wore very short shorts. Just think John Stockton, who seemed to have missed the memo to lengthen his shorts.

Recall that Reagan was president throughout the early 80s (and then Bush, Sr. after him). The political conservatism also affected popular culture.

In particular, the long hair from the 60s and 70s gave way to shorter hair in the 80s, some of which can be attributed to the punk movement. Short spiky hair replaced the large hair of the early 80s. Basketball shorts also began getting longer. They went from waist-height and proceeded down to the knees. Indeed, this trend affects all shorts, not just basketball shorts.

Unless you get golf shorts or some tennis shorts, the typical shorts you get at the local mall, either casual khaki style shorts or cargo shorts or even basketball shorts are basically down to the knees. For a while, tennis tried a different idea, popularized by Andre Agassi, where conventional shorter shorts was combined with knee-length spandex underneath. These days, Rafael Nadal wears capri pants which appear to be narrow shorts that extend a little past the knees.

The lengthening of shorts made its way to swimwear. Guy used to wear pretty short shorts for swim wear, but just like the basketball short cousins, swimwear for guys started to dip down to the knees. I can't quite say why that style was more in-fashion except that it contrasted with a clothing style prevalent during the 70s that I completely missed until well into the 90s.

Tight jeans. During the women's liberation movement of the 70s, guys were starting to be objectified in much the same way women were being objectified all the years before then. Men began wearing designer jeans, and those jeans were meant to give women (and gay men) a clue about how much stuffing a guy had. And this extended to both ends. Tight jeans were used to good effect show off a fine derrière as well as emphasize genitalia. (Women also wore tight jeans to show off the junk in their trunk).

Perhaps the 80s lead to a degree of shyness (by the 90s, for example, parents did not want their kids showering at the high school level or below, even though it was common to do so in the 70s and before). Longer pants and looser fits would counter the 70s trend of showing off the male form.

But you know who bucks this trend towards longer shorts?

Yup, runners.

For runners, short shorts are still preferred, though it's done for a fairly practical reason. Long shorts retard the leg as one runs. Indeed, the trend among runners is to wear the lightest weight shorts possible. These puppies (why do people use "puppies" to represent pretty much any doo-dad?) are feather-light and often exclude such niceties, like pockets.

If you're new to running, running shorts are a shock to the sensibilities. Do you really want to show that much leg? Fortunately, the industry empathizes with those who realize you aren't ready for the running equivalent of the mini-skirt.

For the more modest, there are longer running shorts. They still come up above the knee, but they aren't quite at point where the two legs conjoin, where if it were any shorter, you'd be in Lindsay Lohan/Paris Hilton territory. These are the training bikes of running shorts, meant to get you acclimated to less material, until you make the leap to the short shorts and join the brotherhood of runners.

But there's more. What happens when you run?

Right, you sweat.

And potentially a lot.

Thus, running shares something in common with water sports (swimming!). You get wet. It's not a stretch of the imagination to see to create running shorts that mimic swim trunks. Swimming trunks, in case you haven't worn them in a while, usually have an inner lining. After all, getting in the pool means you're getting your trunks wet, and if you were wearing underwear, they'd get wet too. Unless you're wearing Speedos, most swimwear has an inner lining that serves as a kind of underwear, and a modesty guard.

Not surprising that "real" running shorts also have this feature. The good news is that you don't get your underwear soaked in sweat.

I kinda figured this from Ken. Fortunately, while I was a bit concerned about wearing such shorts before, I'm not so worried about modesty and things like that. If there's a pragmatic reason that I should be wearing short shorts with inner lining to run, I'll do it.

Ah, but where to get the clothing?

I generally prefer to go to specialty shops because the local Sports Authority, while it does a fine job serving the masses, often lacks the knowledgeable folks of a place that specializes in running. About two years ago, I went with Jaime to Metro Run and Walk which is near Seven Seas, a decent Chinese restaurant in Rockville. I bought a semi-expensive pair of running shoes which I've used less than half a dozen times. Still, it seemed like a decent store.

Ken had been told by Jay, another coworker, about a shop called RNJ Sports, also located in Rockville, which has a half-off shoe section. All their items are 20% off, which one generally must take with a grain of salt.

This store is a bit off the beaten path. By that, I mean it's on the second floor of a two story building that doesn't look at all commercial. It's easy to miss, though I happened to find it without problems. It looked like a pretty good store.

First thing I have to give props to is the sign-up list. If you sign up, there's someone who will call you up, and answer your questions. So, I signed up, and they had some guy--probably Korean-American--help me out. Another positive point. The store had about five people to help out, which is a lot.

I asked the guy questions about shorts, and he said really short shorts with the inner lining (a la swimming trunks) were common. You weren't supposed to wear any underwear while wearing them. He pointed out that there were somewhat longer running shorts if the really shorts ones were bothersome, and even longer ones with no inner lining (i.e., you would wear underwear with those) if you really weren't ready to take the plunge.

I figured I'd bite the bullet and get ones with inner lining. What the heck, might as well do it right. It wasn't the super-short ones, but it was shorter than I was used to.

I had thought about getting shorts from the half-off rack, but all the shorts there are pretty long, so I picked from the other racks.

Running shorts have pretty nice drawstrings, so on the off-chance that I am losing weight, I can draw them more tightly and not have to buy a new pair of shorts right away.

After picking out two shorts, I quickly found two shirts---the kind that wick away sweat, probably used by anyone doing outdoor stuff like biking.

Now I wanted to get shoes.

To decide which pairs to get, the guy helping me had me walk to see what I was doing.

He said I overpronated, mostly because I have flat feet. This means, he explained, that I roll my feet inward after my foot lands. If my feet had a typical arch, it wouldn't roll. So, he said, I needed shoes that have good support where the arch would be (on the inside of my feet).

We went to the half-off shoe section (everything 50% off!) in the back, a treasure trove of good prices. He said shoe manufacturers have recently agreed to color the shoe cushion gray to indicate higher density, thus increased support for the arch area. I should look for shoes with this gray color and a wider last (basically, the footprint area).

He had me walk, then jog, and said while these shoes improved my step, I should go for shoes with even more support. However, he said that would cost twice as much since none of the discount shoes in my size had that support.

But, then he did something that I have to respect. He must know that beginning runners often quit after a short time. I might shell out a hundred bucks on shoes I would hardly use (it happened before).

Why spend a ton of money on shoes if one never uses it? So he said, why don't I just buy these discounted shoes? They give pretty good support, and if they were giving me problems in a couple of months, I could come back and look for a pair with better support.

I agreed, and thought it was rather classy of him to give this advice. It makes better sense for a store to be honest (unlike, say rental cars, who are grubby money grabbers) and try to save me some money, than to advise getting the priciest thing available. Hopefully, these guys don't work on commission, which doesn't really serve the customer at all.

In the back room, I eyed a duffel bag that I liked. I've been wanting to replace the tiny bag I've been using. It's a bit bigger than I want, but the one I have is too small, so I'd rather err on too big. This duffel has side pockets where I can put stuff like socks and underwear, and it's large enough that I can also put shoes in it too.

The total cost was a bit pricey, but I said, what the heck. If I were only more frugal.

There was one thing I was missing. Running shorts don't exactly have pockets, and even those that do seem problematic. It seems like anything could fall out of those pockets.

I wanted something I could use to hold a card key. You can get stuff to wear, but they were either hugely unwieldy (meant to hold water bottles), or they were a bit small (meant to hold cell-phones). I wanted something that I could either wear on my arm, or on my shoe (attached to the laces) or some tiny belt I could wear, and nothing quite fit the bill.

So I left without buying something to hold a keycard. Then, I went to Metro Run and Walk, you know, the store I went with Jaime to a few years back to see if they had something. I noticed that it's both smaller and pricey than RNJ (the store I was at), and they didn't really have what I was looking for.

I decided to take a break and get some coffee at Starbuck's, the one by the Barnes and Noble. I saw the Hudson's Outfitters place next door. They mostly do camping and hiking, but I thought they might have what I was looking for.

Sometimes, you have to look at something that's a little unrelated to find the stuff you want. Thus, what you want may not be in a running shop, but in, say, a biking shop.

I finally found a shoe "pocket" held to the laces by velcro that could hold something credit card sized, which was just what I wanted, and it wasn't too pricey either.

And so I could run, right?

Ah, the weather.

It's raining.

Of course.