A nice day

It is a gorgeous day outside.

It sometimes surprises me how good that can make me feel.  And of course, having a nice sunny day means all sorts of other things are happening.  Where I live is next door to one of Claremont McKenna's practice fields, and today the track and field people are practicing the hammer throw.

That is just fun to watch!  For those who haven't seen it, the hammer is the event with the 16 pound ball attached to a chain.  Watching the throwers spin around and around and just heave that sucker as far as they can reminds you of when you were a kid and just threw things to see how far you could (see also: skipping rocks.)

It doesn't hurt that I know one of the throwers.  He's been in my probability, statistics, and Monte Carlo methods courses and is an all around good guy.  I wish him luck on the field as the season begins!

Thanksgiving

Nothing beats a Thanksgiving with friends!  

This Thanksgiving, Asuman, a professor in my department had myself and two other families over to her house for a great turkey dinner.  With eleven people involved, this is more like a day long party than anything else.  After polishing off a variety of tasty dishes and desserts, we went up to Mt. Baldy for a hike afterwards.  Then those with the skills hit the Backgammon boards, while the more stuffed people like myself just chatted away the afternoon and evening.  I know what I'm thankful for:  wonderful friends that make life that much sweeter.

Here comes the rain again

This past week was a beautiful:  the sun was shining, the temperature was in the mid 70's, and all seemed right with the world.  This morning, it's raining.

Yes it does rain in California.

And when it does rain, it tends not to mess around.  The forecast shows rain this morning, this afternoon, this evening, and tomorrow.  There's even a flash flood alert on top of that for areas of L.A. County that have been recently burned.

I do love watching the rain though.  Maybe it goes back to childhood memories of Corvallis where it seemed like it rained every day, or maybe it's just the randomness of the drops, the way it throws light in all directions.  Especially on a Saturday, where I don't have anywhere to go and can just relax and watch the water pouring down through my window.

Halloween, Rifftrax style

In honor of Halloween and my abiding love of making fun of movies, I headed out to the Rifftrax live event this last Thursday.  The movie they riffed was the classic Vincent Price "House on Haunted Hill" a delightful product of its times movie that was perfect for Kevin Murphy, Mike Nelson, and Bill Corbett to go after.

This is the second Rifftrax Live! presentation that I've gone to (the other being their Christmas special last year).  The last one was fun, but this one was amazing.  Part of the fun is being in a semi-crowded theater.  Southern California has enough former MST 3K fans like myself to fill a theater for these types of events, and the fun of seeing them do their shtick live really adds to the laughs.

Dala

Last Friday, I headed up to Scripps for their once-a-semester free concert on their big lawn.  This is part of a series of concerts organized by a Scripps Alum, Elizabeth Levitt Hersch '74.  Part giving back to Scipps, part advertisement for the Levitt Pavillions, this is always a well-organized nice event.  Performing this time were Dala, an acoustic folk duo from Canada.  

They were awesome!  I have to admit, my consumption of folk has dropped dramatically since leaving North Carolina, so it was nice to get a booster.  Lovely harmonies and an easy back-and-forth between two friends made for a wonderful concert.  The concert setting itself was also very nice--by setting the time from 5:30-7:00, there was a pretty transition from day to night while they played.  And they even gave chairs and/or blankets to everyone.  A great way to start the weekend!

A week in Warsaw

The first night in Warsaw, I met up with some friends, Galin and James, and headed out to Old Town.  Warsaw's Old Town is in fact quite new:  almost every building was destroyed in WWII, and meticulously recreated in every detail.  The result is like nothing else:  a modern medieval city with incredible artwork and detail adorning stonework that is mere decades old.

The Royal Palace managed to save some of their most impressive art, including four of the thrones used by kings of Poland.  The audiotour is great:  it includes headphones (no holding up a weighty device to your ear), and each room has a main number, with extra numbers reserved for specific items of interest.

The next day (before the conference), we headed out to the center of town and the Warsaw Uprising Museum.  This contains artifacts from the desparate days near the end of WWII.  The Red Army was
encamped outside the city, and with the hope of reclaiming the city the local resistance tried to expel the Nazi forces.  But Stalin had other ideas, and his army sat while the German first retook the city block by block and building by building, and then waited further as Hitler systematically destroyed all the important buildings in retaliation.  The Uprising Museum tells this story through artefacts, letters, photos, and even film taken by the Poles.  An immersive, moving museum.

From there we headed westward to the National Museum.  This containsone of the largest collection of medieval religious wood carvings that I have seen with intricate detail very well preserved.  And the paintings by the Polish also reveals a deep artistic tradition.

On Wednesday, the conference organized an excursion:  A guided tour through the Old Town followed by dinner in another gallery.  The dinner was great, and was accompanied by a concert by a trio of women on piano, clarinet, and flute.

Friday was the last day of the conference, and again the afternoon became a sightseeing opportunity.  The Palace of Culture and Science (Stalin's "gift" to the Polish people) looms massively in the center of town, and the terrace offers great views of the city.

One corner of the Palace houses the Museum of Technology, a history spanning from the paleolithic to modern times.  Automotive, radio, electronic, and typewriter fans will find much to love in their exhibits, and the basic science experiments are quite cool.

Finally, we swung through Old Town for some picture taking.  What a lovely place!

New York, New York

It's hard for me to believe that last weekend was only my second time in New York City-what a fun place! Of course, much of the fun came from getting to see a friend from the Duke days (only two years ago but feels like forever sometimes), Bianca who is now at The City College of New York and now is living in Manhattan.

We saw Avenue Q after hitting the half price ticket place in Times Square, it's really a wonderful show. The next day we headed over to the American Museum of Natural History in Central Park. Awesome place! Went to a planetarium show, haven't done that in years.  Here's a picture of us enjoying the foyer.

After New York I flew over to the University of Warwick to spend a week talking with Gareth Roberts and his group--including another friend from Duke, Natesh, who will be starting at Harvard in the fall. Go Natesh!

Finally yesterday I landed in Warsaw, Poland, where I'll be giving a talk at the MCQMC conference.

The months, they are a changin'

I get it when you are a kid: Summer's supposed to fly by then. So why does it seem that as I get older every summer seems to go by faster?

Last week my REU'ers (Research Experience for Undergraduates) gave their final presentations, turned in their papers, pulled up stakes and drove/flew off into the...well sunrise since most are from parts east of ol' California.

That's eight weeks that just went by at lightening speed. The six in my group (Elise, Scott, Jason, Jacky, Dan, and Annie) broke into two projects. They turned out great presentations (yay Beamer!) and...okay papers (I'm sure with more time they would have been fabulous.) Now comes the hard part--keeping the momentum built up during the research to get those papers polished and into journals and published. Go team!

Summer time fun, a summary!

So it's been about a month since my last blog post.  I'd hoped to be all done relating my travels through Italy by now, but once again an exciting summer has intervened.  So I thought I'd step back and give the brief description of what I've been up to lately this last month.

After the trip in Italy came what I went to Europe for in the first place:  The Ninth Valencia international meeting of Bayesian Statistics.  This was the first year I had been invited to give a talk:  very exciting!  So I tried to go with my A material, a new algorithm that my graduate student Sarah and I have been working on for the last year.  It did receive a lot of attention, and I found the discussions with those interested in the method to be enormously helpful.  One thing I'm working on right now I'm working on the finishing touches on my response to the written discussion of that paper.

So that was a week, and unfortunately, it was also the first week of the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) that I am running this summer.  I had sent my crew (six students from around the US) daily assignments to work on, but there's nothing like being there in person.  So the first few days were a blur as I lectured extensively and got them up to speed on the projects they would be working on.

A few weeks later they were pretty much in self-sufficient mode, and I just had to check in once a day to make sure all was moving along smoothly.  As I write this the end of the REU is in sight:  next week they will be giving oral presentations of their final results, and both groups are writing up their work in paper form as well.  Along the way, I went out to Joshua Tree National Park with lots of the Claremont REU (more than just my six are pictured below) and we also had some other events as well.

Last week was more traveling for me, although not academic in nature.  I met my folks in Las Vegas for a three day whirlwind tour of magic and acrobatics before heading out to the Grand Canyon.  The last time I was there time was limited but this trip we took our time and did things right.  The highlight was a Ranger led morning hike partway down into the Canyon.  Great stuff!  On the way back we also hit Sunset Volcano National Monument, a gem of a park just north of Flagstaff.

That wasn't the end of the week for me though, as last weekend was La Grande High School class of 1990 twentieth reunion.  Also great fun as I met up with friends that I hadn't seen in, well, 20 years!  Okay, a few I'd seen since then, and Facebook does make it easier to catch up, but still there's nothing like just hanging out and dancing to the 80's favorites.

Headed East

Getting out of Florence the next morning proved difficult:  an accident on the motorway had traffic backed up halfway to the city center.  But eventually we escaped the Tuscan capital and headed East towards Bologna.

My first goal was to see the oldest continually operating university.  Their original building is now the public library, with several of the halls left as they were in the Middle Ages.  Nice to see that professors got their own shields.  There's a tradition I could see reviving!

This is also where the Anatomical Theatre was located, where physicians used to dissect cadavers under the watchful eyes of the clergy, who made sure nothing inappropriate went on.

Next stop in Bologna was the Basilica of Saint Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order.  This is a gorgeous building, as befits the final resting place of the saint.  Unfortunately, the traffic in Florence meant an abbreviated stop in Bologna, so it was back to the bus.

The next stop was Padua, which has a delightful central park surrounded by a canal that is the second largest square in Europe.  Passing through this area, "the group" headed toward the Basilica of Saint Anthony, yet another popular pilgrimage destination.  The monument over the tomb of the saint inside was magnificent.  What differentiates this place from others I saw was the number of domes, six if I remember correctly.  But what I found most interesting was the statue of the saint in a side courtyard.  Visitors visitors must have been shaking hands with Saint Anthony for luck or blessings.

Leaving Bologna, we headed for the hotel outside Venice.  That night, after dinner, we took a boat to the main square, Piazza San Marco.  Finally, a name I can get into!  Since it was high tide, and Venice is slowly sinking into the sea, the north end of the square was covered with water.  Wading time!

Tuscany

The fact that the Italian cities were their own states for so long makes them great places to visit. Each one tried to outdo the others in grandeur, art, and all around magnificence.

Florence, of course, has a few aces up its sleeve. The first is Michelangelo's David, which stood outside in a public square for centuries before being moving indoors for its protection. The statue was everything I believed it to be: a dominating presence that seems so fluid, so lifelike, that it is hard to imagine that this is solid marble. This was another museum where pictures were not allowed, which in this case was kind of nice, since it meant that everyone was actually looking at the statue rather than trying to get pictures of friends and family with it in the background.

The second ace is the Duomo of Florence, with every inch of the exterior covered by carvings and mosaics. The fabulous bell tower is a separate building, as is the baptistery built later (that's the striped building you can just see a bit of on the left). But for true height, you have to climb to the top of the central Dome, which affords a 360 degree view of the city below.

The third (and last) stop in Florence that I had time for was Basilica di Santa Croce. Here some of the most illustrious inhabitants of Florence are interred. Galileo, Marconi, Machiavelli, and of course Michelangelo are just part of the tombs that line the walls.

For the remainder of the afternoon, the tour headed to Pisa, and the famous Piazza di Miracoli--the Square of Miracles. Like the Florence Duomo, this really consists of three separate buildings, the main Cathedral, the Bapistery, and the bell tower constructed later. Of course, the bell tower was the ill fated one of the three, whose gradual sinking into the soil gave rise to one of Italy's greatest landmarks: the Leaning Tower of Pisa. After touring the Cathedral and Basilica, I went over to try to get the standard picture every tourist is required to take. Fortunately, I had met a pair of Australian women on the tour, May and Carol, and they were able to help me out.  (The keen eyed among you will note the distinctive outline of my Lonely Planet Italian phrasebook in my left pocket.)

Heading north

Leaving Rome in a little car is a trick, leaving it with a 60 person bus is just amazing.  But our driver successfully navigated the vehicle our tour guide nicknamed "The Monster" through five hotel pickups and then we were on our way. 

First stop was the town of Assisi, home to St. Francis, or should I say San Francesco.  In 1228, two years after the death of the saint, the new order decided to build a Basilica in Assisi.  This was the first major religious building I saw in Italy, and it was far from the last.

Assisi itself is set upon the side of a hill, which makes the town proper a series of switchbacks aligned with the old Roman walls.  On one end is the Basilica, with wonderful views over the valley below.  Inside there are frescoes which mark a shift in subject:  instead of purely religious figures, they show the common people instead.  It has multiple levels, the original, the crypt below where the saints body is entombed, and a more airy upper level built later.  Like many Italian holy buildings, photos were not permitted inside.  A quick stop for lunch and then we were on our way.

The next stop was Siena, set in the middle of Tuscany.  Once a major crossroads, the buildings constructed during the Renaissance heyday are wonderful.  The centerpiece is The Duomo.  Every major city in Italy has a Duomo, which was the most important church in the city.
 Every place I visited seemed to have a unique feature:  in the case of the Siena Duomo it was the wonderful floor tilings.  This is where being part of a tour is unfortunate, I wish that I had more time to explore the museums in the historic center, or climb the tower in the Piazza del Campo.  Next time!

Roam if you want to

Rome!  The Eternal City!  Like most tourists arriving somewhere for the first time, I took a taxi from the airport to my hotel, and gawked at the scenery.  The main road to the center of Rome goes right past old Roman walls, churches, and even the Colosseum in all its magnificent ruined glory.  That's what I came to see!

So even though my plane was late and I did not get to my hotel until about 5:00, I immediately headed out to see some sights.  Despite it being a Sunday, shops were still open (including the little tourist info booth) and sightseers were thronging around.  I walked down about half a mile to where the main archaeological attractions were.  You can get a great view of the old Roman buildings from the top of the hill, too bad it was getting too late to do the close up tour.  Still, it really was great just walking around soaking up history.  Tomorrow my Italian tour would begin!

Better living through science

Iron Man was the first engineering superhero.  Sure Spiderman created his webbing from his chem knowledge, but only after that radioactive spider had given him most of his powers.  And Batman's toys always took second place to his physical conditioning.  Iron Man created his own powers one step at a time, one model suit at a time.

That is why I was so excited when the first Iron Man movie came out to see what they would do with it.  And I was not disappointed.  This was a movie that reveled in the engineering, delighted itself in the process of creation.  Too often science is viewed as a static memorization of facts and laws rather than the creative process that it really is.  To do science is to create something new, to connect to the world in a way that no one else has done before.

I saw Iron Man 2 last weekend, and this is one sequel that accomplishes the rare feat of improving upon the original.  Early in the film we see a clip of Tony Stark's father (played by the always delightful John Slattery) introducing the Stark Expo in the 70's.  The standard touchstones are there:  grainy film quality, toy model city of the future, optimism that science will lead to a better world.

What struck me was that this was presented in an entirely irony free way.  There's no Men in Black style behind the curtain pullback, no tongue in cheek "boy weren't they idiots in earlier times" subtext.  This is played straight:  the simple idea that good science can prevail over evil in the world.

This is the story of our time.  There seems to be a sense that we are entering a new age of technology.  One where technological progress is not only important, but necessary to our survival.  The last century was the age of Petroleum and the Green Revolution, where cheap energy and massive increases in food production led to unintended consequences.  To master the problems these "advances" created, society is looking toward science and engineering.  It is not an option to return to a preindustrial time, there are too many people to feed, too much at stake.  So now society is going double or nothing:  pouring money into green technology in hopes of keeping the plates spinning.

That is the same story unfolding in Iron Man 2.  The power technology that Stark thought he had perfected has unintended consequences of its own.  Every military in the world seeks it, while it slowly poisons Stark's body from within.  The only way through?  Advance the science his father started, create a truly clean energy source.

Easy to do for a superhero in a summer blockbuster.  Will the world succeed on this course?  The next few decades should be interesting.

Iron Man:  4 out of 5 stars
Iron Man 2:  4 1/2 out of 5 stars

The Doctor is dead, long live the Doctor!

It was a glorious few seasons with David Tennant, the eminently likable Doctor Who, but all good things must come to an end.  For those who aren't familiar with the series, The Doctor is a Time Lord, a species that short of disintegration regenerates after death into an entirely new body.

The eleventh Doctor took the reins this season, and in a policy turnaround BBC America is showing the series in the US a mere two weeks behind the UK debut.  With a new Doctor, new showrunner, new companion, new sets and new opening, thing could go very right...or very wrong.

That's the reason why I'm so pleased by the two episodes so far.  They have had that magical Doctor quality, skirting the line between madcap adventure, social commentary, with a dash of science fiction wackiness for good measure.

So far the episodes have touched base with the series history, but the most fun for me has been the many nods to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Douglas Adams had worked on several episodes in the series, and conversely both his Hitchhiker's series and the Dirk Gently series incorporated time travel.

In the first episode of the new season, ships hover above the Earth and are about to destroy it, but unlike the Vogon's the 2010 aliens can tap into our cellphones as well as TV and radio to broadcast their message of Doom.  At the end of the first episode, the Doctor's new lithesome companion joins him from her bedroom--and so spends the entire second episode in her nightgown, much like the hapless Arthur Dent in his bathrobe.

And oh yes, there's a whale.  In space.  I love the human imagination, always creating new variations on themes both strange and sublime.

California Adventure

Last week my Mom flew down to Southern California for a week of fun in the sun during her Spring Break. First big stop on the list: California Adventure!

This park opened in Anaheim in 2001, so it was after I had left California for the East Coast. With the success of Disney World at sucking in visitors for a multiday experience, it was probably only a matter of time until a second park opened at the original theme park location as well. They took out the giant parking lot of my youth and replaced it with an enormous parking garage. The setup is still much nicer than at DisneyWorld, as a short walk to a tram takes you to the entrance plaza: Disneyland on your left, California Adventure on your right.

The park itself includes some of the best rides developed anywhere is Disney parks over the last decade. The Tower of Terror continues to thrill, and Soarin' is unique in concept and execution. Toy Story Mania is wonderful: at least it is if it is like the one in Pixar Studios, since the hour long line in California Adventure meant that this time we gave it a pass.

Unique to CA is the midway area. This includes some pay-to-play games (I won a Woody!) and several classic styled rides. Mickey's Fun Wheel is an enormous Ferris Wheel, but with a twist that the cars can slide in towards the center as the wheel turns. This gives it an extra excitement factor. California Screamin' looks like an old style wooden coaster, but is in fact a steel behemoth with a fast acceleration start, but completely outdoors. Very fun!

The day parade was short but fun, composed entirely of Pixar characters.  It was very easy to see characters:  one short musical show ended with three characters forming lines for meet and greets, and the plaza continually had new people buzzing in and out.

When I was last in San Francisco I had intended to go do the Boudin bakery tour and see the sourdough being made.  Too bad the day I went the tours were closed.  Fortunately, CA has it's own miniature version! Mmmm, chili in sourdough bowls!

The old Main Street Electrical Parade has now become Disney's Electrical Parade, and runs through CA every night.  Still a lot of fun seeing the thousands of lights.  Even if you don't have a ticket to Disneyland, we discovered that you can catch the fireworks show from the entrance plaza, or even the parking garage, at least if you can live without sound.

Altogether the time flew by:  this is a great place to visit, and since it's about an hour away from my place, I have a hunch I'll be visiting again soon!

Blast from the past

When I was an undergraduate, there were exactly three TV shows that I watched. Star Trek: The Next Generation, Babylon 5, and the Simpsons.

Yes, The Simpsons is that old.

The fact that the Simpsons outlasted not only Star Trek: TNG, but Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, and the reboot of the entire movie franchise still amazes me. Of course, it is a very different show than those heady days in the early 90's. You just can't repeat the same jokes for 21 years without having to change things up occasionally.

Or so I thought until last Sunday's episode. This was truly a blast from the past, an HD version of the early seasons. It opened with a pitch perfect filmstrip parody of the "city of the future" so beloved in the 50's and 60's. Cut to Mrs. Krabappel pining over the possibility of meeting single firemen. How long has it been since Mrs. K showed her man-hungry side? Ten, eleven years?

And the plot was a hearkening back to the days when The Simpsons tried to keep at least one foot grounded in reality. Here Bart is playing his parents against each, a standard trope at least as old as Leave it to Beaver. The syndicated loop for the Simpson's has been running from 1990-1994 lately, and this episode would have fit right in.

LXXXII

The 82nd annual Academy Awards are almost upon us! This year I am staying out of the major categories: I'm rooting for best supporting actor and actress.

For Best Supporting Actor, Christophe Waltz is my unmatched favorite. The scene that opens Inglourious Basterds will probably go down as one of the tensest sequences ever captured on celluloid. Waltz's Col. Landa is erudite, multilingual, and pure evil of a kind that rarely get captured in film. His is evil grounded not in deep hate, but arising out of pure Machivallian calculation. Landa owes no loyalty to anyone but himself, and chooses his path of infamy purely because it serves his ends, and because he is good at it. Shudder.

For Best Supporting Actress, I'm rooting for Vera Farmiga. I first saw her in the short lived summer series "Roar". T.V. Fantasy had made a comeback in the 1990's: Hercules, Xena, and the Beastmaster all graced the small screen (for better or for worse). But the networks continued their Sci-Fi and Fantasy slump: every single show they came up was canceled in under a season. Syndication yes, networks no. Farmiga was 24 when the show aired, one year younger than me, and oh yeah, she made an impression. And of course this was also Heath Ledger's first show, but who cares about that? They made 13 episodes, only aired 8 that summer, and it was gone.

Her next series was UC: Undercover, with lead Oded Fehr who was riding high after his turn in "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns". It got canceled in under a year: only 12 episodes this time.

Her next series was Touching Evil. Farmiga always had a certain kind of strange about her, and finally they paired her with someone who matched that strange: Jeffrey Donovan. Those who've seen him in the more successful Burn Notice know what I mean. There's something not quite right about that guy. Anyway, the run this time: 12 epsiodes.

Three series I enjoyed (although I've never gone back to see if Roar was as fun as I remembered,) and three series down.

But she kept plugging away. That was the last series she was in, moving full time to movies. Starting in supporting roles, then working her way up to the leads. And finally, the big time: a major role opposite leading heartthrob George Clooney. An Oscar nomination to boot!

Now I don't think she'll win. Mo'Nique has the important movie vote locked. But I think it's just great that someone I never expected to make the big time worked hard, climbed the ladder, and now is getting a shot at the premier award in their craft.

Now as for Waltz: he's running at better than 97% chance to win right now at the bookies. I'd get a speech ready if I was him. Pick a language.

Lost

The final season is upon us, and Lost has firmly put its stamp on TV sci-fi history. Babylon 5 was really the first to lay out a story plan that would take years to complete. This allowed for unparalleled development of the universe, and many quirky experiments. One of the delights of the series was a wonderful pair of interlinked time travel episodes (one from season 1 and one from season 3) that showed a story from the perspective of two seasons.

My how the world has changed!

Only ten years later, and we are led to Lost, whose complexities, subtle challenges, and willingness to draw from past seasons is simply without peer, and worlds beyond the ambition of Babylon 5. Building on the shoulders of giants, Lost has created an intricate clockwork of past future, and sideways events that hold a fascinating mystery. And this season just keeps getting better. The last episode linked Jack's search for his father from Season 1 to his alternate universe self's search to become a good father, and beautifully advanced both story lines.

But let's face it, if you gave up on Lost in Season 1 for moving too slowly (and there were times I considered it) then now is too late to catch up. The plot lines are all firmly tied in place, slowly unraveling and dragging characters to their eventual dooms. So what there to say about Lost?

The final question is how will it end, and like most fans I have a theory. (Non-Lost viewers can probably stop reading now--what follows isn't going to make much sense.) Smokey Locke is wrong about the candidates, they aren't here to replace Jacob. The fact that Jacob is still around after being ashed by Smokey and manipulating events through Hurley means that the previous act of white stone throwing defiance was so much empty show. Jacob is still here, still running the show for the white side, and replacement is not on the table. Otherwise faithful Hurley could just don the mantle and be done with it.

Instead, I tend to a more "Mallorean" view of things. The world has been split (literally!) and the candidate's job is not to replace Jacob, but to bring a final end to the white/dark dichotomy. To contain within oneself two conflicting principles, and thereby replace the world on its track. This isn't good vs. evil, but truth versus lies, stasis versus fluidity. Smokey represents truth, reality, the status quo. Jacob is lies, the fantasy of a better world, or as he puts it "progress". Progress and change only exist if the current reality is made into a lie, which is why Jacob seems to have no moral qualms about telling everyone what they need to hear, rather than the truth. (Does Jack have what it takes? Or only if Jack believes that he has what it takes will he actually have what it takes?

In the end, Jacob and Smokey are actually working toward the same goal: they both want off the Island, but Jacob wants to accomplish that by finishing the job, moving to the endgame, bridging the chasm, while Smokey, unable to conceive of that union, that singularity, cannot make that leap towards a brighter reality.

The metaevent

I've been watching a fair amount of Olympic coverage this week, and as always on of my favorite sports is the metaevent: seeing just how ridiculous NBC's Olympic coverage can get.

The Olympics are so much more fun to watch then 16 years ago, thanks to the DVR. Don't want to see Mary Carillo play with the polar bears? Zip right through and on to something more interesting.

But finally NBC's coverage broke through my defenses. They showed the fourth and final heat of Women's Skeleton last night. Of course, before that they had a five minute interview with Evan Lysacek (their second in primetime) and a four minute puff piece on Noelle Pikus-Pace who was in fourth place going into the final heat.

The other American was in the 10th spot. Two Germans were in 5th and 3rd, a Canadian was in 2nd, and Amy Williams for Great Britain was in first. So naturally, NBC started their coverage with... 11th place?!?

What? As near as I can understand, her run was shown purely because she was right in front of the American and they didn't want to make it too obvious that they really, really, wanted to show the US athlete in 10th.

Now, I'm not one to ding NBC for showing US competitors that are way back: If I was in France, I'd want the TV locked on to a French athlete in 27th place. But I would also want them to actually show the medaling runs. And that's why I hated what happened next.

NBC skipped the runs for the 9th through 5th competitors, jumping straight to Noelle Pikus-Pace in 4th. Now the competitor in 5th was only 3 tenths of a second behind the Canadian in 2nd, so she was definitely a medal competitor. And they skipped her so: they could show 11th? A second interview with Lysacek? That was just wrong.

True to form, the Canadian made a few small errors at the top and the German whose run we didn't get to see took the bronze. Very exciting. Would have been more exciting if we had actually GOTTEN TO SEE IT, NBC!

Of course, I may be biased myself. The German's name: Anja Huber.

Luck and the Olympian

I've always loved watching the Olympics, Winter and Summer. For two weeks every few years, I get to see sports that otherwise I wouldn't even know existed.

It is also a sobering reminder of the importance of luck.

Olympians train constantly. To be the best in the world in anything, you have to push yourself as hard as you can. But even with daily training, the best coaches, the best equipment, and the best attitude, luck still plays a role.

My first refresher course on the power of luck came on Saturday, as Apolo Ohno and J.R. Celski appeared certain to take the 4th and 5th spots in the men's 1500m short track competition. The Koreans had taken the first, second, and third places, and looked destined for a medal sweep.

Then the unthinkable--a poorly executed pass tripped up two of the Koreans and took them out of the race. In the blink of an eye Ohno and Celski took silver and bronze, an amazing reversal of events.

Then came the men's 10km sprint biathlon, the wonderful event combining cross country skiing with target shooting. The competition started as usual, with the competitors let onto the track spaced out at intervals of 30 seconds. But then, a few minutes in to the race, it started to snow. And it wasn't light and fluffy either, but wet and deadly to the later competitors. You could train all you want, but if you weren't one of the first ten competitors, you weren't going to win a medal.

Of course, without all the preparation, without the work and the dedication, you never get a shot at the Olympics in the first place. Luck isn't about bemoaning what happens to you, it is about being ready to take whatever life throws at you. As my favorite fictional designer once said, "Luck favors the prepared, darling."

Super Bowl XLIV!

Once again, the game has upended my expectations and proved more exciting than the commercials!

Still there were a few winners. The baby Etrader commercials continue to impress while GoDaddy continues to underwhelm. But for me the winner was Google's ad.

The best ads are short films, entire stories mapped into 52 seconds. And in that respect, Google has created a new art form: the short story told entirely through Google searches. The epistolary novel form tells a story entirely through letters, but that's the closest I've seen to this form.

Like many people, Google searches have become an indispensable part of my life, pointing the way to resources for work and play, telling me where to go and surprising me with the amount of information that is out in the world. Since they rule the search market, they rarely advertise, and so it was nice to see them land such a nice ad on their first shot at the biggest show in town.

Walking in a winter wonderland

This week I was on a work trip to the Washington, D.C. area, and is my usual M.O., I decided to spend an extra day to do some sightseeing. Washington is unique in the variety of museums clustered close together. New York and London both have larger museums, and Paris has an unmatched collection of art, but only in D.C. can you walk half a mile and move from the National Archives and the founding documents of the country to the Hope Diamond, a forensic investigation of bones found in Fort James, and the C-3PO suit from Return of the Jedi. Nowhere else in the world is such a variety of stuff just packed together for public view, and it seems every time they renovate one of these places, things just keep getting better.

This time around, I most enjoyed reading some of the letters to the government that are in the National Archives. A little girl pleading with President Truman not to give Elvis a standard infantryman haircut, the northern Michigan town that wrote their letter on a sheet of copper, and the man who wished to assure the FCC that he was, in fact, not brought to the point of panic by Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast.

I also love looking at the edit marks on an early typeset draft of the Articles of Confederation. The editor had written "and Providence Plantations" next to Rhode Island, it looks like everyone forgets that part of the name. In one part line numbers had been added every five lines.

This trip to D.C. was also unique for me in another way. This was the first time I was here when it snowed. And this wasn't the kind of namby-pamby will it stick or won't it kind of snow. This was the roll around in it, have a snowball fight and there will still be an unbroken blanket of white streching over everything kind of snow. So I didn't visit Lincoln this time around, but the views from top floors of the museums were amazing.

A tale of a prophet

Ever since the Road Warrior, I have enjoyed a good apocalyptic film. This year has seen a resurgence, first with Terminator: Salvation, then the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", and now with Denzel Washington and "The Book of Eli".

I enjoyed this film immensely. The movie is full of tiny moments, starting from the very first scene that do not make sense in a particular way. At first this rubbed me the wrong way, as I thought it was simply another example of substituting movie style for practicality. But the movie's wonderful twist ending redeemed all these small moments. And unlike films like the Sixth Sense which felt the need for a montage to relive all the out of place moments, The Book of Eli confidently keeps moving forward after the reveal, letting the viewer sort through memory and pick out those off moments that now make sense.

Even before the ending, however, this movie has a lot going for it. The bright palette (explained through use of a weapon that caused the apocalypse by altering the atmosphere) and gritty surroundings give the film a look half Road Warrior and half Western. It's an environment that encourages compromise. Who wouldn't follow the direction of the man who provides the only water in hundreds of miles? Even if he is a dictator who rules with an iron hand and treats the world as his inferior.

Our hero, that's who. Denzel Washington has always been good at projecting the calm in the storm, and this role as a wandering prophet was tailor made for him. But he is an old school prophet--bringing unyielding death and destruction to those who would thwart the path God has laid out for him.

The movie walks the fine line between faith and evidence, and raises wonderful questions. In the events of the film, we have only the word of Eli himself that he has been chosen by God. Is his survival evidence that he is in fact divinely protected? Or just another coincidence in a world turned intolerably cruel? Were the survivors of the apocalypse right to turn against religion as the cause of the war that tore their world apart? Or is it the only thing that can save the survivors? Images and events can lend credence to arguments in either direction. It is hard not to feel the positive aspect of faith as a girl prays before eating for the first time, but then the plan of the dictator to use religion to control an empire emphasizes the terrible things that have been done by people to other people in the name of faith and religion.

The Book of Eli, a tale of a prophet in a future that hopefully will never be.
4 out of 5 stars

Elementary

One Christmas long ago my brother and I received a pair of novels. His was a collection of Edgar Allen Poe, and mine was a collection of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories of Sherlock Holmes. I fell in love with the character, and today consider this fictional hero a wonderful introduction to the work of a scientist. He was methodical, observant, and careful to always put observation before theory. Moreover, he was endlessly curious, taking cases because of their difficulty, not because they were easy.

These sides of the fictional detective have been captured in movies galore. But they usually failed to capture some of Holmes other qualities--his martial skills as a fencer and boxer, his slovenly ways, and his maniacal focus on a case.

So you can imagine my delight when I heard that Guy Ritchie (of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch fame) was directing a Sherlock Holmes movie. Ritchie has built a career out of constructing intricate action films with thugs in the leading role. Men for whom violence was not an abstraction, but an integral part of their world. That is how the Holmes stories felt to me. Some (like "The Hound of the Baskervilles") took place in rarefied settings, but most of the short stories took place in the grimy streets of the London underground. Holmes dove headfirst into these settings, disguising himself until he became one with the criminal element.

For me, the movie did not disappoint. The classic Watson Holmes banter was there, and the offhand deductive showpieces, but also a strong sense of Holmes as character actually driven to solve a case, who experiments with drugs and insects, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of London and its environs.

I have noted critics expressed surprise at Holmes in an action movie, but seem to forget that Holmes was the character who fought Moriarty atop a waterfall to the death. Holmes was not an armchair detective, but someone who put all his energy and action into a case. This is a fresh, fun take on Holmes that is rife with clues for the observant, a solvable mystery, and yes, action packed sequences that give new life to industrial era London. Grime included.

Sherlock Holmes
4 1/2 out of 5 stars