Remains of the Day

Headlines

On CNN.com, I saw these three headlines listed one after another under "Top News":
Director Billy Wilder dead at 95 | Filmography
Country singer Lyle Lovett trampled by bull
Giant octopus caught off New Zealand

Whoa.

Billy Wilder was great--one of the directors who helped to make movies a populist art.

The Lyle Lovett headline leads one to believe, for just a second, that perhaps Lyle was bull-riding. The words "country singer" and "bull" equal cowboy hat and man being tossed violently about on the back of a bull with one hand on the saddle, one in the air as if waving hello.

I've heard of giant squid, but never giant octopus.

LOTR DVD, Two Towers preview

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring will come out on DVD on Aug 6 (you can order it from Amazon starting April 12). That will be a 2 disc set. Then, later in the year, a special extended edition of the film will be released in a 4 disc set with extra footage in the film.

Of course, no fan would buy just the 2 disc set, but it's tough to wait an extra few months for the extended edition. Why aren't they coming out at the same time? The official explanation is that additional time is required to prepare the special extended edition. That sounds reasonable, at least more reasonable than the explanation for special edition DVDs for movies that have been out for years and are released more than a year after the original DVD comes out.

The other big news is that a special three minute preview of The Two Towers will be attached to prints of The Fellowship of the Ring starting this Friday. I'd love to see the preview, but again there are tradeoffs--you have to spare 3 hours of your time, or you could, I suppose, pay to see the movie and just walk in at the end.

There's no way around it, they're going to get their money from me somehow.

With great power comes...

New Spiderman trailer posted today.

Looks like fun, as does Episode II. But is it just me or do the special effects in Episodes I and II look so obviously fake as to lose some of the magic of the old school, physically produced special effects? Some of those landscapes and sets in the new Star Wars films just look like cartoons to me. The surfaces don't look solid or real. Sure, it saves George Lucas time and money to not have to build models and sets for all the cities. There was a raw, realistic look in Episodes IV-VI which lent them a sense of scale.

Internal model of gravity

Maybe we are born with an internal model of gravity? How could that be?

Speed reading

One thing everyone should learn is how to speed read. I have to because of the number of books, newspapers, and magazines I have to keep up with. And time is money.

Take a tutorial to learn the basic techniques. Or take a test to see just how fast and good a reader you are, to determine if you can benefit from speed reading.

The principles are simple: scan blocks of words at a time, keep your eyes moving forward. Your mind can absorb information faster than you can read it, and you don't need to read each individual word to comprehend the meaning. Most words don't have meaning in isolation anyway--blocks of words convey thought. We read slowly because we're taught at an early age to read out loud, and later in life we continue to read "out loud" in our mind out of habit. That slows us down because reading out loud requires you to fixate on each individual word.

It takes time to learn. It helps to use some simple training techniques. The basic principles once again:

1. Scan blocks of words--don't read word by word.
2. Don't linger on any words. Keep your eyes moving forward on the page, and don't let them wander.
3. Don't go backwards to scan things you missed (or at least reduce the number of times you do so)

What's even better is that speed reading tends to improve comprehension which may not be intuitive but has proven true in my own experience.

There's enough info on speed reading online that you needn't take a course or pay to learn to speed read. But if you have to, you can always download a trial copy of software like RocketReader to give yourself a kickstart.

Generally, I read at b/t 500 and 600 words a minute, though I could hit 1000 when I was younger. I remember using this machine that would flash a bright horizontal light on a page and move it down at a constant pace which could be adjusted. Your goal was to keep up with the line while reading. I think all this reading off of computer screens has slowed me down (on average people read 25% slower off of computer screens than off of paper).

One thing which helps readers is to keep horizontal blocks of text reasonably short, which is why I insert so many line breaks in my blogs.

One thing which I've also found is that it's difficult to spead read certain writers, whose sentences tend to meander, or who use non-conventional sentence structures. And foreign texts are hard to speed read, mostly because they contain so many words which aren't in my limited vocabulary.

So if you're looking for a self-improvement goal for this coming year, forget yoga, or losing five pounds, or quitting smoking, or all that stuff you pledge every year and have to start over the next. Set a goal to triple your reading rate--it's like biking, once you learn, you never forget. It will benefit you for life.

Today I'm taking a trip

Today I'm taking a trip down memory lane. It's a mix of the food poisoning I feel coming on, which evokes memories of getting food poisoned from bad hamburger at IHOP as a child, and an encounter with a movie from my youth.

I saw E.T. at the incomparable Cinerama on Saturday night. My mother took me to see E.T. in 1982. I remember the event fondly because it was one of those movies she would not have wanted to see on her own, but she had probably heard the big buzz and known that parents were taking their kids to see it, and so she took me. She made lots of sacrifices like that.

To see the movie again was to be transported back to 1982, when Men At Work was the Grammy's Best New Artist, and Olivia Newton John won best music video for Physical and Toto won record of the year for Rosanna. It was probably around the time I first began getting into music, ordering cassette tapes from the BMG music club, trading cassettes with friends and spending hours making mix tapes. Some other songs I recall:

Eye of the Tiger by Survivor
I used to listen to this while jumping rope.

Hard to Say I'm Sorry by Chicago
Chicago was the king of the type of love ballads that all teens listened to when falling into puppy love, pining over unrequited love, or mourning in melodramatic fashion over lost love.

Ebony and Ivory by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
We had to sing this in chorus class. Over and over and over. I remember that in those days teachers didn't use copiers. They used this weird type of primitive copying machine (whose name eludes me--can someone please tell me what those were
called?!?) which printed in this purplish ink that would bleed all over the page. And the teacher would pass out song lyrics duplicated in this fashion to all of us, the serif fonts struggling to maintain their form on these soggy pages, and we'd follow along mumbling as our chorus teacher banged on the piano and sang loud and proud.

Don't You Want Me by the Human League
My friend Alan was this crazy firestorm of a kid with the strangest interests. He loved karate, his hamsters, Atari, and the strangest music. This was one of the songs he used to play on his tape player over and over. I don't want to remember this song, but it has been hard-wired into the 1982 memory banks in my brain.

Other movies I saw that year and rememberd:

Chariots of Fire
I saw it with my dad, and that Vangelis theme still runs through my head. I barely remember the movie but I do remember the scene where some guy falls down in a race then gets back up and in a surge of adrenaline catches and passes all the other runners.

Annie
My sisters liked to sing songs from that movie. I think Karen had an Annie haircut for a while. That didn't last.

Firefox
My cousin Chuck and I loved the lines at the end...
"Rear missiles. Rear missiles! Damn it!
Think Russian
Rear missiles!"
Firefox cold hit Mach 6, I think. We still don't have any planes that fly that fast, do we?

First Blood
I must have seen this at Derek's house a few years later. My early initiation into movies was from rented cassettes which I watched at Derek's house. I'm just no recovering from that overdose of John Hughes and ninja films. Stuff like Remo Williams, Some Kind of Wonderful. Those probably represented the pinnacle. My childhood education in film came courtesy of the local video rental store.

Other memories evoked by the film: Riding on BMX dirt bikes. The Speak and Spell toy. Lunchboxes and thermoses (not in the film, but I remember a classmate who had the E.T. lunchbox). What ever happened to thermoses anyway? Do people still use them? Spaghetti-O's in a thermos was the world's greatest lunch, its warmth miraculously preserved over the course of morning classes. Halloween masks (life was easier as a child, when a plastic mask held on by a cheap vermicelli-thin rubber strap and a plastic cape constituted a pretty damn good Halloween costume). Underoos--I had the Incredible Hulk Underoos, and they were sweet. Star Wars figures. If only I had kept mine in great shape, I might be rich now. I had most of the ones that Eliot had in the film, and I had the Millenium Falcon and the Creature Cantina playset.

If you were do to an archaelogical dig into my past, my toys would be the centerpiece. You wouldn't have any idea what sort of attachment or relationship I had with the toys, but they'd be my Rosebud.

E.T. is a great film. Ghandhi stole the Oscar for best picture that year, and with The Fellowship of the Ring losing this year, I daresay we will need another tearful Halle Berry-esque speech when a science fiction film finally wins for best picture. That's truly 74 years of prejudice against the science fiction and fantasy film category.

Other vague memories from that time:
Knight Rider (being remade into a movie, perhaps) and Dynasty.
The A-Team.
Showbiz Pizza.
Big hair.
Transformers, America's take on Japan's obsession with robots that could turn themselves into objects like trucks, airplanes, ships.
Kool Aid (one packet of flavoring, one cup of sugar, 8 glasses of water, and voila, neon thirst quenching. Much tastier than Tang or Ovaltine.
My brush with soaps in the form of Days of Our Lives ("like sands through the hourglass..."). Yuck, what was that all about? That was Chuck's fault.
Voltron and He-Man.

Baseball cards, like those from Topps which came with nasty pink sticks of unchewable bubble gum. Fleer and Donruss.
Big League Chew.
Robitussin, Mentholatum, Flinstone vitamins, and Pei Pa Kao.
Dragon's Lair. Ooh, speaking of video games...

Atari 2600. Remember some of the weird games they had for the Atari 2600? My cousins had all these pirated cartridges from
Taiwan, which didn't have labels, so we'd have to label them with ballpoint pens and masking tape to keep them straight, or we'd just have to stick cartridge after cartridge in the machine to find the one we wanted.
Breakout.
Pac-Man, which, with the crude graphics of the 2600, didn't have dots to gobble but wafers instead.
Decathlon, which my cousin Chuck and I would play for hours. To run, you had to swing the joystick back and forth rapidly, and we'd have to wrap our hands in gauze because the skin on our palms had ripped off from one too many 1500m runs.
Megamania, which would rain strange objects like hamburgers from the sky.
Air Sea Battle, the first game I ever owned. Hours of fun because it contained so many different games all in one.
Combat, the second game I ever owned, and like Air Sea Battle one of the great multi-player games ever invented.
Asteroids: a simple, 2-D classic.
Bowling, another 2-D classic. Taught me how to score in bowling.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: avoid the tsetse flies!! The first RPG I ever played.
Space Invaders: I love that image on the cartridge--it's my visual equivalent to
E.T. the video game, which, admittedly, sucked. Never could do much more than get E.T. to crane his neck over and over.
Joust, with its cool looking people riding what looked like giant ostriches.
Pole Position, the first high end driving game.
Journey Escape, one of the weirdest games I ever played, and thus the most memorable. You play a band member trying to avoid shady music agents while music by Journey plays in the background, and at the end you encounter this giant person who looks like the Kool Aid man.

I loved the packaging on those games, and I can still picture them vividly. The multi-hued solid blocks of color with the crude cartoon images on Activision's games like Pitfall. The simple monochromatic text labels on early Atari cartridges like Breakout.

That was back in the day when it was worth it to pay a quarter to play games in the arcade because the quality was so superior. We used to go to this arcade in Palatine that allowed you to pay one flat fee and play for 2 hours straight with unlimited play on every machine. Nowadays, games in arcades are expensive and you can get comparable quality on a home console.

You know what else is great? With the Internet, you just know that you can locate that nutcase out there who collects Underoos and has a website with pictures of all the ones he has, or the fanatic who must preserve photos of the Millenium Falcon model. It's not quite the same as getting inside my head, but if you've lasted this long, you know Eugene the 8 to 10 year old kid a lot better than you may have wanted to.

The Oscars

Much ado, as usual. Lots of suggestions about how to improve the show. Ones which make sense, to me:

1. Use approval voting. It makes sense for multi-candidate competitions and is used for political elections in many countries. In approval voting, you get to vote for one or all of the candidates, any that you like a lot. The one who gets the most votes wins.

2. Choose a better host. Half of Whoopi's jokes about how bad her jokes are. She recycled half her jokes from the last time they had her host. "C'mon, people, work with me," she'll say after she gets modest laughter for her previous joke. That's one of the oldest crutches in comedy. C'mon Whoopi, work harder. Steve Martin brought a nice cerebral, satiric humor to the show last year, and Billy Crystal's dance numbers were amusing. But Jim Carrey would be the best of all. Even Chris Rock. But it will never happen.

3. Combine the acting categories. Men and women all in one pool. No other category all night is divided between the sexes. Why is acting any different? Just so they can give out a few more trophies. Don't they need to shorten the show? Wouldn't it be more exciting to see 10 men and women compete for one acting award? That would be fun. It will never happen.

4. Let the presenters for each award write their own speeches. The Academy, worried about folks like Richard Gere freelancing and urging us all to free Tibet, write canned speeches for the presenters that sound limp and stilted as read off the teleprompters by the stars. C'mon, let's see more presentations like Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller's lead-in for best costume design. Or do actors always need someone to give them their lines? If they're the best actors in the world, why can't they memorize their lines and deliver them convincingly as opposed to reading them like robots? Do we really need to hear why editing or makeup or visual effects are important to a film? Seriously, it's ridiculous to explain why a director is important to a film.

I actually don't mind the length. Really, if everyone minded the length so much it wouldn't attract a billion viewers. The show isn't in that bad a shape--for what it is, which is a big party for a small, elite, priveleged cadre of our society, it is can't miss TV for a huge portion of the world's population year after year. We all love to see what those damn good-looking, rich, crazy people are wearing, what they'll do when they win, what they'll do when they lose. Everyone's patting each other's backs, the rest of us in the world can sit like jealous flies on the wall and wish we were attending the post-parties. I'm reminded of watching the homecoming queen selections during high school.

My other notes on the evening:

What's with J.Lo's big hair? She has a split personality. In music she's kinda trashy, hanging out with the hip hop dudes, wearing green dresses that show the cleavage. In movies she's sedate, wears conservative gowns, and now she has big hair. Would her hip hop buds let her get away with that? Smart move for her movie career (look what happened to Mariah Carey), but still seems
disingenuous.

I was cringing the whole way through Halle Berry's speech. It was great to see some black actors and actresses honored during the evening, but I'm not sure the situation is much different than it was before. Halle Berry's part in that movie was specifically written for a black woman, and it was still a fairly small indie film. Her roles in big films--Swordfish, for example--haven't exactly been meaty. We'll see if any real progress is being made in the years to come.

Denzel's speech, on the other hand, was smooth. As is Denzel. Classy, not overly emotional. Act like you've been there, and in his case, he had. Glad to see him win--he was great in Training Day. The way he speaks--wouldn't you love to have Denzel, Harvey Keitel, and Morgan Freeman chatting away as your poker partners? Distinctive American dialects all around.

Julia gets away with a lot. She's getting a bit carried away with her status in Hollywood. First of all, did she call Bill Conti "Tom Conti"? She disrespected him last year by calling him "stick man" and now she gets his name wrong? Bill Conti is an Oscar winner himself, Julia. Give the man some respect.

And what's with Julia's obvious bias for Denzel? Not that he didn't deserve it, but the other nominees must have thought Julia would said "Oh shit!" if one of them had won instead.

Watching who gets to present specific awards is a cue as to the pecking order in Hollywood. Tom Cruise getting to give the opening speech is acknowledgment that he is prince. Kevin Spacey was given the honor of talking about the mourning over Sept. 11 and the ones who had passed as he's the duke of Hollywood, the one who respects its history (yes, he loved Jack Lemmon) and has a formal training in the craft of acting. Julia presents best actor to her friend Denzel--that's the queen honoring a friend witha knighthood. Mel Gibson presents best director. He's the maverick turned lovable veteran. The goofy uncle of the family. And Tom Hanks gets to present best picture--he's king. There you have it--the reigning ruling class of Tinseltown.

Tom Cruise actually was the dark prince this time around. His speech was a bit corny, but his delivery was almost malevolent. With his 4 day beard and halting delivery, it was all a bit melodramatic.

I thought Jennifer Connelly was going to curtsy at the end of her speech. She has a frail persona. Her speech was polite, or as a writer described her in Salon, "evocative of a shy fourth-grader doing an oral presentation on the solar system."

I enjoy the segments that show clips from lots of movies, or clips from soundtracks--that's the magic of movies that we care about.

No crazy outfits this year. Conservative pink or black dresses on all the women, the men in their same old boring tuxes with black bowties or the solid black silk tie. Where's Bjork when you need her?

Okay, someone has to know the answer, why do British singers sound American when they sing? There must be an actual phonetic principle at work. I intuitively understand why, but I want the technical explanation.

Amelie didn't win best foreign pic, so perhaps there is some hope for Academy voters after all. No Man's Land was a better film.

I love the Oscars. Someday I'm going to get mine on stage and I'm going to talk and talk, past the time when Bill Conti cues the music until they send Russell Crowe out to go Gladiator on me and drag me off the stage.

Beat

Been one tired pup recently. Work is intense. Chronic brain fatigue.

I'm playing a fool's game. Take time out in the morning to try and work out, or take time at the end of a long work day to read a little, or to hit the gym. It doesn't matter if the big block of time you're working around in the middle is the same size every day. It's a zero sum game.

Had my eyes checked. Occasionally, the vision in my right eye just goes for five to ten minutes at a time. First time it happened I nearly lost it. Then, every few months, it would happen again. I imagined what it would be like to go blind. The initial depression. Then the violent, angry explosions, perhaps a bout with alcoholism. The cinematic confrontation with someone, the best supporting actor or actress, who'd chastise me for feeling sorry for myself. The inevitable triumphant return after a period of training with the blind master. The exclamation point being a thwarted robbery, or a masterful piano recital, something like that.

Doc's diagnosis? Ocular migraines. Perhaps that explains the splitting headaches I've been having recently. Maybe it's this godforsaken weather.

Snow today. It's March. In Seattle.

Cold.

Ahn Trio

Audrey took me to see the Ahn Trio as a birthday present (the birthday that keeps on giving late into the year). I'd never heard of them before. Turns out I had seen them recently and didn't realize it. They are currently on the homepage of the Gap.

Jennifer Garner from Alias is also featured on the Gap website. I think that's her boyfriend? Husband?

It's celebrity central at the Gap. Seeing celebs model Gap clothing has the same effect on me as seeing Tiger Woods touting Buick minivans or Britney Spears singing the praises of Pepsi Cola. Namely, no effect whatsoever.

It's remarkable that three siblings could get along well enough to collaborate so closely for so many years, especially since two of them are twins. The concert was lots of fun. Good to hear some new pieces, many of which are featured on their CD Ahn-Plugged. In particular, the tango Primavera Portena by Astor Piazzolla. Also good to see a younger crowd at the concert, listening to classical music. Say what you will about the use of glamor and glitz, younger musicians, and/or sex appeal to sell more country and classical music CDs. It's good business.

That Angella Ahn is pretty cute.

If you really have to know, I don't think HP should merge with Compaq. Mergers rarely make sense, rarely work out well. What does this one do for either side? I have no idea.

Dave

David Letterman is a cool dude. Here are some excerpts from
his speech on Monday night during his show, when he announced
that he would stay at CBS:

"You folks came on a good night -- I'm still here."

"I woke up this morning and had to check (the) New York Times to see where I was working today."

"This is a very interesting time right in the middle of a very tricky contract negotiation. CBS, all of a sudden they can't kiss up to me enough -- it's crazy. I finally got a get-well card for my bypass surgery -- two years ago -- crazy."

"I figured out what I'm going to do. I'm going to get a face lift, then I'm going to Fox News. That is exactly what I am going to do."

"Can you believe there are two networks fighting over this crap -- crazy, ain't it?"

"I recognize that what I am going to talk about is ridiculous when you consider what happened six months ago, when New York and Washington, D.C., were attacked. Compared to that, this is all trivial, pointless and downright silly."

"Paul (Shaffer, the show's musical director) and I came over in 1993. We'd been fired from NBC. CBS was nothing. From 11:30 on, the rest of the night there was nothing but `Gunsmoke' all night long. And we were able to build something."

"A couple of months ago -- my contract is going to be finished in August -- I get a call from the boys. They say we have to negotiate. I say fine, negotiate. There's been good times, and we've had fistfights. I'm not speaking figuratively, I'm speaking literally -- I actually punched some executives."

"We get a call from another network, and, apparently, the guy had been drinking. He says come on over, and I'm thinking he is nuts. Turns out it's ABC, and they are serious. The more I talked, the more I realize they are serious, and they have all the damn money in the world. I get a call from Regis saying he would be available for sex. Isn't that odd? And then it got crazier and crazier."

"I just need to say a word about Ted Koppel. He has been on this show three or four times, and to me he has always been a gentleman, a great guest and very funny, really funny. Back in '79 he began on `Nightline,' started out doing nightly reports on American hostages in '79. The point is, his contributions to American culture speak for themselves. He is one of a very small group that represents the highest echelon of broadcast achievement. Ted Koppel at very least deserves the right to determine his own professional future. Absolutely no less than that."

"So what I have decided to do -- and this has not been a very easy decision for me -- I have decided to stay here at CBS. (Applause) The morons running this network think there won't be fistfights. By God, there will be fistfights, and that's too bad. I would like to finish my career -- a week from Tuesday -- at CBS."

"I just want to say a word about the folks at ABC. I would rather ride naked on the subway than go through what these people had to go through. To me they were gracious and generous and very, very patient. Whatever you decide to do at 11:30, I wish you the very best. And my personal hope is that it will continue to be occupied by Ted Koppel and `Nightline' for as long as that guy would like to have that job -- that is just the way it ought to be."

Jon Stewart was considered as a potential replacement for Dave had he moved to ABC. Jon Stewart has good things in his future. He's a funny dude.

P.S.: David Letterman signed a 5 year renewal with CBS. He stands to make $150 million over the life of the deal. He's a cool dude. But don't feel sorry for him.

Smooth

I just bought some new bedsheets, some 600 thread count stuff, and damn it's smooth. No more pooh-poohing thread counts. More is better.

Annual must-read

Warren Buffett just published Berkshire Hathaway's annual letter to shareholders, probably the most read such letter in all the world. It's probably the only annual report that people read even though they don't own a single share of the company (by the way, a single share of Berkshire Hathaway A Shares (BRKa) costs $71,600. I don't think it's ever split.

It's a great read. How many CEOs admit their mistakes, or accept blame for poor performance? It's tough to blame Buffett for the poor year that Hathaway had--after all, a bulk of their losses resulted from insurance claims for Sept. 11.

Some interesting comments from Buffett on the stock market:
"We made few changes in our portfolio during 2001. As a group, our larger holdings have performed poorly in the last few years, some because of disappointing operating results. Charlie and I still like the basic businesses of all the companies we own. But we do not believe Berkshire's equity holdings as a group are undervalued.

Our restrained enthusiasm for these securities is matched by decidedly lukewarm feelings about the prospects for stocks in general over the next decade or so. I expressed my views about equity returns in a speech I gave at an Allen and Company meeting in July (which was a follow-up to a similar presentation I had made two years earlier) and an edited version of my comments appeared in a December 10th Fortune article. I'm enclosing a copy of that article. You can also view the Fortune version of my 1999 talk at our website www.berkshirehathaway.com.

Charlie and I believe that American business will do fine over time but think that today's equity prices presage only moderate returns for investors. The market outperformed business for a very long period, and that phenomenon had to end. A market that no more than parallels business progress, however, is likely to leave many investors disappointed, particularly those relatively new to the game.

Here's one for those who enjoy an odd coincidence: The Great Bubble ended on March 10, 2000 (though we didn't realize that fact until some months later). On that day, the NASDAQ (recently 1,731) hit its all-time high of 5,132. That same day, Berkshire shares traded at $40,800, their lowest price since mid-1997."

Just do it, please

I wanted to check out the new Air Jordans. Problem? Niketown is probably the slowest, most unreliable online store I've ever shopped at. I don't think I've gotten a single page to load completely yet. If you somehow manage to buy something from this site, please let me know. It reminds me of Sony's online store in that they're incredibly image heavy yet no one page every loads every image successfully. Both companies have great brand names and a lock on production of their products. It's a shame they can't figure out how to launch a halfway decent online store.

Miscellany

Rode 39 miles today. It was cold, windy. Riding into the wind sucks. Two guys blew past me down by the lake. The trailing guy said, "Nice paint job."

Got up at 7 a.m. this morning, with a raging headache. I still have a headache. For about two minutes, I felt good though. I was turning the pedals at 95rpm, going about 20, 21 mph, a light breeze at my back.

Most the day, I alternated between lying on my sofa watching the most awesome Cowboy Bebop and reading the "perfect for when you have a raging headache" fiction of Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, perhaps his most accomplished novel).

During one delusional moment, when I passed out cold, I dreamt of the first computer we had in our family, the amazingly cool Osborne 1. It had a monitor the size of a postcard, a
monochrome monitor with green text. I used to write my papers on it, using Wordstar. To this day, I remember that ^K-S was the
command for save. ^K-P was print. Or was it ^Q-S and ^Q-P? Maybe I don't remember after all. We had this daisywheel printer that made my papers looked hand-typed, far more aesthetically pleasing than the crappy dot-matrix printer output of my classmates. Of course, the Osborne didn't allow me to play the educational computer game Oregon Trail. For that you had to be fortunate enough to get a pass to the computer lab from your teacher.

Good news: Cubs first round pick from last year, pitcher Mark Prior of USC, is going to be very good. In a few years, the Cubs are going to very good. David Kelton, Luis Montanez, Bobby Hill, and Hee Seop Choi in the infield. Corey Patteron, Sammy Sosa, and either Roosevelt Brown or Nic Jackson in the outfield. Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Juan Cruz, Ben Christensen, and maybe Carlos Zambrano in the rotation. Kyle Farnsworth and Scott Chiasson in the bullpen. Who knows who behind the plate--there are very few good catchers.

Bad news: Cubs have called up Jeff Shaw to ask him to replace an injured Tom Gordon. Jeff Shaw is overrated.

I love music by Philip Glass. When I'm working at the computer, I fire up this very cool interface created by IBM, the Glass Engine, and pick random clips from his long discography.

Remember Wil Wheaton from Stand by Me? Funny weblog.

William Shatner was all the buzz on weblogs this week because, well, he created his own weblog. Read this excerpt by Captain Kirk about his recent visit to Seattle for, what else, a Trek convention:
"I had a wonderful experience in Seattle a week ago. Lisabeth and I traveled there for a convention, and took the opportunity
before I went on-stage to tour around a bit. We ended up in Pike’s Marketplace. (Forgive me if I don’t get the name exactly right. I was calling it “Pike’s Peak” for a while until several people kindly corrected me. I’m still not sure I’ve got it right.)

The marketplace was alive with color and activity, and we took full advantage of it. We had a wonderfully delicious halibut sandwich at one of the outdoor stands that specialize in the local fresh fish. We bought Washington apples from an apple vendor, and beautiful scarves from a couple of lovely ladies. We even bought a rock that said “Live Long and Prosper” on it as a gift for Leonard, who was joining us at the convention. The rock vendors had a good laugh and told us the purchase would become a “market story” after we left. All in all it was a grand time, and we left with our bags full of goodies.

We got to the convention and I had the bright idea to take the purchases up on the stage with me. Leonard couldn’t figure out what I was doing with all those bags, but I began taking out items one by one and sharing them with him. We ate apples on stage and then, saving the moment for last, I handed him his gift. The audience laughed as hard as he did. We went on to do one of the most enjoyable, funniest hours together on-stage that I can remember.

The incident reminded me of the role humor plays in my life. Although my earlier career involved many serious roles, I’ve always been aware of how important humor is to me. I kind of see it like this: the basis of humor in life is the joke that God is playing on us. What I mean is, we are all born with an awareness of death and each day brings us closer to it. That’s the joke that all humanity deals with. So we should go along with that irony and perplexing indecipherable humor. Then you become part of that grand laugh we call life.

One of my clearest examples of this comes from the painful experience of my father’s death. I had gone to the undertaker’s to choose a coffin for his body; while I was looking all of them over, I could distinctly hear my very frugal father’s voice telling me he didn’t need a fancy coffin since he was already dead. Following this train of thought, I chose a very plain, simple wooden coffin I knew he would approve of as an extremely practical choice.

I returned to my parents’ house where I met up with my sister, Joy. I told her I had chosen the cheapest coffin. She turned to me and asked, “Why? Is it used?”

Need I say more?"

I want to make fun of him (it's Pike's Place Market, William) but that would be like mocking a Trekkie. Easy prey, and just plain mean. I admire the man for maintaining the same haircut that he had when he was T.J. Hooker.

Where did I find most of the humorous and wonderful links in this blog entry? From the wonderful blog Memepool.

Kylie!

The common cold

The first sign that you've caught a cold is a slight tickling in the throat. I think I've caught a cold.

In a strange case of convergence (or are cases of convergence by definition normal?) my copy of The New Yorker arrived today with an article about the mysterious common cold. Very interesting stuff.

Among the facts I'm sure to memorize and use at the next cocktail party I attend: "An American observational study of an audience later found, in ordinary circumstances, one in three adults picks his nose every hour."

What have doctors learned about curing the common cold?

Take ibuprofen and an older antihistamine. The ibuprofen works on the cough, the antihistamine reduces stuffy and runny noses.

Zinc? Just tastes bad. Antibiotics? Useless. Vitamin C? Doesn't do much, though high doses may have a minor effect, but an antihistamine is better. Echinacea? No conclusive testing. Drinking lots of fluids? No proven effect.

Colds are transmitted through touch, primarily through the hands. So washing your hands often helps, but when cold viruses are on every surface, even doctors admit it's pretty hopeless. Yet even this is not conclusive. Some studies have shown that perhaps some other mechanism is responsible.

Oddly, the cold has nothing to do with temperature. Being physically cold does not increase your chances of catching a cold. This has been studied again and again. Yet colds are seasonal. No matter what part of the world and what the temperature patterns are, cold season tends to run from early fall through mid spring, with spikes at the beginning and end.

All I know is this. I'm going to be miserable for the next week or so.

Not a girl, not yet an American?

Oops. The Seattle Times is apologizing to readers after having published a headling that read "American outshines Kwan, Slutskaya in skating surprise". No need to explain the types of angry letters the Times received, and the general outcry from the Asian American community. Michelle Kwan is an American. I am an American. That there is still any doubt about the issue is disturbing.

When I was young, my mom used to ask me which side I'd fight on if America went to war with China. I wasn't sure back then. But these days, especially upon reflection after Sept. 11, I can say unequivocally that I consider myself an American. The term Asian-American has always been a strange one to me. I prefer to just say American. Better to have the term American be a broad one, to reflect the unique melting pot that is our country's population, than to have that term reflect a narrow segment of our population (white Anglo-Saxons) and to come up with hyphenated terms to refer to all the other groups in this country.

I'm confident my generation will be one which comes to accept this as the conventional opinion. But articles like this remind me that my friends may be the wrong group to use as a proxy for the population at large. Occasionally I still hear a racist comment tossed my way, and in a way it's worse than the more frequent and vicious barbs heard on the playground in grade school. The difference is that people my age can't fall back on the excuse of childhood ignorance. They're just plain ignorant.

Thanks to Ken, who is in St. Louis, for pointing this article out to me. I'm the one who lives here in Seattle, but I never read the Times. Local newspapers are, for the most part, a waste of time. This story gives me little reason to believe otherwise.

This, of course, is an easy topic. Affirmative action is tougher, but plenty of misconceptions exist about that topic as well. One of these days I want to discuss it, particularly as my recent reading from Guns, Germs, and Steel has influenced my thought on why affirmative action is a good thing if defined properly.

T-Rex needs a diet

ArsT linked to this article about a study which shows that Tyrannosaurus Rex was likely a scavenger with a likely running speed of between 11mph and 25mph, with 25mph being the max sprinting speed. The T-Rex was put through a computer model that's been validated against lots of creatures in the animal kingdom today and is based on the ratio of muscle mass in the legs to overall body weight. As a cyclist, I can fully appreciate this theory. I can barely ride up a hill right now because my upper body is heavier than it is during riding season. Ever seen a pro cyclist? They're brutes downstairs, chickens upstairs.

I laugh to think that a future generation of children might grow up learning about the giant plodding T-Rex, unable to chase down your average teenager.

As noted in the article, if this is true, then the image of the T-Rex chasing down a jeep in Jurassic Park is pretty ludicrous. But it is not even close to being the most severe distortion of history set forth by movies. The entertaining book Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies provides a detailed analysis of the accuracy and inaccuracy of all sorts of Hollywood movies.

While we're on the subject of popular myths from my childhood, the idea that Shakespeare didn't even write his own plays is gaining momentum. A new documentary makes the case that Christopher Marlowe wrote the plays, and earlier this year I saw a play at the Seattle Rep called The Beard of Avon which proposed that the plays were a collaboration between Shakespeare and Edward de Vere, with de Vere being the primary author.

Bad then good customer service = customer loyalty?

There may be hope for humanity after all. I had called United Airlines back in November to try and get credit for 25K frequent flier miles I had intended to use on a flight to a wedding on 9/14. Well, then 9/11 happened, and my flight was canceled. I tried to call United a few times in October and the lines were eternally busy. So November rolls around, I finally get through, and United wants to charge me $75 to get those 25K miles back.

Like any reasonable customer, I had a conniption fit and chewed out a customer service rep and then her manager using every word in my vocabulary longer than four letters to express dismay, anger, intent to maim and pillage.

No use. Bye bye 25K miles.

Today I finally gave in and called them back. I needed the miles for a flight home for my sister's wedding, and it was cheaper to pay $75 than a couple hundred.

Well, lo and behold, a very friendly woman with a British accent answered. She inquired about my situation, even though I was resigned to my fate, then put me on hold for a while, and when she came back she said she'd waive the fee.

Of course, United Airlines is near bankruptcy so they're being forced to improve their customer service. Who knows, those miles I got back may not be usable in a year if United has gone under and been bought out by some other airlines. A company that tried to take a hard stance and fleece its customers in November shouldn't get credit for playing fair in March.

Still, I was feeling pretty good about United after that nice lady apologized and begged for my forgiveness (it might also have to do with the accent--female British accents are so sexy). Studies have shown that if you provide a bad customer experience initially but then rectify it with good customer service, that customer tends to be even more loyal than a customer who got a good customer experience from the start and never had to deal with customer service. Delivery was late? We're sorry, let us waive the delivery charge. Product didn't work out of the box? We'll send you a replacement and a $25 gift certificate. Scary to think that a company that engineers the best possible customer experience up front might end up with lower customer loyalty.

Some companies have taken these studies as a sign that they should purposefully engineer some mishaps into their business process and then trip over themselves to make things right. In doing so, they'd earn extreme customer loyalty.

Maybe there isn't any hope for humanity.

New comment system for my blog

Just installed a new commenting system by YACCS.

I never get any comments on my weblog, it's probably futile to expect any, but I've installed it just the same, just for the hell of it.

My new website mailing list

I just created a new mailing list for my weblog and my website. Subscribe and you'll receive an e-mail each time I publish a new weblog entry. I'll also post to the mailing list anytime I make a significant update or addition to the website.

Many people mention that they are somewhat sheepish to admit they occasionally visit my website. So I've made the subscriber list private. No one will know you're a subscriber.

When I first started visiting other people's websites I had the same feeling of being some type of voyeur. It felt like an illicit activity, or at least one that felt loserly, similar to being one of those chat room junkies in the early days of the Internet. But the fact is, my website is made public because it's intended for public consumption, and it's done more good than bad for me in keeping in touch with lots of people I know but couldn't otherwise update in such a detailed way.

Yes, it's true that some of you (as I've been reminded of over and over again) find out more about day to day events in my life from my weblog than you do from speaking with me. But overall it's a net positive: without my website most of you just wouldn't know what's going on in my life because I'm really busy at work and don't have as much time as I once did to socialize or gab on the phone. Anyway, guys don't gab on the phone. I'm working on it. One of my goals this year is more work/personal life balance.

Until I get there, I enjoy hearing from people who visit my website. Drop me a line, or sign my guestbook, or give me a call. Whoever you are, I probably miss you.

Edge of chaos

Emergence is a fascinating idea I've recently discovered. It's not a new idea from what I've read. Emergence is the idea that complex and seemingly sophisticated objects and patterns can arise from simple interactions between simple and relatively dumb actors or units. It's closely related to theories around chaos and complexity. Like the theories around memes, emergence is an idea I'd like to explore through further reading.

This active essay on emergence is one of the more clever and fun pieces of interactive content on the web. Rather than presenting emergence in a long text, this essay uses a clever applet to demonstrate some of the basic principles of emergence.

An example of emergence? As noted in the book Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, the global and seemingly organized intelligence of ant colonies arises not from central control but the interaction of many dumb individual ants, operating autonomously. The path that an ant trail takes from a food source to home base is almost without exception the shortest distance between those two points, yet no single ant is holding a bullhorn or flying overhead to coordinate their movements. Other examples of emergence include the patterns of life and traffic that emerge in cities (most famously modeled by the incredible computer game SimCity) and even the sophisticated recommendations engines of Amazon.com.

More on emergence in the future--I want to study the idea because I'm curious about what it can teach me about optimizing organizational design--but one of the principles that jumps out at me immediately is the idea of the edge of chaos. It's the simple yet powerful idea that designed sloppiness or structured chaos is a positive thing. That a somewhat messy desk at work is the sign of a productive worker. That to improve something like an organization one must push it towards the frontier of chaos. Not over, but as close to the edge as possible. Why are command-and-control models of management not effective? Why do reward systems like stock option plans fail to incent the best behavior in employees, despite all the talk of making every employee an owner?

It's encouraging because I have a hard time keeping my room or even my desk at work perfectly neat, and I've realized that it might not be such a bad thing. If they were always perfectly neat, I wouldn't be nearly as productive as I am. This is probably an abuse of emergence, but recently at work my life has been chaotic and complex, and I'm hopeful that that's a good thing, not a bad thing. It feels right--I've always known that I'm heading the right direction in life when everything has felt a little out of control, a little too hectic.

Death to pop-ups

Pop-up windows on the web are driving me crazy. Every website has them now. Sang sent me a link to this great free software that allows you to easily disable pop-ups while surfing. It was just a matter of time before someone came up with something like this. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. Pop-ups are proof that the bell-curve of intelligence exists just as much in the world of advertising as it does in any other profession. If the technology existed, today we'd have commercials popping up while watching television and blocking our view of the screen. While flipping through a magazine and reading an article, suddenly a new page would appear containing an ad for vodka or apparel.

I'm running Pop-Up Stopper on my Windows 2000 machine with IE6 and it's working like a charm. Occasionally I visit sites where pop-ups are essential, for example when I do Windows Updates on software. In those cases, you can easily disable the Pop-Up Stopper by double clicking an icon in the Windows tray in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, where all the other Windows "lint" resides. To turn it back on, just double click again.

Sites that depend on pop-up windows to convey key messages or functionality to their users are going to have to consider alternatives. It's unfortunate when the rotten eggs corrupt a good thing, because pop-ups are useful in some cases. But as they say, it just takes one little kid peeing in the pool to send everyone out of the water.

Well, maybe they don't say that. You get the point.