Dallas 362 Again

I saw Dallas 362 a few years ago on the positive review of Internet critic, Mike D'Angelo. It was just showing this morning on IFC and I caught the last 20 minutes or so.

If memory serves, the story is about a mother and son, originally from Texas, that move to California. The woman, played by a perhaps impossibly beautiful Kelly Lynch, has become a widower when her husband has died as a bucking horse rider, one of those guys that tries to stay on a horse as long as possible, usually merely seconds, before getting tossed aside. She's moved to be as far away from where this happened as possible.

The son, having been transplanted, doesn't fare particularly well. He gets tangled up with a guy named Dallas who is mixed up with the wrong folks. Perhaps in Dallas, the son (Rusty), sees a kind of father figure, or at least, some masculine role in his life. But perhaps, much like the Charlie Sheen figure in Wall Street, he knows that what he's doing isn't right, and the film depicts how he ends up choosing the right path for himself.

Jeff Goldblum plays, well, himself. Perhaps one reason to cast Kelly Lynch is because she's blond and a bombshell, though with the paucity of characters in the film, no one much pursues her. Goldblum's character is the awkward, geeky, nerdy character he generally plays in most films, but it serves as a contrast to Rusty and the film takes time to have Rusty warm up to this guy who is nothing like the self-destructive Dallas.

Mike D'Angelo, himself trained as a screenwriter, picks a scene, where son and mom sit on a bench outside the house having a heart-to-heart. She tells him that she's in love with Jeff Goldblum's character, and wants to marry him, and he tells her that he's genuinely happy for her, and she finally gives him permission to pursue his dream to go back to Texas and do the only thing he's ever been good at, riding horses.

And he realizes that, even if he thought he would leave California and pursue it with or without his mother's permission, he would have to cut off his life in California, one that was bad for him, but the only one he knew. And it's an interesting decision, the contrast of living the honest life that he knows he should. He tries to convince his buddy, Dallas, to leave his wicked ways and join him, and yet, we know, Rusty knows, and finally Dallas knows, that Dallas is just as suited to life in Texas as Rusty is suited to life in California.

During this scene, D'Angelo points out that Goldblum is just about to join in. He's in the background, hangs out a minute, then leaves. Rusty peers over for a second, and the Goldblum is gone. He credits director Caan (who also plays Dallas) with keeping that subtle, not drawing attention to it.

I happen to like a later scene, flashy as it may be. While Rusty and his mom and his mom's boyfriend are having a nice dinner, Dallas has paired up with a guy to rob a local kingpin. That scene is played for tension and intercuts with the life Rusty could be living (namely, being with Dallas) and the life he has now decided is right for him. The scene ends in an absurdist situation where a third character pounces in at a moment that causes Dallas and a guy he has paired with to rob the house, end up accidentally shooting each other and killing one another.

Of course, that scene is played for the tragic ending you know the film feels inexorably drawn to, and while flashy and reminiscent of the tense moments in "Boogie Nights", it's not the one I point to.

Instead, although you are never told this, it's a scene afterwards where Rusty is dazed, devasted and begins to cry. Few films about the tough male bonding ever dig deep at the emotional, homoerotic crux of such relationships. Dallas, for all his faults, was the one guy that, in his way, cared for Rusty, and bad as he was for Rusty, it meant something emotionally to him. It was, in its way, a doomed love affair, improbable because one guy was, at his core, someone bad, and one, at his core, was someone good, as trite as the idea seems.

It reminds me a bit of "Wild Reeds", a French film, which has the daughter of a Communist teacher (communists supported the Algerians during their fight for independence from France) who has fallen for a loner (whose dad died in Algeria, and believes Algerians owe the French for all they've done for them). The two have a very brief tempestuous relationship, one similarly doomed to fail because both are such different people. Lust and love can't overcome their diametrically opposed view of the way the world works.

Perhaps the reason this scene resonates is because few male relations are depicted like this, and perhaps few relationships exist like this. In the process of creating a drama like this, it seems Caan has also given thought to what it's like for someone to have that intense a friend, and the associated emotions that it brings. This hyper-masculinity means the two can never really express what they mean to each other in any but the most superficial macho preening ways.

And yet, in that moment of loss, with Rusty on the verge of leaving California, leaving his friend, he breaks down. The one man he truly cares for is gone, and it has taken his death to reveal just how much he cared. And yet, he's also now a truly free man. He has made the right decision, and he only wishes his friend, whose life was being sucked to self-destruction, had listened to him, had taken that improbable step, a step he was never going to take.

It takes keen observer to create characters that you can tell have a path they must lead, but try to escape it.

By the way, after this movie, IFC is now showing Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, the inspiration to Star Wars. The movie opens with two bickering low-lifes who are wandering across the desert. There is a war and they were mistaken for the enemy, and like Merry and Pippin, have managed to get themselves out of a bind. The two insult each other, even come to strangle each other, when another guy, a warrior of some sort, stumbles across, trying to escape the enemies pursuing him.

Six horses with men come by, finish him off, and then leave, the two men bewildered, happy to be seen as beggars.

It reminds me of the scene of C3PO and R2D2 crossing the desert planet of Tatooine. Of course, C3PO is the fussy English butler, and R2D2 mostly squeals and beeps. They don't have the kind of insulting, bawdy, relationship that the two characters in Hidden Fortress do. And it is funny to imagine Lucas deciding to make the droids behave like these men, bawdy, bickering, rather than polite, effete.

Too bad that Lucas's pilfering of Kurosawa doesn't extend to Kurosawa's clever filmwork. Kurosawa is a formalist, often as interested in the relationship of how characters fill the screen, how they sit and situate against one another. Lucas, far less mannered, doesn't seem concerned with these trifles.

Wait Wait Followup

Of course, now that I did a full rant, I learned what had happened. Turns out the guy who was supposed to play tennis with me got caught in traffic and that had severely delayed him. He went on to play tennis with someone else that day. We ended up playing doubles and singles the following day.

I'm not sure my observations were incorrect in my previous post, but at the very least, I should apologize for the situation which I misunderstood.

Wait Wait

In India, the term is so common, it's been given its own name: IST. IST stands for Indian Standard Time. No, it's not the peculiar N + 1/2 hour difference that the entire country of India has with other countries. It's akin to what is called "Clinton Standard Time".

Bill Clinton was known as something of a schmoozer. He loved to talk and charm his guests. So much so that his meetings often ran late, which meant he was rushing to his next meeting, but the rush was superfluous because, well, he was late. And that meeting would run late, and so forth.

IST is this idea that Indians don't show up to anything on time. They can be late as short as 10 minutes to as late as, well, who knows, half an hour, an hour? If the person making you wait is, say, a relative, then you put up with it. Grandma was supposed to arrive at 2 PM, and it's nearly 6 PM and you're still waiting, wanting to get on and do the next thing? Nope, you're hanging out. The thought of taking off and leaving Grandma by herself would be deeply insulting, and so the culture never cures itself of this promptness problem because the person that's late knows they can get away with it. They prey on the kindness of others.

I've heard of Indians who promise they will show up to something and when it happens they "just don't feel like it" and so they don't show up at all. Do they call ahead to inform the folks that they don't feel like it? It doesn't seem necessary. They don't seem to feel that bad about it. Perhaps it's happened to them so much, and they've done it so much, that saying you won't show up, especially to a group event is, even in this modern day of communication, a trifle. What should someone bother?

Now, to be fair, there are enough Indians that are pretty prompt. They know how to get to places on time. But it seems like a foreign trait. Most people that run late feel they have "power". I'm not constrained by a schedule. I don't have to be out there right. This. Minute.

Part of the problem is the lack of ability to estimate time. You need to be somewhere by 7? Many think, oh, it'll only take 5 minutes. Once you convince yourself of that, then it no longer matters if you leave at 6:55 or 7:00, now does it? It's only 5 minutes, right? And much like the snooze alarm, you can always say, well, if 5 minutes late is OK, then 10 should be OK too, right? I think many would be shocked to learn that they need to be in their car at 6:45 moving, because at 6:45, 7:00 seems so far away.

And so sometimes the lies come. It's 7, and they are still at home, so you give them a call, and they don't want to displease you, so the white lie is "I'm on the road now, so I'll be there in a few minutes" and by the time they show up, you realize when you called, that they weren't even in their car. The entire trip time consists of the time between the time you called and the time they arrived.

And because it's so prevalent, a late Indian never (or rarely) apologizes for being late. Sometimes they are almost indignant or shrug it off, and try to convince you to move on, they're their now, let's get started.

What's worse than that is not the lack of ability to estimate time is the thought process that occurs. It seems, any time there is a deadline to arrive somewhere, that's when someone will decide to do something. Oh wait, we need to take care of this one thing before we go out.

I suspect this idea of getting a hundred things done had to do with the nature of slow transportation in India, that once you were out your door, you might not get back for hours, and if you hadn't taken care of something by then, it might be too late, so rather than take care of those things hours ago or the previous day, the deadline of having to leave the house suddenly reminds the person they need to take care of this or that, or they don't want to be interrupted in whatever they are doing.

The idea of completely dropping everything and getting out and to the vehicle and reaching you on time is foreign. Indeed, if everyone is in IST, why bother rushing? The other guy is going to take his or her time, and you have to wait, because the notion of abandoning the person you are waiting for would be cutting your nose off to spite your face, that is to punish someone and yourself as well.

This tardiness, as I mention, not a particularly Indian trait. I'm told it's common in Brazil, and I'm sure in many developing countries. To be held to a deadline is to feel shackled, and so people feel it's OK to slip a little late here or there, until it is an epidemic behavior in society.

So I tell this story because this happened to me. I play tennis with a guy who is routinely late. I think part of his tardiness is this embarrassment that he has to do all these things at home for his wife and kids. He never says that this is the cause of why he's late to play tennis, and then insists, after he's late, that everyone else accommodate him so he can play his 3 hours, even though everyone showed up 1.5 hours earlier. You must wait, he says. It's an incredible amount of selfishness that he merely shrugs off.

The morning group tennis was canceled because it was felt the courts were too wet. But he hadn't played the night before with me. Why not? His new job means he gets back around 8. His cheapness means he doesn't have a cell phone, so he can't call any sooner than 8. I told him I had made plans, and I wasn't going to play tennis, but he had hoped. By 10 PM, it was raining anyway, so it might not have been possible to play.

So at 10 AM, I called him, and asked if he would play at 10:30. Oh, no, that's too soon, how about 11? Fine, 11. So I went out to arrive by 11, and he calls while I'm on the road. "Maybe it's too wet to play?". Too wet to play? Too wet to play?! I told you the morning tennis had been called off because it was wet, and you insisted on playing, and only now, you think it's too wet? You better be out in a raincoat ready to play. If you break your leg and can't play for 6 months, you better be out there! Too wet to play, indeed!

Of course, I said nothing of the kind. I told him I'd check on the court conditions and get back to him. I reached there, and it was wet, but no wetter than the previous weekend, and he showed up then.

Now realize, this guy was ready to show up at 11. So I figured, he's dressed and ready to head out. I should have known.

IST.

Probably not dressed. Probably attending to hundreds of other things, and taking care of them, and not even ready to roll. So when I say it's OK, he has, I'm sure, not even made a move to leave. He's in the middle of other things, don't you know. I will wait, don't you know? It's all about him and his selfishness, and he won't even bother saying why he might be late, because it's a sign of weakness, or it's something no Indian ever thinks about. You don't apologize for your lateness because it's a trifle, a bother. You are too stressed out about people being late! Enjoy life!

So as it became close to being 30 minutes late, and I had made several calls, I left. Funny that he called 4 minutes later. Clearly, he couldn't have arrived at the court, and then gone back home. It meant he was still home and still hadn't left. So I refused to return his calls all day. I hope he was unable to play with anyone that day.

And you have to do things like this, because otherwise, the guy thinks he can do it again. And, of course, being human nature, he'll probably not learn, and continue to do it, and continue to beg to play. The man can't even convince his own son to play. His son doesn't want to be seen with his dad. So he bullies his friends because he can't bully his family. His family knows how to say no, and he's given up.

Are things likely to change? Most likely not. Lateness is a disease, and the cure too painful for most to swallow.

Netflix vs. Redbox

I've wondered whether the demographics of those who use Netflix differ from those who use Redbox.

Both address the following problem: how do I get a DVD conveniently? Stores like Blockbuster are often not that convenient. Once upon a time, you had to go to the store and rent the video for 2-3 days, and if you didn't get it back in that time, you were fined some amount for each day you had it out.

This lead to users having to make a trip to the video store late, and often making themselves watch a movie they might have ordinarily said no to if they hadn't already plunked down the money.

Netflix came up with a pretty good idea. They figured people don't want to pay late fees. They don't want to have to go to the video store to pick up videos. Since DVDs are pretty small these days and fit in typical mailboxes, why not mail it to them? You pay a monthly fee that gives you 1, 2, or 3 videos a month. When you return it, you get another one.

There is a drawback. You can only get videos as fast as you can return it and have a new one sent to you. Netflix has centers at many different locations so returning it can be speedy. Even so, you expect perhaps 1-2 days minimum turn-around.

Netflix tries to mitigate the delay by letting you create a queue. That way, you can plan ahead, sort the list of DVDs you want. This requires a browser. And, while you're at it, you can rate films so other folks can see what you like. It's a social networking experience.

Redbox, on the other hand, solves the problem differently. They try to be everywhere, in particular, grocery stores. You have to shop for food, right? So head to a grocery store, and rent a DVD for $1 a day. You can keep it as long as you want, but you continually get charged. There's still some incentive to get it back, but the idea is the location is closer to you.

Unlike Netflix, there is (I assume) no online identity. You do not plan ahead. You go, look at the selection, and rent. This is geared to the masses that may not particularly care for an online experience that requires a long-term commitment and planning.

Thus, I can see Redbox being more popular than Netflix even though Netflix appears to have been around a lot longer.

These crowds need not be exclusive, of course. You may decide that, at some period in your life, you have time to watch movies, and then you maintain a Netflix account, but at other times you don't, so you use Redbox and pick up a DVD whenever.

Clearly, the long-term solution is download on demand, although Redbox would still continue to be a viable option for those who only want to pay for what they rent, rather than pay for the privilege of downloading.

So are the kinds of people different? Are Netflix folks typically more well-educated, Internet savvy folks? Or not?

Asian Mart

I live quite close to an Asian supermarket. This is a fairly new phenomenon, at least, to me. Larger metropolitan areas have always had access to big Asian supermarkets. Smaller towns have Chinese shops that are smaller than a 7-11, perhaps half the size or one third the size.

I just discovered they built a new Asian supermarket a bit further away. Like the one I live by, this one is Korean-run. Of course, Koreans know that their customers aren't solely Korean, so the shop covers a wide variety of Asian countries including: China/Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. And because there's often a large Spanish speaking population, these stores often have a section devoted to products like Goya.

Usually, there are two big strengths over standard supermarkets. First, is the dizzying array of produce. There are vegetables you've never heard of, and at prices that are bargains. Indeed, even products like soy sauce is often sold cheaper at Asian supermarkets.

For a while, these supermarkets looked a bit run-down, much like supermarkets used to look in the 1970s where the goal was to sell quantity and not offer a good customer experience. However, H-Mart, the Korean supermarket has adopted a bunch of ideas from places like Costco. They have their own logo and shopping bags (often Asian supermarkets used generic bags). They have music blaring. At H-Mart, that music is often 80s or 90s music, and not of the Asian variety.

They have food samples for people to try. I had a sliver of a Korean pear. The items are displayed attractively on shelves. Admittedly, the spacing is a bit tight, and it resembles nothing short of a zoo.

I went to H-Mart looking for Pearl River Bridge Superior Dark Soy Sauce. Dark soy sauce is thicker than standard soy. Some recipes call for dark soy, but I couldn't find it at the local Asian supermarket. I think I bought the last one and the only stuff they have is the mushroom flavored dark soy. I've bought that before and it's way too intense. Fortunately, this store had plenty.

Indeed, you can often buy 20 different kinds of soy sauce. Do you want Chinese soy? Or Japanese? Soy from mainland China? Or Hong Kong? Soy from Korea? Soy from Thailand? They have maybe 10 different kinds of fish sauce. You can get Vietnamese brand or Thai brand. You can get various Korean miso, spicy and otherwise.

Oh and if you like beef and like making beef lo-mein? They have pre-cut beef strips. You can get it fairly thin for sukiyaki or pho. You can get it moderately thick. See if you can find that at your local supermarket. Won't be able to find it. A little too much labor for your local supermarket.

Oh yes, fresh seafood. Usually situated in the back, you can see fresh seafood, though it's often not so fresh that isn't starting to smell some, but you can't find that easily at your local supermarket.

This is one nice trend in the US, an alternative supermarket if there ever was one.

500 Flavors of Soda

500 Flavors of Soda

It's about soda, only it isn't. Watch it.

Links to Recipes

Recipes on BBC Website

Freshman Orientation

This is going to start out as a movie review, but it isn't one, so bear with me. There was a movie that came out a few years ago called Freshman Orientation. It didn't get particularly wide release so if you haven't heard of it, no big deal. Indeed, the film was originally released titled Home of Phobia, which may indicate why it didn't get much attention. That title, which is a double entendre, sounds like a bad horror movie.

The new title, Freshman Orientation, at least hints to what the plot is actually about. It follows a freshman who goes to college and wants to, surprise, meet women. The main female interest, in a plot machination that really seems contorted, is forced to join a sorority, the one her mom went to since there's some discount of such if she joins.

The sorority holds a contest where each of the sisters need to make a guy of a certain stereotype fall for them, and then they get invited to a party hosted by the sorority, where they will be unceremoniously dumped. The main female picks the stereotype from a hat (it's "gay" in case the movie title hasn't hinted that to you). The main male pretends to be gay because he's taken a fancy to this girl and will do what it takes to be with her, and hilarity ensues.

Well, not really. It's a not-so-great sitcom.

But let me get to the subject matter at hand. What exactly is homophobia? I can't claim to have a good definition, but the term suggests a fear (or hatred) of homosexuals, which is usually more prevalent among males than females.

Here's my thought. There are plenty of folks that say they are not homophobic. Indeed, they'd give you liberal credentials. They say they're pro gay marriage and so forth. That's fine. Perhaps, in the end, that's all that matters.

But here's the deal. Many young American men grew up at a time when parents were starting to be more homophobic. This came at a time when gay rights was becoming more prevalent (during the 1970s). Many middle schools had, up to that point, required gym for boys and girls and decided, for whatever reason, to "require" showers for boys and girls. Since the facilities were not extravagant, this meant "gang" showers, the kind that some gyms still have today.

This was an awkward moment for many teens who had been raised to have shame about themselves, which makes some sense. After all, left to their own druthers, many children might run around totally unashamed bringing shame to their parents who would be criticized for not placing more restrictions on their children's behavior.

By the 1980s, parents were starting to become even more concerned about their children's welfare. This may have been due to an increased sense of fear. News was being pressured to attract viewers and make money. Sensationalist news was replacing hardcore news. Parents were increasingly called "helicopter" parents who would hover over their children's every move, making sure they got to school safely, making sure they got back home safely. Kids were no longer considered safe enough to wander for hours on their own. Parents feared their kids would be kidnapped and they'd be accused of poor parenting.

Perhaps along with that perception, parents were now concerned that gym showers were a little too much for little Johnny or little Janey to bear. They'd be under scrutiny from potentially gay teens. Or perhaps it was simpler than that. Kids complained and then parents complained. This lead to many schools throughout the nation deciding to stop requiring showering.

This seems innocuous, and perhaps it is, but what that also meant was one way of acclimating teens to not be so body-conscious was gone, and so people continued to carry shame. Ironically, athletes who can be quite homophobic are usually not particularly homophobic in this respect. Athletes were still required to shower as part of their athletics.

Whatever the reason, more teens carried this notion of shame with them. Furthermore, even kids that aren't particularly likely to spew homophobic slurs still reacted badly to the notion of the unclothed body (especially males). If you mention that so-and-so might get nude, the reaction is generally "Eww" regardless of how handsome that person might be. It's similar to how some men feel the need to comment on the beauty of women.

Many men feel insecure in their orientation or feel the need to reassure their male friends that they are heterosexual by making saying how hot they are for some female, and by contrast, how male bodies are icky to them. This seems very much a male view, at least in the US. Women don't seem to have this problem. Women are allowed to be more friendly with women, allowed to comment on the physique of other women with impunity. They aren't considered lesbians.

Much of this may have to do with the pressure women have to look good to be attractive to men. They spend a great deal of time looking at how other women present themselves to the public and can admire women who look good. Men, by contrast, often care very little about how they appear, and so they don't spend much time looking at other men. The exception seems to be those who are heavily into fitness and working out so they look good to women. It's so much effort that they grudgingly admire other men who are putting in a similar effort to look good. They can positively comment on how some guy looks ripped because they feel it's worthy of admiration.

So here's the point. I believe many guys who are otherwise pretty pro-LGBT are nonetheless homophobic. Their reaction to other men are not that different from the men who spew homophobic epithets, except rather than give in to their natures, they restrain themselves and say the "right things". Were such guys indifferent to other guys like women seem to be indifferent or even partly admiring of other women, then the idea of being pro-LGBT would be met with an attitude that backs that belief.

Photoblog: Soldiers

Denver Post Photoblog

I'm a sucker for good photo photography, especially of the photojournalism variety.

Concentration

Here's a scenario. You are busy doing something. You are asked to spend a few minutes calling up a place, no more than 5 minutes, by a friend or significant other.

Do you do it?

Or do you say "No, I won't do it. I need to get what I'm doing done first, and then I'll take care of it". There are quite a few people in that second camp. Why is that? What is the big deal being interrupted?

Joel Spolsky noted this when he posted the following problem. He imagined two tasks that needed to be done, each lasting 10 minutes. He asked which is better, for a computer to do one task to completion then the other, or to interleave the two tasks. That is, give one minute to one task, then one minute to the other, and so forth.

It may sound identical to you. Both tasks are finished in 20 minutes. Or the second might seem more appealing because each task makes more progress. But consider when both tasks complete.

Start the clock at zero. If you interleave, one task will finish at minute 19, and the other at minute 20. However, if you did one task to completion first, it would complete at minute 10, while the other would complete at minute 20. The average in the first case is a wait time of 19.5 minutes while the average wait for the second is 15 minutes.

This assumes no penalty for switching tasks. In reality, computer tasks pay a small penalty to switch from one to the other. This is called "context-switching". Apparently, for humans, context switching is a very real penalty. Thus, minor interruptions may not be so minor. I find it baffling personally, especially if the time to carry out the task is very little.

The point is this. Some people are definitely inclined not to be interrupted, not even for a few minutes so they can get their task done. I wonder if that is symptomatic of a certain mindset or personality. Is a type A person likely to dislike interruptions and want to be fully engaged, no matter how short the interruption?

What is the thinking behind this behavior?

Change I Want

OK, so we're embroiled in a health care debate (if you can call it that) because health care costs are spiraling out of control and because millions are uninsured. I was going to discuss whether the attacks on Obama racist (indirectly, they are), but instead, I'll talk about the kinds of changes, mundane as they may be, that I'd like to see changed.

First, Internet bandwidth. I don't really download or stream movies, but one can see how nice it'd be if the bandwidth was comparable to say Japan or Korea which reportedly have 10 to 100 times the bandwidth.

Up-to-the moment reporting of how much electricity and gas I'm using. Why does someone have to come and check meters once a month? I want to know how much I spent cooling my apartment today. I want to know how that money is really being spent? Who oversees this anyway?

More intelligent traffic monitoring. Why am I sitting at a red light when there's no one in the crossroad? Why are lights based on very simple information about who is on the road?

Getting groceries easily. I would like to order groceries, and I know I can, but the cost! Is there some better way to do this?

Companies that pay for auto maintenance. Would be nice if an on-site mechanic did routine maintenance so you wouldn't have to worry about taking it to the shop when something breaks down.

Or perhaps better public transportation. I look at the Metro and it makes a stop every stop. Why isn't there an express that stop every 5-10 stops the a smaller train that visits those 10 stops all the time. You'd need twice the trains, but people would get to where they were going faster.

I'm sure I could think of more things, but there are changes that would affect my day-to-day life more, and yet these changes are much slower to come.

Separation of Concerns

If you were at a software company and could only have one person, you'd probably want an engineer, someone to build the product. That person might have an engineer's mindset. Get it working, do what's easiest. They may be less concerned about how the user will use the product (I'm assuming there is an end-user).

The problem with this mindset is the lack of someone to see things from the user's point of view. Engineers typically complain when managers pick a feature set because they can be fickle. Managers become idea generators and can come up with and discard ideas quickly mostly because they don't have to implement the feature.

Meanwhile, engineers have to implement stuff, and so they may not be so motivated to implement something that's easy to use because it may be hard to implement.

However, without a separation of concerns, someone who is relieved of the burden of having to implement a feature, then getting a good product, one users will want to use, is challenging.

Thus, it's very common to have someone be the user advocate. The only problem with this viewpoint is that it's easiest to have the prototypical user be the person making the decisions about what features to implement. In other words, the ideas guy typically doesn't want to talk to lots of people to get their ideas because this person thinks his (or her) ideas are the best, and likes the autocratic nature of making that decision.

So there is the dilemma of trying to create a good product, and thus separating the guy who comes up with the features with the one implementing it, and controlling the idea guy from coming up with ideas that don't make sense and aren't really looking at true users.

Entertainment Tonight

So it's been a while since I blogged, so I'll do this one for Justin.

Let's start off with a supposition that may or may not be true. You work 9-5, but you have enough free time in the evenings to do something. But what is that something? If you were growing up in the 1970s and even into the 1980s, the most common evening activity was watching television.

You didn't have much control over what you were watching. If you had TV prior to cable, you might get 4 channels over the air. If you had cable, then you might have 20-30 channels, the numbers of channels growing as the years passed. However, you had to watch the content live, at least until the advent of the VCR.

The VCR allowed entertainment to expand in several ways. First, it allowed you to record programs that you could watch later. The technology wasn't terribly sophisticated. You could only set the time and duration. The VCR was, as a group, poorly designed, mostly because usability was not something anyone thought about. Get engineers to design something and they'll design what's easiest for them to build, not what's easiest for the users to use.

More importantly, VCRs meant people could also buy and rent videotapes and a whole new industry was born: renting movies. For a time, if you wanted to watch movies, you had to go to the theater. If you were lucky, the movie was popular enough that it would show up on TV and you could watch it there, filled with commercials. When cable came around, channels were devoted to showing movies all the time (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax).

Movies at home were wonderful. Sure VHS tape quality was poor, and the more you watched, the worse the tape became--more snowy, more jittery, but at least you could watch it in the comfort of your own home. This was especially important for parents who lack time to go out and watch movies. Prior to this, going out would require a babysitter to stay a few hours. These days, the paranoia about having other people look after your children seems to have pressed parents to stay home more.

Fast forward to the 2000s, and the entertainment has changed, but mostly in technology. By 2000, videotapes were being replaced by DVDs that were smaller, less resistant to wear, and much higher quality than VHS. Instead of getting DVDs at a local movie store, companies like Netflix were offering DVDs by mail.

DVDs also liberated televisions. Shows like LOST couldn't be made without DVDs (although that's changing now). LOST has a plot so complex that it requires understanding shows that preceded it. Admittedly, soap operas also had a similar structure, but most fans seem happy getting other folks to fill them in on details. There also wasn't a huge puzzle which fans would scrutinize each episode for.

If you look at programs from the 1960s, they had to create one-off shows with few references to past episodes because if a person missed it, they would be, well, lost. Now, fans who miss entire seasons can buy or rent DVDs and catch up on whole seasons, commercial free. Some argue that commercial-free is the only way to watch television.

Netflix meant you didn't have to run to your local video store to get content. You could get it sent to you via mail and return it via mail. You didn't have to feel pressure getting it back to the video store in 2 days or risk getting fined. Netflix charged a montly rate and only controlled how many videos you could have out at any time.


Technology has pushed the concept further. The problem with the original Netflix model was the delay between ordering a movie and getting it. If you didn't feel like watching a movie, you had to return it and wait for another. There was a lack of instant gratification.

Fortunately, Netflix could rely on the biggest game changer of them all. The Internet. Of course, the US lags behind countries like Japan and Korea in sheer bandwidth, but the bandwidth has become good enough to stream videos (in Japan/Korea, you can download videos in minutes rather than hours, so streaming is less of a big deal). That means you get all the benefits of every technology. If you don't like the video you're watching, watch another one.

But the point is this: we're still watching movies and by extension television.

What are the alternatives? Some alternatives are simply what people watch. A subculture of Americans are heavy into anime. Anime has never been widely adopted by the popular media and is the closest thing we have to counterculture entertainment.

There are video games. Video games have been a staple of entertainment almost as long as VCRs have been around.

With the Internet, there's surfing the web. You can watch movies on the Internet, or viral videos, or read articles of interest. You can play games on the Internet, chat on the Internet. The Internet (via web browsers and websites) allow you to devour information of all sorts, from politics to sports to cooking to photography to conspiracy theories to whatever. Still, it's not a very social thing to do. If you're hanging out with a significant other, surfing the Internet means you are doing your own thing. This isn't to say movies are all that social, but it's somewhat more social.

That leads me to the point of this entry. What are the next forms of entertainment? Why do we still gravitate to the entertainment choices we've always made. Why is it like so many other people's entertainment?

I don't have answers to this except that we have a herd mentality, whether we like to admit it or not.

Why India Will Always Be Poor

India has certainly made strides to be a force in the technological world of the 21st century. However, there will always remain a big part of the population that will be left out of these advances. What is amazing about India is there is such a wide disparity in education and wealth and yet it remains relatively peaceful.

The biggest reason for this is the population of India, which is a billion plus. Its population is likely to overtake China because China is about the only country in the world that can pass a policy to limit the number of children a couple can have. With multiple languages and multiple religions, any attempt to enforce such a policy would lead to riots. You never hear of the Indian army trying to quell civil unrest.

One reason there is a billion people is the agrarian nature of India where more people means more hands to do the physical labor. Another reason is because women have yet to achieve real equality. Real equality would, alas, mean going against something India holds dear. Marriage. Women need the income to live by themselves and be self sustaining. The situation is better for those who have education where women are able to be more independent.

Divorce is another problem. While most family-loving countries would like to avoid divorce, India really does avoid it. In the past, women were expected to throw themselves on a burning funeral pyre of their late husbands or be forever shunned as women that belonged to other men. Men, of course, having made the rules never had this problem, a consequence of thinking of women as property.

Once you have more education, more freedom, more opportunities, women worry more about their career, and less about having children. Thus, the more educated women are, the more likely they will have fewer children. And that in the long run will cut down on the population problem.

Until education is so widespread with an economy to support that many people, you have a population problem. With a billion people, you need a way to employ them. Many will be uneducated, yet many have to eat. If India was in colder climates and not agrarian, they would never have a population they do now. Local farms imply cheap food, especially with no middle men. A country like India has to have cheap food.

Compared to India, Americans spend an enormous money on their food. If Indians had to pay comparable prices, most would starve to death. The pay scale in India goes exponentially downwards. Thus, the poorest person might make a tenth of what an average person makes.

Imagine a person making 100,000 dollars in the US. That's pretty good actually. Most people don't make that money from one income. 1/10 of that is 10,000. You could barely live on that amount of money. You'd share a place, and then rent might eat up 4000 dollars, possibly less if you can live in a small town where it might cost $250 a month to live (by yourself) as opposed to $1000 in a big city. You might be able to get food for a few thousand more, but beyond that, you'd be struggling to buy anything. And imagine living on $5000 or $2000. There are plenty of Indians that are likely living on a tiny fraction of a middle-class worker.

To live, housing must be cheap and food must be cheap. Once this is taken care of, then labor itself can be cheap. Most people couldn't afford a live-in chef because it would use up 50% of their income easily. But if it used up 1-2%, many might find it acceptable. If you could get food and a chef for $100 a month, most people would go for that option, but the food alone would exceed $100 and the chef would expect to get paid a ton.

India survives because of this huge income disparity that takes advantage of what India has in abundance. People.

India has solved its population problem in a funny way. Indians have left India. They essentially go to other countries to live. Where Indians were rare in the US and England in the 1970s, the numbers have sharply risen by 2009. It is a pretty novel way to solve the problem, but the fact remains that there are still a billion people in India.

The one advantage India has is that it's willing to develop so some people get the advantages even as the rest of the nation is poor. Indeed, it's been said that India is really many nations that co-exist. They are divided in language, religion, education, caste and money. Many people identify with their section of India. Their India may be the educated affluent worldly Indians, but that is not all of India, even though it is the part of India that is driving it to the modern era.

The Need for Speed

Perhaps no sport has undergone such a radical change as swimming. For years, the standard outfit for male swimmers was a sliver of fabric that became known as Speedos after the company that manufactured it. Then, about 10 years ago, new suits came out. At first, these suits covered from the waist down. These suits were supposed be more slippery than the Speedos. Times came down.

Then, full body suits came out, and times fell even more. Recently, Michael Phelps did what had been rather unthinkable. He lost. The winner bragged that his suit reduced his time by 2 seconds. Phelps's coach was furious and floated the idea that Phelps would boycott future events. FINA, the governing body of swimming, wanted to ban these full body suits.

The technology is problematic. With athletes getting paid money to sponsor products, a company may fall in the quest for the fastest suit, and it becomes more about the suit and less about the swimmer. To be fair, few complained when these suits caused record after record to fall, and only because it affects Michael Phelps are we hearing a bit of uproar.

But it goes further than that. These suits are expensive, and it is affecting the pocketbooks of would-be swimmers. Parents are having to shell out bucks to pay for their kids swimwear so they can stay competitive.

Although FINA is willing to have the suits go back to the waist-down variety, I think they should all head back to the Speedo days where the material provided only enough for modesty, and the rest was up to the swimmer. Admittedly, companies like Speedo or Arena that have benefited from these pricey suits would suffer, and they are, undoubtedly, the first to object, much as the health industry has sought to protect its own interests under the cloud of a health care reform movement.

This is undoubtedly the reason FINA did not decide to go back to the small trunks swimmers used to use because then, the competing companies would only have fashion to distinguish themselves, and would lack the profits that several hundred dollar suits have vs the sub hundred dollar swim trunks.

But then, the sport would be back to the people who swim rather than the suits they wear.

How We Communicate

It's funny. With all the technology to let people communicate better, it only works on a handful of people. Most people find the oldest way of communication, face-to-face, so much more pleasant than any of its alternatives.

I have friends who hate IM, who hate email, who hate the phone. All of them, to one degree or another, interrupt, especially the phone, but even IM. You'll find people who are pretty friendly when you talk to them in person, but get them on the phone, and they are suddenly distant, wondering why you want to talk, etc. Admittedly, these are generally guys, because the stereotype is that women love to gab on the phone and will do so ad naseum.

Face to face communication has one "advantage" over other forms of communication. It limits how many people can interact. In principle, if you have 100 friends, they can all contact you on the phone simultaneously. And that would be interruption. So someone might call you while you are watching TV, or driving. Someone might IM you while you are surfing the web. Although face to face communication is also an interruption, it limits the kind of interruptions that might occur.

Ideally, someone would want to figure out a way of communicating that is as acceptable as real life communication, but we haven't figured how to do that. The only way is to have some sense of what we're actively doing now, and many would prefer not to do that.

And no one has figured that out.

The Curious Case of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

This has been in the news. Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., professor at Harvard University found he was unable to open the door to his own home after a lengthy excursion. With assistance, he tried prying the door open. However, someone believed his home was being broken into and called the police. One Sgt. James Crowley came to the scene to see what was going on.

Depending on whose version you listen to, either Gates was fairly calm and this was a rogue cop that didn't like black folk, or Gates was verbally abusive, claiming racism, refusing to cooperate, and the cop, being calm, finally decided he was a nuisance and had him brought downtown.

For most news organizations, this boiled down to African American professor who had made it in lily-white academia being harassed by cops who can't believe there are well-educated black men.

Whatever.

The point, to me, isn't who is right or wrong, but that these two became figureheads, representing the generic. I believe they call this synecdoche.

NPR, to its credit, did something so simple that it puts most news organizations to shame. And the reason it puts it to shame is because most news organizations are really editorial organizations. They peddle opinions, because actual investigation was too much work. NPR wondered "who is this cop" and just found some background information.

It turns out that he has been involved in racial sensitivity training and had a brush with "fame". He was the guy that unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate Reggie Lewis, a Celtics player that died of sudden cardiac arrest, back in 1993.

Much like Rashomon, which does not really postulate that truth is unknowable, but suggests that people bend truth to make themselves look good, there are good reasons for both Gates and Crowley to take their stances, and therefore good reason that both may have bent the truth to make themselves look good. In particular, if Gates had been wailing like a mad-man, he'd ironically reinforce every stereotype that says African Americans have anger issues and believes the man is against him, and therefore, it's best to peg the nameless cop as the crazy guy, and similarly, many a cop has excused their bad behavior by outright lying and claiming they didn't do anything.

The point is, people form opinions, especially news organizations, and use it as a launching pad to all sorts of race relation rhetoric, but little to actually trying to determine the "truth". The truth, of course, may not matter that much, because it is framed in the context of race relations. Were this a quarrel between two unknowns, we wouldn't care, but because it's Gates, and because the opinion doctors quickly put this out for public consumption, it becomes news.

And it's not really even news.

Why Teaching is Hard

Teaching is one of those things that can be very hard to do well. The first step to teaching is to know what you are talking about. There are people who are "experts" on a particular topic, but they've never organized their thoughts in a way that would make sense to a newbie.

Teaching is story-telling. It's telling a story that makes sense to you and hopefully makes sense to your listeners. Experts sometimes reach a level of unconscious competence. That is, they know what to do, but they can't explain it. Teaching is about moving that expertise into conscious competence, that is, to explaining what you know in a clear, cohesive way.

OK, but that's not all of it. If you're an expert at something, then you will make assumptions about your audience. This is very important. Without assumptions, you will most likely assume they know as much as you do, and so they may struggle with an explanation. For example, if you know statistics backwards and forwards, you might assume that everyone knows the basics really well, which may not be correct.

Some people try to explain ideas using analogies. That only works if the analogy makes sense to the audience. Some people won't get the analogy you are making. Once upon a time, people figured you knew baseball or boxing and they'd make an analogy figuring, for sure, you had to know this.

This isn't to say analogies aren't useful, but only that you have to be careful about it. Analogies are often good at making something concrete that seemed very abstract otherwise. It takes something that lacks familiarity and makes it more familiar.

The key to effective teaching is to understand the worldview of the people you teach. Because students are individuals, you may have a hard time conveying information that will work for everyone. However, since most students generally have similar backgrounds heading into a class, there are some commonalities.

To discover where students are coming from, you need to talk to them. It's surprising how one-sided communication between teachers and students are. Teachers spouting out information, but not engaged in a dialog where the teachers tries to understand why students get confused. To me, this is still the single best way to learn how to teach. Too often, teachers imagine themselves to be something like TV performers with students as the audience kept at arm's length away.

Indeed, one might argue that the lecture format is not the best way to teach students. At the very least, most of us learn by doing.

To sum up, good teaching requires understand the material, being able to tell the material as a story so it makes sense to yourself and to others, to be adaptive to what the audience needs, adjusting the level of difficulty as needed, and to interact with students to better understand how they view what is going on.

Review: Moon

Science fiction movies, at least those set in space, have been influenced primarily by three films: Alien, Star Wars, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of the three, Star Wars may be the least influential. Indeed, it's hard to call it a true science fiction film. There are elements of "science" in the film, from Death Stars to light sabres, to ATATs and myriad vehicles. However, they are mostly treated as part of the scenery. They look cool, but the society merely uses these advancements without questioning where it came from. Better to call it science fantasy, as it appropriates elements from Lord of the Rings and other ancient tales.

Alien is perhaps the film that is mimicked the most. A crew that is somewhat military in nature works on contract for some nameless faceless mega-corporation that seeks profit through dubious means. In general, these corporations seem to scrimp in some ways (few people are used) and are extravagant in other ways (the ship itself, androids, etc). It depicts the isolation and danger of space and the people that serve as its pawns.

Finally, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of the three, 2001 has the best pedigree. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, the look of the film still holds up quite well after 40 years. Lacking traditional CG special effects, it's one of few films that depict weightlessness and the slow movement of space.

Although 2001 has been imitated many times, many are afraid to imitate it too faithfully. In particular, Kubrick didn't care that much about the main characters, Dave and Frank. They are ordinary in every sense. You aren't meant to care about their plight. Other characters are similarly shown as less than human, cogs in a military machine.

Indeed, the one character that has personality is not even human. It's HAL. HAL turns out to be quite a menacing character. Designed to be "perfect", HAL gets in a conundrum. He is instructed to lie to the crew about their mission. Only those in suspended animation know the true mission and they stay asleep during the trip. In a perverted sense of logic based on "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a noise", HAL figures if no one is alive to catch his lie, it didn't happen.

All throughout, HAL believes it is perfect, but when Dave disassembles HAL, in a sequence that takes many minutes to complete, HAL slowly loses his mind and desperately begs not to be killed off.

Ever since, such AIs have been used, and it's not clear whether they are there serving human needs (see Aliens) or not (see Alien).

Kubrick would probably be saddened by the amount of homage paid to 2001, a sign of lack of creativity. Smaller SF films seem to prefer the Kubrickian vision of space from Danny Boyle's Sunshine to Duncan Jones's Moon.

The lack of imitation to 2001 lies mostly in character development. In a film ostensibly about the next stage in humanity, the most human character, perhaps a kind of Satan, is HAL. The rest of the humans are made out to be rather bland, perhaps reinforcing the notion that humans need some evolution.

The sequel to 2001, namely 2010, chooses, as many films do, to develop characters. Unlike 2001, where Kubrick only wants you to care about the characters enough to see that they are recognizably human, mostly so you can imagine yourself in their place, and to serve as a contrast to the panoramic weirdness of Dykstra special effects, a scene that is meant to represent a kind of New Age awe, 2010 wants you to care about the characters of the film. It's hard to sell a film where you don't care about the characters, and perhaps that is where Kubrick's genius lies. He's able to grapple a deep issue "where do we come from" without resorting to normal characters.

Moon's trailer reveals what seems to be way too much information, but turns out not to be. Sam Bell, assigned to do repair work on the Moon, for harvesters that provide limitless energy for the Earth (hard to believe, but anyway) is alone, in the last few weeks before he is scheduled to return to Earth and reunite with his wife and newborn daughter. He discovers, while checking out a failed harvester, large tank-like objects resembling Jawas moving vehicles, that there is another man still alive, and surprise, surprise, it's him.

Well, a clone.

This information is revealed in the film's first 30 minutes because to reveal it late means to have spoilers that wouldn't be kept secret.

The film doesn't mind looking less than sleek. The spacesuits still look circa 1960s. The rover still looks much like a rover. A laptop that makes an appearance is humongous. Like 2001, communications is delayed enough that there is no live interaction. Sam's hair is cut by a flowbee-like device. The future still has homages to the past.

Like 2001, Sam is kept company by a HAL-like AI named Gerty who uses smilies to indicate his emotion. Most of the time, Gerty wants to make Sam food.

Moon, in its way, explores what it means to be human. It doesn't explore it too deeply, to be fair. It doesn't intend to be a philosophical treatise. Indeed, the interaction between the clones is not what you'd expect. There are signs throughout that the film wants to fake you out and become menacing, but it never chooses to go in that direction.

The film doesn't answer a lot of questions. For one, if there is AI technology, what's the point of Sam? Given all this money the company could be making, why not run the operation legitimately? Sam isn't shown as being particularly gifted. He's meant to be an ordinary Joe.

Indeed, Sam doesn't fully question life as a clone. Indeed, he barely questions it at all. There are nods to other films too. There is the notion of a megacompany using people to its advantage, as in Alien. There is some similarity to Gattaca where Ethan Hawke plays an ordinary human who imagines he'll go to space. It's almost an inverse of that. There's nods to Blade Runner and their notion of replicants.

So although one feels the plight of Sam, and even to some extent, his relationship to Gerty, the ideas never feel that fleshed out, and the ideas never seem that deep. Indeed, if anything, Gerty should have been a more interesting character. What is the purpose of Gerty? To be the real communications to Earth, instead of Sam. And yet, Gerty is alone, always having to lie to each Sam clone. Gerty has grown to care for each incarnation of Sam. But this isn't fully explored. It's much closer to HAL in 2010 who is talked into self-sacrificing for the good of the human crew.

I'd like more movies to be made like Moon. But it seems thin on ideas and thin on characters too.

A Bit of Humor

Wow, it's been a while since I last wrote something.

I was watching a short comedy sketch from The Whitest Kids U' Know, a comedy troupe. I generally don't watch them, so I don't know that much about it.

The sketch went something like this. A guy comes to a cube, and asked the person working there how things went the previous night. The guy said he had a pretty quiet night. He hung out with his girlfriend.

Then, the guy asks "did you do your girlfriend"? This is probably a thought that occasionally comes across people's minds but one they don't say in polite company. The guy says he feels uncomfortable answering this question, and in any case, the guy asking is his boss, and his boss never hangs out with him, so why is he asking.

The boss then says he better tell him or he'll be fired. The guy says "this is weird, but OK, OK, yes, yes, I did have sex with my girlfriend". The boss is enjoying the answer to this question, and then asks him to draw what happened.

Now comedy works in a number of ways. There's comedy of recognition. Sometimes it's shameful recognition. For example, some comedians noted that, as kids, one was asked to climb a large rope, and that in the process, this rope might actually turn a person on, given its proximity to certain parts. Most kids imagine they're the only ones that go through this, but once they realize other kids have too (usually as adults), they can mine it for comedy gold.

Then, there is the escalation of some idea way beyond what is perceived as normal.

This sketch heads in that direction. I changed the channel because the routine was getting a little uncomfortable to watch, but switched back out of curiosity. The boss is sketching out on a white board. He is drawing a picture of himself in self-pleasuring. The employee is shocked. He draws a picture of the couple in bed.

He then draws a window, and the employee says "You were watching us last night?", and the boss is telling him to shut up, and he's not done yet. He then draws himself imagining he's sleeping with his employee's girlfriend. "You were imagining yourself with my girlfriend?!".

The boss tells him to shut up, that he's not done. He draws additional people. The employee goes "you invited other people to watch?". He again tells him to shut up and draws a camera. "You filmed us?!". Again, shut up. He draws the word "Internet". "You put us on the Internet?!".

Now the idea for this sketch has at least two parts to it. One is the idea of asking someone something personal, and seeing if they'll react to it. The other is the idea of escalating this craziness by sketching the idea on a board. The sketching part is pretty impressive because you have to imagine how to reveal the various parts. Of course, the employee screaming incredulously helps explain what is going on.

Ultimately, a lot of this edgy humor comes from humor of recognition. It explores darker sides of the human psyche and pushes the notion into absurdity, but almost recognizable absurdity.

If humor succeeds, especially sketch humor, it often keys in on insights of people. To be fair, much of this humor is cultural, and cultural humor may make sense (in a way) in one culture, but not in another.

What seems shocking, in hindsight, is rather clever, requiring a kind of perverted insight.