The past couple of years I have been on the quest for the Holy Grail of concurrency. Oracle Coherence is perfect for as far as I’ve pushed it, with the tiny drawback of 7-figure license fees. Erlang has a bit of concurrency brilliance in exchange for shocking primitiveness in things non-concurrency related, but even the concurrency part leaves much more to be desired than advertised. More to follow in another post one day, but suffice to say that when I read an article the other day saying Erlang had done away with race conditions, I ended up snorting beer all over my keyboard and monitors.

Most recently I have been delving into the world of concurrent Python, which is to say lots of frameworks built around “asynchronous” or “event-driven” or “cooperative multitasking”. So while I have never used Node.js, this was still a very appropriate time for me to come across this video.

Concurrency is pretty awesome, btw. It’s looking more and more like either I’m going to be the one to find the Holy Grail, or else the Holy Grail is going to end up being something that cannot possibly exist. So, either way, definitely the best kind of thing to be searching for.

All the complexities of assembly with the efficiencies of Javascript.

(PS – My one quibble with the video, and unfortunately it’s a big pet subject of mine, is that the history of Columbus is a bit screwed up. Anyone of any sort of knowledge on the subject in 1492 knew that the Earth was round and pretty accurately what the correct circumference was. Columbus knew only the former and was catastrophically stupid and insane about the latter. But he was lucky, very lucky.)

But today I randomly signed on to dreamhost and hit the “update wordpress” button and… we’re back.

(I can’t tell you how tempting it is to go back and quickly delete at least half of the posts that are on this thing from the years ago when I started it.  But, fuck it.  Some spider has logged it all already anyway, so when I run for president I wouldn’t be able to pretend the posts never existed.  I’ll go with “youthful indiscretions”.  I used to commit a lot of those.  I still do, but I used to, too.)

The iPhone did NOT start the touch-screen revolution.

There are only 5 million or so iPhones that have been sold.

On the other hand, there are over 70 million Nintendo DS’s that have been sold, it’s been around since 2004, and it’s still today selling at a faster rate than the iPhone.

Nintendo is the one who brought touch-screen consumer electronics to the masses, not Apple.

I don’t mind crediting Apple for making a gorgeous device and leading the way to making touch-screen phones, but why is it that even in the world of technology news that people still mostly ignore the pervasiveness and innovation of video games?

Cleanliness only leads to death and destruction.

I think there’s a simpler explanation, which is partially backed up by the polling results that single people actually do rate “number of single people of the opposite gender for me to date” as one of the highest considerations for where to live, higher than job opportunities. The simpler explanation also assumes that people aren’t really smart enough to have seen this data before, but instead are going based on more mainstream perceptions.
The simpler explanation is as follows:

If you’re an average single guy, looking for single girls, then you think of California as being the place with the most desirable girls. Desirable girls being, of course, physically attractive, fit, blonde, plastic surgery-ed, etc. When you think of “girls in California”, your first image is immediately a girl on the beach in a bikini. Your best possible catch is a hot, young actress.

If you’re an average single girl, looking for single guys, then you think of New York as being the place with the most desirable guys. Desirable guys being, of course, successful, rich, powerful. When you think of “guys in New York”, your first image is immediately a guy on Wall Street in a suit. Your best possible catch is an ambitious young exec, a doctor, a politician.

Of course, this is probably a wild generalization, right? But strong correlations usually require a pretty dominant, simple explanation as to their cause.

And also, notice in the map, the only red dot that’s in California. That’s Sacramento. Where there are no beaches and no girls in bikinis. But the highest density in the state of politicians in suits.

The market is not efficient. Obviously not. And it couldn’t be anyway, because equilibriums never really exist. So obvious in some contexts, yet completely overlooked in ones that count big.

I have the beginnings of a thesis as to why the uber wealth gains of the top percent, the US CEO salaries, the golden parachutes, are actually the exact opposite of incentive to do a better job. Every unit of money becomes less useful the more of them you have. I don’t think any CEO’s make decisions they know are bad. But when the cost of a bad decision is taking $100 million and slinking off to some other project and having missed your chance for the billionaire’s club, that cannot possibly be as big a motivator as when $10 million is the jackpot and $1 million the consolation.

And this needs to be the argument of smart progressive econo-politics. This is a simple question of video game design or motivational psychology or game theory or marginal economics. And we can be confident that the best and brightest are going to scrap harder for the diminishing returns when the differences still mean something than they will when the differences are just paper.

That said, the motivation on the 90th percentile now must be insane. The smart money is that the current situation can’t possibly go on forever (no equilibriums remember). And so all of us at the bottom of the top must strike now, or always remember that those indistinguishingly similar to us, starting in the same place, got the memo, jumped through the door before it closed, and rode the power of exponents farther while they could than might ever be possible for the rest of us to go later, once times change.

What I mean is before now I always thought of it as a love story.  The narrator starts out living an unfulfilled life and then he meets a soulmate.  But sometimes when you resonate so strongly with someone and yet you’re just the slightest bit out of sync the resonance rips you two apart just as strongly as it would otherwise pull you together.  See the narrator meets his soulmate in the moment that he feels at his weakest, when he’s going to groups to seek solace in other people’s greater miseries.  And you don’t feel sexy when you’re at your weakest, so the narrator pushes Marla away.  And re-invents himself as the warrior he thinks he needs to be to win her… or the warrior he thinks she ought to be won by.  So much so that he deludes himself into thinking the loser who trolls the group sessions isn’t even the same person as this warrior he has created.  In the end he pulls himself from the brink, he integrates his split personalities, and he realizes she’s drawn to all of him.  He lets go of his delusions, and as the credit company buildings blow up and reset everyone’s debt record back to zero, he and Marla hold hands and reset their romance back to zero.

Or really, it doesn’t even need to make that much sense.  A good love story just has the energy that lets you know it’s right, no matter what literally happens.

But that’s how I used to think of it.  Tonight, pondering my own split personalities, I was struck by the screaming question I hadn’t yet thought to ask:

Why didn’t Tyler Durden shoot the narrator instead?

The logic was clearly laid out.  Tyler was who the narrator wished he was, but the narrator certainly wasn’t who Tyler wished he was.  And there’s that emotional component…

The elephant in the whole movie is Brad Pitt, who presents the paradox so precisely: “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t.”

In another scene, the narrator sees an advertisement with a Calvin Klein underwear model and asks “Is that what a real man is supposed to look like?” and in response the millionaire movie god with an far more superstar body than the unknown Calvin Klein model smirks knowingly.

The irony of Brad Pitt playing the role of the liberator who realigns our perceptions cannot be reasoned away.  It’s classic joke theory, where our Freudian egos are distracted by the flattery of superficial wit, freeing our ids to fully enjoy the emotional energy of wicked thoughts.  While Palahniuk’s writing is dazzling you with such clever punchlines as Tyler’s:

“Tyler, you are by far the most interesting single-serving friend I’ve ever met… see I have this thing: everything on a plane is single-serving…”

“Oh I get it, it’s very clever. ”

“Thank you.”

“How’s that working out for you? ”

“What?”

“Being clever.”

… your id is feasting on Brad Pitt’s glistening 5% body fat abs, catlike movement, 99th percentile facial symmetry, and total comfort in his own being.   Without the sexiest man alive prancing around and socially proving the narrator, would we really see Everyman Ed Norton or would we see Primal Fear‘s psychopath introvert?

I guess these two contrasting views of the movie come down to this:

In a joke, which is more important – the cleverness, or the sex, violence, and farting?

(Answer: The Aristocrats!)

…
I also never noticed before that the narrator shares the same duality condition that I do.  We’re both Ed Norton by ourselves, and Brad Pitt in public.  Except his Brad Pitt is craftier than mine, managing to sneak off into the company of others and spend less and less time as Ed Norton.

Although, I have been going to bed earlier and sleeping in later recently.  I thought it was just depression …but maybe somewhere I’m being Tyler more?

If so, Tyler, please shoot me.  The alternative would be tragic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Navigation_plans

Actually, most educated people, and especially anyone involved with nautical exploration (eg, Kings, scholars, ship captains, sailors) had known the Earth was round since the time of Ancient Greece.  Even more interesting, the story of Christopher Columbus being the kind of genius who thought outside of the conventional wisdom of his time and for that reason made his great discovery is also bogus.

In fact, the people who thought Columbus’ 1492 voyage would be suicidal thought so because they had a pretty accurate understanding of the circumference of the Earth, in particular that the distance traveling West from Europe to Asia was in fact farther than contemporary ships could travel without running out of provisions.  Columbus’ contrary belief was actually quite wrong as he thought that the Earth was much smaller than it actually was, such that the distance between Europe and Asia was much smaller.

Of course, while the contemporary scholars were right and Columbus was wrong, fortune favored Columbus and there happened to be two massive unknown continents in the middle of the vast ocean between Europe and Asia, and they were just close enough to Europe for him to reach before his ships ran out of provisions.

2. A frog placed in water that is very slowly brought to boil will not attempt to escape

http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp

I suppose this one persists because it is such a useful metaphor for the human trait that sometimes we don’t notice a chance that happens gradually over a long time, when we would be shocked if it happens all at once.  I say “sometimes”, because the weird thing about using this example as a metaphor for human behavior, is that if you infinitesimally raise the temperature of a swimming pool or a hot tub, it is a pretty safe bet that any people in the water will get out long before the water gets to a boil.  And that basic physical survival response is at least as old as our shared ancestor with amphibians.  So if you want to boil a live frog, the best advice is really to start the water boiling first, and hope that the scalding water disables the frog before it can respond.

3. You shouldn’t swallow chewing gum

http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/chewgum.asp

This myth actually has consequences, as used chewing gum is disgustingly littered so frequently that Singapore even banned it altogether.  If everyone swallowed their gum from the time they were kids, then a lot of litterers wouldn’t even think to spit it out.  You don’t see already chewed-up candy gumming up mailboxes and keyholes and the undersides of benches, do you?  I myself didn’t put any thought into this until a couple of years ago when I thought to check on snopes.  It used to be such a pain when flying Southwest when they would give me my bag of peanuts but no napkin and I’d have to wait for them to come back again with napkins before I could spit my gum out and eat the peanuts.  Now I just swallow the gum.  So easy.

Now I just need to find a way to convince girls to swallow their gum as well, so after they leave the next morning I don’t have to discover a nasty chewed-up piece of gum just sitting on my nightstand.

…we’re going to give Israel $30.4 billion in bribes in order to get them to not object to our decision to sell $20 billion of advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia, who is arming the people we’re fighting in Iraq.

Today’s weather forecast for Guildford.  No joke.

About a month has passed, and so it was time to finally go out and get the proper kind of torchiere bulb.  Just got home with it this afternoon, and plugged it in.

Fucking lamp does not work!

And of course, I already threw out the other one because it’s glass part was busted, even though it still actually functioned electrically…

Fuck light.  I’ll pack in the dark.

For some reason, everyone’s first response on hearing that I’m moving, is asking, “Why?”

Well, I didn’t exactly have a reason. But since “I don’t know” isn’t a very friendly response (see further: Alberto Gonzales), I have came up with 10 excellent reasons for this move and here they are:

10. The weather. Seriously. The problem with living in Southern California, where the weather is nice all the time, is that if you’re depressed, then it’s your own fault.

9. Chicks with British accents.

8. I hear there may be an opening for Prime Minister.

7. I want to get in on some of that soon-to-be-beach-front-property due to Global Warming.

6. Only suckers are sticking around to get paid in US dollars right now.

5. I have over a year more of DUI-related probation during which I cannot legally drive with any measurable amount of alcohol (ie, 0.01% or higher BAC) in my blood. And I live in Los Angeles. See a problem?

4. I always wanted to be knighted.

3. Catching an extra bit of sleep on the way to work far safer in a train than in my car.

2. 1400 km to Ibiza, 300 km to Paris, 400 km to Amsterdam, 1000 km to Milan, 2500 km to Mykonos, and 2300 km from gorgeous Black Sea beaches crawling with untapped beauties of the former Soviet Block. (For comparison, Los Angeles is about 4000 km from New York, Miami, or Hawaii.)

1. I have Attention Deficit Disorder and I’ve lived my whole life in California. A better question is, “Why haven’t I moved already?“

So the living room has been very dark these past two weeks.  The guy and I have commented to each other a few times about how we miss being able to see.  But we’re lazy.  And have more important things to do, like defending the Earth.

Tonight, I thought I would do something productive, like cleaning up or going through stuff seeing as how I’m moving to London in about a month.  Most of that stuff is not in the living room — that is the areas the stuff is in actually is still adequately lit — but somehow with the living room being the big dark center of the apartment splitting the other areas into little islands of light, well, it was just too dark for productive activity to happen.

Then I had an idea that only took me two weeks to come up with: Even though I didn’t want to get a whole new torchiere right before moving, why not just go get a new bulb so that it will still light the room even if it’s got a broken glass head?  And that let to an even better thought: Didn’t I actually have a spare torchiere bulp sitting around in some random box of junk that I kept “just in case” any of it might be useful someday?

I did!  And I found it.  And plugged it in.  And…

LIGHT!

…

A short while later, I’m on the phone with my mom.  I pace continually while on the phone, and that was especially appropriate in this conversation as I was talking with her about all of my stuff that I don’t want any more and what to do with it, and so while talking I was pacing around surveying it all at the same time.

Eventually my pacing led me to the little nook between the kitchen and the bar that’s pretty much the most remote area of the apartment (ie, as far as pathfinding or line-of-sight goes).  The human brain has a very important visual filtering system that tosses away things that are always there.  Like always in the same place, a place that you see all the time, never altered or moved or changed in any way.  Like all the pictures on the shelf at Grandma’s house.

Or like the extra, not-broken torchiere that you didn’t need any more when you moved in and so stuck back in the corner of the nook behind the kitchen.

I told this story to my mom who got a kick out of it.  An extra torchiere bulp that only took me two weeks to remember that I had, and even better an extra torchiere that I wouldn’t have even remembered at all had I not been pacing around while talking to my mom about all the junk that I don’t want to move that I’ve been accumulating for years, you know, “just in case” any of it might be useful someday.

…

My mom didn’t get to hear the ultimate conclusion to the story, though.  Having a living room well-lit by a torchiere with a broken-up glass head was obviously not as good as I could do.  So I went to take the extra torchiere bulb out of the broken one in order to put it in the not broken one that I had found in the nook.

But even the little plastic bit holding the glass part of the bulb was a little hotter than I expected, and it turns out that a one inch fall onto the base of the torchiere head is enough to break a just-used-hot torchiere bulb.

So the living room is dark again.

And there’s now bits of glass on the linoleum again.

…

I guess I need to put my pants back on and go to the store and get a new bulb, or how am I going to get anything productive done?

But is this importance accorded the consciousness overly egotistical, in the worst connotations of that word?

More to the point — do we need consciousness?  Why?

Of course, the importance of consciousness as the only actual reality, recognizing that nothing exists except perception, yadda yadda yadda, will never go away.  That rock isn’t a rock at all but only a rock in my mind, those interstellar nebulae aren’t really out there either, except as bits flashing in a radar array.

But it works both ways.  One could just as easily argue that consciousness does not exist at all.  Nothing exists except what we do or say.  Tell me a thought you think you had yesterday that you didn’t tell anyone until just now.  And then prove to me that just now wasn’t when you actually thought it.  How can you, except by writing it down, or otherwise externalizing it and therefore invalidating the experiment?  The scientific method does not allow for consciousness.  Point that out the next time a well-intentioned atheist is arguing to you about evolution or global warming.  Point out that the underpinning of those systems of understanding are incompatible with Descartes.  Consciousness exists as far as if you raise a child to speak English and understand what the word “consciousness” means, then if polled “are you conscious?” they will most likely say yes.

(And maybe one day it will exist as much as a clump of neurons, a complex interaction of neuro-electric fields, some ingeniously bizarre mechanism to replicate the function of the instruction pointer register inside whichever computer you’re reading this on.)

So never mind Descartes vs Occam for now.  Let me argue instead that consciousness is worse than useless, is some unfortunate evolutionary artifact like the appendix, one that can only impair our natural functioning.

There’s a recent link out there somewhere, in the greatest thinking organism known to man, this Internet, which, btw, functions beautifully without any apparent consciousness.  About a study in which groups were given choices to make.  At first simple, but then complex.  The discovery was: faced with complex choices, people make better decisions, decisions that they are happy with longer, if they are distracted when the choices are presented, such that they cannot bring their full consciousness to bear on the decision.  That is, if they are prevented from fucking up their natural good sense with their woefully underpowered ego.

If we drop the ego’s pretension, we admit, do we not, that this isn’t all that surprising?

What does Kobe Bryant, or any other athlete, say they were thinking during a super-human performance?  “I was playing unconscious.  I really wasn’t thinking at all.”  And what happens to Karl Malone and Jim Kelly and just about any golfer who’s ever taken a one-shot lead over Tiger to the back nine on Sunday, that instant that they start to think “wow I could win this thing”?

Ok so not everyone is a world-class athlete in the most intense moment of competition of our lives, but I say that The Zone is the place we always wish we were in anyway.

Take interpersonal relations.  Giving a presentation to the boss, making that sales pitch, approaching that cute girl at the bar.  Think about every little detail, what you’re saying, what the other person is thinking, how your voice moves up and down.  Think these thoughts mentally out-loud, think about thinking, think about why your voice suddenly went up an octave, you started stammering, and now you don’t remember the next thing you were going to say at all and your audience is starting to look at you funny.

I’ve a debilitating compulsion towards argument.  And a reputation for being somewhat “good” at it.  A feel for rhetoric, the various trips and traps and tacts to take to making my point of view sound the most reasonable.  A record of adversaries surrendering with some comment about me being “so logical”.  It seems to me that people always use “logical” to infer that a conclusion was reached from some methodical process.  Like balancing an algebraic equation.  4x – 7 = 2x + 9.  Move all the x’s to one side.  2x – 7 = 9.  Move the constants to the other.  2x = 16.  Divide out the factor.  x = 8.  The left side of the big brain-polarity myth.

Honest truth though, how I argue is I open my mouth and words just come out on their own.  That they connect into that semantical linguistic symmetry people call “logic” is due to the same mechanism that causes Tetris blocks to fit together just right (hopefully!) even when they’re dropping down the screen at dizzying speeds.  Words said quickly enough to rebut the first half of a sentence before that sentence has even been completed cannot have first wallowed in consciousness any more than can those “reflexes” required to play video games.  It’s all unconscious pattern matching.

And this truth, that our unconscious performs far more of these tricks of intelligence than we give it credit for, is actually kind of logical when you think about it anyway.  That instruction pointer of consciousness holds, what, about 7 things if we’re really pressing things?  But date me for a year and I’ll still have fresh anecdotes I can tell you in vivid detail, pulled out of that vast unconscious beneath.  Consciousness tells as much of the story of our brains as one instance of Firefox can tell you about the Internet.  Or riding in one car can tell you about all the starts and destinations and stories and reasons for travel of all the tens of thousands of people in the traffic jam with you.  That myth that we’re only using a small percentage of our brain holds much truth, at least if we’re only talking about our consciousness.  And don’t wise ones always admonish us to use the bigger of our multiple brains?

And so many problems are caused by that tiny little conscious one.  Like the entire litany of ailments of our modernity: Depression, Anxiety, Politicians, Lawyers, Consultants, Fundamentalism, Deception, Greed, Envy, all the evils of Idleness, New Age anything, Impotence, Narcissism, Pop Culture, the Democratic Leadership Council, Jerry Springer.  Another link that was floating around suggested, in fact, that maybe consciousness doesn’t really predate civilization.  That consciousness was only an attribute humans developed in parallel to modern societies.  Before written history, before mass communications, there was no such thing as consciousness.  People spent all their time toiling to survive, following their instincts to eat and fuck and that’s it.  The oldest stories we know of are always about what people did.  It’s only now we make stories about what people think.  Advancing civilization breeds this neurosis we call “thought”.

So I’m going zen.  Emptying my mind.  All introspection has ever told me is that I can’t think of a damn thing introspection has ever told me.  The conscious chatter are chains holding my super-human self back.  Good-bye Thought, and good riddance.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
- Hamlet

The sad people who are out of control are all her supposed “fans” and all the other “concerned” people who are looking down at her and her recent behavior disapprovingly.  I love to see a celebrity who was known for a squeaky clean image show some depth and throw out a “fuck you” to all the people who obsessed over them, without ever really knowing them, by actually revealing some depth and complications to her character.

Reminds me of first seeing Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach.  I and my pothead filmstudent college roomies were the only guys there amidst a crowd of teenage girls who had seen Titanic dozens of times a piece.  Leo started the movie off with a shot of snake’s blood, but the girls were undeterred, confident that their beau would get cleaned up and sexy again on Phi Phi soon enough.  Then halfway through comes the shark attack, rivers of blood running up the beach as horribly mutilated half dead bodies are dragged from the water and everyone is running around screaming.  The girls in the theatre gasped, and gagged, and you could sense despaired confusion all around us.  My estimation of DiCaprio went up considerably after that, and despite his handicap of being overly boyish to easily slip into mature men’s roles, he has still consistently been picking interesting projects to work on ever since.

Britney’s attractiveness was never based off of the virginal facade her original image consultants tried to pull on us so that 12-year old girls could buy her cds without their out-of-touch parents flipping out.  The lowered smoldering eyes and the hip action in the school-girl skirt was always there to promise that a caged-but-wild animal was underneath just waiting to pounce.  Now that animal is out and going wild and that’s beautiful.  It’s a sick society that really was never admiring the beast inside but instead was just patting themselfs on their collective back on how nice and strong a cage they could build.

And what are people so disapproving of?  She shaved her head?  Hair is the last superficiality that shallow women cling to.  A girl can eschew makeup and jewelry, wear pants, get tattooed, play sports, be an action hero, run for president, bang her girlfriends with a strap-on (oh hell yeah), play elite computer hackers in iconic geek films, and even cut their hair short but not off, and they’ll still be celebrated as empowered women gracing otherwise male trappings with their unique femininity.

Girls, your hair is not your femininity.  And if you aren’t sexy without it, then I’m sorry but you’re not sexy with it either.  Britney shaving her head is confidence, independence, liberating herself from the crushing expecations of her continued fame.  It’s breaking free from the oppressing pedophilic box our society puts girls into, demanding they stay young and thin and virginal for all eternity so that each of us can be the only one to defile them alone in the privacy of our own repressed minds.

When I was a naive high school virgin myself, I probably couldn’t have had any greater fantasy than school-girl-Britney, blonde and supposedly untouched, just as naive herself.  But I’m grown up now, and I’m wiser.  And I know I want a girl who’s grown out of pretending to be sweet and innocent.  I want a girl who’s lived, who’s made mistakes, who isn’t afraid to make more, who’s going to express herself regardless of what people say, who’s going to take chances and follow wherever adventure leads.

Britney is officially HOT again.

Will: “I preeditk da Bears will win, one hunderd n sevendy six ta tree.”

Chris: “I dunno, everyone is favoring the Colts.”

Will: “Okay den, one hunderd n sevendy six ta six.  And Ditka will be held to under twenty touchdowns.”

Like when the show started winning Emmy’s and Peabody’s.

Or when it started drawing guests like Bill Clinton.

Or John Edwards, who used it as a forum to officially announce his presidential candidacy.

Or John Kerry coming in at the height of the 2004 election.
Or when Jon Stewart hosted the Oscars.

Or Colbert giving the final address at the White House Press Correspondents dinner.

So what now?

How about the PRESIDENT OF PAKISTAN?

This just astounds me. A sitting leader of a nuclear power that is on mixed terms with the US (as noted in his answer to the Seat Of Heat question) sitting there chuckling at Jon Stewart’s jokes.I mean, it’s a good thing no doubt.

But… I don’t know. Wow?

Those three words
Are said too much
They’re not enough

So I guess what I’ll say is that this is definitely my favorite band (and I only have one of those, as opposed to my handful of “favorite” DJ’s and my couple dozen “favorite” songs…). And tonight was the first time I saw them live. And they did not disappoint. And at one point I was contemplating going on ebay when I got home to try to score better tickets for tomorrow’s performance.

It wasn’t one of those perfect performances where I just know that there can’t be a better experience. Like the first time seeing BT or PVD or Junkie. So the Snow Patrol concert that I want on my deathbed hilight reel is still to come.

But it was most definitely that great awakening experience where all these personal little songs — you’ve only heard on your iPod that feel as private as the very thoughts in your head — you suddenly discover are loved and shared by hundreds of other people right there with you, and even more amazing is the very source of the songs right there on stage.

And that source, the frontman Gary Lightbody… well in a sense doesn’t reality always get it exactly right? The voice, the poetry of the lyrics, the feeling of the songs is so smooth that you almost fall into the trap of expecting the smoothest bloke out of the UK that you’ve ever seen. The kind of guy that could walk right in and steal the heart of every girl I know that loves Snow Patrol music.

But reality was more clever than that — he’s actualy rough and awkward in all the right places. He’s got the gawky arm positioning problems that all of us skinny guys have. Like you know how in big emotional moments guys with skinny arms have them all folded up near their body like a cricket’s leg? Gary is prone to do that whenever he doesn’t have his guitar to focus his hands on. I love it. He’s there face to face doing the most beautiful duet I’ve ever heard (guess what my favorite Snow Patrol song is!) and visually he’s spazzing out. His voice is a little rough too. Lots of uneven changes, volume shifts as he runs back and forth on stage between lines. I loved that even more.

Because all the little imperfections make it so REAL. The imperfections frame the perfect feeling in the middle of the music. Like a quantum particle is never perfectly THERE, but all of its imperfect probabilities frame its perfect conceptual position.

And the duet! I guess I’m just too resigned to most musicians on tour never having their guest vocalists with them. So what a wonderful surprise when Martha Wainwright herself skips out on stage and lets loose. She’s actually touring with them as an opening act I guess, and Gary’s plug of her album absolutely worked on me. I think they got the song names crossed up on that album though, because “Make This Go On Forever” is all I’m ever thinking during it. But life and love are too short, so songs must be too.

I’m miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold ground
I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms

But he’s stayed with me all the same. Although, since I don’t know how he got in I guess I wouldn’t know how he would get out. Finding him visually has been more tricky, but it’s easy to know he’s still here. Oh, the chirping!!

Tonight he’s taken up residence underneath my cd player. I wonder if he knows that is the central source of all music in the apartment and picked his spot accordingly, or if it is just a happy coincidence. At the moment the stereo is off, and he’s the one very dramatically filling the room with sound.

So I began to wonder what he has been eating, or if not how much longer he might live, etc. That little trip on the internet got me to thinking.

First off, according to the internet, crickets bring luck. I can use some of that.

And, of course, the chirping is a mating call. But I’m afraid that there is nothing fertile and female in this apartment of any species (I’ve checked), and so I don’t think his call will be very fruitful. A lovesick song for hours each night, night after night, never to be answered.

That’s a noble tragedy I can relate to. So I’ve resolved to no longer throw heavy objects at him. And I’ve named him “Erik”, after the title character in Phantom of the Opera, a kindred mournful soul, similarly condemned to loneliness and haunting his dominion with the music of unrequited passion.

You alone can make my song take flight -
help me make the music of the night . .

You are always welcome at any gathering

The problem with computers, I’ve realized, is not that they do stuff wrong. It’s that when they do something wrong, they do it again. And again. Over and over. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. Exactly the same way. Like drops out of a leaky faucet, slowly eroding through the most stone-solid patience.

Drip…

drip…

drip…

…

“YOUR CAREFUL NATURE WILL BRING YOU FINANCIAL SUCCESS”

(Just like every flop tonight, this was clearly intended for someone else…)

Wired News: Stuck Pig
(Medical researchers have successfully revived pigs that have been in suspended animation for hours, after having drained their blood and replaced it with cryogenic fluids.)

Nothing is certain, of course, but it is undeniable that it will be very possible in the near future to do this with humans, and do this for much longer than a matter of hours.  And there is a crucial threshold where being able to do this to humans may suddenly cause a fundamental leap in how long we’re able to live for.  At some point privileged people will be able to continually freeze themselves long enough to always hit the next order of magnitude advance in life-extending technology.  In the eyes of everyone who lived before them, they will be nearly immortal.

So the question is, really, who will be the last generation to die?

“I don’t know what the big deal is – that is what I was aiming for.”

This is the guy Zidane popped with his head, the rumored cause of which apparently was some racial slur.  This is also the guy who was blatently pushing himself up and over the French defender on a corner kick to head in Italy’s one goal.

Jugo bonita.

My streak continues.  I think nearly every game I watched the team I was rooting for lost.  I was supposed to be rooting for Italy in the final, since a good friend of distant Italian origin was rooting for them and I don’t have any French acquaintences at the moment (any beautiful femmes out there feel free to message me), so the balance of my friends’ happiness would be greater if Italy won.  Plus it would be nice if the USA would end up as the only team that didn’t lose to Italy.

But the Italians are such a dirty team with the diving and fouling that I found myself rooting for France.  True, France’s first goal was off a bit of a dive in the box, but there was a later French chance in the box where the Italian clearly fouled him that wasn’t called, so it kind of works out.  And how was Italy’s goal not off a foul when Materazzi was pushing the French defender down and himself up to get the header?

I hate to sound like I’m trying to compare sports here, when they’re all great and people who can’t appreciate different sports and recognize the brilliance and triumph in sports that aren’t their favorite are just close minded and silly.  But I will say after the NBA Finals and the World Cup this year that I have a new found reasont to really love baseball — baseball is almost never decided by the umpires, and the losing side is almost never left complaining about forces beyond their control.  I think of the great whiners in baseball, and what they whine about is why the manager left Pedro in to pitch, or took Ortiz out for a reliever, or a ball went through  an infielder’s legs, or why Giambi didn’t slide, or why a fan interfered with the ball.  Every now and then there is a clearly bad call, or an ump who just screws up the balance of hte game with a bizarre strike zone, but those are really pretty rare when you think about it.  Usually you’re blaming the team that lost for losing, and celebrating the team that won with a clear conscious.  Not so for the contact sports.

So, by the end of regulation time I was seriously rooting for Zidane to score again and have the greatest retirement moment ever — maybe better than Jordan’s shot in 98.  I just couldn’t cheer on the Italians.

And then Zidane gave a new meaning to the word “greatness”, in out-dirtying the entire Italian team on one moment that we’re lucky was even caught by a camera it was so far away from the action of the game.  Unbelievable.  8 minutes left until penalty kicks in the World Cup final, his last international game ever, and after just some heated words back and forth he completely snaps and tries to sneak in a vicious head-butt away from the referee.  I guess there’s some controversy over whether the referee brought out the red card on advice from a line judge or whether he saw the replay on the big screen in the stadium, but there will be no controversy over whether Zidane deserved the red.

How could he go out like that?  Does this kind of viscious cheap shotting happen away from the ball all the time?  Most famous unsportsmanlike moment in World Cup since the “Hand of God”?

So I guess I’m starting to get used to the dirty aspects of footie.  I guess you just have to learn to think less and cheer more, and acknowlege that cheap shots and dives and anything you can get away with are part of the game.  I think part of the love is really an infrequent-reward-schedule/slot-matchine psychology of how thrilling it is when out of this wild scrum of people shoving and kicking and flubbing the ball around a clean moment of brilliances breaks out, such as the Argentina extra-time goal against Mexico, and a beautiful thing happens too fast for it to be ruined by something dirty.

Now, I know I am not just a stupid American when it comes to seeing that football at this level is definitely in need of some subtle rule tweaks.  Plenty of proper Englishman and others from all over the world will agree that there are just too many matches being decided by one questionable call or by a penalty kick shoot-out.  And I do emphasize the world subtle.  No one is trying to turn it into basketball.  But the World Cup in the age of Pele averaged 4-5 goals per game, and now we’re down to like 2.3.  The goal should be to raise that up to the 3-5 range.  Keep goals special, but don’t make every single one decide the match.

(As is demonstrated by that stupid “record of teams who score the first goal” statistic you have to hear about every damn match.  I can’t believe that in the entire World Cup no one on the ESPN or ABC production teams ever pointed out during some staff meeting or something that, you know, teams who score the second goal had a better record for the tournament than teams that scored the first goal.  And thank you, Italy, for just demonstrating that yet again.)

I’ve been reading some of the BBC blog discussions about ways to tweak the game.  Oh, and let’s also put to rest the silly myth that the game has rules laid out by God in Genesis and hasn’t been altered since.  In fact it’s consistently been evolved and tweaked just like any sport.  There wasn’t always offsides for instance, or there was a rule introduced in the 90′s to reduce backpassing to the goalie, etc.  The injury time was another addition.  The list goes on.

And what about this new ball?  Changing the aerodynamics is kind of a major alteration to a supposedly perfect game.  And I don’t entirely buy that it was a benefit to the offense.  Sure, there were a couple crazy knuckling goals, especially in the 3rd place match, but a ball that knuckles more easily necessarily has to be a ball that is harder to aim because the shooter doesn’t control the knuckling.  If there were any extra goals there were probably lots of extra shots that sailed high or wide, and even worse lots more errant crosses and other ways that opportunites were missed before the shot.  Of course, you can’t really tell from watching.  But I hope someone’s done or is doing some science on the ball.  And really testing out whether the best feet in the game have more or less control with it.

Anyway, my big idea for a rule change to football doesn’t seem to get very much mention out there for some reason.  I hear lots of ideas like bigger goals, 10 to a side, no offsides, or other dramatic changes that could really have huge undesired effects.  How about something more simple:

Change the substitution rules so that players that are subbed out can be brought back in, lots more subs can be made, and basically both teams can have their best line-up playing at the end of each match and with much less fatigue.

I would love to see some data analysis about when in the match goals are most likely to be scored, and I know that lack of fatigue isn’t necessarily the only reason why there seems to be lots of goals scored relatively quickly in the match.  But I do strongly contend that less tired players helps offense.  Even in the really important matches, I always notice in the dead spots of the match, especially in the middle of the second half, that you see a lot fewer offensive players running away from the ball.  That is, the player controlling the ball and maybe a player or two that’s around him is active, but the other players are kind of standing still, easily being covered, or not being up enough on counter attacks to be ready to take the extra pass and score.  In the opening of games, and in moments where teams pick up the pace, you see a lot more movement of offensive players farther from the ball, and that’s when you see lots of scoring opportunities.

It’s true, there are plenty of goals in later parts of matches that should probably be chalked up to defenders being tired and letting their guard down just enough.  Italy’s tie-breaking goal at the end of extra time against Germany was one of those cases.  But I think that on balance less fatigue has to help the offense more than the defense.  Good defense can be played more economically, as you can clear dangerous balls, take down offensive players who get by you, and you don’t need to move if you’re in position and the tired offsenive player isn’t moving.  Good offense requires more coordinated sprinting, moving to open up passing lanes, and always requires making the extra effort to score, instead of just booting the ball to give yourself a breather.

I was kind of vague in how to describe the increased substitution rule because there is a little difficulty in how it is implemented.  You obviously don’t want the game to be stopped that much more often, you don’t want everyone to be waiting around while players on the other side of the field hustle off, and you don’t want teams to be able to always have in defensive specialists without taking the chance that they’ll be less effective on counter-attack, and vice-versa for always putting in offensive specialists.  But those trade-offs will usually be automatically part of the decision.  And adding in the potential for more mis-matches and more varied tactics would only add to the game.

And as long as the timing of substitutions is worked out to keep the game fluid, you still fundamentally have the same game.  Nothing that happens would be that different than what already happens the first 20 minutes of play in either half, or what could potentially happen any other point in the game.  You still have the same numbers of guys playing the same game, just that they’re playing always fresh and at the top of their abilities, instead of walking around out there and making their coach try to calculate at what point of fatigue a great starter becomes less useful than his less talented back-up.

Oh, well.  Maybe the game is less than it could be and worth changing, but that doesn’t mean it still isn’t fantastic.  I so feel like a kid on Christmas eve wishing that the next World Cup was going to start again tomorrow but realizing that the long wait is a key part of what makes it so enthralling.

And even with the disappointing results on field, football, soccer, is becoming huge in the US.  One of the things so overlooked by our narrowminded media is that this country is the most diverse on the planet, as all the biggest empires have been.  I watched the final in a packed Hollywood theatre, and both the French fans and the Italians fans were so numerous and loud that I couldn’t tell which contingent was larger.  (Of course it didn’t help that they were all wearing blue.  Hey, Italy — what gives?  There’s no blue on your flag, so where did this Azzurri thing come from?)  And tooling around after the game in Hollywood, there were plenty of cars with French flags or Italian flags flying out the windows.  And the crowd they kept showing out in front of Boston’s city hall was as impressive as the shots of crowds from Europe.  America is proudly part of the world’s game; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

But, the Cup is now over.  And all the other sports have cleared out, so that we can all focus, without distraction, on baseball.  Only 80-some games left! — it’s pennant-race time!

BEAT L.A.!!  BEAT L.A.!!

“The World’s Most Amazing Dog” (YouTube)

And we’ll all stumble, lose our balance a bit sometimes.  And adrenaline shoots through our hearts and propells us back up to safety.

But what I hate — don’t ever do this around me — is when afterwards you run back far away from the edge, and you won’t stand there again with me, re-balanced and still enjoying the view.

Got to hand it to the Ghana squad though – they are seriously dangerous with their quickness, not playing timid at all, and are deserving of all the attention they’re now getting in this World Cup. Of course, Brazil is a tough way to start the round of elimination, but how “far” a team gets is obviously not an exceedingly accurate measure of how good a tournament they had.

I think Group E has to be acknowledged as having been the toughest group. Argentina and the Netherlands were tough in Group C, but where were the other two teams? Was there any ever doubt on who was going to advance? Group E could have broken a lot of different ways, considering that the last place team in the group managed a draw against the group winner, and might have even beaten them if the refs had been a little more mellow.

That said, the USA definitely has themselves to blame most of all. There’s just a certain kind of sharpness, a certain touch that they seemed to be lacking. I think they actually dominated possession in all three matches (at least they did in the two losses), but when you watch match highlights the US never has quite as many solid scoring opportunities.

As an outsider to soccer, it looks like too much long ball to me. The US almost never tried to make controlled passes in that critical area between 20 and 40 yards outside of the opponents’ goal. Instead of challenging the defense, they would usually opt to try to send a long ball in the air to the strikers, and they rarely won opportunities off of those. Partially the US strikers just aren’t very big so don’t win a lot of balls from bigger defenders, and partially they aren’t as refined in their ability to quickly control those types of balls even if they get to them first.

Indeed, the only goal scored by a US player was the result of Beasley in that zone I was talking about, trying to squeeze a pass through a ton of defenders that would have set up a great break. Of course, the defenders blocked the pass but the rebound was a bit too far and Beasley was able to swing around, pick it up on the run with both he and Dempsey a step ahead of the defense. I’ve seen so many goals scored in the World Cup in that sort of fashion. Either with a great thread-the-needle pass (eg, Nedved’s pass to setup Czech’s third goal against the US in the opener), or due to a counter strike or second chance off a steal from the defense (eg, Ghana’s first goal off of the US, which was all that mattered since the US needed a win so the bad penalty call would only have mattered if the US could have scored a second goal).

The thing about offense on soccer is that you only need to succeed on a few plays. Keep pressing for those tight short passes between the defenders that will open up a clean look at the goal. All you need the whole match is for a couple to go through, or for a couple to end up slightly misplayed by the defenders.

Which brings up the other area where the US could definitely improve: defensive mistakes. Again, offense was a bigger problem as striking 1 goal is not enough to reasonably expect to get out of the group. But 6 goals against could also be improved on. A bunch of those goals were just bad clears. Rosicky’s first goal (Czech’s second in the opener) was an amazing shot, but he wouldn’t have had it if it hadn’t been for a US defender failing to clear the ball long wide and instead leaving it short and in the middle. (By the way, with all the talk of how many strikers are licking their chops over this ball and being able to get crazy movement on shots from 30 yards out, how come the US wasn’t firing more from there? I mean, as I said before, I guess we actually rarely had the ball in that area, but in the closing minutes today there were definitely a few opportunities for us to say a prayer and drill in an equalizer. Donovan can’t shoot with his left foot though apparently?) Obviously Reyna is going to have nightmares for a long time about trying to dribble past an opposing striker only 20 yards out of his own goal.

And the second goal today also could have been prevented without giving the refs a chance to make a shitty call at all. The US defender could have easily cleared the ball out of bounds on the side and let the rest of the defense reset for the throw-in. But instead he got clever and tried to shoot it up in the air to keep it in play. As soon as he did I yelled out “no don’t pop it up!”, and unfortunately it became prophetic because of the ensuing call in the box that resulted from the fight for the ball.

So that’s at least half of the goals against that could have been easily prevented by clearing the ball and remembering that you’re not supposed to take chances on defense. In fact, in general I think our offense and defense sensibilities seem a little switched. We seem way too concerned with controlling the ball, and as a result of our keeping possession longer than our opponents we only managed a couple scores and in the process gave up half a dozen goals on counter attacks. In particular, we’re concerned with possession more in our half of the field than we are in our opponent’s half, which is backwards. All those defensive mistakes listed were the result of trying to keep possession in the backfield instead of letting the ball fly, we were constantly making passes from midfield back to defenders, even when we were desperate on time and needed to press, and then when we got the ball across midfield we were suddenly willing to just let the ball fly long and almost always get lost to the opponents’ defense.

Ok, well probably enough analysis by someone who’s watched now a total of 6 soccer matches in his life. Still proud of our team, will be long treasuring that one moment of pure “GOAAAL!!!” on Dempsey’s solid finish, and I’m already plotting in the back of my mind how I’m going to be in South Africa in 4 years to represent.

Meanwhile, I shall enjoy the rest of this year’s tournament with a bit less stress. Go England! – do it for Owen (who is the only other player I have a jersey for other than the Donovan jersey I’m wearing now… so I’m pretty disheartened that neither of them showed up). Go Brazil! – let’s see something dazzling. Go Germany! – no, I haven’t forgiven 2002, but I just have a soft spot for hearing the loudest possible crowds. Go Ghana! – make the US look better by pulling off the upset of the tournament against Brazil. And lastly, go Togo! – pitch a shut-out tomorrow so at least we can say that at least the US offense isn’t as pathetic as France. :)

will it be that easy to know when i should start back up again?

what’s wrong?

nothing major

maybe that’s why something has to change

i was down-regulated last week but there was an obvious reason.  not so right now.

i’m past this morning thanks to my buddha-like calm.

found a new cd to love.  (though isn’t listening to this kind of song more like mourning?)

i think the defining characteristic of the real-world generation is that the parts of your life that no-one else witnesses don’t really exist any more.  if i didn’t mention the bottle of chateau lalande bordeaux i was drinking while writing this blog post, how would you know i was speaking from the heart?

and obviously, girls, if you have no myspace interests and no myspace “about me”, then you must not have any personality at all.

aw, the cd’s run out and left me alone again.

doesn’t it scare you when your grandmother makes sense?  she lives with her cat Belle, just the two of them, and whenever she leaves the house she turns on talk radio so that the voices will keep little Belle company.  my mom and i always joke that poor Belle must go nuts waiting for my grandma’s swift return so she can escape that endless annoying chatter!

but sitting in silence on my couch i can see her point.  i’m a bit of an extreme extrovert as far as personal energy goes.  kind of like the solar-powered bad guy in Superman 4, except for me it’s people-power.  around people i’m go-go-go, and when you all go away the shadow falls over me and the merry-go-round lurches to a halt.  (some of my close friends don’t believe this, but it’s true.  of course, it’s a catch-22 trying to see it for yourself.  only the NSA will ever know for sure…)

which is why i’m addicted to music.  concentrated extract of all the parts of people that energize my soul.

“The music promoted a sense of ‘we’-ness, of being together in the same situation facing the same problems…  creating a social rather than a merely individual identity.”

The evolutionary social psychology of music

This is really cool.  It’s an article about an archaeologist who’s exploring why we as humans developed music, and why we still love to rock out to it in large groups all night long.  So next time the breakdown hits and you’re looking up into a sea of hands all around you, think about how that awesome sense of bass-driven togetherness might well have played a critical role in the development of the first human societies before the development of language… maybe even a critical role in the development of language itself.

Will be very excited to read this guy’s book when it arrives.

If you’re sitting around, nice and cozy on Saturday night, already committed to staying at home and taking it easy, here are a couple pointers to help you acheive that goal:

1) Don’t put on clubbing music.  Even if it “just helps you get your chores done faster.”  Excellent progressive internet stations like FriskyRadio.org seem to reserve exceptionally good sets for Friday and Saturday nights.  Avoid turning them on.

2) Be careful about checking messages, answering your phone, etc.  Who is going to call you on a Saturday night anyway except someone who wants you to go have fun with them?  As guarenteed as they will never call you the nights you really desperately want to go out if you can just find some partners in crime, it is also guarenteed they will be calling you to go out with them the night that you’re supposed to be staying in.

3) Most importantly, and I cannot stress this enough, avoid at all costs watching the movie “It’s All Gone Pete Tong”.

Oops sounds like my cab to Avalon is here…

Ok I feel a little guilty making light of this.  Clearly this is a real thing that is happening in the world and I sincerely hope more and more societies in the world will move out of poverty and into more progressive gender equality.

But when I read that, I just couldn’t help but picture a fish-out-of-water comedy series with a Borat-crossed-with-Mr-Bean lead and his taxi driver cousin sidekick bumbling around LA trying to snatch every cute girl they come across — be they actress/waitresses, beach girls, valley girls, Paris Hilton (imagine the B-celebrity cameo possibilities!), upscale Hollywood tranny’s, or even a lost Kyrgyz cousin who is studying abroad at UCLA precisely to get away from these kinds of shenanigans.  Of course, the girl always ends up getting away, and each episode ends with our poor hero saying, “well, I’m sure the next one will stay!”

(** when the freeways are working)

But I love how, today, when people are flagrantly abusing our confidence and saying things that are completely retarded when held up against things they themselves have said before, that we nail their ass.  (And by we, of course I mean The Daily Show and all the bloggers that provide the steady dose of humor that maintains our sanity in these trying times.)

Tom Friedman: We need to let this play out for a while before we do anything rash. The next six months are critical.

Robin Williams does SPORE

my hard drive with all my pictures, music, a decade of other interesting data, just wouldn’t boot up a month ago. i discover this a few hours before leaving to go snowboarding, so i don’t really have time to deal with it emotionally at that time. the past seems like it should be fixed and never change. but what is the past beyond what evidence there is of it in the present? lose all memory of something, and it never happened. it becomes less than a dream.

well, turns out the power supply was just dead and they shipped me a new one and i have all my memories back. very very very happy right now. :)

Don’t really know that much about him except that he’s a conservative-conservative arm-chair-general think tank type, and I’m sure there are more than a few views he holds that I would find positively nutty. (He like my father comes from the age of the vast Marxist Left conspiracy so he’s still a little paranoid of guys with dreads from the San Francisco Bay Area…)

But his blog is mostly just about thinking on military matters and that part is quite genious and fascinating. And that he makes references to a large under-brass movement of fellow “School of Fourth Generation Warfare” thinkers is one of the strong reasons I have for hope in these times, one of the things that reassures me that intelligent thinking really does push to the top eventually. (Of course, this whole group of thinking is embarrassed and appalled at our Commander in Chief, or Sec of Defense, and just about any public person who isn’t courageous enough to perform their duty and admit that Iraq was a fuck-up and we need to massively alter our entire discussion of it so far.)

A few gems from a bunch of good posts I caught up with today:

The Fourth Plague

The plague of contractors reinforces one of the militarys (and other bureaucracies) worst habits, formalizing thinking.

Of course, maybe this one just strikes me because I’ve been currently bristling — very minorly though — from a couple of moments where I saw that tendency and this gives me a nice name for it. “Formalized thinking.” No extra criticism necessary, just add the term to the “these are bad things” list.

Sweeping Up

Recognition that war is not dominated by technology but by human factors is an important counter to what will inevitably be claims by the U.S. military that it performed brilliantly; it was the politicians who lost the war (the Vietnam War claim repeated). As the authors note, this reflects an overly narrow definition of war:

Other lessons are that the military services must digest again that war is an instrument of policy. The profound neglect given to re-establishing order in the militarys prewar planning and the facile assumption that operations critical to the overall success of the campaign were somebody elses business reflect a shallow view of warfare.

It is kind of amazing to me that the people with the fierce competitiveness and ambition to become top leaders of imense power structures (politicians in the government or politicians in the military, aka “generals”) can sit in their positions and not lift a finger to help their team win, content as long as they can argue that losing wasn’t their fault. This is what children do when their team loses in CTF games online. America is getting its ass kicked (relatively) right now, in Iraq and across a lot of other fronts. Our whole acceptance of our ugly political processes is based on this intuitive assumption that if you’re able to “win” the dirty game of the election then you’ll be able to “win” later when it counts. Generals in particular. Why don’t they bust their asses to do whatever it takes (including, say, admitting error and trying to learn from their mistakes) to win in a total obvious fashion (stablizing the country, rebuilding, policing, bloody walking old Iraqi women across the street — basically nation building) when the alternative is that no matter how good their kill ratio is on the field, it’s going to be an uphill battle for them to get anyone to feel good about that considering the overall project failed spectacularly.

I mean, come on, this is America. No one cares how well you do if your team doesn’t win the championship.

Although, I guess selling out your team to cover your ass is just human nature. Writing this I’m suddenly remembering all the times I’ve seen a game programmer care more about something running fast and being bug free than the game being, you know, fun…

Off With His Head!

While Rumsfeldian Transformation represents change, it represents change in the wrong direction. Instead of attempting to move from the Second Generation to the Third (much less the Fourth), Transformation retains the Second Generations conception of war as putting firepower on targets while trying to replace people with technology. Its summa is the Death Star, where men and women in spiffy uniforms sit in air-conditioned comfort zapping enemies like bugs.

What a beautiful analogy. Not only pointing out that Rumsfield’s unconscious dream is really to turn the US Military into the best known sci-fi bad guys. But even better, because the Imperial commanders who were all proud of their “ultimate weapon” were even dumb in the eyes of the wisest of the bad guys Darth Vader, and he force-ably pointed that out to them. Of course, in that case, like now, the Fourth Generation scrapy woefully-technologically-inferior rebel forces came out on top.

Damn, such good movies too now that I think about it. I wonder whatever happened to the guy who made them?

“I believe that the government that governs the best is the government that governs the least. And by that standard, we’ve set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”

But from the totally irrelevant point of view of how good a time I had just being a guest, this one is the big winner. :) This was the second time that I’ve been a good friend to both the bride and groom, and coincidentally once again also the minister. Seeing one friend of yours tying the knot with someone who you’re just now meeting, under the direction of a bunch of people you also haven’t met before… well it’s just different when someone you’ve already known is marrying two other people who are near and dear to you.

I guess it’s the friends focus. Nothing against my friends who are more family-oriented. I wouldn’t have wanted them to have married in any other way. But you probably don’t have a lot of experience with your friends’ family. And if their friend network is diverse enough, you might not be that tight with anyone else there.

Josh and Cheryl are of the type where all of their friends seem to all have the right chemistry to be friends with each other. Not to mention that Josh has a little-brother version of himself that does a good job standing in and making conversation when Josh is off distracted somewhere, say, marrying someone.

Having a wedding as a weekend trip for all the guests is also fantastic. The standard half-day ceremony reception means you’re really just coming to show your support and love, and make dinner conversation with whoever you’re sitting near. I won’t miss the chance to put my face in the crowd that any of my friends see on that special day, but they know they’re not going to be able to have a quality moment with every guest. Josh and Cheryl did their family rounds, their picture taking (always at least four times longer than the actual ceremony the pictures are “of”), but then they declared themselves _done_, and spend the rest of the weekend with their friends. Fitting for a couple that’s been so bloody long getting to that point that most of their friends only know them as a two-for-one package anyway.

Miami wasn’t quite as expected. Vegas East it is not. At least, not in the sense that Vegas is so easy to jump right into. Thursday night I struck out looking for a party (not to say none was too be found, but could you ever be trolling around Vegas or Ibiza 4am Friday morning and not find anything?), and Friday night was a bit of a bloop double. Hardly the kind of smooth contact I was aiming for, but when I saw people packed into a black-lit room and heard good electronica, wow was I happy. Nothing makes something more valuable than scarcity.

But enough of pretending those moments of less-than-happiness are even deserving of mention. Miami is a beautiful girl even when she isn’t talking to you. And when you’re with all your friends there, things can’t get much better.

Be it the night riding in the back of Adam’s Porsche and looking over to the full-on nighttime money shot of downtown Vice City. Or the endless good eats, starting late, restaurant after restaurant on the beach.

As always, Saturday night was the peak. We got a table at Sky Bar, although now since Josh’s Bachelor party I can see that this is a group that just has no talent for finishing bottles. If you see us at a club near you, do come over and grab a cup — I promise you we need the help! Sky Bar Miami isn’t quite the view of the one in Hollywood, but the space is much larger, and it just always lends such a delicious air of decadence having a totally useless glowing-baby-blue pool in the middle of all the mingling.

Sky Bar’s conversations bled into a return and refresh at the hotel, into wandering and chilling at a cafe along the ocean, and finally out to the beach. The most Josh and Cheryl and Darion and Adam and Lara of the weekend, and the new friends (previously “of friends”) as well.

So I guess a lot of the magic of the sun flirting with the horizon has got to be due to adding water to the mix. As a California kid I’ve never been overly enamored with sunrises, except in so much as if I see them then I know I’ve been having a good night. But the molten orange searing through classic Miami-pastel-purple clouds was positively a west-facing coast’s sunset in reverse. A lover once was surprised that I enjoyed watching her put on clothing almost as much as watching her take it off. It’s the same thing really. All of life happens at the transitions.

As we waited for the sun to stop teasing us from behind the clouds, it occurred to me to stick my feet in the Atlantic for the first time. And there was much picture taking, and group hugs for physical and spiritual warmth. And some last moments in the newlywed suite, with the mirror on the wall next to the bed not just for playtime but also so that whichever side you like to lay on you won’t have to take your eyes off the endless ocean view.

A topic that kept coming up was how Burning Man-esque the whole moment was, as the sands in the dark slowly light up with life. But I think the real hook was just how we were all in the same moment together, and with each other we didn’t need anything else. We don’t ever seem to dance enough alone in small private groups, when the dancing isn’t for a partner or the DJ or the crowd or any hot singles out there that might be watching. I’m not going to say that from now on I’ll always be dancing just to dance and enjoy the moment, or even that it should ever always be like that. But when it is, I will always cherish it.

Thanks Josh, Cheryl, again for such a lovely time, and I’ll be dancing again with you soon, when the sun is next balanced on the horizon just right.

Suppose, totally hypothetically, that your convertible is parked at your workplace one day, just innocently minding its own business. And some… well it doesn’t really matter what so let’s just assume it’s a “person”… Some person comes up and randomly decides to cut a hole in the top of it. Again, doesn’t matter with what. Just assume something sharp. And doesn’t apparently matter why. Not to, like, get inside the car or anything. Assume the “person” just thought that the car needed a hole in it.

(A hint from the service representative at BMW: If you want to actually get into the car — maybe score yourself a cd case full of excellent progressive electronica — then the standard practice is to just knock out the back window.)

Now, what do you suppose fixing this hole in the top of the car might cost?

Is it:
a) Twice as much as it costs five bachelor-partiers on a mission to enjoy themselves at a top Vegas club if they should be so unlucky to be there the same night as Nicole Richie?

b) About 20% more than what your average pre-med has in play at any given time while playing poker online to save up for med school?

c) About the same as retaining a quality Los Angeles DUI lawyer for services up to, but not including, trial?

d) About half of the annual cost increase of driver’s insurance if said DUI defense is unsuccessful?

e) A third of the Blue Book value of the entire rest of the car?

f) A quarter of the price of a PS3 devkit?

g) A little less than a fifth of the portion that you, fellow citizen, owe of our national debt?

Winner is the one who guesses closest without going over.

Loser is whichever insurance company is still standing when the music stops…

Why do we keep trying that sequence of jumps over and over again? Why do we ignore kind and beautiful women who will do anything for us so that we can get repeatedly stung by lesser women who play hard to get? Why do we cripple ourselves with alcohol and lack of sleep and then dance around all night in bad parts of town or strange foreign countries and then try to get home safely so that we can call our friends randomly and try to have a meaningful conversation with them? Why do we leave our cozy villas to go hiking in 2am darkness or four hours straight up the treacherous side of a volcano?

Why do I keep playing a game like poker that is so perfectly the worst kind of game for me: designed to brutally punish both emotions and moments of inattention or carelessness?

If feels good to win, yeah, sure. And those MMORPG makers I’m sure have mapped out the exact right failure->failure->success curve to addict the widest possible audience.

But I say there’s still something missing to that explanation. We’re supposed to be evolved from those crafty little mammals that ran and hid while the dinosaurs stepped up and took the big asteroid challenge head-on. I mean, doesn’t the lion who runs after the slowest, lamest gazelle survive the longest?

And less impressive, but they hit so many of the right poses:
Google Video – SF2 Salsa

Now I just need a partner…