The magic hour

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The reason my posts from the past few days tend to show up all at once is that by the time I start browsing my newsreader, it's usually after dinner, around 10 or 11 at night. Things I read may spur an idea which I'll jot down, but then I'll get sleepy and lack the energy to finish a grammatically sound, coherent post. So I leave a line or two and return when I'm feeling brighter and committed and finish the thought.
With my job kicking in again, the days are so short. Wake up, work all day, get home, try to fit in a bike ride or movie or some reading, then make some dinner, and then it's 10pm and the day's just about over. I've made a schedule for myself for every night out of the week, and all I can squeeze in is one activity a night at best, and a bit of writing depending on how late I can stay awake.

Spam filters with teeth

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An interesting idea: spam filters that pound spammer's URLs and overload their servers. My e-mail spam is fairly under control, at least on my home e-mail account, but now various forms on my website are being spammed to death. Everyone gives lawyers and used car salesman a bad name, but spammers have to be, among human life forms, the lowest of the low. I'm ready and willing to participate in anything to hit these spammers back where it hurts.

1 BRKa = 1 BMW 740

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Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's conglomerate of various businesses, announced earnings on Friday. From a dollar value perspective it makes little difference in one's investment return, but since Berkshire Hathaway has never split, its stock price is ridiculously high. Its earnings per share figures are also sound like Monopoly money--its EPS on Friday was $1,452 per share (pdf earnings release).
If Berkshire had a stock option or bonus program, anyone would be thrilled to death to get even a single option or share.

Olivier and Ludivine

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Two movies I saw this past weekend presented two mythical French archetypes, one a fantasy and one a nightmare. Which is which depends on your sexual preferences, I suppose.
S.W.A.T. featured Olivier Martinez. I'm a guy, so Olivier is for me what he is for most American males, our greatest fear. Rugged European good looks, long hair, and a suave French accent. When your girlfriend takes that trip with her girlfriends to Europe and leave you behind, Olivier is the guy who awakens you in the middle of the night in a cold sweat as you try to clear your mind of the vision of your girlfriend giggling as Olivier nibbles her ear. That tragic possiblity was taken to the extreme in Unfaithful, in which he stole our own sexy-girl-next-door sweetheart Diane Lane. I could barely watch.
Fortunately, Olivier did little such plundering in S.W.A.T., though everytime I see him I still want to chop his hair. And the next day, my visual palate was refreshed by the mythological Venus of American male mythology, the shapely young Lolita, just blossoming into a sexual predator, the beguiling French coquette. Playing her was Ludivine Sagnier in the indie hit Swimming Pool.
Within mere moments of appearing on screen, Sagnier is brazenly flitting about all four corners of the movie screen nude with the confidence of a European seasoned on the clothing-strongly-frowned-upon beaches of the Cote D'Azur. It helps that she has a perfect figure. She seduced the camera so often and with such gusto that it became comical--the audience started to giggle everytime she popped up naked again. We laughed, but in delight--it's impossible to imagine any young American actress pulling off the performance with anywhere near Sagnier's audacity and fearlessness.
All this in a movie about the process of writing fiction, no less. At some point in the movie, it finally made sense to me, why her character was so over the top. No, it wasn't necessarily because all French girls behave this way, but because...well, to explain would be to ruin the movie. Swimming Pool is not a great movie, but it is a fun, sexy, humorous mystery worth catching if it's still playing in your neighborhood.
Someday I may have to travel to France with a wife, and it will be with a certain tinge of sadness and fear, what with all the Ludivine's and Olivier's lurking at the next corner cafe.

Important grass-roots investigative journalism

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A guy who describes himself as "just a regular guy living in New York City (Go Yankees!) who wants a larger penis" is documenting in a weblog his trial with some penis enlargement pills he found on the web.
The ability to reach a large audience cheaply and simply via the web has given the necessary impetus for citizens everywhere to put on their journalistic shoes on behalf of their fellow man. Someone should just create a site that just hosts a list of random investigative journalism projects they'd like to see someone, anyone, carry out and document online. Chances are someone is just crazy and bored enough to follow up on just about anything.

Evil Frodo, scowling MRod

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The lead baddie in S.W.A.T. looks like an old, evil Elijah Wood. Like a Wood who, after the luster of the LOTR trilogy wears off and depressed over the subsequent lack of attention, becomes alcoholic, finally ages about 10 years, and ends up turning to a life of crime.
S.W.A.T. does nothing to disprove the theory that any movie which considers L.L. Cool J a thespian is likely to stink. I loved the old TV show; my cousin Chuck and I watched it religiously one summer while staying at our aunt's house in San Diego. It was part of the daily regimen. I don't remember much about the show, and if I saw it today I'm sure I'd be disappointed. Memory has a way of aging everything like wine. But I do remember the creative special tactics that the TV show featured every episode, and none of those were on display in the movie. The fight scenes in the movie are straight shoot-em ups, and the director's crazed cutting and camera angles confuse instead of clarifying the action.
The only fun to be had is listening to Elliot Goldenthal's 589 variations on the old S.W.A.T. theme song (as anyone who's seen the trailer knows, the characters even hum the tune at one moment, one of several post-modern winks at the audience) and watching Michelle Rodriguez's 685 new variations of her trademark scowl. In the spirit of Paul Ekman's FACS test, which seems to be top of mind for me these days, I created a Michelle Rodriguez FACS test (thanks to the Michelle Rodriguez Underground for the pics).

Search for the giant squid

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Those who know me well know my obsession with the giant squid. Therefore I will be following this expedition closely. Excerpt:
Dr O'Shea has found males implanted with their own spermatophores.
"If we are talking about a 200kg squid, this is an animal with a 20g brain," he told New Scientist.
"It's not very bright and it is trying to coordinate a metre-long penis.
"He's going to get a bit confused."
Thanks to Metafilter for the link.

Become a mind reader

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Matilda: I became...
Hansel: What?
Matilda: Bulimic.
Derek Zoolander: You can read minds?
from Zoolander
A follow-up to the post on mindreading which referenced Steven Johnson's new book and Malcolm Gladwell's article from The New Yorker. Paul Ekman, one of the key figures mentioned in the Gladwell article, was interviewed in the NYTimes. Turns out Ekman's facial reading skills are in high demand from everyone from animators to the FBI.
Excerpt:
Q. One of your most fascinating findings is that if a person merely arranges his face into a certain expression, he will actually feel the corresponding emotion. In other words, emotions work from the outside in as well as the inside out. Is happiness really as simple as putting on a happy face?
A. In a very limited way, yes. The trick with happiness is that while everybody can smile, most people can't move one crucial muscle around the eyes that must be moved to generate the physiology of happiness. With anger or disgust, though, everybody can make the right facial movements and turn on the physical sensations of those emotions.
I'm seriously considering purchasing the FACS training CD. Does anyone want to split the cost with me? Just think, we'll become gifted mindreaders, able to tell when people are lying to us. How many chances in life do you have to gain a superpower?
In Emotions Revealed, Ekman posits the existence of display rules. That is, while all humans are evolutionarily endowed with the same emotional expressions, different societies and cultures might teach them rules about when it's appropriate to use those expressions.
Ekman conducted an experiment in which he showed Japanese and Americans videos of surgeries and accidents. When they were alone, both sets of people displayed the same negative facial expressions, but when the Japanese were in the presence of a scientist they masked their negative reactions with a smile.
This makes me wonder whether or not my American upbringing has clouded my response to acting. I'm biased towards American actors, generally. On the whole, I think America has more good actors than other countries. But perhaps that's because I'm biased towards a more emotive school of expression. This may explain why I find so much of Asian acting to be too understated, or French acting to be too stern. It certainly makes it more difficult to critique foreign movies if one misunderstands why a character is displaying a certain expression in a particular context.
(Maybe Keanu Reeves is considered a great actor by some societies? Maybe the Wachowski brothers' fascination with Asian cinema explains why all the actors maintain a facial expression of zen placidity throughout The Matrix: Reloaded)
The universality of emotional expression reaffirms the utility of emoticons, also. It would be frightening to think that =) might be interpreted as anger by another reader. Someone should conduct a test like the "Eyes tell all" test, but with emoticons.

Some light prison reading

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This week's New Yorker mentioned that it existed, so I checked it out, and indeed, former ImClone founder and Martha Stewart buddy Sam Waksal has an Amazon.com wishlist. Sam is currently in prison for insider trading, and last I checked, Martha Stewart was on trial for that crime as well.
Waksal has generous friends and family: all but three items off of his long reading list have been purchased, and the three that remain are not available.
It got me curious to see if anyone else famous had searchable wishlists. Of course, it's possible to create phony wishlists for people, but some of these look legit:
Steve Jobs (just one item on his list--what to get the man who has everything?)
Dean Kamen (ditto)
Jeff Bezos (this one I know is real)
There are probably more, but I'm too tired to search for them. If you come across any, let me know.
I wouldn't mind being famous. Then perhaps random people would buy me things off of my wishlist.

No

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I went to type a cent sign today and realized that it isn't on the keyboard. For some reason it surprised me. I remember typing school papers on my dad's Osborne computer and using the cent sign plenty of times. I can't remember where it was, but it was definitely on the keyboard.
Someday we'll explain the cent sign to our kids who will never have had to carry change or coins because they grew up using debit or smart cards as cash.

Windows onto the soul?

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Steven Johnson posted an excerpt from his upcoming new book, describing human's remarkable ability to mind-read. In it, he takes a test in which he's presented a series of pictures of just people's eyes and is asked to select what emotion is being expressed. A comment on that post led to this test which I took and scored a 30 on.
Not suprisingly, all the ones I missed were of women. The emotions and thoughts of the fairer sex remain a mystery to me. I was especially disappointed to have misread the two women who were "interested" and "flirtatious."
This whole thread recalled an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell on just this very topic. And it also explains, perhaps, why so many interviewers know within moments of meeting a candidate whether or not they're going to hire them.

RIP Guestbook

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I had to retire my site's guestbook because it got hit with a wave of spam from the usual e-mail spam suspects: home mortgages, adult sites, etc. Is there nothing sacred in this world?
Still, if you're dropping by for a visit for the first time, drop me an e-mail or leave a comment on my weblog. Sometimes it feels like one is on a stage, in a spotlight, and can't see anyone in the audience.

Lists of great things

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American Scientist once published their list of the twelve greatest scientific mongraphs of the 20th century. I couldn't find the list on their site anymore but found enough mentions of it to cobble together an Amazon-linked booklist. For reasons not worth delving into, I felt like perusing that particular list again today.
Some of these books are outrageously expensive, some are out of print, some can only be bought used. Many are somewhat outdated now, but they're like LPs--they're worth collecting for their historical aura.
John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern: Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944)
Paul Dirac: The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1930)
Albert Einstein: The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (1930)
Benoit B. Mandelbrot: Fractals: Form, Chance, and Dimension (1977)
Linus Pauling: The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals; An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry (1939)
Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead: Principia Mathematica 3 Vol. Set (1910-13)
Cyril Smith: Search For Structure (1981)
Norbert Weiner: Cybernetics (1948)
R. B. Woodward and Roald Hoffmann: Conservation of Orbital Symmetry (1970)
Albert Einstein: The Meaning of Relativity (1922)
Richard Feynman: QED (1985)
Donald Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming: Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set (1968)
Another more recent list is the 20 greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century:
1. Electrification
2. Automobile
3. Airplane
4. Water Supply and Distribution
5. Electronics
6. Radio and Television
7. Agricultural Mechanization
8. Computers
9. Telephone
10. Air Conditioning and Refrigeration
11. Highways
12. Spacecraft
13. Internet
14. Imaging
15. Household Appliances
16. Health Technologies
17. Petroleum and Petrochemical Technologies
18. Laser and Fiber Optics
19. Nuclear Technologies
20. High-performance Materials
That's a good list. Maybe I'd add credit cards. Make that airline mile credit cards.

Location, location, location

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The NYTimes has an article on the pricing bifurcation in the U.S. home market: your money can either buy you a mansion in a small town or a hut in a big city (NY, SF, Chicago, Boston, LA, etc.). I'm experiencing that reality firsthand as I delve into the housing market. For the price of a 3BR/2B home in the Seattle metro area I'll get a house about half the size of the last home I lived in before I left Naperville for college.
Of course, there was less to do in Naperville. A wild night out involved cruising in our parent's cars around the local McDonald's parking lot to see which of our classmates was getting arrested, or sneaking over a fence and past guard dogs to climb up the local landfill to look at the stars. I'm not kidding, I did that once. The sense of exhilaration my cousin, friend, and I felt upon returning from our illicit quest to the top of a giant mound of dirt burying tons of human refuse--only Jason and his surviving Argonauts could empathize.