Friendly Fire

There's an interesting dilemma that occurs as people enter into their twenties, especially those of us who are not so charming or so handsome or so loathsome as to be able to find anyone of our choosing. At some point, people begin to think their friends aren't enough. Sure, they're fun to hang out with. Sure, you go out to movies, or parties, or bars, or museums, or book signings, or camping.

But it's not enough.

You crave more. You crave constant companionship. You crave sex. There's nothing that signals that you have reached adulthood more than engaging in sexual activities. There's some maturity and skill involved with the ability to convince the other sex that removing clothing, and intertwining bodies, for the purpose of hedonistic pleasure. Or the same sex. Or several someones.

How many people, involved in a relationship, can say, without sex, they would be just as happy, just as content as they are now? How many people would leave their significant others if they were given an ultimatum?

Oh, I'm sure there are people that would indeed be fine with the thought, and yet, there are those who are slaves to their bodies desires. Everything else is this song-and-dance, provided this bodily addiction is fed once in a while. Of course, I'll go shopping with you! Of course, we'll walk the dog! Of course, we'll visit the museum! Of course, I'll return that to the video rental place!

But in this quest for a relationship, we often give up our friends. We want to get past the notion that we are whores or gigolos who merely crave the body, but have little regard for anything else, so we hang out, we sleep together, do things together, and given those limits, we are unable to hang out with our friends.

Now that we stop hanging out with our friends, they have one less friend to hang out with. They decide that, they, too must seek out a soulmate, or a lover, and when that doesn't succeed, they lament. They need a significant other. Their friends are no longer there. They want someone to be with them all the time. It's too lonely otherwise. With a significant other, there's a pact, to be with each other all the time. They owe your their time. You owe them yours. And, you do it for sex.

Oh, sure I'm simplifying. There are many where these rules don't apply.

You need a new drug, my friend. Because friendship is passe, it's out of style, it doesn't give you the kick you once had. We are friends, and there are simply boundaries between us, that prevent us from being more, without altering the dynamics of who we are. Maybe I don't even like you that much. I certainly don't like you enough to do that.

Imagine a world where we didn't have to follow these rules that have been built up through years of social interaction. We'd be swingers, and fool around with whomever. Friends, enemies, the indifferent. Would that make anything better? Would the devaluation of what sex means give us less hangups than we have now? How does one explain the way the world works?

Why am I wearing blinders that insists the world works the way it works from where I see. There are places where couples are virgins til they wed (even in the United States!). It leads to couples that marry when they're 19 or younger, desperate to feel what had been forbidden. There are people who have open marriages. Does it make them less faithful? Does it matter? Does it lead to jealousy? There are places that advocate polygamy, but only for the man. The woman is not allowed her harem. The gay community once abounded with casual sex, which attached no meaning but pleasure to the event.

Is love the enemy of friendship? Is sex? How does it all relate?

I need a drink.

E. T. Phone Home

Do you find yourself calling several people a day for non-business reasons? Do you find that when you can't through to talk to one person, you call another person, then another? Do you find yourself calling the same person two, three times in a day, if you can't reach that person? Do you find your day incomplete if you haven't called anyone? Do you feel insecure if you aren't telling someone something about your life?

Do you find, when you leave messages, that you aren't leaving messages? Do you say "please call back", but don't have anything to talk about in particular? Do you dread the idea of being cut off from your friends, even for a few days? Do you find yourself on vacation, wanting to call your friends to see how they are doing, instead of enjoying the vacation?

When you get email, do you feel it's of utmost importance to write back? Do you get upset when other people don't reply to your email? Do you demand people email you back? Do you send two, three, four emails to the same person in a day?

That is a sign of addiction.

I think I better call someone to talk about it.

Creating Great Software Teams

I read Joel On Software. Occasionally, he tells you how he goes about creating great software, which is to get great programmers. He was a Microsoft intern back in the day, and perhaps epitomizes Microsoft thinking more than anyone, even those in Microsoft.

The thinking goes, hire smart people, and you get great products. It's not such a bad way to go, until you think of how they get great programmers. Imagine you have a computer science department with 100 students ready to graduate. Only hire the top 5 students. The rest are useless.

OK, I should be more fair about this. In general, Microsoft doesn't care about grades or past experience. They believe very much in their interview process. The typical interview is really about 6 interviews. The first is with a recruiter who asks some non-technical questions and appears to be 9 times out of 10, a woman.

Then, two more interviews with one group at Microsoft, followed by three more interviews with another group. Lunch is one of the interviews.

The questions asked depend on the group that interviews you. Microsoft has many groups. I'd guess at least fifty, but one hundred wouldn't surprise me. They try to act like fifty small start-up companies. Some groups ask lots of brain-teasers. Some ask lots of coding questions.

If you're just graduating, you don't interview for a particular job position. You interview for a job type. For computer science majors, those three types are: SDE, which are programmers, SDET, which are testers, and PMs, which are feature spec designers. SDEs are called "devs" for short, and are the elite. In a group of 80, maybe only 20 are devs. 40-50 more are testers. The remaining are PMs.

PMs are program managers. Despite the name, they are not managers in the conventional sense. You could, on your first day of work, be a PM. Your job is to manage a project, not people. You design the features. Then, the dev works on the APIs and fleshes out more details. The tester tests code written by devs.

An interviewee is assigned two groups by Microsoft who interview them. They prefer to hire smart people who will do the job assigned, rather than listing all of their jobs and having potential hires select which job they want. They figure smart people can work on anything, and everything can be exciting.

Occasionally, they interview a superstar, and when they recognize them, they try to sell them on working for Microsoft. My cousin appears to have gone through this route. They do a better job of selling themselves than most companies.

Perks include your own office, free membership to the local gym (which is very nice), free bus passes at Seattle (convenient). They generally treat their employees very well. In exchange, they get to work them like crazy too.

Spolsky, who is the head of Fog Creek software, wants to tap into the same kinds of college students that Microsoft does and that Google does. The biggest problem for him is, well, who's heard of Fog Creek software? They don't write particularly innovative software. They have a bug tracking system (which is really a project management system). They have a program to manage webpages. They have Co-Pilot to help debug Windows problems using VPN and webpages.

Yet, they write the stuff very well, and they make money. They try to write easy-to-use stuff that doesn't break.

Many companies looking for superstars tell you, it's better to reject ten great programmers than hire one average one. If in doubt, no hire. Thank goodness the rest of the world doesn't work that way. Essentially, they want the software industry to resemble professional sports, where only the thousand or so best players can make a living, and the rest do something else.

I'm at a startup, but at this point, our name recognition is not that great. We're also not located in California, or in a big city (though we are near a big city). To find great programmers, you have to convince them to move to where you are. Unlike college football, which can convince great athletes to go to Happy Valley or Morgantown or many an isolated town, it's too hard to get great programmers to move to Iowa. A few might do it, but not enough.

Lesson one. Fog Creek Software is located in New York City. Even if some people despite NYC, more people like its city amenities.

Lesson two, which Spolsky doesn't exactly mention, but which is becoming key in his strategy to get the best. Blog about yourself. This allows you to show off to anyone who finds you, and through word of mouth (and the three books he wrote), he can begin to build a reputation that he wouldn't have otherwise. Right now, he has some project called Aardvark where college interns get to design their own project from scratch.

If and when they finish their project, the company can use this to convince more to work for Fog Creek. He has someone filming the intern experience so he can use this to advertise to others. In order to pull this off, he has to be completely concerned about the work environment. Coincidentally, they've just built some extremely nice digs for the programmers to work in.

In this day and age, you advertise the heck out of your company, to get the best. The question I have is, what do the rest do? Even as many elite programmers lean left, many lean right when it comes to hiring programmers.

Ah, well, they're all going to be outsourced anyway, eh?

Phat Man and Little Boi

Ah, NPR, where do you get these news segments. Today, on the way to work, I listened to a blurb about a display at the National Atomic Energy Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico (do you know how tough it is to spell Albuquerque?). Apparently, there's a real life version of both these bombs on display for tourists to see.

But, these are about to be replaced by not-so-faithful copies. You know why, don't you? National security, of course! But assuming these changes aren't instantaneous, wouldn't somebody go in and take a picture (and there are probably already photos available), and then check the differences.

Speaking of NPR, one of the more harrowing stories I've heard recently involves an Iraqi war veteran named Harold Noel who suffers from Post Trauma Stress Disorder. He says he still carries the eight cartridges for each of the people he killed in Iraq, as a reminder of what he did.

While he understood that it was "necessary" to kill to save his own life, it was difficult for him as well. When he came back, he didn't want to be with his family. He was in a shell. Now, he talks about his experience with others. My little summary doesn't begin to do justice to the story he tells. Take a listen. You won't regret it.

Peer Pressure

I've somehow managed to avoid jury duty until now. Jury duty, much like voting, is one of those things that many Americans seem to want to get out of. In fact, given the choice between voting and jury duty, I'm sure many would opt for voting. At least, you know what day it's on, and you know how long it will last (although those standing in long lines in Ohio might disagree).

Having taken a civics class many an eon ago, I recall the process of jury selection. Lawyers can excuse jury members who know too much about the case, either the participants, witnesses, or the facts. It was amazing they could even find a jury for the OJ case, since it occurred many months after the fact.

Lawyers can also use peremptory challenges to essentially kick out a limited number of potential jurors for no good reason. Maybe they want more women, more African Americans, less men, less Asians. There may be some sociological reason for not picking certain individuals that wouldn't pass legal muster otherwise, ie, it'd be discriminatory.

Once selected, jurors listen to the case, then, in a criminal case, they must come to a unanimous decision of not guilty or guilty (notice it's not innocent).

I woke up tres early this morning, like 6 am, merely 5 hours after I went to sleep to try to make a 7:30 am courthouse date. Due to websurfing, getting food, and so forth, I didn't get on the road to the courthouse til 7:15. The directions suggested 30 minutes to the destination. Turns out it was more like 20 or 25 due to lack of traffic.

The courthouse (to me) wasn't well-labelled so I had to ask directions at a Starbucks. That's my rule of thumb. Someone at a Starbucks always knows the directions. And so they did, and so I was able to get to the courthouse.

I knew there was some free parking somewhere, but I didn't want to look for it, and it didn't seem obvious where it was, so I ended up paying the $6 it cost to stay the whole day. Little did I know I wasn't staying the whole day.

Once I passed through security and reached the room where the potential jurors sat, I saw, maybe 100 or more people. Turned out it may have been closer to 200. We were greeted by some courtroom official, who seemed cheerful. She showed as a video on how to be a juror, which looked like it was made in 1985 based on the clothing and hairstyles.

We were each handed one of three colored cards: purple, white, or orange. Each card had a number. I had orange 47. This took a while since nearly 150 cards were passed out. We were informed there were 7 criminal cases, each requiring a jury of 12. We must have had at least 2 people for every juror picked, although at the time, I thought we had more like 10 people for every juror picked.

We waited about half an hour or so, and then the first group, which was purple, was asked to line up in numerical order. They left the waiting room. A little while later, many of them returned.

Then, more waiting. Eventually, they told the people who had purple cards that hadn't been selected to go home. It turns out several cases had already been plea-bargained, and therefore, no jury trial. With a plea-bargain, the defendant claims guilt, and gets a shorter length sentence than normal. Without plea bargains, courthouses would be backlogged with work.

Then, those with white cards were told they could go home. Orange card folks (like me) waited, wondering if we would have to go through the process of voir dire (the selection process). There were hints that we might not have to.

In the end, 6 of the 7 cases were plea-bargained, and so all but 12 people out of the 150 or more potential jurors were sent home. It was 4 hours after the process had started. I spent most of the time trying to sleep. I didn't really sleep as many people used the occasion to talk prodigiously to their neighbors, but that was fine. Even a catnap of sorts was good enough, and it helped time pass. I had brought reading material, but I find being totally fatigued doesn't make me eager to read.

All in all, the court officials were quite pleasant trying to assure us that this was a painless process. However, large number of cheers were heard when potential jurors were being told they could go home.

We were all told that even though we didn't serve, and therefore could possibly be called back within a year, that we had three years off. One woman said it was her third time through this process, and that like clockwork, she's asked every three years to do this.

I don't know whether the jury process is a good thing or not. Are we really peers? Many people don't want to be there. A few like the idea, and want to be jurors. Should decisions about others be made by people with no legal training? I understand it's to prevent a system where judges get out of touch with the citizenry, but is it any better to be judged by those with little training, who'd rather not be there at all?

Overall, I found the experience moderately pleasant, except for the ungodly hour that I had to arrive. The court officials had as much to do with that as anything. I'm sure there's a better way, but if this is the way we have to deal with juries, it's about as pleasant as they can manage.

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle

Does the mother's marital status determine the gender of the baby? Dr. Karen Norberg thinks so. Through extensive research, she claims that when mothers are unwed, there's a statistically deviation for slightly more boys being born than girls.

This is the kind of blog entry that most people put. They hear or read of an interesting article and say, now that's cool, I should blog about that. At first, I didn't understand the reason why. Bloggers often have little to add other then their incredulity to the article of interest. They often lack the expertise to say anything intelligent. Curiously, that's where I find myself on this article.

The only thing I can comment about is the general misunderstanding of statistics. If there's one thing the average American doesn't understand, it's statistics. I don't even mean complex stats, I mean even the simple stuff. For example, in this article about babies, they claim there are 106 males born for every 100 females. For unwed mothers, the ratio of boys to girls is just under 50% (say, 98 males for every 100 females).

The average person just hears statistically more likely and think it's some absolute certainty, and say "I know a single mom who has more boys than girls!", and yet, that's an incredibly small sample size. Statistical deviations are highly likely when you have tiny sample sizes.

For example, casinos make money because the odds are slightly in their favor to win. Even if you know plenty of people who have made money at casinos, overall casinos do better, and that's assuming those who go to casinos play to the best of their abilities (without resorting to, say, counting cards), which many people are unable to do.

There are two other issues that come up with regards to this single mother hypothesis. First, is it really valid? Others have hypothesized that chemicals in the environment may be to blame. After all, it does sound ludicrous that the gender of the baby is not solely determined by the male sperm, especially since this has been the widely held belief for many years.

The other issue is why do males outnumber females in the first place? Is the ratio already askew to begin with, or are there other factors at play? Even though it seems like a roll of the dice to be either a boy or a girl, there's something reassuring knowing that once the egg is fertilized, the gender is determined. If the gender does change, does that affect the physiology of the child?

And finally, is this one of those sensationalist articles by some crackpot scientist. One assumes not, because it's being reported in newspapers. I'd be curious to hear what other scientists in her field think.

All's Well

The hardest part that I find about blogging is the ending. The best articles are those who last paragraph and last sentence are emphatic. Yet, I always find myself, deep in the middle of an entry, wondering how on earth I'm going to conclude. Although I blog like crazy, I have yet to discover the answer. Until now.

And it's so obvious! Yet, so uninituitive.

Write the ending first. Figure out the clever ending first, then write the article that leads up to that ending. The person that best epitomizes the clever ending is Garry Trudeau. He's got four frames to get his point across, and the last one's always the kicker, and he often does it with an one-two punch, with a clever observation followed by the clever retort. How he does it time after time, I'll never quite know.

Old habits die hard, because I'm at the end of this entry, trying to come up with a good ending.

Oh, oh, how about this. An American, a Russian, and a Chinese are on a deserted island. American says to the other two "In order to survive, we must each search for supplies. I volunteer to go on the first day". The next day, it was the Russian's turn. On the third day, the American said "Ok, it's now your turn to get supplies". The Chinese man nodded his head and was off. Hours passed and the American and the Russian grew concerned.

They decided something must have happened to the Chinese and started to search for him. As they wandered through the forest, attempting to retrace the path, they eventually came by a large rock. From behind it, the Chinese jumped out and yelled:

"Supplies!"

Love and Marriage, Part 1

In the original Star Trek, you know, the series from the late 60s, with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley as the triumverate of Kirk, Spock, and irascible McCoy, there was an episode where aliens wonder why so much Earth literature is devoted to love.

If you were to ask evolutionary biologists about love, they might claim it's all about humans trying to pass on their genes. All of this romance business, that's just how human perceive the need to reproduce.

I wonder how difficult a topic love and sex was to teens and twenty somethings fifty years ago, during the 1950s. I suspect it's still something of a challenging, even embarassing topic, and yet, my sense is that, in the right mood, you can get many Americans to talk about the subject. Kinsey managed to do it, but he exuded the kind of dispassionate objectivity of a scientist or a doctor that his subjects were willing to be frank.

I've been around enough single people whose foremost thought is to be in a relationship. As such, many people devote a great deal of time trying to get in a relationship, and then a great deal of time maintaining that relationship. People seem miserable when they don't have someone, and yet, due to traumatic experiences, some are afraid to be involved.

You'd probably get some Indians, particularly of an older generation, who find all this talk of romance and meeting people, quite a mess, and that they'd already figure out the solution to all of this long ago: the arranged marriage. Having been raised in the United States, I find the system we have, of people pursuing relationships far more interesting, even if it means a great deal of work on the part of some to achieve what they want.

I leave this as part 1 because it's getting late. I know I could wait and edit this as a whole, but my fear is that I'll postpone talking about this for so long that I won't get back to it, and I wanted to post this up while it was fresh on my mind.

I want you to think about this question. Why do you want to be in relationship? How do you get yourself into a relationship/ What do you expect from the person you're in a relationship with? How eager were you to get to your first sexual experience? What, in your opinion, is the relationship between sex and love.

You know, I'd certainly like to talk about the human need for aesthetics or their purpose in the universe, but I'm as prurient as the next person, and so I'm curious about the topic that seems of greatest concern to the most number of people: love and sex, and how to get them, and why.

Cultural Touchstones

During the middle of May, 2005, George Lucas released possibly the last Star Wars film he is likely to make. Even if he hopes life after Star Wars will allow him to make films like life before Star Wars, he may not succeed. In the summer of 1977, Star Wars came out. Although widely seen as the first mega-blockbuster, you can't forget Jaws, Spielberg's big time debut in 1975 (yeah, he did Sugarland Express and the TV film, Duel, but does anyone but Spielberg fans remember them).

Despite wide acclaim for Star Wars and the return to Saturday matinee films of the 40s, not everyone embraced what Star Wars became. There are those who criticize Star Wars for ruining what was considered a great time in American independent filmmaking. During the late 60s and early 70s, films like Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, The Conversation, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, the first two Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now reflected the uneasy sentiments of an era going through war, and grappling with peace and resistance. This was the Vietnam and post-Vietnam era, the downfall of Nixon. The violence of the civil rights movement. The birth of the gay rights movement.

Star Wars was to the 70s what It's a Wonderful Life was to the 40s, a curiously optimistic fairy-tale that believed in the goodness of people. Star Wars is less science fiction than it is space opera. It doesn't wrestle with the big theological or philosophical issues of man, as did, say, 2001.

The return of the first trilogy of Star Wars meant that kids who grew up in the 70s, who remember the innocent joy they had, as they pretended they were Obi Wan fighting Darth Vader with lightsabers, or piloted X-wings through the trenches of the Death Star, or used the force to fight blindfolded against pesky seekers. In one film, Lucas brought together a memorable bad guy, cool dogfights, a pseudo-religion, and even cooler light saber, and two loveable robots, to boot.

Episode 1, in particular, allowed those kids, now dads of their own, to share their experience with their sons, to have them know what Star Wars was like when they were a kid. That seems like such great fun, no? Yet, when I was growing up in the 70s, I don't know if there was any film like that which my dad could have taken me to, and that's even allowing for the fact that my dad wasn't in this country during the 50s.

Episode 3 just came out, and of course, newsmagazines want to ride the popularity of any Star Wars film, so Darth Vader's famous cowl graced the cover of Time on May 9, 2005. Articles talked about the Star Wars phenomenon, and the new characters showing up in the last installment. However, of all the articles, it's the essay by John Cloud that's most personal.

He returns us to that place a long time ago, in a place, far, far away, which was the summer of 76. As a teen who was on the move, he kept having to make new friends. He also discovered that he liked boys more than he liked girls. One way he learned to survive during this time was to imagine himself not as Luke Skywalker, farm boy turned Jedi knight (OK, that didn't really occur until ROTJ, but indulge me), but as ruffian, Han Solo. His wisecracking ways and general coolness gave him a role model for life. He memorized Han's lines.

This space fantasy got him through a difficult time. When Return of the Jedi concluded, he turned his interest to the Star Trek franchise from the Next Generation to Enterprise. Enterprise was just about to wrap up its last show, and for the first time since STTNG came out, no new Star Trek episodes were going to be on the air. And with Episode 3 also being released, the last of the Star Wars films was also almost concluded.

And while Cloud said he would miss these movies and what they meant to him, he was also at a point in his life, with his sci-fi hating boyfriend, that he no longer needed these films. He could get on with life just fine.

I suspect stories like Cloud were not unusual, and that when we look back on the effect of Star Wars on a generation of kids who grew up in the heyday of disco and the rise and fall of Carter, that many a person can claim an influence as profound to them as it was on John Cloud.

Gus Gazzler

What make a film a film? I just read an article about Gus Van Sant, the indie director whose list of films include: My Own Private Idaho, Even the Cowgirls Get the Blues, To Die For, Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, Gerry, and Elephant. Two of the films on this list are not typical Van Sant, Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester.

An indie director often has a different take on what qualifies as entertainment. While it takes skill to make films that lots of people like, which directors like Zemeckis or Spielberg seem to excel, some directors also deny its audience the basic pleasures it gets from films, such as a hero to root for, a romance to care for, or a flat out comedy. How many people would declare Gerry genius? It has little to no dialogue. The dialogue is practically meaningless. There are lengthy scenes of two guys (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) walking in some rocky, desert-like terrain, resembling a desolate version of Lawrence of Arabia, minus the entire epic story and characters. What does it mean? Do we get caught up in the here and now?

Somewhat more structured, yet similarly opaque, was Van Sant's Elephant. The title derives from two different stories. In one, an elephant in a living room is so obviously a problem that one can't ignore it. In the other, are the story of three blind men trying to describe an elephant. Since they touch the elephant in different parts, each comes up with a different story.

Elephant is a tale of several high school kids on the day a terrible shooting occurs. Van Sant often takes the camera just behind the head of one student and follows him or her around. We don't really get any great sense of who anyone is. There's nothing that predicts the atrocities that are going to occur, and even when the camera follows the two kids who are going to carry out the deed, we only get bits and pieces of their lives, not knowing why they do what they do, only that they do it. Absurd moments such as one character's dad's drunkenness of the bulimia of three girls add a peculiar touch to what is essentially a naturalistic exploration of life on a pivotal day. Van Sant refuses to invest drama or an emotional pack to what happens, asking us, the viewer to come that conclusion without his help.

It's not those movies I want to talk about, it's the one movie of his that I want to see next, and that is his shot-for-shot reproduction of Psycho. I'm sure, if you asked Van Sant, whether he thought he was as good a filmmaker as Alfred Hitchcock, he'd say, of course he wasn't. Van Sant isn't trying to make the same kinds of film that Hitchcock is.

Apparently, Van Sant had detailed notes on the production of Psycho. He wanted to make a shot-for-shot reproduction of the film. I presume he even used the same music. He had two make two concessions, of course. First, he had to have new actors. Anne Heche, for example, plays the role that Janet Leigh did. Vincent Vaughn plays Norman Bates, the role made famous by Anthony Perkins. Vincent Vaughan, interestingly enough, has gone on to do comic roles.

He also had to make the film in color, since black and white films simply do not do very well. Few films these days are done in black and white. Schindler's List is black and white (mostly), and many of Guy Maddin's films are black and white. Young Frankenstein is in black and white. Sin City comes close to black and white.

I believe Van Sant expected the experiment to fail, but he was curious. If you follow his directions exactly, why is it that you can't reproduce what Hitchcock produced? Many critics didn't realize that this was Van Sant's purpose. If he stumbled on a great reproduction of Psycho, then great. If he failed, then it wasn't because of the way the shot was set up. There was something more.

In the article I linked above, the author suggests that Hitchcock had what's known in the business as "directorial gaze". I read a review of School of Flesh by director Benoit Jacquot, in which the reciew says that Jacquot does this "male gaze" as well as anyone. The idea is basically camera as voyeur, trying to capture, women in moments of vulnerability as well sensuality. Hitchcock is well-known for his fascination for icy blondes, and the author of the article says he probably hated himself for it, and that both tendencies come across in the way women are captured in his films.

Van Sant, he argues, is a gay man, and would have far less sensibilities to such matters.

There's also the matter of originality in film. Some films become so beloved that people just don't want to see a remake. I have to wonder if this is how people think of some shows. Would you make a new Friends or Seinfeld with new actors playing the roles? After a while, we associate the people so much with the roles that they basically are the role they play. Much in the same way that we like one person instead of another, it no longer becomes the quality of acting, but the familiarity of that person in that role. We want no one else.

For some reason, many other forms of entertainment does not suffer from the need for originality. We can listen to many different people play the Goldberg Variations. We can prefer one over another, but there's nothing wrong with performers playing it. Same with Broadway plays. New cast and crew replace old ones. This doesn't seem to detract from the enjoyment.

The only thing close, I suppose, is pop music. While there are plenty of remakes, often, it's the original that people remember. Only when the original singer is suitably obscure does a more famous remake take its place. Many of Elvis's songs were not his own, and yet, he was so famous, that his renditions are the one we remember.

Why do different forms of entertainment have differing views toward the acceptability of remakes? Right now, Hollywood is remaking many films that weren't so great to begin with. Summer 2005 has really brought on quite a spate. From Herbie Fully Loaded (not exactly a remake), to Bewitched, to The Longest Yard, to The Dukes of Hazzard. Batman and Superman films have either come out or are expected out soon. Those weren't the classic that Psycho was and furthermore they're not the same faithful adaptation.

Bewitched for example is about a film about the remake of Bewitched. Will Farrell plays a down-on-his-luck actor who hopes this show will resuscitate his career. Nicole Kidman plays a real-life witch who gets cast to play the Elizabeth Montgomery role. A remake often twists the original in a way that makes it more acceptable for a modern audience.

It's my hope to watch Van Sant's Psycho first, then Hitchcock's later on, as most people almost invariably watch Hitchcock's first, at least, if they care to watch either version. I want to see if the act of watching Van Sant's version first is enough to make it more resonant. Unlike Roger Ebert, I haven't done shot-by-shot analysis of a film like Psycho, which may prejudice him by making him so closely attuned to the original, that he can't see any other remake with a disinterested eye.

It's too bad more directors don't try this out. I'd love to see what happens with other faithful reproductions of other classics. I know most critics would find it a travesty, and a waste of film and talent. Yet, it's the very question of talent and directorial intangibles that such an experiment attempts to explore, and while we see entertainment as entertaining, I find the thought of entertainment as analysis on what defines greatness a fascinating one.

Feast for the Eyes

I've noticed something curious about Asian males. I don't mean Asian-American males. I mean those from Asia. No, no, I don't mean from Asian. I mean from China. Or perhaps what we used to term as Oriental before that adjective fell from fashion.

Once a Chinese male reaches their 30s or 40s, thoughts of growing food seem to occupy them. My dad spent time trying to make a food garden from rocky Tennessee soil. My coworker grows vegetables too. This desire to be a farmer seems nearly universal among Chinese males.

Contrast that with a typical American male. Those who are interested in growing anything, and I suspect they are few and far between, prefer to grow things that are decorative. Flowers or plants of some sort, mostly to show off, rather than for the functional purpose of growing food.

It reminds me of (as many things do) a film I saw in the 80s. It was a French film called Jean de Florette, which translates to mean, Jean, of Florette. Alas, spoilers follow.

Apparently, the story is of a man named Jean, who has inherited a farm from his mother, Florette, who has passed away. The film appears set around the 1900s. Jean is, if I recall, some sort of tax collector, and wishes to give up city life to move out in the country. He is played by that French everyman, Gerard Depardieu.

He moves in with his wife and daughter, and wants to grow food and live off the land. The Simple Life as it were (shoo, Paris Hilton, shoo Nicole Richie). Alas, his neighbors wish to grow carnations, but to do so require water from Jean's land. Thus, a scheme is hatched to plug up the water source and make it extremely difficult for Jean to prosper on his land, and perhaps he will leave and sell the land. The plan unfolds over the span of perhaps two years.

As the film ends, Jean is killed while trying to get water from explosives (I assume it's underground, and has to do with creating a well). His wife is forced to sell the land since she is unable to take care of it herself. At the end, the daughter is wandering around, and spies the old man and his son unplugging the water, and crowing him prince of carnations. The daughter realizes the treachery, that her father's success has been prevented by neighbors that pretended to be good but just wanted the land to get to the water source.

Do I believe that food has a more fundamental value than decoration? I'm not sure I do. On the one hand, growing vegetables is usuallly not enough to live on, at least for the average hobbyist farmer. It's an activity that is rewarding because the end-product is something you can eat, but it's not enough to live on, especially if you're not vegetarian, but even if you are.

Growing food does have the virtue of being neighborly. If you do grow enough vegetables, you can give them to your friends or coworkers, and they can enjoy in it too. This is less true of nice shrubbery ot plants, which can only be enjoyed if you visit your friends.

This is, as they say, food for thought.

Modern Life

There's a phrase that's entered the American slang lexicon---old school. It's probably been around for ten years, maybe? Old school is contrasted with new school though new school is almost never heard. Old school is a kind of philosophy, which would normally be termed as old-fashioned, except that old-fashioned has a pejorative connotation. People equate old-fashioned with unwilling to change and to embrace the future.

Old school, by contrast, refers to old-fashioned in a good way. I recall when Gar Heard was selected as the Washington Wizards new coach. Right now, the Wizards have gone through a merry-go-round of coaches, having maybe 8 coaches in the last 8 years. This happens when a team loses. The coach is the easiest person to replace. Heard apparently "blew away" owner Abe Pollin in his interview. The phrase stuck partly because Heard did not do much except to continue in the Wizards losing ways.

Heard was said be "old school", a disciplinarian in a sport where multi-millionaires often have more say about how the team is run, than the coach. Professional basketball is not college basketball. In college sports, coaches are kings. Players are not making multi-million dollar salaries. They have to stay in the good graces of the coach, or they never get to play. All the risk is on the players.

At the pro level, coaches have to manage egos. Phil Jackson, former coach of the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers (and coach again of the Lakers), was the zen master who soothed the egos of Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, Shaq, and Kobe, which is no mean feat, and lead him to nine titles. He might represent the best of "new school" thinking where stars have to be treated like stars.

Heard, on the other hand, insisted on his way or the high way, and players quickly checked out. Even the combination of Doug Collins and Michael Jordan were more old-school, berating players like Kwame Brown, and eventually trading Richard Hamilton to the Pistons when he didn't want to toe the Jordan/Collins line. Old school often stresses fundamentals that new school has forgotten. In basketball, that would be passing the ball, playing solid defense, and putting team ahead of flashy individual play.

For lack of a better word, there's now new school elitism and old school elitism. In this case, I use old school elitism is a more disparaging way. I should use old fashioned but that phrase sounds, well, old fashioned, and using the phrase old school serves to highlight the point I want to make.

What am I talking about when I use the word elitism? I'm referring to what people do when they wish to move to a higher level of enlightenment. The ultimate conservative lives in a small town, grows up with a limited set of ideas, and stays within the comfort of those ideas. Small town folks, stereotypically, only know about the small town, about basic values, about limited forms of entertainment. They haven't seen expensive cars. They don't know the latest fashions. They see people much like themselves.

Now, such a person is quickly becoming extinct, but I'm sure such people exist. Elitism requires work. Old style elitism is about being prim and proper. Going to museums. Going to the symphonies. Reading classic works like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Watching Merchant-Ivory films. Films by David Lean. It is about beauty over grotesque. If I think of one person who might fit this moniker of old-school elitism, it's Diane Rehm, who hosts her own show on NPR. She'd watch a film like The English Patient, but would avoid experimental films like Gus Van Sant's Gerry or the violent Battle Royale.

New-school elitism is a combination of the obscure that's old-school elite, and a kind of slumming. Forms of entertainment that would normally be poo-poo'ed by the old school. For example, there's a flourishing comic industry that is no longer the Marvel and DC comics of the 70s. The peak of the iceberg of this industry peeks out in movies. Blade, Constantine, Hellboy, Batman Begins, Sin City are all derived from comics from the 90s and the 00s.

The comic industry, once the domain of gawky teenage boys, took a turn. As the industry realized that fanboys weren't boys, but were, instead, 20 something men, prices of comics increased, and the subject matter became more adult-oriented. This may have coincided with the populariity of mangas, Japanese comics. In Japan, there has always been comics aimed at adults. Such serious topics as rape and misogyny are mainstays in mangas. R-rated comics with nudity are common, and given the respect, rather than the derision such comics have in the US.

A new school elitist is just as willing to derive entertainment from violence and non-mainstream humor. I call it elitism, because it very much is. There are a series of t-shirts that I've seen at threadless.com. In particular, I know someone who wore the following: Outbreak Girl shirt. Go to this website, and you'll see dozens of shirts, and yet, this shirt that I've linked to is among the most popular.

Never seen it? I hadn't either until about a week ago. Then I saw it twice in three days. I remarked to a coworker.
It probably says something about new-school elite that they don't want to flaunt this information. Either you get
it and are part of the elite, or you don't, and in that case, you're ignored. Where as old-school elite is often tied
to some degree of wealth, new-school elite is just as likely to be geeky students or those who find their form
of entertainment more compelling than climbing the ladder to achieve "real-world" success.

It takes a great deal of time to be new-school elite. The easiest way is to hang out with others sharing the
same world view. Just by them being there, you get a sense of what is cool. And yet, this stuff is terribly
ephemeral. New-school elite is always on the search for new music. They embrace all sorts of music from
hip-hop to alt-rock to ska to classical music. They watch movies that are out of the mainstream. Documentaries
and films by indie stars Araki or Van Sant. They go to wine and cheese parties and museums and coffee houses.

They hang out at music clubs, and know where the city parties are located. They embrace multi-culturalism,
gay-lesbian rights, environmentalism, and Lance Armstrong. The web has become the outlet for this kind
of elitism. It presents elitism with the kind of access that makes it egalitarian. Where once money was the
currency used for access, now it is search, the ability to find and process information, finding the cultural
milestones being built in the cyberworld, and to assimilate its meaning and significance.

This is the kind of elitism that can get obscure extremely easily. Since no one much cared about the music,
the style, the art of the here-and-now, how can it persist into the there-and-later? There's a sense that
maybe only a few hundred thousand care in a country of nearly three hundred million, and they don't care
that others dont know, because once they figure it out, it's time to move on, to find the next place to hang
out, the next elite thing.

This it the most fleeting kind of hedonism, a curious blend of entertainment and information. This is not the
rock solid fundamentals of mathematics and physics and study of dead languages. Rather than the ability to
reason deeply about what makes the world work, it's about cultural reasoning, determining what is cool here
and now, and cool, really, to this elite. This is not Desperate Housewives, but The World, The Child, The
Wayward Cloud. This is Guns, Germs, and Steel. This is The Blank Slate. This is Califone, The Microphones,
Lungfish. This is the rediscovery of William Shatner and Johnny Cash.

This is intellectual fashion, decided by a new kind of intelligentsia, whose collectively decide what's hot
and what's not. We're podcasting. We're GPSing. We're time shifting our video, our audio, maybe something
to appeal to our olfactory senses? Maybe we'll go out collecting sounds evoking memories of places we've
never quite been to, making shrines to Ben Burtt. Lightsabers and the sound of mowing grass and crackling
fire, of splashes in the water, of mosh pits.

This is the face of the modern American new elite. Are you ready?

Royale Flush

One of my housemates rented Battle Royale from Netflix. I knew nearly nothing about this film, and was rather prepared to watch it with no information whatsoever. For all I knew, it was the Russian classic Battleship Potemkin, which I knew equally nothing (except presumably, that there's a battleship?).

Unfortunately, I had to break information silence, because I was the one slated to email folks about watching this movie at our house. I must say that the email itself was a kind of adventure, wondering how people would respond. I had expected only one person to show up, and my email list almost guaranteed this to happen, despite the possibility that 4 others would show up.

One person I knew wasn't coming at all. Even were she not planning to be out of town at the time the bits were streaming off the DVD, the subject matter would have been enough to scare her away. Even so, her presence on the list would possibly mean two others would not be coming, due to, as she would put it, a contretemps (read: fight), between her and him. The final person on the list might not even read email where I sent it, though to be fair, I didn't have an alternate email to use.
Two people would be there by virtue of living in the house. One more would be there since it was his idea to watch the movie in the first place.

On the undercard, the gang watched episodes from the Arrested Development DVDs, which delights in the zany ongoings of the Bluth family. This is perhaps as British a comedy as there is on American television, and yet, it's not very British at all, certainly not using the familiar trope of bland Brit male making out with buxomous females, though certainly, it comes close.

How to describe Battle Royale? In a way, it's very Asian, almost Hong Kong-like, despite its Japanese heritage. Essentially, the story of a bunch of teenage Japanese schoolkids brought to an island to basically kill each other off. You see, parents and schoolteachers, are sick and tired of the rebellious teens, and have decided to make this game. Unlike, say, the Running Man, the execrable POS by Ah-nuld, this game seems to have little commercial purpose. There's no sense it's being televised for mass consumption.

Each kid is sent with a backpack with some food and a weapon, ranging from guns, knives, axes, to lowly pot lids and binoculars. With 40 kids, there's really not that much time for character development. Kids are given some stereotypes, like girl who wants to kill everyone, and then guy with crazy hair who really wants to kill everyone. Repressed emotions abound ("I've always loved you!"..."Why didn't you ever say anything? How was I supposed to know?).

It was a surprise to me to see Takeshi Kitano outside of a film not directed by himself. Apparently, Kitano is a star in Japan. Host of a TV show, he also makes his brand of violent/silent films where the stoic lead shows no emotion, and is capable of love and severing all in one. Kitano apparently was in a motorcycle accident that left his face partly paralyzed, except for an odd twitch. It's said it didn't affect his acting that much since he didn't use half the muscles in his face anyway.

The game show element shows up twice, once in the zany video hosted by a way-too-cheerful cheerleader type, explaining the rules of the game (last person to survive wins, 3 days to play the game, avoid danger zones). We get a sense of the kick-ass nature of Kitano when he knifes one of the kids for interrupting the video. Kitano otherwises cheerfully exercises, munches on a student's cookies, bickers with his estranged daughter (ah, Clint, you do watch Kitano!). There's a peculiar story of how he, as a schoolteacher, may have fooled around with a student of his who had accidentally knifed him.

However, that part of the backstory is relegated to an end-sequence of flashbacks which inexplicably ran out of money for decent translators, and therefore, made less than optimum sense.

What remains is an over-the-top melodrama, as guy and girlfriend team up with previous winner of the game who had to kill his girlfriend, lest both of them die (tis the rules of the game), and wacky hacker group featuring the fastest coding in the east plus the knowledge to build explosives (and this huge backstory doesn't get the kind of payoff you'd expect), while Kitano hangs out at school central, announcing the death toll.

This Lord of the Flies on steroids has kids trying to make do in the three days they have to live, and flashbacks to a earlier, happier time, when basketball was played under the rim. No slam dunks in this film. Androgynous guys abound resembling heroes of anime. There's a giddy sense of anarchy, filled with (translated) dialogue that has to be heard to be believed. the cinematographer is damn good though, showing off the lush island scenery as these tough kids realize that all the guidance counseling they received was for naught.

The storyline vaguely resembles Resurrection of The Little Matchstick Girl where the loafing Korean gamer gets pulled into a real-life video game, trying to save the matchstick girl, while hanging out with Korean Lara Croft. It takes you into this bizarre, video-game-as-reality world, but where that film fails to convince us of the character's love for the matchstick girl, there's more of a sense that the characters in BR care for one another. In a corny way, the flashbacks do a good enough job showing how, once upon a time, life was innocent, and all anyone cared about was playing this game of basketball.

Gender Bender

A friend recently wondered aloud "why do men not like flowers and babies?", two things she loves best in the world, and "why do they love action pictures", which she doesn't care for, and "why is it cross cultural?".

I grew up during the middle of the women's lib movement. OK, I was maybe 5 years old when it was at its height, but there was pressure to pass the ERA, which was the equal rights amendment. Sadly, it did not muster enough votes to make it an amendment, and it perhaps the last serious attempt at amending the Constitution. Even though I was very young, the cries for gender equality must have meant something to me, because I generally felt men and women were equal, including attitudes.

It look a very long time, much longer than most people who reach this conclusion by the time they are teens, before I realized women and men view things differently. I know, I know, these are generalizations, but that's fine. They are generally true, not true to each and every last person. What I'm most curious about is whether the fact that women like cute things and men prefer electronics or sports is something that's basically genetic, or whether it's cultural. At one point, I'd tell you it was society, and I'm sure society pressures have much to do with the way men and women act.

For example, many men are moderately homophobic, perhaps less so now, than say 30 years ago, but still homophobic. A guy can show his toughness (in a strange way) by following sports avidly. Even the wimpiest of persons can follow their favorite teams and watch admiringly as 300 pound men try to stop 230 pound men from bulldozing their way to a first down. Still, what male would wear his hair in a ponytail?

What male likes to receive roses? What male cares about how his shoe collections look? I knew that male/female equality was far from the same when I went into a department store and just stared at the number of purses, shoes, and lipsticks that were being thrust upon the women consumer. Women who disdain those kinds of things are probably accused of being dykes. And, so our gender roles are forced upon us by people who want little boys to dress in blue and little girls to dress in pink.

They want little boys not to cry, while it's fine for little girls to cry. Little Johnny must try harder, and not lose to little Rajeev, but little Kavitha doesn't have to win since ladies aren't good at sports or competition. It is no wonder that only men play cricket in India while the women watch. It makes the nerdiest of teenage males feel some comfort that he can handle a wicket while his female classmate can not.

I wonder, sometimes, whether men are not more insecure about their sexuality than women, and that ultimately, their need to feel male drives them to avoid things that seem effiminate. I haven't met too many guys who try to act tough and be John Wayne, but certainly, in small ways, they avoid acting like girls. No playing with dolls. No dressing in mama's clothing. No putting on lipsticks. Girls seem to suffer less problems acting "male". Once upon a time, it was scandalous for a girl to wear jeans, and now it's so common place as to not even attract notice.

Still, women are expected to at least wear brassieres so their bosoms remain shapely, and shave their underarms, lest they seem too manly, so perhaps women too, feel the pressure not to be male, which, alas, sometimes means they won't work that hard to be smart. Leave it to daughters of Asian parents who often push them to succeed academically as hard as they do their sons. Strange that conservative cultures that generally have women barefoot and pregnant are the ones that raise their daughters to compete with their male counterparts in science and engineering. It baffles me as well. Perhaps Asian parents feel this is their way to deal with the new world, and they are more liberal in their attitudes than their relatives who stayed back in the homeland.

Men and women act different, all right, and I don't know why. I partly blame culture and society, but I suspect genetics may have a little to do with it too. Men and their testosterone. Women and their estrogen. How much do the chemicals that course through our bodies play a role in who we are. When we value intellect and thinking, it may be the hormones and chemicals that make us feel the way we do, that make us think the way we do. We can fight it, but only so much.

Mr. Clean

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Giving It the College Try

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a Tangled Web

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's your lesson about the web.

Style vs. Substance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cell Mate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strawberry and Pimms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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