Ali and Vieux Farka Toure

Mike Birbiglia is a funny comedian. In one of his routines, he says that rappers like to invoke their names. In particular, he says he like Busta Rhymes, who'll invoke his pseudonym ("The cat in the hat, and that is that. Busta Rhymes!"). He wants to do that in jokes: "If Folger's is the best part of waking up, I don't think I want to wake up! Mike Birbiglia!".

This narcissism has made the swim to Africa. Vieux Farka Toure, son of the late Ali Farka Toure, the Mali bluesman, has combined the new and the old to produce, well, songs that sound just like his dad, even as his dad, allegedly, wanted him to be a soldier, rather than follow in his immense footsteps and be a musician.

In one of the songs, Vieux says "Ali Farka Toure, Ali Farka Toure" intoning his father's name as if it were Busta Rhymes.

Lest you think that Vieux, or his father, sang in English. They do not. Mali has dozens of spoken languages, and Ali spoke at least four. Bambara is most widely spoken. Occasionally, especially on his last album, Ali would sing in French, an official language of Mali.

As I've said before, I prefer listening to these songs without really understanding the words, the rhythm of African languages serving as its own instrument. I'm listening to a duet with Toumani Diabate, who Vieux's father also collaborated with. He plays the kora, a harplike instrument, of which Diabate is an acknowledged master. In the Heart of the Moon was a collaborative effort between Ali and Toumani, arranged by Ry Cooder, who "discovered" Ali for the west with Ali's album, Niafunke, which isn't a Malian form of music made famous by George Clinton, but is, instead, a city/town where Ali Farka Toure resided.

Usually, I have to be in the right mood to listen to Toure, usually relaxed and quiet, and that's usually when I appreciate it most.

Maybe Vieux didn't steal the idea from rappers. Maybe it's his form of homage to his father. I don't know. But I think of that joke from Mike Birbiglia when I hear Vieux say his father's name.

Ali Farka Toure. Ali Farka Toure!

Restaurant Review: Bombay

One question I like to ask to folks from India is to tell me the difference between biryani and pullao. These are two common rice dishes in India. Typically, biryani has meat and is a more substantive dish, while pullao is vegetarian, and somewhat lighter.

Some places are known for their biryani. Hyderabad, a city in Andhra Pradesh, in the mid-south of India, is known for its biryani.

I've been working my way through restaurants in this year's Cheap Eats, which is the Washingtonian's special issue on the best "cheap" restaurants. To be fair, these are hardly cheap restaurants. Prices at restaurants, in the US, typically don't vary by orders of magnitude.

You might get a Happy Meal for several dollars, but to get food that's better than McDonald's typically requires you to spend about 7-8 dollars a person, on the main dish. Thus, Cheap Eats focuses on places where the main entree is about twenty dollars or less. Twenty dollars is quite expensive, for most tastes, and really, most restaurants charge 7-14 dollars.

Again, this is simply the entree.

Bombay is a restaurant in White Oak, which is on New Hampshire Avenue. White Oak a strip mall, and not exactly a trendy place. Even so, it appears to have a mix of restaurants, to accompany a Giant food store, and a Sears, a place I used to drop by to make my Discover card payments, back before you could handle it on the Web.

Bombay doesn't look like much on the inside nor the outside. When I went in, the clientele was mostly white. Several people dropped by for take-outs. It just seemed just one step above the Chinese restaurants who, while having places to sit down, do primarily take-out business.

Nevertheless, Cheap Eats liked the place, and makes their picks not always on the decor, but on the food itself (though I'm sure decor doesn't hurt). They suggested biryani, and having had it before, I thought I'd give it a try.

The prices were a bit steep for a restaurant in a run-down strip mall. Dishes were in the low teens, though this is not uncommon for an Indian place. Soups were around three dollars, as were the breads. Lassis and beers around four dollars. I've become more wary of places serving beer at four dollars and more, though it's terribly common.

The rule of thumb for many restaurants appears to be: beers at 3.50 to 4.50 unless you get a large size, wines at 5-6 dollars. Mixed drinks, if there are any, at 7 dollars or more. It's not that any of these drinks should be that expensive. Indeed, there's no particular reason mixed drinks should be that pricey. The alcohol should be cheap because it's used in small quantities. The rest of it is paying for a supply of juices, ginger ale, limes, etc. I suppose you're buying labor and knowledge with mixed drinks.

I decided not to get the alcohol, as that's practically like ordering another small meal or appetizer.

The biryani came out in a karahi, the Indian equivalent of a wok, except, unlike a wok, it tends to be made of copper, and it has rings for handles on the outside, and it's smaller than a wok. Quite frankly, after having some Indian meals where the quantity is somewhat small (though deceptively so, because often after you eat it, you're quite full), the biryani was huge, which offset the fact that it cost about 14 dollars. Indeed, you could eat for two with biryani.

It was a bit wetter than I expected. Perhaps that's because the biryani I've had lately have been at buffets where there's a heat lamp drying stuff out. But, even compared to the biryani I had at a hotel in India, it was wet. Even so, it was pretty tasty, and had lots of chicken.

I had also ordered naan. That was OK, nothing special. It came out a bit after biryani. I suppose ordering naan and biryani together isn't so common, as naan seems like something you use to sop up curries, and biryanis hold up well on their own. But something about ordering naans at Indian restaurants compelled me to get some.

My feeling is that I'd come here to pick up biryani to go in the future, and it would be enough food for two meals.

So my opinion? The chicken biryani was pretty tasty, if a bit wet, and priced a bit high (alas, somewhat typical though). There was plenty of biryani, however, which compensated for the price.

Ben There, Done That

I used to read Joel on Software religiously. (I recently saw a film with Ed Norton and Naomi Watts where he plays a doctor who goes out to China where there's an outbreak of cholera. Anyway, Naomi Watts, who plays the wife, was trying to use the phrase "religiously" in the same way I'm trying to, but of course, she's trying to say it to a nun, and wants to use a different phrase instead. But, I digress).

I'm sure reddit had as much to do with my distractions, and that I've started to peruse sports, and even Gabe's Techmeme.

If I were cool, I'd have an RSS feed, but I find it clutters up way too much, and most of the articles I see seem like crap. I just don't bother. Thus, Joel, who these days writes rather infrequently, is someone that's generally fallen off my radar.

Recently, as in today, he reviewed two books on management. It's intriguing that management always has time to read books about management, but the commonfolk developers rarely find time to read about development. You can read into that as much as you want, as there's certainly many ways to read it.

One of the books he's reading is by a fellow named Ben Casnocha, who had a startup by the time he was 19. I've only met a small handful of people that have been that driven, that young, and still, many of them don't try a startup.

You'd think I'd say something intelligent about his book, or what it must be like to be that young and come up with ideas.

No.

I fixated on something far more inconsequential.

And believe me, it is inconsequential.

It's Ben's name.

A little over a year ago, I met with three of the guys working at Fog Creek. One of the three is named Ben. Ben Kamens graduated from Duke, did an internship, and now works full-time. He's also pretty tall. That's incidental. He's now one of two Ben's at the company, the other one apparently writing a Smalltalk book (I had sent an email to Ben K. and he said no, no, it wasn't that Ben, but the other one. And that one's from Duke too).

Now, Joel's company, is what, maybe 15 people? I had thought he ran 30-40 people, but you need a fair bit of cash influx for that kind of business. Instead, Joel is more frugal, thus requires no VC money. He tries to pick his developers carefully. (One consequence tends to be that you have few to no women). Given that Ben is already an uncommon name, and then having two of them, then to say the phrase "Ben, Ben, Ben" as if he were Jan Brady complaining about the adoration of her older sister, makes you think, does Joel utter this phrase often?

I'm sure he can divide his mental faculties between making a comment about the Ben he's talking about, rather than his employees. And c'mon, the venture-some Ben, who he says is good looking and smart (two qualities that tend to work well together, unless they become insufferable in the process), has a webpage that seems like worship to Ben. Really. Check it out. Looks a little like Tom Brady. Great orthodontics, eh? People who smile too much seem a bit weasly to me.

For some reason, I've taken a perfectly legitimate article of a potentially wunderkind entrepreneur, and blogged about the guy's name. And that it coincidentally is the name of two of Joel's employees. Heck, I bet that other Ben is good looking too!

Of course, it gave me a great excuse for the punny title of this blog entry.

And I feel, as this is the end of the month, I want to catch up to the number of blog entries from May. Got one more day to do it too!

Pumped Up

I was watching, for a few minutes, Wimbledon. Fortunately, even without cable, I can catch a few minutes on the weekends. As usual, along with tea and biscuits, rain was the order of the day at Wimbledon.

The match was between Venus Williams and Akiko Morigami. Japanese women have always fared pretty well, even as they have yet to crack the upper echelon of women players. The last "great" player was Kimiko Date. She could hit her flat shots towards corners, and make slow players look sluggish. But she could also toss dozens of unforced errors. She always struggled against top players like Steffi and Monica, though she managed to eke out a win, here and there. She was a top 10 player, but usually lacked the mental toughness to play in a final.

Date resembles the typical Japanese woman. Reserved with emotions, out there to play. Perhaps the modern players now see how emotional Western players play, and so they imitate, hoping for similar success.

Thus, Morigami appeared to have her hopes dashed when she went for a winning shot, only for it to fail to clear the net.

Only in women's tennis (and figure skating) are tiny skirts still the norm. Morigami had a daintly outfit, contrasted with Venus's garish combination, which included hip-hugging short shorts, and a shirt that exposed her sports bra (apparently tastefully covering her body, without a hint of titillation). It's the kind of urban look tempered for Wimbledon that the William sisters bring.

Despite the dainty frills at the bottom of her skirt, Morigami appears more than capable of hitting hard shots, and indeed, despite losing the first set 6-2, has come back 4-1 (could simply be one break) in the second.

I briefly saw Amelie Mauresmo complete her match, with her broad shoulders.

Unlike the men, the women seem to have backslid some. The power in the game doesn't seem like the chancy strikes of the days of Seles and Graf. What has come in its place though, are the journeymen women (journeywomen?) who now have more oomph in their shots. It wasn't so long ago that you'd see women play like Chris Evert or Tracy Austin, where steadiness and flat shots, not power and spin, were the order of the day.

But that oomph isn't the dazzling displays of a decade ago, when the rest of the field tried desperately to catch up, to learn to hit at a pace that would keep them even with Venus and Serena, with Jennifer and Mary Pierce. The big babe days of Lindsay Davenport seem to have passed. The players of today are more mobile, and hit somewhat less hard.

Has tennis faded compared to 15 years ago? Or is that an American view where the top players aren't American?

Perhaps it says something that I only watched twenty minutes of Wimbledon, so far.

I, Phone

Yesterday, the IPhone came out. I suppose I should have known that throngs of fans would line up at Apple Stores and AT&T shops around the country, camping out as if it were a Wii or tickets to the latest, hottest band.

Given the 600 dollar price tag for the 8G model (seems anyone willing to spend the money won't stoop for the 4G model), a price tag comparable to the PS3, and some initial negative publicity (offset by more positive publicity as time drew near yesterday's release), it was surprising that there were lines. But Apple knows how to hype its own stuff (other than AppleTv) better than any company.

Would Apple deliberately undersupply like the Wii? The Wii was notoriously rare in March, with stores having no new stocks for over a month. Apple's not known for holding out, and such a strategy might wear thin on people wanting to buy it as soon as possible. Certainly, a Star Wars like strategy of getting a certificate for a product months after Christmas was something Apple wanted to avoid.

While the local AT&T stores ran out of the 8G models quickly, the Apple stores seemed to have plenty on hand. The stores closed for a few hours while the prepped up, and lots of extra employees were on hand.

Did Sony ever have such a release? Doubtful.

It's too bad Apple had to tie its hands by offering the phone with a service. I'm sure it had little choice on the matter. We'd all be worshiping Apple if it would free us from these megaliths of phone power, offering some truly innovative way to make phone calls.

For now, I'll stick with my Samsung, the budget version. I may get woo'ed by something better, but sometimes it's nice to simply have a phone that's just a phone.

(I know. The future is something like the IPhone. A computer that's a phone, MP3 player, camera, and Internet connection. But I'll wait until that eventuality happens).

Obsession and Pizza

Pizza. We think of it as Italian, but it feels quintessentially American.

If you're not in a major city, then pizza is what a place like Pizza Hut makes, or Papa John's. These are pizza for the masses. It's the McDonald's of pizza. Tasty. Convenient.

Completely lacking in passion.

There, I did it. Used the word passion.

But here, I mean an obsession with making something different, raising it to a level of art, though I think of this much like gingerbread houses being raised to a level of art. At some point, no matter how beautiful, no matter how ingenious, there is something a bit fundamentally amateurish about gingerbread houses. I feel the same way about pizza. It's like elevating beer. It can be done. It has been done. But somehow, it doesn't feel like wine.

To that end, a fellow named Jeff devoted a webpage to his six year adventure to reproduce the pizza made at his favorite NY pizzeria, Patsy's. Clearly, getting hired to work there would be the easiest way to figure it out. But he did it the hard way. Through years of trial and error.

And the result?

It is hard! The easy pizza you see the folks making at the corner pizzeria doesn't even come close to how hard it is to make top level pizza.

And to reiterate. If you ate the best pizza, you might think, so what? Is it slightly burnt? Eh, it's just odd pizza. I recall a friend who claimed he liked Kraft's Macaroni and Cheese. The original. Not any of the fancy successors. Presumably not even the real thing (though he would have been enough of a foodie that he could appreciate the real thing). He grew up with this glop, but that's what he remembers and loves. I imagine pizza is very much like that.

I'm reminded of this article (which is hard to get, so look it up in the Google cache based on the guy's URL) because I went to Mia's Pizza in Bethesda. This is one of the few DC pizza places that strives to make pizza at the next level, unlike, say, California Pizza Kitchen, which reimagines pizza as something else, replete with unusual toppings.

I'm also reminded of it because Justin recently went to NYC with his SO and they sampled some of these pizzas, which he claims is so far removed from what we normally call pizza that it shouldn't even be called that (OK, he didn't exactly say that, but he is prone to this kind of exaggeration, so I feel justified, or should I say, justinified, to say it).

I have no idea if I'd ever attempt to make such a pizza (answer is no), but it stands as a testament to human obsession to create something exemplary, and to do so in a way that pays homage to science and engineers everywhere. Observation and trial and error, and a lot of devotion to making the perfect pie.

Marat the Wild

Roger Federer is doing his part to win Wimbledon again. Not so long ago, we were proclaiming Sampras as the best ever, even as his attempts at the French were not even worth mentioning. No one expected Federer to take the mantle of possibly-the-greatest-ever from Sampras so soon after Sampras.

In the next round, he's slated to meet with Marat Safin. It wasn't so long ago that people thought Safin might be the Chosen One. He had crushed Sampras in the US Open final, making Sampras look slow and ineffective. Safin could serve, and he could his groundies.

But like many unpredictable types, most notably, Goran Ivanisevic, Marat is up and down. He possesses the kind of power to win, but can lose to anyone. His concentration isn't always there. One could argue, with reason, that Federer is more talented, that even a guy like Marat Safin, at his best, couldn't beat Federer on an average day.

After all, it's been a while since Safin was at his best. Last year, he suffered injuries and was trying to come back. But I suppose, if anyone who gets really hot one day and has an outside shot of upsetting Federer, it would be Safin. I haven't seen him play, but he has made it through a few rounds, so that suggests Safin's game is not too bad.

Let's see how it fares.

O'Reilly Oddness

I shouldn't have been so harsh on Michael Fitzgerald and his book. I forgot O'Reilly has some editorial ideas that make their books tough to read. The biggest one is "Chapter 2 should summarize the language in one chapter", which should really go into an appendix. Someone who has a pretty good idea of programming could easily read that.

It's bad for beginners to have such a chapter at the beginning because it's completely intimidating, and scares readers off.

In my mind, "quick tours" are a bad idea.

Book Review: Learning Ruby

O'Reilly books vary a lot in quality. Often, they try to find some qualified authors, but I think sometimes they find a cool author (I recall they had this teenage dude write a book). You'd think, with all these books, they'd have some quality control. The one thing about O'Reilly is that they hit some of the more obscure parts of the language that most authors, frankly, know nothing about, so they don't write about it.

I'm reading parts of Michael Fitzgerald's book Learning Ruby. Here's typical crap.

Earlier I referred to x as a local variable. What does that mean? It means that the local variable has a local scope (context). For example, when a local variable is defined inside of a method or a loop, its scope is within the method or loop where it was defined. It doesn't have a useful life beyond that.

There are so many things wrong with this--believe me, I see this all the time.

There's a weird habit where a teacher wants to explain something simple, and ends up referring to something more complex to explain something simple.

Here are a few words, Fitzgerald fails to define: scope, context, loop, method. Finally, he says "doesn't have a useful life beyond that" anthropomorphizing the heck out of local variables.

Does he give an example of a local variable? Does he explain why anyone would want local variables? Does he say what a context is?

He falls into a common trap for programming writers. He explains what is. He doesn't explain why it is. Indeed, I imagine Fitzgerald whining to his editors "Why do I have to explain something so easy?" and then doing a half-ass job.

Technically, there's nothing wrong with his statement (except the horribly vague "doesn't have a useful life after that"), but it's awful nonetheless.

If a reasonable programmer were given the list: local variable, scope, context, loop, method, and asked which was the easiest to explain, I suppose they might pick "local variable". So why on earth would you explain it in terms of the other terms?

And then he refers to duck typing which again is awful. Everyone in Ruby uses the phrase, so he has to stick it in. Did he even define what a type was?

If he assumes we know Java, then he should say "Local variables in Ruby work pretty much like they do in Java". If he assumes that the reader is a programming newbie, this is total dreck.

How did this ever pass an editorial review?

Review: Domku

When you go to certain parts of DC, you start to see a greater prevalence of metal fences, for lack of a better word, that people use to block windows and doors from vandals that might break in. Such neighborhoods see more than their share of crime.

Domku is situated in such a neighborhood, but at least, it's not the kind of warzone that some cities (East St. Louis, I'm told) have become. The buildings seem bright. Domku is located in neighborhoods with churches, Carribean food, an Ethiopian place. Indeed, it appears wedged between a liquor store on one side, and some religious building on another. Just beside that is someone's residence.

It seems rather out of place in this neighborhood. From its modern font design, to its coffeehouse-like interiors, with branches decorating the walls, conveying almost a shrine of nature worship. You see a strange melange of architectural ideas. Chandeliers with several bulbs out. Long couches that seem second or third hand.

It reminds me of College Perk, but with a bit more space, a bit more class.

The place serves Scandinavian/East European food. Since I was there around lunch time, and since they have brunch on the weekends, and since I like breakfast food, I had two of their offerings. One was a thin pancake, with onions and some kind of sausage. The other was a dish made with grits, cheese, and an egg--some kind of a bake.

What I liked about Domku is the portions aren't too large. I had the equivalent of two dishes, and still, I wasn't that full. I wasn't stuffed, which I'm starting to believe is the key to eating. I also had a Pom Fizz, which is pomegranate juice, champagne and something else. Not too bad. A variation on the mimosa. (Friday, I had a Chambord margarita. I discovered that, from my mimosa making adventure, that Chambord is a make of raspberry liquer, so at least I knew what a "Chambord" magarita was).

I've read that Domku is owned by an Asian American, its cook, African American, and its food, Scandinavian. I believe I saw the owner, a woman wearing pig tails, with mostly unaccented English. The patrons seemed sparse. The prices are a touch high, so I wonder if this artsy restaurant might not exactly be "right" for its neighborhood, though I'm sure the prices of renting are far cheaper. I had overheard someone who had wanted to give the place a try for a while, and arrived there.

The patrons, what few were there, was a good mix. One group was African American. One group appeared to be Latino. The other one was white.

As I entered, a little girl, sitting at the bar asked one of the waiters if they knew who I was (clearly not, since I had never been there before, though with low probability, I could have known them in some other context). The waiter, who found the question amusing (surely, he knows almost none of his guests) said she was right, he did not know who I was.

It's worth giving this place a try. It's a bit different, and I didn't try the gravlax, which is cured salmon, often used in appetizers, but presumably worth trying at a Scandinavian place. They also had Swedish meatballs. I also didn't try that.

The waiters seemed nice enough. I learned that it's really wDomku which means "a little house" in some language, the "w" being pronounced something like an "f". They had been open a little over two years.

It's pleasant place to try out, even if it's a touch of a hike to get to.

Horn of Plenty

It seems nearly every culture has a tradition of food, and despite the fact that most Americans, at the very least, has plenty to eat, a family is judged by how much they can stuff their guests. I remember, years ago, when I would eat at some (Indian) friend's place, and they would always say "Eat up, eat up!", an exclamation, no doubt, heard by other cultures. The grand irony was that there wasn't a great deal of food, so you had to be a bit frugal, otherwise the food would be gone.

In cultures that egg on people to eat food, which is basically every culture, the notion that you'd get fat from eating too much is not a concern. Indeed, it suggests that pigging out is good, and as a good host, you should encourage such behavior. To be fair, India, for example, seems to lack the super-obese with any number, so feeding people more food doesn't seem to cause adversity.

I noticed, last night, when I was invited to an Indian couples house that we were encouraged to eat the food. Indeed, even as we finished, they insisted on serving more food, even to the point of scooping food even as we politely declined.

There's etiquette on both sides. When people serve food, the guests have to proclaim how tasty the food is (fortunately, the food was tasty) and they have to complete their plate. In such cultures, presumably to say you were on a diet and couldn't eat that much would be considered an insult. On the other hand, pigging yourself out would, I imagine, be considered insulting as a guest.

I'm reminded of a scene in The Nutty Professor where the Klumpps (or whatever) have a family dinner, and everyone takes huge, huge portions. I would assume, in most culture, taking huge portions might be considered a bit scary. The assumption is the guests will be modest, because they don't want to be seen as too needy, and the hosts have to insist on the guests to overcome this false modesty.

I recall a (Chinese) friend who decided to take Chinese classes to get easy A's. In this class, the teacher explained that Chinese etiquette requires a host to offer a gift or food several times, and the guest to politely refuse three times before finally accepting. Believe me, this tradition is still quite true. Both sides must show they are put off, one side insisting on the gift, and the other side being distressed at having to accept before finally taking it, because they don't with to offend the host, even if they wanted it in the first place.

My friend thought this was folly. If you want it, say yes. None of this beating around the bush until you finally get what you want. I must admit I believe this too. When other people insist on paying (even if it should be my treat), I end up letting them pay.

Occasionally, I'm surprised, pleasantly I'll tell you, when I go to a restaurant that doesn't try to give you absurd amounts of food. I just went to Domku, and they give you food, and it's not too tiny, but it's certainly not so filling that you can't even move.

I doubt society will change to this notion of just serving enough. Traditions tell people how they ought to behave, but sometimes being generous isn't the best thing after all.

Riotous Bill Bailey

Trust me, unless you've ever heard of Bill Bailey (and I haven't), you haven't seen anything like this. Bill Bailey re-invents the British national anthem (he's British) as one of those moody, angst-ridden, pop-indie pieces. Humor's always been about putting disparate ideas in a mix, and realizing the humor in it. In the process, Bailey pokes fun at anthems, and the kind of self-important, "woe is me" artists that produce not only this kind of music, the the video backdrop that you see (I recall watching "Doves" from Britain do something like this).

Take a gander.

Gnarls and the Theramin

The funny part, beyond the uncanny imitation of a voice via a theramin (this is an instrument used in the old Frankenstein movies, that creates other-worldly sounds, and had a few top practitioners) is the Google search at the end. Instead of simply typing "theramin", they type it in the Jeopardy-like "What is a theramin?".

Dramatic Rodent

Is dramatic rodent the new lolcat?

Gabe It My All

Here's another "Gabe" interview.

I wonder if Gabe ever thinks "Why doesn't someone ask me anything else besides 'How the hell does Techmeme' work?". Perhaps he'd like to be asked about dwarf tossing. Or maybe whether he's hotter than David Heinemeier Hansson? Geek hotness, now there's a market Gabe could corner. Somehow people are always kissing him. Doesn't this deserve a booty call? Use that Ph.D!

Oh yeah, he's never referred to as "Dr" Rivera. No one asks him what his Ph.D. was all about. No one asks him about grand Chau-Wen-ges. Or about Joshua Burdick. Or Clyde Kruskal. Or how it was like pumping gas for the first time in Maryland.

Instead poor Gabe is subjected to the usual humdrum of questions. I think this should motivate him to create a completely different site. Perhaps it can be finding good restaurants. That still needs lots of work. The real problem is there's no good audience to go there. But the great news is that Gabe already has an audience that is technically literate. Maybe he could get them to do stuff.

Does anyone ask him why he has no middle name? Or how he loves making chocolate cake? Or why he likes Frank Black?

No, it's always "What algorithm do you use?". Even Sergey Brin seems to get spared these kinds of questions. (What algorithm does Google use for search?).

How about "Gabe, can you say 'WeSmirch' three times without cracking a smile?'. I think not.

Get Out of My Dreams

Ah, Billy Ocean, what on Earth did your song even mean?

I was listening to the radio as I do most every day I come to work. They've been playing this commercial. A deep-voiced African-American sounding fellow comes on, with music typical of Barry White, talking about the misery that was the gas lines of the 70s. During the time, gas prices were rising to a dollar a gallon compelling the government to control gas prices. Somehow, this also lead to gas shortages, which, in hindsight, didn't make much sense.

The commercial suggests the government may institute similar consequences and that common citizens should protest any such moves. Of course, car manufacturers are against the idea and this was the commercial produced.

There's almost a hint of racism, suggesting this music and this period was awful. Disco, bad hair, bad clothing, and high gas prices. Why, we wouldn't want to go back to those times, would we? It's not explained (of course) why such lines were there to begin with. Maybe, just maybe, the gas companies caused the shortages to protest the price controls? That would almost make sense. Get the public upset, and then the government would have to relent.

In any case, the music is soothing, it almost makes you think, were the 70s that bad?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beet It

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baa Baa Black Sheep

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

But that's not what this is about.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He Works Hard For the Money

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

But that's beside the point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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