What's wrong with this Picture

I saw this banner on my email login page. I don't know about anyone else, but I swear the before picture is way more attractive than the after picture. The before looks like a warm cuddly hourglass shape. The after looks like a semi-emaciated adolescent boy. If that's what a woman wants out of weight loss she is NUTS. (And if that's what we (men and/or society) are telling her she needs, then we have a problem too.)

Fringe Benefits

As many of you know I am currently working several part time jobs teaching at three different community colleges here in the LA area. Two of the positions are near my home so I drive, but the other one (and the one which pays the best and where I have the most hours) is about 30 miles away beyond downtown LA. Because gas is expensive and I don't like fighting traffic, I ride the metro train there. This costs me a whopping total of $27 for a month pass so it is a big savings in gas even with a fuel efficient car.

But perhaps even better are the fringe benefits. I know you're thinking of things like reading or grading in the train and these are all nice, but the benefit I'm talking about is all the great conversations with CRAZY PEOPLE.

To be sure, I'm not refering to the crazy people who smell bad and wander around swearing under their breath at themselves. The ones I'm refering to usually start coming off about like my Uncle Bernell. (For those that don't know Bernell is a delightful man who loves to be the center of conversation. He is an excellent story teller and really only needs you to nod occasionally to keep the conversation going.)

Well, fairly often someone on the train or in the station comes around and just starts some conversation. Usually pretty benign and often interesting. This is no big deal as I do it too. (Of course I may be one of the crazy people.) But occasionally it takes a turn that I would never expect.

For example, last week I got to talking with a guy who seemed friendly enough, and when I asked him what he did he said he was a father figure for the USC football team. I assumed he was a retired coach who still hung around or something along those lines. The next thing I know he's explaining to me that the reason USC lost to Stanford (when I don't remember) was that he had gotten upset with the quarter back and walked out. Without him there the quarterback was so distraught he couldn't play. Before I know it he's explaining to me how Troy Aikman would never have made it in the NFL if he hadn't flown out at his own expense to give him a pep talk. He continued with these stories and complaining about how they never paid him anything out of gratitude until one of us had to get on or off of the train.

Yesterday was even more fun. Some guy comes and starts talking about Amtrak and some monthly pass they were offering. He said it stretched the entire continental US including Maine and Florida so I commented that it would take about a month to get from her to Maine and Florida on Amtrak. (Only a slight exageration. I think San Francisco to Chicago is about a week.) He kept on talking and then asked if I knew anything about nano-technology. I do in fact know a thing or two so I started to talk with him. Suddenly he is talking about how he signed a release for the government to implant a nano-chip in his brain to help with his manic-depression. At this point I'm cautious but not entirely certain that he is crazy. I don't claim to know about all therapies and a small chip that delivers microscopic shocks seemed like a conceivable experimental therapy. But when he started talking about how it was a "really good" "military quality" chip and that they had put micro-cameras in his eyes and he was filming everything he saw for a documentary, I knew he was over the edge.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that he probably had schizophrenia not bipolar and I mostly listened quietly as he told his stories. When he started asking about black holes I though maybe we could talk sense, but he mostly wanted to talk about time travel. (For the record, the evidence is getting stronger and stronger that no, you can't time travel, even with a black hole. Though Michio Kaku might say otherwise, I think he's a little out there himself.)

When he realized I wouldn't bite on the time-travel business, he asked the burly tatooed guy who he had originally started talking to and was now ignoring us. He actually had a good comment that in quantum mechanics nothing is impossible only ridiculously improbable. (In addition to crazy people you also meet people who know a lot more than you would expect at first blush. Riding the train is a good way to smash a lot of predjudices.)

A Project!! The Long Beach Boat Parade, Help Needed

I'd like to enter my boat in the Long Beach Boat Parade this Christmas. I just have to figure out how. There are a lot of small boats in the parade, in fact there have to be to go around the small island in Naples, so that isn't the problem. The problems are

1. How will I propel it? It is a sailboat and under sail power it can't stay in a nice straight line. Besides the parade is at night and the wind will have died down by then. A small trawler moter ought to work. They cost about $100, but maybe I can get one off of Craigslist, or better yet, borrow one for the night. (I'd need a battery too, so maybe I could borrow that.) Otherwise, we could move it with the small oars I have, or get new ones, but that is a lot of rowing for a boat not built for it.
2. How will I light it. Again, I'd need batteries for that. LED lights would last longer on battery power but would be more expensive to purchase. I might need an inverter to ramp the voltage up too. What would happen if we capsized? Would it short at the battery or at the high voltage end. Or is there a safety device. (Acording to what I've read, lots of people use 120 V lights.)
3. If I want to go on the small boat inner loop, I'll have to lower the mast. I could just leave the mast off, but it would be the prettiest thing lit up and lowering it shouldn't be that bad. Or I could just stay on the outside loop. (Come to think of it, leaving the mast off is harder than I thought.)

So if ANYONE has any ideas, or any of the necessaries (old strings of lights for example, I'm looking for the cheesy colorful ones so if you switched to the classier whites your old ones would be great), please let me know.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight

HOLY @$#* !!!!!!!!!!!!!

We got out of the movie almost an hour ago and I'm still shaking. This may be the best movie I have ever seen. (Maybe not, but seriously, this is a contender.) Everything I had heard about Heath Ledger's Joker and all the other perfomances was spot on.

The joker seems to be the one that is always in control. Even when he is losing you never know if he has another trick up his sleeve. Honestly, even in the end I didn't think it was completely clear that he wouldn't show up again.

It is VERY dark and frightening. Even when you know who wins in the end and who loses the suspense is still there. (And sometimes what you thought you knew doesn't turn out to be true.)

It was certainly a thrill ride and well worth the time spent on it. (We used some free tickets from donating blood or something like that so I can't say it was worth the price, but it would have been.) I'm glad I saw it in the theater and almost wish I had seen it in an IMAX theater. That said, no I don't want to see it in a theater again. The next time I'll be perfectly happy to watch it on a small screen with the lights turned on.

Sports Review, Canadian Football

Those that know me well know that I have always been a sucker for something different, odd, or a bit out of the norm. For example, I chose to play viola in elementary school, not because I liked the sound, but because I'd seen a viola on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and had never heard of it before. This was something out of the ordinary, different, 0dd, unique. The decision served me well as I had opportunities that I would not have had playing cello or violin, but that isn't the point.

So it should come as no surprise that when I heard that Canada also plays football (american style football) but that it was a little different, I was immediately interested. In the past I've only managed to occasionally smuggle a recording of the Grey Cup (their championship) into the states (no it isn't really smuggling, its perfectly legal, but it sounds better this way). Now, our current cable provider shows a fairly large number of CFL (Canadian Football League) games and I just catch them on the DVR and watch them when I want.

Personally, I find the differences exciting just for being different, but they do alter the feel of the game significantly. For example, the field is 10 yards longer and teams only get 3 downs rather than 4 to move the ball 10 yards. You would think this would result in a much slower game with more punts and less scoring, but the opposite is true.

You see, in addition to those differences, the field is 15 yards wider. There is an extra player on each team (for 12 each) but that isn't enough space to plug up 30% more field so the game is more spread out allowing more passing and running lanes and a better chance for end around plays to be successful. The endzone is 20 yards deep rather than 10 (the goal posts are in the middle of the endzone rather than the back) so that goal line offense is not as cramped as it is in the U.S. Plus teams are simply more aggressive.

The longer field results in teams rarely being backed up against their goal line (you almost never get a touchback on a kickoff). The kick itself rarely goes past the 10 yard line and is usually run back to the 30 or 40. Interestingly, being backed up against the goal line is considered much worse than in the U.S. Teams will routinely concede a safety rather than have to punt from their own endzone. I'm guessing it is just too hard to get a good long punt and prevent a runback. I figure they would rather take the 2 points loss than take that big of a risk of giving up 7.

One more interesting point is a single point. If a kick is taken for a touchback in Canadian Football (kickoff or field goal, I'm not certain with a punt and have heard both) the receiving team does still get to start from their 20 yard line, but the kicking team gets one point. As a result, field goal attempts almost always score at least one point (it must miss the endzone or be run out of the endzone) and occasionally points are scored on the kickoff by the kicking team.

All in all I find it very exciting and enjoy watching it. That isn't to say that I will stop watching American Football, but I do enjoy the CFL occasionally to change things up.

The Big Bang Theory, Television Review

While visiting my folks this Summer, my dad and my older brother each asked me if I had seen the CBS television show The Big Bang Theory. I hadn't and when the were agast that I hadn't seen a show about physicists I was a bit taken aback. I mean, why would I want to watch a show that was almost certain to make bitter fun of the physicist's inherent quirks.

When I first saw it, I thought it was indeed very funny, but was still bothered that the main character, Sheldon, and the two minor sidekicks, Howard and Raj, were far more disfunctional than any physicists I knew (or at least the vast, vast majority). Only the major sidekick, Leonard, was at all realistic. Still it was cute enough that I started to record and watch the show (Oh the wonders of a DVR.)

Well, I've come to a few realizations

1. Leonard, not Sheldon, is the true main character. (Yes there is room for debate here, but I am convinced of it.)
2. Sheldon, Howard, and Raj are not meant to be real people, but archetypes of certain idosyncracies that yes physicists and other technical guys do have. Just like the women in Sex and the City were archetypes (except Carrie). Thus we get
1. Leonard, a real believable character with aspects of everyone else's idosyncracies, but generally a functional normal guy.
2. Sheldon, probably high functioning Aspergers with no concept or interest in social involvement.
   
3. Howard, sex crazed and clueless about how to pursue this goal. I haven't seen anyone really like this guy since junior high.
4. Raj, terrified of women and introverted.

So, now the show really is quite entertaining. To be totally honest, back as an undergrad I used to think a sitcom about the physics students' antics in our study room would be really funny until I realized that no one else would watch or get it. Now I find that this show is about as close to that as any real show I could hope for. Maybe not my favorite show of all time, but well worth a half an hour a week. (OK, 25 minutes since I fast forward through commercials.)

The End of an Era

OK, many of you will think this hardly constitutes the end of an era, but the comic strip "For Better or For Worse" www.fbofw.com has concluded. It has been going for some 29 years and chronicled the lives of a family in Toronto Canada. Unlike most comic strips, the characters aged in a lifelike manner so I could follow the children (who were only slightly younger than me) through their lives, and they often seemed like extra friends. (I heard on the radio once that people sometimes overestimated the number of friends they had because they counted Ross, Monica, Joey, Chandler, Rachel, and Phoebe from the TV show friends. I was guilty of the same thing but by counting the fbofw characters.) According to the synopsis in yesterday's strip, she probably had enough material to keep it going for several years or more. I'm sad to see it go as I always looked to it for at least one daily smile. It will be running reworked repeats though so I guess it will just be fun to watch Michael and Elizabeth grow up again.