I haven't even seen it yet [of course I will, and I will like it, because I'm a guy], but I can tell you The Grey is not about wolves. Predictably, tizzies, frenzies, and lathers are being worked up into. Typical headline about wolf experts unhappy, inaccurate portrayal, etc etc etc. Thank god for midwesterners: "It was a movie." And, from the first article as well, "Rasmussen said she doesn’t worry about wolves, even though she lives in
the country where packs run through the yard — but she does keep a close
eye on their little dogs."
Jaws is not about sharks
Blues Brothers is not about cop cars
Moon is not about cloning
Total Recall is not about getting your ass to Mars (ok, yes it is)
28 January 2012
23 January 2012
Pre-CGI Effects
Been introducing the young teenager of the house to some old favorites. I've been (possibly tediously) prefacing each viewing with a spiel about how the effects were not computer-generated. The movies are going over well. Blade Runner still looks incredible, to both of us. Road Warrior? Actual cars smashing into each other. After seeing a CGI Dodge chasing deer through Manhattan at approximately 100 mph [I'm pretty sure deer can't actually run that fast] in I Am Legend, the occasional botch in Road Warrior in which they try to make the cars go faster by speeding up the film ends up being charming.
(Want more cars getting wrecked? Try Blues Brothers. Astonishing and gleeful excess in that movie. I was giggling at the sheer volume of wreckage. Poetic, like the midwestern embodiment of a Hong Kong gun flick.)
(Want more cars getting wrecked? Try Blues Brothers. Astonishing and gleeful excess in that movie. I was giggling at the sheer volume of wreckage. Poetic, like the midwestern embodiment of a Hong Kong gun flick.)
22 January 2012
Requirements Analysis At The Butcher
The impulse of many good butchers is to provide a solution for you. I did not realize this my first trip to a proper butcher nearly a dozen years ago. My mistake was thinking that you go and tell the butcher exactly what you want and they simply provide it. In other words, I not only know all about my problem, but I have already decided on the exact solution. The butcher, who didn't know me, didn't yet trust me enough to let me dictate the solution. Maybe I'm asking for completely the wrong thing, it won't work out, I'll blame the butcher, and he'll lose a customer. Am I planning on using rolled brisket for steaks on the grill? Making a stew with onglet? (Providing exactly and specifically what the customer asked for and yet the problem fails to be adequately solved? Hm....)
So I got a bit of a quiz -- how many people? how are you going to cook it? -- before a specific type and amount of meat was suggested to me. Of course, I could have shortcut the process and just demanded this or that, but it was more interesting to figure out the protocol. At my current butcher, I just ask for very specific things. They operate fine in either mode, as many of their customers know exactly what they want, whereas plenty of others come in with a general statement of the problem -- lamb for the bbq for 8 people -- and the butchers are delighted to come up with solutions.
So: problem domain, solution domain. Where is everyone standing?
I thought of this while witnessing a suboptimal transaction at the butcher's. In retrospect it's clear the customer's problem was needing a kilo of cubed beef for a stew. The butcher could have provided this via a couple different alternatives. What actually happened was that the customer specifically asked for a kilo of a designated, sale price, cubed "beef for stew", pointing at the tray. Which would have worked out just fine if the tray hadn't had about 500g of beef left, max. An ask of "I need a kilo of beef for a stew, cubed" would have resulted in the butcher surveying the alternatives and making suggestions. Or asking for a specific cut, in stock, and having the butcher cube it would have worked. Instead a dialogue ensued in which it took a while to establish that the customer just needed a kilo of cubed beef suitable for stewing and was perfectly content to pay more, if required, than the price on the insufficient amount of "beef for stew".
All was well, I think, eventually. But the customer was a little bit frustrated in the middle. As grateful as they no doubt would have been, I did not afterwards lecture the butchers on how they could have handled that better. A teaching moment wasted. Bitter tears at the missed opportunity to bask in the warming glow of my wisdom. Right, off to whip up some oxtail tartar.
So I got a bit of a quiz -- how many people? how are you going to cook it? -- before a specific type and amount of meat was suggested to me. Of course, I could have shortcut the process and just demanded this or that, but it was more interesting to figure out the protocol. At my current butcher, I just ask for very specific things. They operate fine in either mode, as many of their customers know exactly what they want, whereas plenty of others come in with a general statement of the problem -- lamb for the bbq for 8 people -- and the butchers are delighted to come up with solutions.
So: problem domain, solution domain. Where is everyone standing?
I thought of this while witnessing a suboptimal transaction at the butcher's. In retrospect it's clear the customer's problem was needing a kilo of cubed beef for a stew. The butcher could have provided this via a couple different alternatives. What actually happened was that the customer specifically asked for a kilo of a designated, sale price, cubed "beef for stew", pointing at the tray. Which would have worked out just fine if the tray hadn't had about 500g of beef left, max. An ask of "I need a kilo of beef for a stew, cubed" would have resulted in the butcher surveying the alternatives and making suggestions. Or asking for a specific cut, in stock, and having the butcher cube it would have worked. Instead a dialogue ensued in which it took a while to establish that the customer just needed a kilo of cubed beef suitable for stewing and was perfectly content to pay more, if required, than the price on the insufficient amount of "beef for stew".
All was well, I think, eventually. But the customer was a little bit frustrated in the middle. As grateful as they no doubt would have been, I did not afterwards lecture the butchers on how they could have handled that better. A teaching moment wasted. Bitter tears at the missed opportunity to bask in the warming glow of my wisdom. Right, off to whip up some oxtail tartar.
15 January 2012
NFL, God, and Too Many Words
I was mostly successful at weaning myself from the NFL this season. I didn't renew the online viewing subscription, didn't do a fantasy league, and only watched a little bit on TV. I failed to divorce myself completely -- I did follow the coverage (albeit more casually), did a small bit of wagering at the end, and have kept an eye on the televised playoff games. The latter just reinforced the nagging thought that supporting professional American football is immoral.
Early in the New Orleans loss to San Francisco, Pierre Thomas took a hard helmet-to-helmet blow and, upon replay, was clearly knocked unconscious, the football falling out of his arms as his limp body fell to the ground, only to be buried by players scrambling for the loose ball. He got up and walked off the field, but didn't return, having been concussed. Yes, there are new rules for concussions and have been more player-protection rules. This has led to more passing, which in turn has led to commentators such as Bill Simmons to moronically decry this the era of "flag football". (Simmons is a talented writer who should know better. The frat-boy shtick and macho snideness is getting old for someone who is a father and ostensibly an adult now.) Watching guys doing long-term damage to their brains, and knowing this is a huge problem and starts at pretty early ages in the sport, makes it really hard to enjoy the game in any capacity. And there's no denying it's a brilliant game to watch on TV.
...despite the uniformly awful TV commentators. I can only conclude these blithering robots get paid by the word. They essentially spew a stream of unconsciousness so meaningless that viewers must just all spam-filter it by now. Here's a single trivial example, and know that any given game will have dozens of examples more egregious: in the New England v. Denver game, one of the announcers said, "This is New England's first third down situation." So let me ask, what does the word "situation" add to that sentence? Answer: nothing. It detracts. It muddles. It makes the dufus sound like a self-parody of someone attempting to come across as sophisticated. They should all be forced to read Strunk & White's Elements of Style, but that wouldn't help because they'd assume it irrelevant to speaking.
The brilliance of the NFL as spectator-sport on TV, in particular in HD (it really does look great, and the standards of camera work are consistently high), should also clue in the owners and commissioner of the league regarding the future of the in-stadium experience. Here's what they don't get yet and if they don't eventually get it it may be too late: the people who go to the games in person are the studio audience. This is true also for the NBA. (Not true for baseball, especially not true for afternoon games on a beautiful summer day at a ballpark in the middle of a real city, but still.) If having an enthusiastic studio audience for your live broadcast enhances the TV viewing experience, and if TV is by far your biggest and most important source of revenue, then treat your audience well, and figure out now how to attract and retain enthusiastic audiences. Steps 1-100 in this: make tickets free, or so close to free it doesn't matter. This will never happen (until, possibly, it's too late), but should.
Maybe it's just that god hates people who can't afford personal seat licenses. God seems to have a really keen interest in the NFL, at least according to the players, the most famous of which is now Tim Tebow. [Didn't Roger Zelanzy write a short story in which Death was a football fan?] Tebow has a cute little routine about praying to god whenever something especially good happens. Seems a bit inconsistent. If god is interfering, and everything that happens is god's will or part of a "plan", shouldn't Tebow stop and give thanks after god makes him throw an interception or get sacked?
This is a trite example of the incoherence of the belief that god is meddling with the world. If a plane crashes and, say, a single child survives, a chorus of credulous christian cretins will quickly claim the miraculous at work, the hand of the divine in action! Well, you can't get that without also indicting god as the murderer of everyone else on board. The only ways out of this are to decide god really does have a strict non-interference policy (yes, the Star Trek "prime directive"), or, more simply, that god doesn't exist.
But what am I saying, of course god not only exists but also interferes constantly AND loves the NFL. God clearly hates Pittsburgh but loves Boston, or is trying some tough love voodoo on Denver. Better luck next year, Broncos.
Early in the New Orleans loss to San Francisco, Pierre Thomas took a hard helmet-to-helmet blow and, upon replay, was clearly knocked unconscious, the football falling out of his arms as his limp body fell to the ground, only to be buried by players scrambling for the loose ball. He got up and walked off the field, but didn't return, having been concussed. Yes, there are new rules for concussions and have been more player-protection rules. This has led to more passing, which in turn has led to commentators such as Bill Simmons to moronically decry this the era of "flag football". (Simmons is a talented writer who should know better. The frat-boy shtick and macho snideness is getting old for someone who is a father and ostensibly an adult now.) Watching guys doing long-term damage to their brains, and knowing this is a huge problem and starts at pretty early ages in the sport, makes it really hard to enjoy the game in any capacity. And there's no denying it's a brilliant game to watch on TV.
...despite the uniformly awful TV commentators. I can only conclude these blithering robots get paid by the word. They essentially spew a stream of unconsciousness so meaningless that viewers must just all spam-filter it by now. Here's a single trivial example, and know that any given game will have dozens of examples more egregious: in the New England v. Denver game, one of the announcers said, "This is New England's first third down situation." So let me ask, what does the word "situation" add to that sentence? Answer: nothing. It detracts. It muddles. It makes the dufus sound like a self-parody of someone attempting to come across as sophisticated. They should all be forced to read Strunk & White's Elements of Style, but that wouldn't help because they'd assume it irrelevant to speaking.
The brilliance of the NFL as spectator-sport on TV, in particular in HD (it really does look great, and the standards of camera work are consistently high), should also clue in the owners and commissioner of the league regarding the future of the in-stadium experience. Here's what they don't get yet and if they don't eventually get it it may be too late: the people who go to the games in person are the studio audience. This is true also for the NBA. (Not true for baseball, especially not true for afternoon games on a beautiful summer day at a ballpark in the middle of a real city, but still.) If having an enthusiastic studio audience for your live broadcast enhances the TV viewing experience, and if TV is by far your biggest and most important source of revenue, then treat your audience well, and figure out now how to attract and retain enthusiastic audiences. Steps 1-100 in this: make tickets free, or so close to free it doesn't matter. This will never happen (until, possibly, it's too late), but should.
Maybe it's just that god hates people who can't afford personal seat licenses. God seems to have a really keen interest in the NFL, at least according to the players, the most famous of which is now Tim Tebow. [Didn't Roger Zelanzy write a short story in which Death was a football fan?] Tebow has a cute little routine about praying to god whenever something especially good happens. Seems a bit inconsistent. If god is interfering, and everything that happens is god's will or part of a "plan", shouldn't Tebow stop and give thanks after god makes him throw an interception or get sacked?
This is a trite example of the incoherence of the belief that god is meddling with the world. If a plane crashes and, say, a single child survives, a chorus of credulous christian cretins will quickly claim the miraculous at work, the hand of the divine in action! Well, you can't get that without also indicting god as the murderer of everyone else on board. The only ways out of this are to decide god really does have a strict non-interference policy (yes, the Star Trek "prime directive"), or, more simply, that god doesn't exist.
But what am I saying, of course god not only exists but also interferes constantly AND loves the NFL. God clearly hates Pittsburgh but loves Boston, or is trying some tough love voodoo on Denver. Better luck next year, Broncos.
14 January 2012
I Love Betfair
Heading into this weekend's NFL playoffs, I've locked in a little bit of [now] risk-free profit. Not quite enough to retire on.
12 January 2012
Work Footwear
It's (former) police. [from here]
Do you remember when police used to wear shoes?
10 January 2012
Mountain Food, Continued
My favorite here is tartiflette. After a day in the cold and snow this is as hearty and warming a dish as you could hope for. Chunks of potato, with bacon, cooked in butter and cream and lots of reblochon, golden brown and crispy on top, served bubbling in a ceramic dish.
Predictably, the French do burgers better than the Austrians. To get properly Alpine, melt some raclette cheese onto that bacon burger.
[Not] Purchasing Checked Luggage
It must be me. On a SWISS return flight to LCY from GVA with my 13 yr old, we had 4 bags to check -- 2 normal pieces of luggage, a ski bag, and a small, soft-sided bag we chucked our helmets into since we didn't want to overstuff the other bags. On the way out, not only was there no problem checking in all four bags, the agent didn't even mention that it might be problematic or that anything special was happening. It simply wasn't an issue.
At checkin at GVA, though, I was informed that the policy only allowed for one checked bag, plus one ski bag, each, and thus the final bag would cost extra. Well, ok, how much extra? She checked... 90 CHF! Ninety swiss for a single bag that weighed nothing! Remember this was a bag with 2 ski helmets in it. So if we'd taken the contents out and put them into a 6-foot long ski bag, they would have happily checked it in for free as well. Since that wasn't an option, I asked if I could just carry it on, along with our other carryons (one small bag apiece). Sure! It's small enough and light enough. No problem, no charge. So, yeah, we carried it on, to no one's gain.
What a shame. If the fee had been nominal, I would've paid it. Clearly a bit of judgment had been exercised by the check-in agent at LCY on the way out, which I retrospectively appreciate.
At checkin at GVA, though, I was informed that the policy only allowed for one checked bag, plus one ski bag, each, and thus the final bag would cost extra. Well, ok, how much extra? She checked... 90 CHF! Ninety swiss for a single bag that weighed nothing! Remember this was a bag with 2 ski helmets in it. So if we'd taken the contents out and put them into a 6-foot long ski bag, they would have happily checked it in for free as well. Since that wasn't an option, I asked if I could just carry it on, along with our other carryons (one small bag apiece). Sure! It's small enough and light enough. No problem, no charge. So, yeah, we carried it on, to no one's gain.
What a shame. If the fee had been nominal, I would've paid it. Clearly a bit of judgment had been exercised by the check-in agent at LCY on the way out, which I retrospectively appreciate.
05 January 2012
Purchasing Lift Tickets
Thursday afternoon, attempting to buy lift tickets for 4 days, fri-mon, inclusive:
"You can't buy for tomorrow, it's too early. Come back in 30 minutes."
Ok. [30 Minutes later...]
"You can't buy for four days, only 2 days at a time."
That's fine. I'd like 2-day passes, please.
"I can sell you a 2-day pass, but there's a special price for Saturday, so it's cheaper to buy Friday and Saturday separately than to use the 2-day rate."
Ok, can I do that?
"No. It's too early to buy a pass for Saturday."
So, uh....
"So you can buy just a Friday pass now for tomorrow, then, tomorrow night, come back."
Ok, that's fine, I'd like to--
"But when you come back tomorrow night, don't buy a Saturday pass, buy a discounted Saturday-Sunday pass, because that's cheaper."
Um.... can I please just give you some money now?
I blame technology.
"You can't buy for tomorrow, it's too early. Come back in 30 minutes."
Ok. [30 Minutes later...]
"You can't buy for four days, only 2 days at a time."
That's fine. I'd like 2-day passes, please.
"I can sell you a 2-day pass, but there's a special price for Saturday, so it's cheaper to buy Friday and Saturday separately than to use the 2-day rate."
Ok, can I do that?
"No. It's too early to buy a pass for Saturday."
So, uh....
"So you can buy just a Friday pass now for tomorrow, then, tomorrow night, come back."
Ok, that's fine, I'd like to--
"But when you come back tomorrow night, don't buy a Saturday pass, buy a discounted Saturday-Sunday pass, because that's cheaper."
Um.... can I please just give you some money now?
I blame technology.
03 January 2012
If Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Was Way Too Upbeat For You
I feel remiss that I hadn't discovered it before, but I am loving The Last Psychiatrist blog.
Some sample posts to check out
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/01/penelope_trunk_abuser.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/06/louis_ck_on_being_a_dad--_the.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/07/jezebel_proves_scott_adams_is.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/10/marc_marons_mid-life_crisis.html
even a short story:
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/10/the_plan_will_always_fail_cata.html
Some sample posts to check out
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/01/penelope_trunk_abuser.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/06/louis_ck_on_being_a_dad--_the.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/07/jezebel_proves_scott_adams_is.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/10/marc_marons_mid-life_crisis.html
even a short story:
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/10/the_plan_will_always_fail_cata.html
02 January 2012
Middle Class Rebellion
London's Victoria Park has been undergoing some fairly substantial renovations the past year. This includes redoing the playground in the northeast corner of the west half of the park. Progress on this seemed slow, but it looked like it should have been in a position to open by June or July. Yet it didn't open. It sat there with new equipment, fenced off, all summer long. And into the fall. Shockingly poor planning. They were continuing other work in the park and couldn't be arsed to segregate the playground well enough to allow it to be opened for the summer. Finally by November the good citizenry had had enough and stormed the barricades. It was a wonderful moment of civil disobedience -- a pleasant autumn weekend with kids cavorting around the new playground, playing on the nice new bridges and swings and generally having a good time. Power to the playground!
01 January 2012
Scotland!
I'd been to Edinburgh before (recommended!) but had never been to the Highlands before until a couple months ago. Loved it. Really pleasant countryside. A brilliant and incredibly civilized thing about Scotland is the "right to roam" -- a very long-held freedom to wander pretty much anywhere that was codified into law in 2003. Basically, you can walk across any land, whether public or private, as long as you're not an asshole about it (i.e. don't bother the lifestock, etc.). See something interesting in the distance? Go ahead and walk there. The land is open for you. And what a gorgeous land it is.
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