Batting gloves

Posted on June 7, 2011

A surprising proportion of people who play slow-pitch softball wear batting gloves, but I definitely prefer not to. This is in contrast to my younger, baseball-playing days, when I usually wore two batting gloves. I don’t remember exactly why; I guess it felt better and provided me with a better grip. But I do remember that when I first got my dad to buy me a batting glove, at about age 7 or 8, I wanted a batting glove because I thought it was cool. It was a new, cool product that I could wear and use and be like the big-leaguers. The same reason a child would want cool new shoes or a cool pair of sunglasses. I guess from then on I never went back and eventually upgraded to two batting gloves.

Looking back, I wish I had been a person who didn’t wear batting gloves. It seems so much more tough and hard-core, like the baseball players who don’t change their hat throughout the year or rub all that pine tar and dirt on their helmet or always seem to get their uniform dirty. They play hard and tough and don’t care about any dirtiness or discomfort. I’m going to raise my kids not to wear batting gloves, even (especially) in the cold weather when we’re practicing for the new season.

Ted Williams was one person who didn’t care about discomfort but rather welcomed it, embraced it, and inflicted it upon himself with ardor. He famously took soft toss every day in spring training until his hands bled. He could only feel assured that he had practiced enough if he swung to the point that his hands bled. And he came back and did it every day after that, until his hands were so calloused that they probably couldn’t bleed anymore.

Interestingly, Ted Williams is one of the people who is thought to have maybe been the first Major Leaguer to wear batting gloves. That would have been in spring training, but Hawk Harrelson is well known to have been the first Major Leaguer to wear a batting glove (actually these early ones were all golf gloves) in a regular-season game.

Entirely apart from the blisters and pain, there are good reasons to wear batting gloves with a wooden bat. There is no leather or other-material grip, as there is on metal bats, so you have to put pine tar, rosin, dirt, and/or other substances on the handle to make it less smooth and slippery. Therefore, I don’t consider Major Leaguers less tough or manly because they use batting gloves. I still admire those who don’t wear them, though. The two main ones I’ve noticed in my lifetime are Moises Alou and Vladimir Guerrero. That Wikipedia article informed me of a few others who don’t wear them, either. Here are my favorites:
Moises Alou Vladimir Guerrero Brooks Conrad Jason Kendall Nate Schierholz Francisco Cervelli

I didn’t include Jorge Posada in that list because I can’t stand him, and even his gloveless batting doesn’t rescue my opinion of him. I think he is so overrated (even though isn’t rated all that highly, possibly (hopefully) not even a Hall of Famer) and don’t think he deserves whatever high praise he has received. He is only good because he has been lucky enough to be on the Yankees his whole career, surrounded by other, actually great players, and his defensive skills never improved over his entire Major League career.

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The en dash vs. the hyphen: examples for more precise English usage

Posted on June 4, 2011

You can tell there’s something wrong with me when I have a favorite punctuation mark. It’s the en dash, the bastard middle child between the hyphen and em dash, but it can provide oh-so-much clarity and eliminate oh-so-much ambiguity once you learn a couple simple rules for when it should replace the hyphen. The en dash has the HTML code –, the Unicode number 2013, and can be found, for example, in the Insert | Symbol | Special characters box in Microsoft Word. The Wikipedia article on the en dash, or “n dash” as it is sometimes written because it was originally supposed to be the width of a capital N (I guess “en” is the transcription of the word for the letter N), is very informative. I also wrote a tutorial on the proper uses of the en dash, based on the Wikipedia article and my experiences editing biomedical research manuscripts, on my Grammar page.

The en dash has multiple usages: to represent a range of numbers, to mean “and” or “to”, and to take the place of the hyphen when one side of the hyphen or the other (or both) contains a space or hyphen. This post is about the third use: When you would normally use a hyphen to create a compound adjective or some other compound term, but either side of the hyphenated phrase has multiple words or a hyphenated word, then the hyphen should be replaced with the en dash. A few simple examples of this replacement might make you think it’s no big deal and shouldn’t ever be bothered with:

stem cell–derived
Pulitzer Prize–winning
MS-DOS–based
pro–free market

Probably every time you have encountered those phrases and others like it, the hyphen was used instead, and it was clear enough. It wasn’t as precise as it could be, and we have a perfectly good punctuation mark to make those phrases as precise as possible, so if you’re going to use one almost-right punctuation mark, why not use the right one? It might not be the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning, but as the examples below show, there are times when the difference between the hyphen and en dash is almost that big, so it is better to follow the rule uniformly than to follow it sometimes and ignore it others (just like the Oxford comma!).

The main purpose of this post is to provide some example phrases in which the hyphen is completely unacceptable and the en dash is the only suitable punctuation mark:

non-current smokers vs. non–current smokers

This example is taken from a paper in which the authors divided their study population into two groups: those who were current smokers and those who were not. Therefore, their two groups were current smokers and non–current smokers. The only possible way to express this in a concise way and using the terminology that the authors wanted was to use the en dash. The hyphen isn’t just unclear; it is categorically incorrect. Non-current smokers with a hyphen means people who were smokers but aren’t currently, i.e., past smokers (or I guess future smokers too), which would specifically exclude never-smokers, which would have been incorrect according to the analysis these authors performed. Many similar examples can be imagined in which the “future” possibility really does apply, such as a prospective study that was conducted on people who weren’t smokers but became smokers later in the study, or weren’t diabetics but became diabetics, or weren’t pet owners but became pet owners, etc. Non-current with a hyphen is an adjective that applies to smokers, whereas non–current smokers is a single noun identifying a different, more inclusive group: people who no longer smoke and people who never smoked.

conventional extract–treated group

This group wasn’t an extract-treated group that received some other conventional treatment that earned them the “conventional” label; they were treated with the conventional extract (of green tea or something or other), which can only be expressed with the en dash and not with the hyphen.

FGF stimulation–dependent SHP2 activation

With a hyphen, this phrase would mean FGF activation of SHP2 that is stimulation-dependent. Dependent on what stimulation? It makes no sense. It is SHP2 activation that is FGF stimulation–dependent. The need for the en dash in this phrase does come partly from the stilted, super-formal conventions of scientific writing. This phrase appeared at the end of a sentence that could have been written, under different circumstances with a different meaning, as “…FGF’s SHP2 activation” (“FGF’s activation of SHP2”), but apostrophes are way too frowned upon in primary literature, so the awkward phrase “the FGF SHP2 activation” could be totally legitimate, if the FGF protein directly activated the SHP2 protein. It does not. Stimulation with FGF leads to activation of the intracellular protein SHP2, so with the multiple-word antecedent, the en dash is necessary.

postprandial TRL–mediated foam cell formation

Again, this is not TRL-mediated foam cell formation that is postprandial; it is foam cell formation that is mediated by postprandial TRL.

small RNA–dependent scaffold

This is an especially good example because “small” is a common adjective itself. This phrase means a scaffold that depends upon small RNAs as a necessary component, in contrast to a small scaffold that requires RNAs.

inter–stress fiber space

This is another good example of a prefix (“inter”) that needs to be followed by an en dash instead of a hyphen in this phrase. This means the space in between stress fibers, not an “inter-stress” fiber space, whatever that would mean.

All of my examples are from biomedical research papers because that’s the writing I encounter the most. What are some good examples that you’ve come across of the need to replace hyphens with en dashes?

Posted in Grammar, Writing | Leave a comment

Narrative songs: Paradise by the Dashboard Light

Posted on January 15, 2011

Clearly the all-time greatest story-telling song is “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meat Loaf, featuring Ellen Foley as the girl. It was from his 1977 album Bat Out of Hell and was written by Jim Steinman, who wrote most of the music and lyrics of his first two Bat Out of Hell albums. Steinman also wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for Bonnie Tyler, but “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” eclipses everything else he ever did, combined.

In the music video, Karla DeVito plays the girl, but she is just lip-synching to Ellen Foley’s singing.

Boy:
Well, I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday:
a parking lot, a lake, and there was not another car in sight.
Well, I never had a girl looking any better than you did,
and all the kids at school, they were wishing they were me that night.

And now our bodies are oh, so close and tight.
It never felt so good, it never felt so right.
And we’re glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife,
glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife.
Come on! Hold on tight!
Well, come on! Hold on tight!

Boy and Girl:
Though it’s cold and lonely in the deep, dark night,
I can see paradise by the dashboard light.

Girl:
Ain’t no doubt about it, we were doubly blessed
’cause we were barely 17 and we were barely dressed.
Ain’t no doubt about it!
Babe, I got to go out and shout it!
Ain’t no doubt about it, we were doubly blessed

Boy:
’cause we were barely 17 and we were barely dressed.

Baby, don’t you hear my heart, you got it drowning out the radio.
I’ve been waiting so long for you to come along and have some fun.
Well, I gotta let you know: no, you’re never gonna regret it.
So open up your eyes, I got a big surprise, it’ll feel alright, well, I want to make your motor run.

Boy and Girl:
And now our bodies are oh, so close and tight.
It never felt so good, it never felt so right.

Boy:
And we’re glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife, glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife.
Come on! Hold on tight!
Well, come on! Hold on tight!

Boy and Girl:
Though it’s cold and lonely in the deep, dark night,
I can see paradise by the dashboard light!

Boy:
Though it’s cold and lonely in the deep, dark night,
paradise by the dashboard light.

Boy and Girl:
You got to do what you can
and let Mother Nature do the rest.
Ain’t no doubt about it, we were doubly blessed
’cause we were barely 17 and we were barely—

Boy:
We’re gonna go all the way tonight, we’re gonna go all the way tonight, tonight.
We’re gonna go all the way tonight, we’re gonna go all the way tonight, tonight.
We’re gonna go all the way tonight, we’re gonna go all the way tonight, tonight.
We’re gonna go all the way tonight, we’re gonna go all the way tonight, tonight.

Phil Rizutto:
Okay, here we go, we got a real pressure cooker going here. Two down, nobody on, no score, bottom of the 9th. There’s the windup, and there it is, a line shot up the middle. Look at him go, this boy can really fly. He’s rounding first and really turning it on now. He’s not letting up at all, he’s gonna try for second. The ball is bobbled out in center, and here comes the throw, and what a throw! He’s gonna slide in head first, he’s out. No wait, safe! Safe at second base! This kid really makes things happen out there. The batter steps up to the plate. Here’s the pitch, and he’s going! And what a jump he’s got! He’s trying for third. Here’s the throw, it’s…in the dirt. Safe at third. Holy cow, stolen base! He’s taking a pretty big lead out there, almost daring them to try and pick him off. The pitcher glances over, winds up, and it’s bunted, bunted down the third base line, the suicide squeeze is on. Here he comes, squeeze play, it’s gonna be close. Here’s the throw, here’s the play at the plate. Holy cow, I think he’s gonna make it—

Girl:
Stop right there!
I gotta know right now!
Before we go any further, do you love me?
Will you love me forever, do you need me?
Will you never leave me, will you make me so happy for the rest of my life?
Will you take me away, will you make me your wife?
Do you love me?
Will you love me forever, do you need me?
Will you never leave me, will you make me so happy for the rest of my life?
Will you take me away, will you make me your wife?
I gotta know right now, before we go any further,
do you love me? Will you love me forever?

Boy:
Let me sleep on it.
Baby, baby, let me sleep on it.
Let me sleep on it, I’ll give you an answer in the morning.
Well, let me sleep on it.
Baby, baby, let me sleep on it.
Well, let me sleep on it, I’ll give you an answer in the morning.
Well, let me sleep on it.
Baby, baby, let me sleep on it.
Well, let me sleep on it, I’ll give you an answer in the morning.

Girl:
I gotta know right now, do you love me?
Will you love me forever, do you need me?
Will you never leave me, will you make me so happy for the rest of my life?
Will you take me away, will you make me your wife?
I gotta know right now, before we go any further,
do you love me? Will you love me forever?

What’s it gonna be, boy? Come on. I can wait all night.
What’s it gonna be, boy? Yes or no?
What’s it gonna be, boy? Yes…or…no?!

Boy:
Let me sleep on it.
Baby, baby, let me sleep on it.
Well, let me sleep on it, I’ll give you an answer in the morning.

Girl and Boy (simultaneously):
I gotta know right now, do you love me?
Let me sleep on it.
Will you love me forever, do you need me?
Baby, baby, let me sleep on it.
Will you never leave me, will you make me so happy for the rest of my life?
Let me sleep on it, I’ll give you an answer in the morning.
Will you take me away, will you make me your wife?
In the morning, the morning, I’ll tell you in the morning!

Girl:
I gotta know right now, before we go any further, do you love me?
Will you love me forever?

Boy:
Let me sleep on it!

Girl:
Will you love me forever?

Boy:
Let me sleep on it!

Girl:
Will you love me forever?

Boy:
I couldn’t take it any longer, lord, I was crazed!
And when the feeling came upon me like a tidal wave,
I started swearing to my god and on my mother’s grave
that I would love you till the end of time.
I swore I would love you till the end of time!

Boy and Girl:
So now I’m praying for the end of time
to hurry up and arrive
’cause if I gotta spend another minute with you, I don’t think that I can really survive.
I’ll never break my promise or forget my vow,

Boy:
but God only knows what I can do right now!

Boy and Girl:
I’m praying for the end of time,
it’s all that I can do.
Praying for the end of time
so I can end my time with you!

Boy:
Well, it was long ago and it was far away, and it was so much better than it is today…

Girl:
It never felt so good, it never felt so right, and we were glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife…

Posted in Music | Leave a comment

Sure vs. certain

Posted on September 29, 2010

Without reading the title of this post, if you were asked to give a synonym of “sure”, wouldn’t your answer most likely be “certain”? And vice versa? In most cases, these words are identical and interchangeable. But these cases are mainly cases in which we are describing a person (I, you, he, she, etc.) with one of these words. “I’m certain/I’m sure,” “Are you certain?/Are you sure?” However, I hadn’t realized until recently that these words aren’t, in fact, perfect synonyms in every possible instance, which means they aren’t perfect synonyms at all. If you want to say whether a situation or contingency is certain, you can’t say “sure”: “The Devil Rays and Yankees are still fighting for the AL East title, but it is certain that they’ll both be in the playoffs.” “I know which apartment complex I’m moving into, but the exact unit is not yet certain.” If you used the word “sure”, at least in the English language that I know and grew up speaking, it would not sound right and people might wonder, “What? Who’s sure? It sure is what?”

You might say, “Oh, the explanation is simple: ‘sure’ describes a person’s state of mind/attitude, whereas ‘certain’ can describe both people and non-personal nouns.” Not so. With the same pronoun “it”, we use the idiomatic expression “it’s a sure thing” but would never say “it’s a certain thing”. Just another reason why English, like all languages, is both beautiful and weird.

Posted in Grammar, Language | Leave a comment

I can’t watch NFL football anymore, or: Why Roger Goodell is a small, weak coward of a commissioner

Posted on September 13, 2010

I’ve long been more of a fan of college football than professional football, and the nullification of Calvin Johnson’s game-winning touchdown reception against the Bears according a rule and an interpretation of that rule, which everyone in the NFL is defending, disgusts me enough that I can’t watch that stupid league anymore. I refuse. I’m done with it until they change the rule or, at least, how the rule should be interpreted.

Here’s Calvin Johnson’s touchdown reception:

Here’s the NFL rule under which the replay officials nullified an obvious reception and behind which everyone associated with the NFL is hiding because they are small, weak men:

Rule 8, Section 1, Article 3, Item 1: Going to the ground. If a player goes to the ground in the act of catching a pass (with or without contact by an opponent), he must maintain control of the ball after he touches the ground, whether in the field of play or the end zone. If he loses control of the ball, and the ball touches the ground before he regains control, the pass is incomplete. If he regains control prior to the ball touching the ground, the pass is complete.

To briefly review what happened in the video above, Calvin Johnson caught the ball, got two feet down, fell onto his left hip, his left hand slid out of bounds, he touched the ball to the ground while maintaining a secure grip on it with his right hand, started supporting/propping himself up with his right hand with the ball underneath it, and then he let go of it (or, possibly, lost control of it; it doesn’t matter). It wasn’t one motion, and he didn’t lose control of the ball in the process of making a catch or going to the ground. There is simply no debating it. It is obvious Johnson completes at least one if not two full processes before he starts propping himself up with his ball-holding hand, during/after which he lets go of it: the first is falling to the ground and landing on his left hip, and the second is rolling over while his left hand is out of bounds and the ball, gripped by his right hand, reaches the ground while he still maintains control of it. Then he lets go of it.

The rule says “he must maintain control of the ball after he touches the ground”. He did. He fell to the ground and then rolled over, and he didn’t lose possession yet; he still maintained possession. The rule says, “If he loses control of the ball, and the ball touches the ground before he regains control, the pass is incomplete.” He didn’t lose control before the ball touched the ground. I’ll say it again: when his right hand touches the ball to the ground, he still has control of it. Right after that, he loses his grip on the ball, either voluntarily or involuntarily. It touched the ground under his possession, and admittedly very soon after that, it squirts out of his hand. Any reasonable person would deem him to have possession when the ball touches the ground, but not immediately after that. He didn’t “lose control of the ball” before the ball touched the ground, and the ball did not “touch the ground before he regained control”.

The purpose of this rule is to prevent plays from being called receptions when someone catches the ball with two feet barely in, falls down out of bounds (or, maybe occasionally, in bounds), and the impact of hitting the ground causes the ball to come loose. I think in football and, for instance, in baseball, maintaining control of the ball while taking two steps is, or was, generally considered necessary to define complete control. I’ve also heard a rule (or opinion) cited that requires two seconds of control in baseball if the player isn’t running when he makes the catch (for instance, sliding, diving, or leaning over a wall). It is perfectly understandable that the NFL would want to amend a rule or correct a preconception that as long as you have two feet in bounds while securely holding the ball, even for a millisecond, that those two feet give you the reception. It makes sense that catching the ball over the middle, taking two steps, and then losing the ball upon contact with the ground would count as a completion and a dead ball—you took two steps while controlling it, the ground can’t cause a fumble, so the ball is dead where it hits the ground. Similarly, it’s perfectly understandable that catching the ball over the middle, taking two steps, and losing the ball when you get hit would count as a reception and a fumble. However, according the NFL’s position and everyone’s opinion who watches football, including mine, it shouldn’t be considered a completion when you toe the sideline or the back of the endzone, catch the ball while leaning out of bounds and falling down, and then lose control from the impact of the ground. This makes sense because you weren’t taking steps, each of which could be considered a “process”, but were just toeing the line and falling down, so you should have to complete the process of the fall with control to be judged as having caught the ball and completed the reception.

According to what everyone is saying about how the rule actually defines Johnson’s catch as an incompletion (which it doesn’t), then if a receiver lands on his back with possession of the ball, holds the ball up for the official to see it, and a defensive player comes and swats it out of his hand, then that is also an incompletion. Because the process of getting two feet down, falling down, maintaining control of the ball, and holding the ball up wasn’t completed without losing possession. Sure…

With these considerations and the letter of the rule examined line by line, it is clear that falling to the ground, sliding your non–ball-holding hand out of bounds, rolling over, and touching the ball to the ground with it under your possession is neither one “process” nor an incompletion under the spirit of the rule when it was discussed, drafted, and implemented by the NFL. Yet the slimy, disingenuous suits in the NFL Competition Committee and the Commissioner’s Office are hiding behind the rule and saying it was interpreted correctly, but that they’ll look at it in the offseason.

Most people’s point in venting about this awful call is that it was clearly a touchdown by any common-sensical definition of a reception and that the rule should be eliminated so that the NFL can go back to calling touchdown receptions touchdown receptions. Most people also say, “Yeah, by the letter of the rule, they made the right call.” I think I’ve explained why the video evidence and the content of the rule ineluctably prove that it was a reception by any definition and any literal or common-sensical interpretation of the offending rule itself. But my main point is that regardless of whether the rule defines this catch as a reception or an incompletion, the travesty is that the NFL itself—not bad officiating or a mistake—caused this injustice and continues to hide behind a rule, claiming it was the right call, and that they might “look at it” in the offseason. As Michael Wilbon said on today’s Pardon the Interruption broadcast, “Change the rule TODAY.” If this happens again, it won’t be a good thing that the NFL was consistent. Consistently wrong, at least in this type of awful rule/interpretation, is worse than wrong one day and right the next. Be consistent by being right for the rest of the season/eternity, not by being wrong for a whole season and then right the next. The NFL deliberately caused this travesty, continues to hide behind the letter of the rule (which judges this a reception, not an incompletion, anyway), and refuses to apologize or do anything other than say “the call was right, but we’ll review the rule”. This disgusts me and makes me uninterested in watching another NFL game until they fix it.

This isn’t the first time this year an officiating disaster has befallen Detroit. A much worse call as far as the consequences it had for the individual player and for posterity was Jim Joyce’s missed call at first base on what would have been (was) the 27th out of Armando Galarraga’s 28-out perfect game. This was not caused by a bad rule or a bad interpretation, and no one hid behind anything or claimed it was remotely correct. Everyone recognized it was wrong. This highlights baseball’s colossal shortcoming in not having implemented instant replay except on potential home runs here in the second decade of the 21st century. They’re behind the times; that’s bad enough. But everyone knows and admits the call was blown. What the NFL continues to do is far worse. Everyone knows the rule is bad and the call was wrong; the NFL caused the problem and continues to deny that anything is wrong. That’s why the NFL and that small, testicle-less, slimy coward Roger Goodell should be boycotted. I never liked him, but that was just opinion; now the entire nation has solid proof that he’s an awful commissioner who ought to be ashamed of himself for focusing too much on the players’ image and not enough on the playing of the game, not to mention his own league’s and officials’ image.

Here are some related links:
HuffPo: Calvin Johnson Touchdown Catch Overturned on Controversial Call
New York Times: The N.F.L.’s Worst Rule: ‘Going to the Ground’
The Big Lead: Calvin Johnson and the Going-to-the Ground Rule

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Sharp 52” LED-backlit television for $1100

Posted on July 4, 2010

Ah, I love 4th of July weekend. Not necessarily because of anything intrinsic about it, but I loved this one and I loved the one two years ago, so it’s becoming a trend.

Today I got up early and ran in the Tortoise and Hare 5k in downtown Ann Arbor, hung out at home and finished editing a paper that I was unable to finish last night, and went out to lunch at ABC with Dave. Lame-ass Theresa and Rich didn’t join us, but that’s okay, they probably didn’t feel well or have time. Since I had no particular thing to do or place to be, and I didn’t want to go back home and sit in my hot, stuffy apartment for 6 hours, I decided to drive around to a couple stores and look for furniture or electronics that I could buy in the future (after I move next month or next summer). I headed for Art Van, the furniture store, to look at coffee tables, end tables, night stands, and couches. I saw lots of good ones, probably plenty of things Kathy and I would like, but it felt kind of pointless without her there (for her knowledge of home design and her opinion of every piece, as they will be joint decisions), but then I saw the TV store that existed in an annex in the back of the store: Paul’s TV. It is like the “home theater” section of Best Buy, just a medium-sized room in the back of the store, and it operates as an independent store. I’m sure they have plenty of TV/furniture deals in coordination with Art Van, but other than that, they’re separate.

I went back to Paul’s TV and sat down in an armchair to watch a plasma TV (Panasonic P50S2) and an LED-backlit Sharp (LC52LE700U) that were set up perpendicular to each other. I had a good angle to watch the Tigers game on both, though it was closer than I’d typically sit at home. The reason I sat down to watch those two, mainly the Sharp, is that the local appliance store ABC Warehouse had given me a guaranteed price of $1500 for the Sharp, to be delivered in August after I move, if I paid a down payment on it, but I saw that Paul’s TV had it for $1197. THAT…is insane. Paul’s TV never charges for shipping, whereas ABC Warehouse would have charged $50.

Naturally, my first thought was that this was too good to be true, but I double-checked the model number and size. I had been keeping track of many TV prices in a spreadsheet over the last year (yes, total loser-geek), so I had gotten good at memorizing model numbers and was already familiar with this one anyway. It was definitely the same TV, for $350 cheaper. Its MSRP is $2000. My second thought was also along the lines of, “This is too good to be true,” but referring to the picture quality—maybe this TV isn’t all that great, despite great reviews (at both Amazon and Newegg, which is a ringing endorsement, considering the tech-savvy videophiles who populate Newegg). It is that great. I thought that its colors might have been a little too bright or washed out compared to the plasma, but, first of all, that’s adjustable, and I don’t believe that the Sharp’s colors will be the slightest, remotest bit sub-optimal after I adjust them. One strong point of the Sharp LEDs according to reviewers is the color accuracy. The motion of the ball and players seemed nearly identical to the S2, with the edge probably going to the S2. I don’t know if that’s a by-product of the colors being turned up too bright, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The big advantage of the Sharp LED was, surprisingly, its black levels (and other dark levels). They were better than the plasma’s. Its blacks were blacker, and it was easier to distinguish a few details in dark places than on the plasma. This is despite the incessant claims by videophiles at CNet and everywhere else that plasmas’ black levels are so superior to LCDs’. Not these two. (Nor any plasmas in ABC Warehouse, which is the very thing that swayed Kathy and me towards the Sharp in the first place.) In and around the backdrop of Comerica Park, which is the dark, empty part behind center field that enables the hitter to see the pitched ball, more detail was distinguishable. It was July 4th, so the Tigers and Mariners were both wearing these special “patriotic” caps (here’s the Tigers one). Before the start of one inning, the camera zoomed in very close to a Tigers hat that was sitting in the dugout or in a shaded part of the stands or somewhere; I guess the Fox Sports crew had set it up there for the purpose of zooming in one inning. The LED-backlit TV was far, far more detailed and accurate in showing the lines of the Tigers’ English D and distinguishing the navy-blue textures of the middle and left side of that logo from one another. It was a mess of navy blue on the plasma, and a clear English D on the LED-backlit screen. Sold.

To make the end of this story rather shorter, I took this price to ABC Warehouse to challenge them to beat it, but I had no documentation, so all they could beat was the website’s price of $1497 (the $1197 was a special 4th of July sale). I went back to Paul’s TV, paid a 10% down payment on my credit card, got the receipt, brought it to the ABC Warehouse manager, who eventually told me he would not only match it but beat it by $100. I don’t know if he mistyped, misspoke, or miscalculated, but he actually gave it to me for over $160 less than Paul’s TV: $1102 after tax and shipping, compared to $1268 in total from Paul’s TV. That is INSANE, people.

When Kathy and I had first picked out the Sharp LED-backlit TV in June, I walked out of there telling her it wasn’t quite a steal, but it was a very good or great deal on a great, long-lasting, highly reviewed TV that we both witnessed outperforming every TV in the store with a remotely similar price. But $1100, THAT is a steal. It’s unbelievable. I am ecstatic. This has made my month.

Posted in Entertainment, Freakin' sweet, Technology | Leave a comment

Oh, it’s already been broughten!

Posted on January 28, 2010

I am amazed at how familiar the American public is with my favorite line from Not Another Teen Movie, “Oh, it’s already been broughten!” One of my friends made her Facebook status simply “bring it.” Of course, someone else commented before me with something like “it’s already been broughten.” But I still laughed, not so much at them but at one of my favorite parody movies. I know a lot of people who haven’t seen that movie, and it isn’t a really popular, famous, memorable movie, and it certainly didn’t get good reviews…but people sure know that line.

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December miscellany

Posted on December 31, 2009

My brother told me about the web page Symphony of Science, where its proprietor, John Boswell, mixes the voices of famous scientists (e.g., Carl Sagan, Michio Kaku, Richard Feynman) with an autotuner and puts them over R & B–style music. You should check it out.

I have seasons 1–5 of South Park on DVD, and I don’t ever plan on buying any more because every episode is available for free 24/7 at its official website, southparkstudios.com. I know there is abundant evidence that giving something away for free actually increases its sales, but I at least understand the basis of where the RIAA is coming from. I won’t pay a penny for South Park as long as it is available on demand for free.

One of the worst things Amazon.com has ever done is lump the reviews and ratings of the DVD version and the Blu-ray version of every single movie together, so that you can’t tell whether someone’s review and star-rating refers to the DVD version or the Blu-ray version, unless they state they’re reviewing the Blu-ray version specifically. What idiot thought of that? I can’t imagine the level of stupidity required to approve of that idea at multiple levels of management in the Amazon company hierarchy. It is inconvenient, counterintuitive, and simply inaccurate because the two different products are, um, different products!

So, it turns out my TV is a hell of a lot sweeter than I had ever thought. It is a Samsung SlimFit high-definition television. It is capable of displaying 720p and 1080i video. It’s only 30 inches diagonally, and it’s a cathode ray tube TV, so it isn’t as awesome as the larger TV I’m going to buy next summer, but, hey, that means it has a higher pixel density. I found this out because Kathy got me a Blu-ray player for Christmas, and I hooked it up to an HDMI port in the back of my TV (hmm, that should have made it obvious to me that it was an HDTV, but it never occurred to me), and it plays Blu-ray movies in very nice quality. I tried out my new Blu-rays of Star Trek: First Contact and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and I’m pretty sure they looked as awesome as they could on a 30” TV. Maybe a new LCD (or plasma, if they existed at 30 inches) would show an improvement over my 3-year-old TV, but the Wikipedia articles on plasma displays and LCD screens indicate that, other things being equal, CRT produces the best picture in terms of color accuracy, sharpness, and blur. (The problem is, other things aren’t ever equal, not anymore.) However, CRT picture quality fades a lot sooner than the flat-panel displays, so I’m sure mine doesn’t look as good as it used to in high-definition. Those two movies looked really awesome, though; you could tell the source and the display were both high-definition.

I began to suspect that my TV was capable of playing video at some level of high definition (either 720 or 1080 vertical resolution) the night before I discovered it for sure, as I was reading my TV’s manual for probably the second time. I don’t remember reading a lot of it when I got it in August 2006. I think I was reading it to determine if it might be possible for me to use my TV’s remote control for both the TV and the Blu-ray player (both Samsung). I know it’s possible to use the Blu-ray player’s remote to control the TV, but I don’t think it’s possible to change the picture’s aspect ratio/zoom with the Blu-ray remote, and I’ll need this for watching regular TV content that is widescreen because I don’t have high-definition cable, so most things are 4:3, so I have to zoom in on a widescreen program to avoid having black bars on the sides and top and bottom. It might be possible, but first I’ll need to figure out how to navigate my TV’s menus with the Blu-ray controller; all it can do so far is power-off, power-on, and change the volume, channel, and input source.

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Jimmy Fallon’s brilliant and hilarious impersonation of Neil Young

Posted on December 6, 2009

At some point on this public, personal web page, I suppose I should admit I’m not as big of a Jimmy Fallon detractor as most people. I got annoyed at his giggling and breaking of character on SNL in every single skit he was in, but whether people realize it or not, his impersonations are all very good, and the Jimmy Fallon/Tina Fey Weekend Update was, too.

So I have liked most of the clips of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon that I’ve seen online, but nothing prepared me for the blinding white light of brilliance that emanates from this clip. I first saw it posted on my friend’s Facebook page and have watched it about 10 times since.

Posted in Entertainment, Freakin' sweet, Humor, Music | Leave a comment

Monkey-proof passwords

Posted on December 5, 2009

You know what’s stupid? That old saying (I guess it qualifies as an “old saying” now) that if a million monkeys banged away at a million typewriters, they would eventually reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare. Obviously you could fill in any other writing(s) and it would remain equally true, i.e., not at all. It would literally never happen because the universe would end before it happened. Oh, it isn’t a metaphysical impossibility, but it is a physical one.

Let me give you some background. I recall reading this article from the BBC News about the futility of the WEP wireless encryption protocol and the superiority of WPA. One of the network security experts they interviewed said something that blew my mind. Do you know how long it would take the best computer-hacking (password-guessing) programs to guess a 20-character password by brute force? (On average.) What would you guess? I assume it could only contain letters and numerals. So that’s 36 possible characters, times 20 places, and computers can try an awful lot of them per second. Would it take weeks? Years? Decades?

This guy said that on average, it would take longer than the entire history of the universe to guess a 20-character password by brute force. Fourteen billion years! Wow! This is verified by the all-knowing God Himself.

A computer that could perform a billion billion computations per second would require 1013 years to guess a 128-character phrase, which is 1,000 times longer than the age of the universe. A 256-character password would require 3×1051 years.

No one has any way of even guessing how long the universe will last. It could be 3×105151 years. If it lasts that long, it probably will have died in ice many eons before, killed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It doesn’t matter. That old saying about monkeys on typewriters has no relevance to the actual universe. Not just monkeys, humans, the Earth, and the solar system, but the entire universe itself could not last long enough for it to happen. You could make it a trillion trillion monkeys, who can type as fast as Lieutenant Commander Data can read, and they would not come even remotely close to producing a single page of any Shakespeare play before the universe died.

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Rejected Mortal Kombat fatalities

Posted on November 20, 2009

Ahh, I don’t know why, but I found these pretty funny: rejected Mortal Kombat fatalities. Here’s the first one:

Also, see the 2nd one and the 3rd one.

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Super Mario Bros. Frustration

Posted on November 12, 2009

This is a hilarious video of some guy playing a Super Mario Bros. game that was created with a level-designing program by some really sadistic son of a bitch. The hellishly difficult game play is entertaining enough, but the player’s commentary is absolute comedy gold. He sounds like he was born in Eastern Europe but grew up in New York. Incidentally, he seems extremely skilled at playing Super Mario Bros., but no one is a match for this game.

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The Golden Age of Video by Ricardo Autobahn

Posted on November 8, 2009

John’s new favorite video of the month (possibly of the year, after some more contemplation) is this mashup of clips from dozens of TV shows and movies edited into a catchy electro-pop music video.

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Fucking Yankees

Posted on November 5, 2009

I’m disappointed in the World Series result last night, with the Yankees winning their 27th World Series, but not as disappointed as I would have been if my team had been the one to lose to them. Not nearly as much as in 1996.

On SportsCenter this morning, their daily internet poll was “How do you feel about the Yankees, Love ’em, Hate ’em, or Indifferent?” and the result was funny. See for yourself (this is several hours later, after I submitted my “Hate” answer and screen-grabbed this image for blagging purposes…so the time and sample size are both large):

ESPN SportsCenter poll results: Everyone outside of New York hates the Yankees

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Watching the World Series at Bar Louie

Posted on November 1, 2009

When I heard that Pedro Martinez would start game 2 of the World Series for the Phillies at Yankee Stadium, I was excited to watch it, preferably with my other baseball-following friends. You can read a nice summary of Pedro’s relationship with the Yankees here and see the famous September 2004 press conference sound bite where he called the Yankees his daddies here:

After that press conference, the Red Sox ended up facing the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. That series is one of the most famous postseason baseball series because the Red Sox came back from a deficit of 3 games to none to win the series, 4-3. That’s the only time in MLB history that a team has won a series after being down 3-0. I never thought I’d see it happen. (It happened twice in the NHL and still hasn’t happened in the NBA). It was also famous for the two appearances Pedro made in Yankee Stadium, in which the Yankees’ organ player and 50,000 fans combined to rouse Pedro with their famous “Who’s Your Daddy?” chant. It started in game 2 when Pedro started and lost, and it continued in game 7, also at Yankee Stadium, when Pedro came in for two innings of relief with his Red Sox up 8-1. He didn’t pitch very well in that outing, either, giving up two runs before settling down and keeping his team up by a comfortable margin.

I tried as hard as I could to find a video of one of those two outings so you could hear the chant resonating through Yankee Stadium, but thanks to the idiots at Fox, it is surely unavailable to the human race forever. But if you’re not familiar with it, imagine what a chant of “Let’s go, Yankees!” would sound like, with the organ going, “Dun dun da-da-dun,” in between the chants, going up an octave each time, but the fans were shouting, “Who’s your daddy!” instead. It sounds just like the “OVER-RATED” chant.

I did manage to find a fan’s video of the “Who’s your daddy!” chant at Yankee Stadium this past Thursday when Pedro pitched for the Phillies in game 2 of the 2009 World Series. I’m sure this video doesn’t do it justice. It must have been louder than that, coming from every corner of the stadium. I couldn’t hear an organ, either, which gave it a nice, old-fashioned baseball touch in 2004.

I didn’t hear the chant on TV myself because I went downtown to watch the game at Bar Louie with five of my friends. It was a lot of fun watching it with them and all of us cheering for the Phillies. Pedro pitched well in Yankee Stadium for the first time since at least 2004, but he still lost because A.J. Burnett pitched better.

I wore my new red Detroit Red Wings hat because I wanted to wear a reddish hat that was close to the dark red of the Phillies to show my support for them that night. That sounds kind of lame because they aren’t even close to the same team, and Philadelphia fans, in fact, hate the Red Wings, but it’s the gesture that counts. (My red Georgia hat feels too tall and awkward on me, so I don’t wear it anymore, and it’s a brighter red than the flimsy, pre-faded, worn-out-looking Red Wings hat that I bought anyway.) However, my Red Wings hat came in handy in a very unexpected way. Near the end of our night there, after we had finished our meals and most people had finished their drinks, the waitress came over and said the bartender wanted to give us a free round of shots because I was wearing a Red Wings hat! Ha! We obviously laughed in disbelief about that. But not in front of the waitress. I’m not even a good Red Wings fan. I’ve never been to a game, I only watch them occasionally, and I only know their famous players. I jumped on their bandwagon and bought a hat so I could wear it to softball next year and because I couldn’t find a new copy of my flimsy, worn-out-looking Braves hat (which is smelly and dirty from wearing during softball). The shots were the bartender’s own creation, the first time he’d ever made it. I forgot what he called it, but I think it had triple sec and some kind of blueberry syrup in the bottom. We all agreed it was good.

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Best technological-impairment stories

Posted on October 26, 2009

These are some of my favorite examples of technological impairment from the Parents Just Don’t Understand articles at CollegeHumor.com. The best ones are the ones you could never, ever make up.

My mom asked to see my pictures on Facebook. I thought about all the drinking pictures that are on it and then I thought about my mom’s computer skills. So I said, if you can find them by yourself, sure. I came back 5 minutes later and she had an empty Microsoft word document up. I think I’m safe.

Instead of using the kitchen timer option on the microwave to time whatever she’s baking, my Mom turns on the microwave and lets it run for the hour or so she’s baking something.

My girlfriend’s dad typed a huge letter out on the computer. After he was done, he printed it and decided the font was too small, so he erased the whole thing, changed the font size, and retyped it.

My mother claimed she could not read my latest email because her printer was broken.

My dad uses the word “video” every time he searches for something on Youtube.

My dad works from home, and often needs to receive updated blueprints. His office has now given him 2 different computers which I set up, and he refuses to turn on. Instead of including him on emails, they have to print their emails and fax them to him. In an odd twist the younger interns in the office had to spend 8 hours on a training day to learn to use a fax machine.

I sent my father a long Google link to a photo, and he proceeded to print out the actual web address. He thought the printer would “decode the link” and turn it into a photo.

I work in a small computer shop in my town. One day a woman walks in, and tells me she has a problem with her computer, that it has broken. I then ask her the problem and she shows it to me and describes her situation. She told me that she had been online, ordering something off the net, when she had put her card in and it hadn’t done anything, just got stuck. Naturally assuming it was something to do with the machine i start booting it up and examine things, this is when she asks me “can you get the card out first please,” curious i asked what she meant. It had turned out that with her limited computer knowledge that she had managed to go online, start ordering items, get to the checkout and wanting to pay with a credit card, she had push her card into the floppy drive. She never came back to the store, but did have to order a new floppy drive.

My cousin, who is my age, recently found a bunch of pictures of us when we were really little and she told my mom. My mom then called me and said “Leanne found some pictures of you two from a long time ago and is going to tag you on facebook, whatever that means. I guess you’re it.”

I bought my mom a new laptop for her birthday. As I’m showing it to her I explained that she needed a power outlet converter because the cord has the ground plug while none of her outlets have the ground inlet. At this point she stops and looks really confused. When I asked what was wrong she said, “Why do I have to plug it in. I thought it was wireless.” I explained that the wireless part is for the internet, but she needs to plug it in for power and to charge her battery. Her response: “So, what’s the difference between the internet and power?”

While my grandpa went online to manage his bank account, there was a box that read “sign here.” He either scrolled down the screen a few times or there was more than one box…his name and initials were written about three different times on the monitor. In ink.

My mom thought that an iPod worked like a cassette player. When I heard her complain that she had to listen to songs she really didn’t like on her playlist to get to the ones she wanted to hear, I suggested she just take those songs off her playlist. She replied with, “Well then I’ll just have to listen to 3 minutes of silence until the next song comes on.”

You know the little image with the wavy letters that sites use to make sure you’re not a robot? It can also be used to make sure you’re not my mom. I have to fill them out for her.

My dad doesn’t know how to send me e-mails. Instead, he just uses the customization feature on stuff like e-cards. I recently got an e-card of a cute kitten with the message “I transferred $100 into your account”.

Our printer ran out of ink, so my Mom bought a new printer.

My grandma kept complaining about how she couldn’t get her new alarm clock to stop displaying 12:00. I went up to her room and took the sticker off of the display screen.

My high school Spanish teacher, on multiple occasions, has been known to photocopy blank pieces of paper in order to get more blank pieces of paper. She’s completely oblivious to the fact that you can open the copier to take out the paper.

My mom thinks Google’s “Suggestions” are the only options available. If she’s trying to find something and it doesn’t come up in the suggestions, she’ll say, “Sorry, it’s not on the internet.”

My dad called me to ask about removing a virus from his computer. Somewhere in the middle of the instructions, he interrupted me to ask, “Are computer viruses man-made, or are they like real viruses?”

My mom was once using my desktop to check her email while I was away at school. I got a frantic phone call that afternoon because the mouse was at the edge of the mousepad but the “thingy” wasn’t at the edge of the screen.

I had fairly bad eyesight for most of my life, so I ended up getting Lasik eye surgery as soon as I was old enough and had enough money. My mom apparently never heard of this procedure, so she was amazed when I told her about it, and is now always asking me how many fingers she is holding up while she is right in front of me, and if I can see the license plate of cars that are up to a mile away. She also tells all of her friends about my amazing “super laser vision”.

I was watching “Jurassic Park” with my grandmother a few months ago. During one particularly scary moment she leans over to me and, with a very worried tone in her voice, asks, “The Dinosaurs…they’re only for the movie, right, they didn’t breed any extras?”

I was in a very dimly lit restaurant with my parents and I asked my mom what time it was. She took out her brand new iPhone (which has the time displayed in huge digits on the screen) and used it like a flashlight to read the time on her watch.

When my parents got the internet, I spent hours explaining how to type in a web address, but my dad still doesn’t understand that it has to be a real website to work. When I look at the previous addresses they read, “www.golfcoursesnearmyrtlebeach.com” or “www.insurancepoliciesforseniors.com”.

My dad got a cell phone a few months ago, but he never turns it on. He thinks that you get charged for every minute the phone is on.

I told my parents I wanted the new MacBook for school. Two weeks later I received “Macs for Dummies” in the mail.

My parents don’t have a debit card. Anytime they need cash, they make out a check to cash and go into the bank.

My mother has never sent, nor attempted to send me a text message ever before. Earlier today, I inexplicably found this waiting for me on my phone: “We r on ca nif eigh six mail gmom”. Anyone want to take a crack at what she meant to say?

My friend just got a text message from her mom that said: “What day do you come home question mark”

A friend of mine found a cell phone. She called the owner of the phone’s parents to see if they could get the phone back to their daughter. Five minutes after she got off the phone, a text message came through from the girls dad saying “Lizzy, some girl found your phone…call her at ***-***-**** to get your phone back”

I’ve worked at an internet company for about a year. One day, a lady called and told me her computer wouldn’t turn on no matter what she did. I said “Ok, can you look at the back of the computer and make sure the power cable is plugged in.” She responded, “Just give me a second, I have to find a flashlight because the power is out here at my house.”

My 75-year-old grandfather just bought a laptop so he could learn to use the Internet. I got an empty email from him yesterday, and the subject heading was, “Andrew what does it mean when it asks ‘are you sure you want to send an empty message’ when i click on the send button??? —-love grandad”

Every time my dad wants to check his email, he goes to Google, types in www.hotmail.com, hits search, and clicks on Hotmail. He recently told me he discovered a shortcut—he can just hit “I’m Feeling Lucky.”

My grandma always reminds me to turn my GPS off a few blocks before I get home “so that the man giving me directions doesn’t know where I live.”

Whenever my mom doesn’t feel like answering the phone and lets the machine get it, she makes everyone be really really quiet because she thinks that the person calling can hear us while they’re leaving a message.

My boss thinks that Google is slang for find. Just this week, I’ve heard him tell our interns to google old documents in our file cabinets, google meeting minutes saved on our server, and google some sugar packets for the coffee bar.

Mom’s Text Message: “Can u go 2 niketown to buy a Pacquia shirt 4 dad size lrg? B careful swine flu.”

My mother got my father a GPS for Christmas. He told me the reason why it wasn’t working in the house was because it couldn’t see the stars.

My dad thinks that he can only check an e-mail account on the computer he made it on. Therefore, he checks his work e-mail in his office and his personal e-mail on our house computer. It wouldn’t be that bad, but he works at home and those two computers are about 20 feet apart….

My mom has a contact in her cellphone named “?.akj.e0”

I showed my dad the BustedTee with Mao Tse Tung on it that reads, “LMAO” and he didn’t get it because he doesn’t know what LMAO means. I showed it to my mom, and she didn’t get it because she doesn’t know who Mao Tse Tung is. Which is worse?

My mom just got a Facebook account a few weeks ago and on Valentine’s Day she posted on my wall:”I HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR VD!!!”

My grandma cannot grasp the functional purpose of a thermostat. She cranks it up when its cold, then proceeds to regulate the heat by opening and closing the windows.

I made the mistake of trying to explain Wikipedia to my grandmother. She’s now convinced that anybody can modify any website at will, and she won’t use Weather.com anymore because she’s worried that vandals will change the temperature on her.

I caught my father on google the other day typing in “show me snow machines”. I later found out that he starts any and all searches with the words “show me”, or “I want to see”.

My mom needed to transfer pictures from her digital camera onto her computer. After a few minutes, she was hopeless and asked me for help. I took out the memory card and put it in the computer. Nothing was on it. I hooked up the camera to the computer, but still, there were no pictures. Finally, I had to ask my mom what she had tried before she asked me for help. She put the camera’s batteries in the mouse.

My professor has tried to show different DVD’s in class for the past 4 weeks. She couldn’t get any of them to work so tonight she decided she was just going to show a VHS tape because “it’s simple and I know how to work it.” It took her 20 minutes to get it to show on the projector. Now she’s trying to turn the volume on. Class ends in 10 minutes.

While my mother was looking over my shoulder at an AIM conversation:
Mom: “What does LMAO mean?”
Me: “It’s an abbreviation”
Mom: “Let’s Make An Omelette”?

A few years ago my mom tried to call my brother and reached his voice mail. She left a 2-minute message calling out for him to pick up the phone, as if it was being played through his speaker phone.

The other day I was at work and an older lady came in and wanted to buy Firefox. I explained to her that Firefox was a free download. I then told her to find it by going to Google and searching for it. She told me, “I don’t have Google; I only have Yahoo.”

I was showing my mom how to get pictures from her camera to her computer. I told her to click on the desktop icon which she clicked once. I told her you have to double-click and she said, “Is that where you click something twice?”

My dad makes the subject for all of his emails “Hi, It’s Mitch.”

My mom sent me an email with the subject as my cell phone number. The email said “Is this a text?”

My mom deleted friends off Facebook in an attempt to free up her hard drive space.

I just saw an old guy working out with a discman inside a fanny pack.

My mom just got a new cell phone. She was setting up her voicemail on it and wanted to see if she did it correctly so she asked me to call her. I called her phone and she picked up so I told her to just let it go to voicemail. She said OK. I called back and she picked up again. This happened two more times until I took the phone away from her.

One time I opened a Firefox window, minimized it to look at something else, and then brought it back up again. My mom freaked out and yelled, “You just wasted twenty dollars!” “Huh?” I eloquently replied. “It costs twenty dollars every time you open up The Internet,” she continued. “Our plan costs twenty dollars.” I assured her that this was a monthly charge, but she remained unconvinced. She demanded that I repay her $20 for “wasting The Internet,” and then reminded me to “turn it off as soon as you’re done with it, we don’t want to use more than we absolutely need.”

I tried to teach my grandmother basic computer skills, but I wasn’t able to get anywhere with her because she kept rotating the mouse on the mouse-pad. She thought you had to steer it like a car when you wanted the pointer to go someplace.

My grandfather literally used the screen as a mousepad because he thought the cursor was controlled by the mouse being on the screen.

My dad has a Zune.

Posted in Humor, Interwebs, Technology | Leave a comment

Sad songs: “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”

Posted on October 25, 2009

The Shirelles were, along with the Supremes, probably one of the two best girl groups of all time. Their song “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” is beautiful, sad, forlorn, and longing all at the same time. It seems to me that for the girl to even ask that question of her lover implies that she already suspects the answer is “no”, but she clings to the love they shared that night and hopes that he feels the same way.

The Shirelles’ version is by far the best and will always be considered the definitive version. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to find the song was co-written by Carole King, who wrote or co-wrote “Locomotion”, “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman”, “One Fine Day”, “You’ve Got a Friend”, and “Jazzman”.

Tonight, you’re mine completely.
You give your love so sweetly.
Tonight the light
of love is in your eyes,
but will you love me tomorrow?

Is this a lasting treasure?
Or just a moment’s pleasure?
Can I believe
the magic of your sighs?
Will you still love me tomorrow?

Tonight with words unspoken
you said that I’m the only one.
But will my heart be broken
when the night
meets the morning sun?

I’d like to know that your love
is a love I can be sure of.
So tell me now
and I won’t ask again:
Will you still love me tomorrow?

So tell me now
and I won’t ask again:
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Will you still love me tomorrow?…

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“The Silence of the Lambs” in limerick form

Posted on October 23, 2009

From Randall Munroe’s Wikipedia entry I learned he founded the Limerick Database to collect all the funny classics and new limericks that people could submit. It changed my life. I highly recommend reading the 150 top-rated limericks. However, since the website now seems to be defunct, I won’t try to submit my brilliant creations to it.

Instead, for now, I’ll publish them on my LifeBlag, and I’ll start with a limerick about the book and movie that have been on my mind for the last couple weeks: The Silence of the Lambs. I realized I was remiss in never having seen the movie, but after I discovered it was based on a novel I committed myself to reading the novel first. I added both the novel by Thomas Harris and the movie on Blu-ray to my Amazon wish list. Luckily, the novel was very cheap, about $5.50, so I bought it in the summer and read it this month. I don’t own a Blu-ray player yet, nor do I plan on buying Blu-ray discs or players for a couple years, but Kathy insisted that after I finished the novel, we had to watch the movie; we rented it and watched it last week.

To save you and myself from an overly detailed comparison, I’ll say the movie was about as close in content and in quality to the book as any movie/book combination I’m familiar with. Even though Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor (not Best Supporting Actor) Oscar for his portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter with less than 17 minutes of screen time and the English-speaking public is almost unanimous in regarding Hannibal the Cannibal as the greatest movie villain of all time, an additional few exchanges or perhaps an entire scene between him and Clarice would have made the movie and his performance more powerful. The deleted scenes included some bits of their conversations that were almost verbatim from the book, that would have given Hopkins even more chance to shine, and that would have given viewers more insight into Clarice’s psyche.

Anyway, here’s the long version of The Silence of the Lambs in limerick form. It takes some things that were exclusive to the book and at least one that was exclusive to the movie, but it’s all basically the same story:

In Behavioral Science they sought
murderers who victims caught
one after the other
to rape, skin, or smother
and regarded their humanity not.

Young Starling was but a mere student
whom, Crawford thought, ‘twould be prudent
to send on an errand—
she’s young and she’s fair and
she might reach the madman we couldn’t.

Alone in a sunlight-less cell,
Lecter burned in his well-deserved hell
To get in his head,
to avert one more dead,
to glean clues he won’t straightforward tell:

Young Starling was charged with this task.
Jack needn’t a second time ask;
she was eager to prove
she could easily move
up from her roots, which were white trash.

Down behind plexiglass screen,
he dropped clues for Starling to glean:
A head in a jar
in an old victim’s car
told more than it would, at first, seem.

Another young body emerged,
a girl of considerable girth.
Clarice helped to print her
and noticed that in her
mouth a cocoon was insert’d.

By feigning impairment he caught her,
the tough junior senator’s daughter.
About a fourteen?—
his judgment’s quite keen
for a fiend who takes women to slaughter.

Back to his lair they sped.
Mere scraps and lefto’ers she was fed.
Trapped in a well
in his dark, homemade hell,
her heart filled with mis’ry and dread.

Her pleas and her promises failed
to sway the man who had her jailed.
Put lotion on skin,
send it back up again,
in exchange for her excrement pail.

He doesn’t just capture and kill,
nor does he rape for the thrill.
He covets, Clarice,
to transform, find peace:
the motive of Buffalo Bill.

Clarice divulged long-hidden pains—
quid pro quo was the name of their game—
of horses and sheep
that haunted her sleep,
but Hannibal gave her no name.

In his new high-security cage,
Lecter showed neither malice nor rage
until, with a key,
he broke himself free
and escaped with a cop’s borrowed face.

The first body wasn’t the first;
’twas the third, weighted down to divert.
Why try to hide it
so no one would find it
till after the second or third?

The rationale didn’t quite register
till Clarice grokked the clues Dr. Lecter
had fed her in pieces,
and then said, “Oh, Jesus!
He must have resided in Belvedere!”

To Fredrica’s hometown she went
to interrogate family and friends.
But what gave her a start
were the girl’s sewing darts
like the ones in the last victim’s skin.

Their former employer to seek,
hot on the trail was Clarice.
A sewing professional,
rejected transsexual,
he’s skinning himself a boutique!

“Yes, we know, from Johns Hopkins, a name
with a typo: not Jamie, but Jame.
An address near Chicago
where he shipped pre-imago
caterpillars that later became

the moths and the grand butterflies
with which Jame Gumb identifies.”
Far away’s where the game is!
She was feeling quite anxious
but was closer than she realized.

He acted aloof but complied.
Nothing he said seemed contrived.
A moth in the air.
Mr. Gumb met her stare.
The moment of truth had arrived.

Chasing him down underground.
He was hiding and couldn’t be found.
The girl screamed in fright,
and then out went the lights
and Clarice was left feeling around.

Silently watching her search,
with his night-vision goggles he lurked.
His pistol he cocked,
she turned and she shot,
and he toppled there…dying…inert.

Now Hannibal Lecter’s in hiding,
but doubtless his time he is biding.
On Doc Chilton’s trail,
but he still didn’t fail
to send Clarice Starling his tidings.

Our heroine has proven supreme
and ended the psychopath’s scheme.
And now the lambs’ cries,
as Lecter surmised,
will no longer torment her dreams.

Posted in Entertainment, Freakin' sweet, Writing | Leave a comment

10/19/09: Never forget

Posted on October 22, 2009

The only worthwhile thing that Fark.com has given me in a long time is this discussion thread about this completely pointless, worthless, empty news article. This thread is comedy gold. The comments posted below the article itself were hilarious until the newspaper’s mods deleted all of them. If you read the Fark thread, you can find some of the funnier comments that they copied and pasted from the article’s comments section (most of which were undoubtedly written by Farkers).

Posted in Humor, Interwebs | Leave a comment

The stomachion, the world’s earliest known puzzle

Posted on October 21, 2009

In my searches related to the aforementioned 3D puzzles, I came across some puzzle vendor and enthusiast sites, one of which contained the text of this New York Times article about the stomachion, a children’s game that seemed to be the subject of a manuscript Archimedes wrote 2200 years ago. From what I can tell, this is almost universally believed to be the oldest known example of a puzzle. This website points out that the stomachion is the same type of puzzle as the more familiar tangrams, which most of us did at some point in our youths.

The fascinating thing about Archimedes’ investigations of the stomachion was not that he wrote a treatise on how to play a children’s game, but rather that he founded the discipline of combinatorics by trying to figure out how many different ways the strips of paper in the stomachion could be arranged to form a square. As Gina Kolata wrote in her New York Times article, which focuses on the efforts at restoring and interpreting the manuscript as much as on its contents:

…a historian of mathematics at Stanford, sifting through ancient parchment overwritten by monks and nearly ruined by mold, appears to have solved the mystery of what the treatise was about. In the process, he has opened a surprising new window on the work of the genius best remembered (perhaps apocryphally) for his cry of “Eureka!”…

The Stomachion, concludes the historian, Dr. Reviel Netz, was far ahead of its time: a treatise on combinatorics, a field that did not come into its own until the rise of computer science.

The goal of combinatorics is to determine how many ways a given problem can be solved. And finding the number of ways that the problem posed in the Stomachion (pronounced sto-MOCK-yon) can be solved is so difficult that when Dr. Netz asked a team of four combinatorics experts to do it, it took them six weeks.
[...]
The diagram involved 14 pieces, and the word “multitude” seemed to be associated with it. Mr. Heiberg and those who followed him thought this meant that you could get many figures [of animals, plants, household objects, etc.] by rearranging the pieces.

“This is part of the reason people didn’t see what it was about,” Dr. Netz said. …[T]he old interpretation seemed trivial, hardly worth Archimedes’ time.

As he examined the manuscript pages, piecing together their text, he realized that what Archimedes was really asking seemed to be, “How many ways can you put the pieces together to make a square?” That question, Dr. Netz said, “has mathematical meaning.”

Archimedes was truly an amazing person. I use that word with the fullest extent of its meaning. It is difficult to understand, much less appreciate, how extraordinary and seemingly superhuman his mind was. I put him in a class with Da Vinci and Einstein and no one else who ever lived (that we know of). His founding of the field of combinatorics only adds to my already reverential and awestruck feelings towards him.

Posted in Science | Leave a comment