Remains of the Day

Hiatus

In The Matrix, when Neo self-actualizes as the One, the world slows down around him. It's a popular "power" in video games these days, this bullet time effect.

My experience the last two weeks has been the opposite of bullet time. The world seems to have sped up all around me, and I'm still trying to catch up. I've been pulled back and forth from East coast to West coast, had a few big decisions drop into my lap, and been buried under some urgent, late-breaking deadlines. I'm just now starting to come to grips with some major life changes in the offing.

It's starting to take its toll. I locked my friends out of their apartment the other day when I locked the lock they told me not to lock. A few nights ago, I left a tie out to pack the next morning. It sat on that dresser all weekend. My shower had no hot water this morning, a cruel reality that set in slowly, as I stood there au naturel in the shower, my toe held under a stream of cold water like a war prisoner under interrogation. A nasty cold took hold of me somewhere in LA and is in the process of pummeling my immune system, and my body clock has just gone tilt.

All the recent chaos has accelerated the onset of a long-planned hiatus from writing here. I'm not sure how long it will last, but at least a month, one in which I'll be traveling anyway. I considered letting a few people guest blog here for a while, but only for a moment. Having a guest blogger seems as satisfying as going to one of your favorite French restaurants and finding out the chef has been replaced with the chef from the sushi restaurant next door. That's an alternative, not a substitute.

Maintaining a blog can be rewarding. I enjoy hearing from old friends or perfect strangers who stumble across my website while Googling something else, and keeping a rough sequential history of one's thoughts can prove useful (I recently used my weblog to recall when I'd purchased a printer, helping me to complete a warranty claim). When I first started writing here, it was mostly for an audience of far-flung family members, but over the years, the majority of my readers became a silent audience of mostly strangers, and that in turn caused me to shift my tone from that of a personal journal to one of sharing my preoccupations.

Tending to a blog can also be a massive distraction and time-suck (as more than one person has pointed out). I check my traffic stats about once a month, for the most part to make sure I don't go over my bandwidth allotment, but it's fairly clear that frequency of posts and frequency of visits are strongly correlated. The months my traffic takes a big leap forward are always the ones with the most posts. It makes sense. The only sites I visit daily are ones that offer new posts consistently. All others are rendered to my newsreader or neglected for weeks at a time.

The correlation between post frequency and traffic volume can come to feel like a burden, which is silly. But more than that, the last few months, even weeks, I've hit a rut. My mind has rebelled against the off-the-cuff nature of the blog writing, and many posts that I would've tossed up in the past without hesitation have been left in draft form, failing to pass the scrutiny of some phantom editor. Life has been busier, and so site updates have fallen further and further down the priority list.

More than one writer has discussed the conflict between blog writing and their other creative endeavors like fiction writing. Count me a believer, and not just because of inherent conflict in free time. As I have some other types of writing I want to spend time on the next several months, this is a good time to make the break. With a fair amount of travel in my immediate future, I may still use this site as a travelogue, so those of you who enjoy the occasional pic or travel story might wish to poke your head in every now and then (or take a peek at my Flickr photostream). I have no idea if I'll have decent Internet access where I'm headed, but I do tend to fall back on my weblog as a place to post my travel updates to friends and family, if only because it allows those who could care less about my whereabouts to discreetly self-select out.

Eventually, I'll return here. Brain-dumping here is too much of an outlet for a natural introvert like me to keep my written voice quiet for too long. Until then, thanks for reading. Cheers!

"The West Wing" and some other TV notes

[SPOILER WARNING: If you didn't watch last Sunday's ep of "The West Wing" and don't know who won the election, then don't read ahead]

Just caught up on the last episode of "The West Wing." I was surprised to read that the ending was changed after John Spencer's death. I'd always assumed Santos would win. If Spencer hadn't passed away, I would have been wrong.

I've never tried to rank my favorite TV shows of all time, but if I did, "The West Wing" would be in the top five, no doubt. In its first two seasons, it was the best show on television. Everything I wrote about the show in my review of the first season DVD boxset for Amazon.com still stands. Not many shows can break the half-hour-sitcom/one-hour-police-medical-legal-drama stranglehold and create a dozen or more distinct and memorable characters. The show even restored American faith in politicians, albeit fictional ones (do a Google search for "The West Wing" and the actual real-life West Wing won't appear until the third page of results). Though it lost its footing for a season or two after Sorkin left, it found a compelling new overarching story arc when it transitioned from focusing on the old administration to centering on the election. Old characters found new roles, and the show won me back. Not too many shows jump the shark and then claw their way back.

When NBC announced that they weren't going to pick up another season, it freed the show to wrap up some loose ends. One of those, of course, was Josh and Donna's seasons' long flirtation. It's a measure of how dear the characters of the show are to me that their hookup (at long last!) made me happier than any culmination of a long-thwarted romance in my TV history (David and Maddie, Fox and Dana, and others that now escape my mind). A tenet of TV writing says that you shouldn't allow a romance to bloom between two of your main television characters lest you pop the bubble of sexual tension keeping your show flying high. But that tactic itself has become so widespread and predictable as to be moldy.

It makes sense to end the show now, as the Bartlet administration wraps up its second term, and yet I'll be more than a bit sad when I hear the theme song (MP3) for the last time (the last episode airs May 14; I hope they put the West Wingers in their finest formal wear for one last swanky affair before season's end). When they air Leo's funeral next week, I'll be wearing black. When old familiar faces like Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) and Amy Gardner (Mary-Louise Parker) pop back in for a visit, I'll feel like I'm reuniting with old friends.

Once the screen goes dark on The West Wing for the last time, and the credit appear, I'll miss them, in part because it doesn't feel like people like that exist in the real Washington, D.C.

***

Everyone could sense Vito was headed for a fall. But holy Bada Bing, I never saw that coming. Truly a moment for the TV scrapbook.

***

I've only seen the first two episodes of Big Love. When the show was announced, the premise didn't really hook me, but HBO as a brand name gets the benefit of the doubt with their one hour dramas, so I let my DVR file it away for later review. After two eps, I'm not ready to make any sweeping judgments, but the acting is exceptional.

Tim Harford wrote recently in Slate about the economics behind polygamy, or more specifically in the case of Big Love, polygyny.

OS X and Win XP, live together in perfect harmony

Parallels is not free, but it's an even niftier way to add Windows to your Intel-based Mac than Boot Camp. You can run the two in parallel, as the name suggests, and XP bootup from OS X is a speedy 15 seconds. You can also run Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, OS/2, any versions of Windows back to 3.1, or even MS-DOS.

I'm eyeing the MacBook Pro like a shark circling a sinking cruise ship, wondering if I should eat the first passenger to float away from the ship or if I should wait a while for the ship to sink further and scatter some meatier fare.

***

If, like me, you bought an Epson Inkjet printer in the past several years, you might qualify for benefits from the settlement of this lawsuit. Epson was sued for indicating that ink cartridges were empty before they were really empty, thus driving up replacement cartridge sales (where the profit margins are much higher). I really love the prints from my Epson, but printer manufacturers are like beefy home run hitters or politicians. When they're accused of impropriety, people lean towards guilty until proven innocent.

The settlement offers $45 of credit from the Epson store, $20 by check and $25 of Epson store credit, or 25% off the Epson Store with a max discount of $100.

***

After the tilt-shift simulation craze in Photoshop, next I plan to participate in the HDR photography craze. It may mean lugging a tripod and giant ball head along with my camera to E. Europe, but it should be fun. The best HDR photos have a gorgeous, semi-artificial look.

Tidbits

Google Calendar launches.

Good essay by Chuck Klosterman on the emptiness of Barry Bonds breaking the Babe's HR record. At this point, however, it's not the sure thing it once was. Any minute, his body could just fail and and force him into retirement. Maybe the very substances that allowed him to make his late career run at the HR record will break him down just short of those milestones, a modern day Greek tragedy. Malcolm Gladwell suggests that perhaps we need to send in the forensic economists.

San Diego Serenade reenacts the bottom of the 10th inning of Game Six of the 1986 World Series in RBI Baseball. Conceptually brilliant, and I can't imagine how long it must have taken, but it's not super compelling watching RBI Baseball. If he could've gotten the ball to actually roll through Buckner's legs, that would have been unbelievable.

Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist, uses economics to answer mundane questions from readers of the Financial Times. For example, should a man leave the toilet seat down, as his wife demands? Sadly, the Financial Times requires a subscription to read the full columns or archived Harford articles, but Harford's website contains the gist of most of his responses.

An advance commitment from government to buy vaccines when and if they are developed would increase industry R&D in developing cures for low-probability, high-impact diseases (full PDF Report for download).

Yep, this gif is freaky, and so are these sculptures.

Scott Van Pelt does impressions of Mel Kiper and Stephen A. Smith (MP3). He should just do these impressions full-time when he's on Sportscenter; it would be funnier than his usual schtick and would finally complete the circular path that Sportscenter has taken towards becoming a parody of itself.

Must. Have. Sugar.

Last week I invested in some new running shoes. My previous pair, the Adidas Supernovas, had carried me through the NY Marathon, but only when paired with off-the-shelf insoles. The Supernovas didn't offer much arch support, and without the new insoles they left bruises on my arches. I have really, really flat feet, so I'm prone to overpronation, so to speak.

Fortunately, most motion control running shoes are cheaper than the average running shoe. Most manufacturers' top-of-the-line running shoes aren't motion control models. This time around I didn't want to have to buy separate insoles. I ended up with a pair of Saucony and a pair of New Balance motion control shoes to alternate with. Both had wide toe boxes to accommodate my toe-side-wide flippers.

Though stores let you test shoes out on treadmills or out around the block, you still never know just how well a pair of shoes fits you until you've put a few miles into them, which is why I cruised down the East River Park to the Brooklyn Bridge last Friday afternoon. The weather has been erratic lately, but on my return trip the sun was strong. Back at my apartment, I had to sit for a long time to cool off before jumping into the shower. I hate getting out of the shower while my core temp is still high and sweating some more. By the time I'd dressed, I didn't have time for dinner before catching a showing of The Odd Couple down on Broadway.

While waiting for the subway uptown, I bought a roll of SweeTarts and a tiny bag of gummy bears, two of my favorite candies. During the show, as Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick mugged on stage, I snuck one candy after another into my mouth, trying to chew discreetly. By intermission, I'd consumed all my sweets. You medheads can probably sense where this horror story is headed.

After the show let out, about 10:45pm or so, the plan was to grab dinner. My friend got called back into work, though, so I walked her back to her office and then headed out in search of food. A bit past 11:00pm, another friend called and said a bunch of folks were congregating at Katz's Deli for food and drinks in half an hour. Could I wait and join them there for a meal?

My stomach wasn't rumbling, so I agreed. As I walked towards the nearest subway stop, I started to feel hot inside, an odd sensation on such a cool evening. I pulled off my jacket, but it didn't help. I started to sweat, at first a little, and then a lot. I've never sweat like that in my life. Then my head started to spin, and my legs went weak. I could barely stand up, and at each street corner I held onto lampposts for dear life. What was happening to me?

My only thought was that I probably needed food. I'd bonked on a bike before, but it felt nothing like this. I staggered into the next restaurant I saw. The name of the place escapes me. A red lantern with a Japanese character on it was hanging out front, and I practically fell through the front door, a few smokers out front shooting quizzical looks my way. The hostess inside gave a start when she saw me, perhaps because I looked like I'd just emerged from four hours in a sauna. I signaled for 1 with my index finger, and she escorted me to the bar, where I sat and put my head down on the counter.

The bartender brought the usual Japanese restaurant amenities. I've never been so thankful for a wet towel, which I used to wipe my face and neck. I couldn't stop sweating, and now my hands were shaking. I ordered a coke, then called Alan and Sharon. Thankfully Sharon was up, and when I told her what was going on, she calmly diagnosed hypoglycemia and recommended something with sugar, like a fruit juice. When my coke arrived, I chugged it like I was chasing something awful, then immediately ordered another. A few appetizers dropped in front of me, and they disappeared just as quickly. By the time my meal was over, I'd stopped sweating and no longer felt like passing out.

Let's rewind to the start. After the run, my blood sugar was low. Then I shocked my system with the candy, and the sugar overload caused my body to release insulin. By the time the show was over, my body was entering insulin shock. I only know this now because Derek told me that researchers study hypoglycemia by doing roughly what I did to myself, except they give patients glucose drinks instead of SweeTarts and gummy bears. Self-experimentation isn't all that safe when done outside a controlled environment. Passing out on a dark street late at night in NYC? Not priceless.

Sudoku robusta

Table Tennis, the next videogame from Rockstar Games. Surprisingly for a Rockstar game (at least based on the trailer), there doesn't appear to be an option to go on the other side of the table and bludgeon your opponent with your paddle.

If you're into Sudoku, IronSudoku offers a solid once-a-day online Sudoku puzzle. I'm still more of a fan of crosswords (once you learn the techniques to solving Sudoku, it just seems like brute force application of those techniques every time out), but Sudoku has its own appeal. It's like numeric Minesweeper.

YouTube video of giant centipede eating a mouse. Yeesh, I didn't realize they were carnivores. It's like something from Skull Island.

Tinseltown tidbits

Teaser site for Spiderman 3 offers one swatch of desktop wallpaper and a screensaver for now.

Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg team up to produce On the Lot, the American Idol for filmmakers. Winner to get a development deal with Dreamworks.

Diving in Grand Turk

NOTE: As I write this, out my window here in New York snow is dumping onto the streets and the thermometer only shows 40 degrees. Last Friday it was sunny and in the fifties. About twenty minutes ago, I was in my running shorts, about to head out for a jog. The weather is having a schizophrenic fit.

This past weekend, Dave and I grabbed a discount fare for a some diving in Grand Turk. Three years ago, Dave had visited and dove at Grand Turk, one of the Turks and Caicos Islands, north of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The first thing a New Yorker notices upon landing in Grand Turk is the languor. People stand around, leaning against walls or sitting on the ground, and it seems as if they're all waiting for something to happen, though they're in no particular hurry either way. In New York, even the panhandlers are aggressive and in a hurry. If all the cities of the world were grouped at the start line at one point, New York sprinted off and has never stopped, while Grand Turk jogged a few stops, then strolled to the side of the track to lie down in the grass to watch the clouds floating by. On Sunday morning we set our watches ahead an hour, but by the time the trip ended, my watch was probably five or six hours behind.

Perhaps the laid-back pace of life arises from the metronomic refrain of the surf lapping at the shore. It is set for all of time at a soothing largo, and at night it would soothe me into slumber. The perfect weather this time of year didn't hurt. With the sunshine and a light breeze of warmed spring air, no one's in a hurry to get indoors. Wherever you are, that's a good place to be.

The people of Grand Turk, many of them Haitians, also prize spontaneity and a live-in-the-moment attitude over certainty and planning. The next day's schedule at the dive shop seemed to change from moment to moment, and ask a question twice and you're likely to receive a different answer each time. At restaurants, inevitably the first thing I ordered would be unavailable. Dave and I tried to order lobster quesadillas at one restaurant as they were listed on the chalkboard as that day's special. The waitress said they didn't have any lobster. When we pointed out the board, she glanced over and said, "Hmm." Every day, for breakfast, I tried to order the crab and avocado wrap, listed as a specialty. Each day, I was told that avocado would come in the next day, but it never did.

The only time I'd been diving before was in 2003, when I got certified on the Great Barrier Reef. I dove there and in the Galapagos, but hadn't touched thought about diving at all in the years since. I couldn't even find my PADI certification cards for this trip, but fortunately the dive shop was able to look up my info so that I could rent tanks. Dave, on the other hand, has been on some 90 odd dives, and he also owned all his own equipment.

On Sunday morning I took a quick refresher course, relearning how to set up my equipment, handle basic emergency situations underwater, and control my buoyancy. Then I joined Dave and a couple from California for our first dive, at Finnbar's Reef. One of the attractions of diving at Grand Turk is how close the reef and ocean floor wall are to the shore. A five minute boat ride and we were there. I'm not a huge fan of living aboard a boat or taking long, choppy rides out to a dive site.

Diving, like spelunking, has a strong mental component. I'm no yogi, but putting in the regulator and dropping into the ocean feels to me like entering a meditative state. If your mind doesn't want to go to that calm place, your body won't follow. It's not a sport for the easily panicked.

My first open water dive ever, on the Great Barrier Reef, was in really choppy waters, on a rainy day. We jumped in and all grabbed hold of a rope, leaving our snorkels in while waiting for our classmates. The waves kept crashing into us, and when one particularly dense wave hit, the woman next to me, a jittery middle-aged Londoner, suddenly lost her grip on the rope. In her panic, she grabbed onto me and pulled me down into the water.

I immediately choked down a mouthful or two of ocean water. Her hands were all over me, tugging at my hair, mask, BCD, snorkel. My mask came off and I couldn't see. I gave her a light shove to free myself, then tried to get my mask back on. The waves kept pounding me, and I kept swallowing water. In a second between waves, I spotted the rope, too far away now for me to reach. At that moment, I decided I couldn't wait any longer and just put my regulator in, cleared some air out of my BCD, and dropped into the ocean.

With salt water in my mask, I couldn't see much. My heart rate was high, my breathing quick and shallow, and my first few breaths drew nothing. They'd taught us this in class, that you had to breathe slow and deep to pull oxygen out of the tank. I closed my eyes, let my body relax, and drew in the longest breath I could, then exhaled as slowly as possible. And again. And again. And finally, the air came, and I could hear my heartbeat slowing. As I sank down, one foot after another, the water around me grew still. Once I felt in control again, I cleared my mask and swam back to the rope. My first time out, and perhaps my most valuable real world dive experience.

In Grand Turk, I was reminded of the lesson twice. Once, Dave dropped down a few feet, then ascended again. I asked him after the dive what had happened, and he told me that he didn't feel completely right upon entering the water, so he popped back up to straighten his head out. Another time, our divemaster Mackie couldn't clear his ears, so he ascended almost as soon as he'd hit the ocean floor. It took an ascent all the way to the surface before his ears cleared. Experienced divers know it's better to straighten yourself out at the surface then to try and do it down at the ocean floor.

Almost immediately after dropping down to the reef at Finnbars, we encountered a sea turtle feeding. As we flocked around to watch it, I heard a metallic tapping. Our divemaster Mackie (a spitting image of Dusty Baker, but with a Haitian accent) was tapping his tank and pointing into another nook in the reef wall. I swam over to find another sea turtle, even larger than the first. Later we spotted a lobster hiding in a dark nook. On the next dive, at Aquarium, I found a half dozen or so barracuda waiting for me at the anchor line. The water in Grand Turk was a dazzling aquamarine, with glass-like visibility.

[All the sweet pics here are courtesy of Emanuel, one of our guides, who had a Nikon D70 in a really high-end housing with two flash arms. If you're serious about underwater dive photography, this seems to be the way to go, to put a serious camera inside an underwater housing. I've seen plenty of photographs from point-and-shoots and cheaper underwater film cameras, and it just doesn't seem worthwhile. The cost of high-end underwater photography gear will give your wallet the bends, though. Emanuel estimated he'd sunk some 6 to 7 grand in his setup, and with each different lens he'd have to buy a new dome. Dave and I purchased a CD of 25 of his pics to contribute to his effort to recoup the value of his camera equipment.]

That's me, checking out a sea turtle.

Heading back to the line for our decompression stop, Dave and I met up with a group of barracuda.

The next day, we dove twice in the morning. Our first dive was at a site called Tunnels for its two swim-throughs. It was my first time navigating through a tunnel, and it was amusing, like playing in an underwater playground.

Me, popping out of a tunnel.

Our final dive was at Coral Gardens. On the boat ride out, Emanuel told us to prepare to meet one of Grand Turk's local celebrities. As soon as we swam over the edge of the wall, he popped up to greet us. He turned out to be Alexander, a friendly grouper. We were able to pet him, hold our hands over his mouth, and cradle him like a puppy. Dave even pulled out his regulator to give him a smooch.

Greeting Alexander the grouper.

Dave pulled out his reg to give Alexander a smooch.

Up on top of the wall, another grouper named Pretty Boy had staked out his plot. Grouper are territorial by nature, and Pretty Boy had chased Alexander down off the shelf. We spent a good amount of time playing around with Alexander, and without realizing it, he pulled us further and further down the wall. Emanuel finally flashed the signal for us to ascend a bit. I looked at my computer and saw that we were down at 120 feet.

Before our decompression stop, Dave pointed at what appeared to be some dark fern arms poking out of the sand. I shrugged. He tried to think of how to explain what he meant, then went down to the sand and wrote EELS. I looked again and realized he was right. The short, dark strands poking out of the sand were tiny eels.

We wanted to do an afternoon dive, but because we were flying out at 11:15 the next morning, Mackie and Emanuel advised against it. We might have a bit too much nitrogen in the system to fly so soon. Instead, we took the boat out around the southern tip of Grand Turk to Gibbs Cay. Along the way, we stopped to free dive for conch. They scuttled across the floor of the sea, sometimes disguised by the seaweed clinging to their shells.

In a swimming pool, I don't ever have to clear my ears when diving down to ten feet or so. Here, diving down to 15 to 20 feet to grab conch felt like inflating my brain against my skull. The pressure in my ears and head were excruciating. The other issue was that I always had to shoot to the surface after grabbing a conch because I was out of air. We grabbed about six conch, just as much as we planned to eat, and headed on to Gibbs Cay.

Mackie showed us how to clean a conch. First you punch a hole through the shell, near the wider end of the shell, on the opposite side of the opening. Then you use a knife to prod the conch out the other end, so that you can grab it and pull it out. Outside its shell, the conch is an alien looking creature, like a clam or mussel, but with a more complex shape. The conch has a sharp tooth or claw that it uses to drag itself along the sea floor.

The part of the conch we ate was the white flesh, with the consistency of clam. We chopped that portion up and mixed it with diced tomatoes, habaneros, onions, and red peppers. We topped it off with fresh lime juice and a few drops of Tabasco and sealed it in a tupperware container to make conch ceviche.

While we waited for the lime juice to work its magic, we waded into the water with some small fish to feed the local stingrays. They'd already been circling just off the shore in anticipation. The touch of a ray's skin is a bit like liquid velvet. Dave and I weren't prepared for just how aggressive these rays were. We were flanked on all sides, and they hit us high and low. Rays are fairly docile creatures, but those eyes, mounted on top of its body and staring without emotion off to either side, are chilling. Seeing one come towards me was like being stalked by one of the tripods in War of the Worlds.

A few times, I nearly lost a finger. How do stingrays see where to bite when their mouths are underneath their bodies and their eyes are above? Maybe they don't, as I learned. While underwater feeding one, I felt a sharp pain in my back. Another stingray had tried to climb over my back to steal the fish, and on its way over had taken a bite out of my back. I hadn't realized that stingrays had teeth, but now I did. Dave and Emanuel saw my back and seemed startled. The overzealous ray had left a fist-sized bloody hickey on my back.

Later, after a few Presidente beers on the beach, our conch ceviche was ready. That was one tasty dish. While snacking, another visitor arrived, a lemon shark. We waded back in with our snorkels and masks for an underwater peek. For some reason, seeing sharks while diving or snorkeling never seems too dangerous, perhaps because they tend to keep their distance. Of course, the only really dangerous shark I've seen underwater is a hammerhead in the Galapagos. If I saw a tiger shark or a great white, I'd pee my wetsuit.

The only thing we missed out on were the humpback whales, who usually migrate through from late February through early April. They hadn't been spotted in the last few days, and since Dave and I were the only ones interested in going out, the dive shop felt it wasn't economically worthwhile to attempt a trip.

I'd like to try and dive at least once a year from here on out. It would save me the trouble of relearning all my skills each time out. For you divers looking for a good dive site, Grand Turk is recommended. Wear sunscreen on your back, though, so you don't end up looking like a cooked lobster, like me. Dave also suggested diving at Bonaire, Curacao, and Thailand, all of which I'll have to try at some point. For our next dive trip, I'm not sure of where to go, but probably not South Africa.

After seeing marine life up close and personal in the ocean, aquariums seem so dull.

A couple links

Two products with cool design: this "blind date" calendar and this lumen tree.

"Nostalgia" by George Saunders.

Yesterday, Golf World's Masters Performance Index predicted a Vijay Singh win at the Masters. That prediction's sitting pretty today, but there's a whole lot of golf left.

Gospel of Judas found. Did Jesus ask Judas to betray him?

Bush authorized Plamegate leak says Scooter Libby.

Boot Camp

Mac Boot Camp Beta, a preview of the software in Leopard that will allow you to run Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac.

That strange falling sensation when you sleep? It's a hypnagogic myoclonic twitch.

A NYTimes Magazine profile of The Wiggles, my nephew's favorite band.

Vitamins and poison pills

Here are those snazzy opening titles from Thank You For Smoking.

***

Are vitamins really good for you? Well, I guess we can wait to see what happens to Ray Kurzweil. Most of the harmful effects of vitamins seem to arise in studies with high dosages. Should be interesting to see Barry Bonds and Kurzweil in about twenty years.

***

Once solely the domain of Corporate America, poison pills have come to the NFL. The Seahawks inserted a clause in their offer to Vikings receiver Nate Burleson that the contract would become guaranteed if he played five games in the state of Minnesota. So of course the Vikings did not match the offer, not that they would have even without the clause. I'd be surprised if these types of poison pills were allowed to stand. If you're allowed to make up random poison pills, then the entire concept of matching offer sheets is negated. You can make up anything to prevent a team from matching your offer.

***

Ryanair turns a profit by discounting plane tickets heavily and making up for that with fees for most every other flight amenity. It's difficult to ascertain exactly how the airlines turns its profit just from reading the article--it could be primarily a result of a low cost structure rather than gimmicky fees--but you can't argue with their results in a tough industry.

***

The most popular movie in South Korean history is King and the Clown, a movie inevitably compared to Brokeback Mountain for depicting a gay male relationship.

***

I would be remiss if I didn't record here that this was the first year that March Madness was streamed online, for free. This was a well-designed first effort, complete with a Boss Button, which would transform the streaming video window into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with one click.

***

The cost-of-living in NYC is so high, I don't feel quite as guilty as I otherwise would in using the local Barnes and Noble and Sephora as a personal library and medicine cabinet. I still do feel guilty, but on the other hand, there's something of the New York survivor spirit in the frugality of such tactics. I have no idea if those high-falutin moisturizers really reduce aging, shrink pores, and restore a youthful complexion, but $50 for an ounce is probably too high a price to find out with my hard-earned savings.

Yesterday I stopped in B&N to flip through John Dewan's The Fielding Bible, which I do have on order, though from Amazon.com. It attempts to bring defensive evaluations to another level by using data from Baseball Information Solutions.

Instead of just looking at statistics, Dewan and company used video of every batted ball the past several seasons and translated each into a vector composed of direction and velocity. Then they computed which of those balls should have have been turned into an out by a particular fielder. That provided each defensive player with an expected number of outs, and the main statistic in the book is how many plays each player made versus expectation, the plus/minus. The book includes some other statistics for each position to evaluate things such as fielding of bunts for corner infielders and throwing arm for outfielders (the only position not evaluated is catcher).

Some of the book's conclusions align with widely held assumptions. Ichiro is the best right fielder (though the trend is one of decline). Orlando Hudson is probably the best defensive 2B in the game. Manny Ramirez and Adam Dunn are atrocious in left. Torii Hunter is fantastic in CF.

Bill James contributes an entire chapter on Derek Jeter's defense, a much debated topic. After putting Jeter through several different defensive evaluation systems and watching video of Jeter's best and worst plays, James, a noted contrarian, concedes that Jeter's defense is indeed lousy (Adam Everett evaluates as the best shortstop three years running, and it isn't even close). Hey, Jeter counts among his ex-girlfriends Jessica Alba and Adriana Lima; please allow us this one grudging flaw in his game.

At any rate, it's a fun compilation of stats to pore over, the type of book to bring to a ballgame and use to incite heated debates between innings.