Cynthia Nixon and Augusten Burroughs

As always, bit behind in my readings. 

The Lifestyle section of the May 26^th contained 2 articles which concerned sexuality. The actress Cynthia Nixon got flack from the homosexual contingent for statements questioning the idea that sexuality was fixed. She can serve as her own posterperson (my own coinage) as someone who went from a long term heterosexual relationship to marriage to a same sex partner. The article contains a quote which with the appropriate word substitutions should be applied to most statements in the blogosphere.

“Different strokes for different folks,” she said. “My view of my sexuality is just my view. It has nothing to do with your view of your sexuality or even my view of your sexuality.”   

 There was an article by Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors) about the loss of the word "boyfriend" now that he married his agent.  He classified the both of them as "bad gays" because they did not  fall into the pattern of tastefully married gays: no tasteful wedding, aspirations for children, or a honeymoon.

His statement

A man who frequently smells like cheeseburgers and makes me laugh hard every day and makes me want to be worthy of being his husband. 

gets at what people find attractive and bonding in each other.

Lena Sjööblom, Miss November 1972

In the process of getting images to demonstrate image sampling techniques I found myself reading, once again, about Lena Sjööblom, the most Mona Lisa of computer imaging.

From: electronicimaging.spiedigitallibrary.org/article.aspx?articleid=1100033
Nonadaptive sampling:	quasirandom	farthest point	importance-driven farthest point
Adaptive sampling:	bandwidth	coverage	importance-driven coverage

The May/June 2001 editions of the IEEE Professional Communications Society Newsletter had a nice write up of the origin of the original and subsequent use (www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/pcs_mirror/may_june01.pdf):

Lena Sjööblom, a Swedish native working as a model in Chicago in 1972, was Playboy’s Miss November that year. She would return to her native country, marry, and raise children before learning that her centerfold picture had become the ultimate laboratory rat. Not only that: Lena became for the engineers something like what Rita Hayworth was for U.S. soldiers in the trenches of World War II.

What I didn't find find was a link to the legal arrangement by which Playboy allowed Lena's copyrighted image to be used by graphics researchers.

The same newsletter issue provided this: You know it’s a “No Frills” airline when:

• They don’t sell tickets, they sell chances.
• All the insurance machines in the terminal are sold out.
• Before the flight, the passengers get together and elect a pilot.
• You cannot board the plane unless you have the exact change.
• Before you take off, the flight attendant tells you to fasten your Velcro.

Brazil, Home of the $30 Cheese Pizza

"In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could." ~Rudiger Dornbusch, an economist who spent his last 27 years at MIT.

I was led to the quote from a NY Times article about the high cost of living in Brazil, "Prices Fuel Outrage in Brazil, Home of the $30 Cheese Pizza" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/world/americas/prices-fuel-outrage-in-brazil-home-of-the-30-cheese-pizza.html), then through an English translation of a Braziliam economics blog (The Drunkeynesian: thedrunkeynesian.blogspot.com/)

I imagine that when someone waxes lyrical about Ipanema, its sparkling beaches and heavenly weather, I'll be prompted to add, "And the $30 pizza."  Consumer anger has been fueled by a law requiring retailers to detail on receipts how much tax customers were charged.  The article cites one $92 grocery bill, $25 of which was tax.

Joanie and Johnny Together

I owe a small debt of gratitude to Doonesbury's video of the day.  Today's video linked to Johnny Cash and Joanie Mitchell singing "The Long Black Veil".  Joannie added a high pitched part to the chorus that I don't believe I've heard before.  She does it the first about the 1 minute mark.  Enchanting. 

How Old is Too Old? - When to Refresh Student & Facutly PCs

It does not give one confidence when an educational bulletin doesn't know how to use a spell checker.

I know it happens.  I know that I notice typos more than most, but it is still annoying.

In the past, when I spotted a typo I'd send a message to an editor suggesting that if they put someone's liver on a pike I'd bring the fava beans and a nice chianti.  I used to paraphrase Dick the Butcher in ''Henry VI" (Let's kill all the proofreaders) until I realized that few proofreaders were left.

Typesetting is gone.  A piece is written electronically, sent, and then posted without the mediation of experience.  It impresses me that mistakes, obvious mistakes, mistakes underlined in red get through.  I've seen it myself in my PowerPoint presentations.

I'll be in front of the class when -- Ooop!  I stop the presentation, fix the spelling error, save the file, and continue where I left off.  Sometimes its worse: a real error of fact gets through.  Ooop.  That's wrong.  Very embarrassing.  I take time to tell the class that they should pay attention and try to think about what they're being told because some of what they'll be told may be wrong.  The instructor may misspeak.  In editing, a "not" gets misplaced.

One of my PowerPoint techniques is to duplicate a slide or group of slides and then edit them.  Occasionally stuff gets left lying around: stray text, an extra slide, or the wrong reference in the notes.  I would have thought I'd learn my lesson, but I don't.

(This might be the appropriate point to quote someone to the effect that education is the process by which knowledge is passed from the notebook of the instructor to the notebook of the student without passing through the mind of either.  Unfortunately the provenance is unclear (quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/17/lecture-minds/).  An updated version might say that knowledge flows seamlessly from the publisher's PowerPoint presentation to handouts stuffed into student Trapper™ portfolios.)

Installation Blues

Another instructor lent me a PC, a Dell Optiplex 745 with Vista installed.  Not a problem.  I have a genuine Windows 7 SP 1 DVD to install a newer operating systems.  Rushing right ahead into the update routine, I became reacquainted with the Microsoft installation nonsense.

 I'll let others bash Microsoft.  All I need to say is that when installing Linux, I'm presented with a whole bunch of screens and choices up front.  Once I click the Install button I don't have to do anything other than wait and then install the 300 or so updates required, but it's essentially painless.

Microsoft reboots several times and ask for user input.  The most annoying part of the installation is that the screen will go black.  Because I wasn't playing close attention, I would think that the computer was in the process of rebooting.  It was only when I tapped a key the screen would light up and display a dialog box giving me the choice of continuing or cancelling.  Sigh.

It was more annoying than stressful, but then the installation rejected my product key.   I figured I'd do something to get a Genuine Windows seal of approval or contact the Dream Spark people to get an alternate key later.

The first order of business was to install newer browsers etc.  Oh simple soul.  Internet Explorer gave me a few raspberries in the form of DLL exceptions in DLL's as did MSPaint.  The Dell site displayed updates for the hardware up to Vista.  Sigh.

As I write I've reinstalled Vista and am waiting for the 102 updates to install.  Sigh.

An Interview with Terence Stamp

With the "Unfinished Song" soon to be released, Terence Stamp was interviewed on NPR by Scott Simon.  When asked about his social exploits (Julie Christie, Brigitte Bardot, Jean Shrimpton), Stamp responded, "They were after the pill and before AIDS. You know, a good time to be a young lad."  He was asked what it was like to work with Vanessa Redgrave who'd had her daughter, brother, and sister die within a year's time.  Stamp replied, "I saw a woman who was kind of very familiar with change of cosmic address."

Not a bad turn of phrase.  I wonder if the post office would forward mail?

In a web search for images of Jean Shrimpton I found a Guardian interview with Jean Shrimpton  from April 2011.  An indifferent student, rocked to fame as the first supermodel, a succession of men, eventually one introduced her to culture (museums, art, and literature).  She's been a hotelier since her 30's and, if the interview is to be believed,  doesn't seem to miss being in the public eye.

Looking at her pictures, now some 50 years old, I was struck by how artificial the hair seems now.  Were people aware of that then?

 

(Photo from http://www.fanpix.net/picture-gallery/jean-shrimpton-picture-17322359.htm)

Bernanke's Princeton Commencement Address

Ben Bernanke delivered a marvelous commencement speech to Princeton undergrads on Sunday, June 2nd.  The video is on vimeo.  My favorite quote:

3) Those who are luckiest also have the greatest responsibility: "As the Gospel of Luke says (and I am sure my rabbi will forgive me for quoting the New Testament in a good cause): 'From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded."

He gave the Biblical quote an academic spin. "Kind of grading on the curve, you might say."

Biology profs will surely quote number 9:

9) On choosing a partner: "Remember that physical beauty is evolution's way of assuring us that the other person doesn't have too many intestinal parasites."

 The text of the enumerated parts of the the speech can be found on cnn (http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/02/news/economy/bernanke-princeton-speech/index.html).  The video can also be found on bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/video/ben-bernanke-s-ten-suggestions-for-princeton-grads-hTsARou6S7md1VCuYjHN1A.html).  I was impressed that the video's time indicator was in Princeton orange.

CIO's Universal Vendor Translation Machine

I discovered a seven year old CIO magazine (June 15th, 2006) while rooting around for things to put out for recycling. I flipped through quickly and found this gem of a hype decoder on the back page. I would normally put a link to the original but I had an odd feeling that the original page might disappear.  You can follow the link to the CIO page or you can read it below. 

(I always suspect that I'm the last person to hear something humorous, but for some odd reason, I'm one of the few who remember a joke.  It's certainly an odd feeling to explain to someone that the joke they're laughing at is the one I originally heard from them.  The entry for "24/7 customer support" feels like a classic.)

I was going to go the long way around by putting the page through an OCR scanner when it dawned on me that the article was probably on line.  As partial penitence for being so stupid I formatted the text as a description list by hand without benefit of search and replace. 

“Fully redundant”

When the product fails, your IT staffers, working by the light of kerosene lanterns, may be able to restart the system using a length of stereo wire, some Juicy Fruit and a car battery.

“24/7 customer support”

You’re welcome to call and talk to our automated phone system any time you want.

“Begins shipping later this quarter”

We use the terms “quarter” and “decade” interchangeably here.

“The leading provider of…”

Just got the venture capital firm’s check last week and finally moved the company out of the dorm room.

“Backward compatible”

Version 2.0 is guaranteed to read files created by Version 1.9 for at least five (5) business days.

“Merger of equals”

We actually believed our own sales forecasts, opening us up to a hostile takeover. In six months, no one will remember our name.

“Ajax-driven Web application”

Guaranteed to crash your browser.

“Open source”

You’ll be relying on Latvian high school drop-outs for upgrades.

“Integrated security”

We bought a little firewall startup and grafted their code onto ours.

“Conceptually, we’re a Web 2.0 company”

Desperately trying to resuscitate ideas from the dotcom era.

“Ensures SOX compliance”

When your CEO and/or CFO winds up behind bars, we’ll send brownies.

“Free six-month trial”

After trial ends, salespeople will call you, e-mail you, IM you, rent blimps to fly over the links while you’re golfing and, if necessary, camp out in your outer office until you agree to buy the product.

“Enterprise-grade”

Too complicated for consumers or small businesses to use.

“Robust”

System runs beautifully as long as no wackos attempt to change the configuration, delete a user or add a record.

“Intuitive user interface”

After two weeks of offsite training, several of your brighter employees will have figured out how to log on.

“Positive ROI within 12 months”

By uninstalling our hardware after 364 days, your time will be freed up to work on more productive things.

Soap/Forge of Empire

The image for Forge of Empires popped up on Pandora.  It reminded me of several things: a hilarious analysis of drawings featuring women who's underpants fell off and the most important invention in the world.  I know I need to explain this.

In reverse order, one of my profs maintained that the single most important thing mankind devised was soap.  I know little kids don't appreciate it, but soap allowed people to remove dirt and contamination from their body and implements.  With (or without) your permission I'll skip over a review of saponification except to say that the expression "wash your mouth out with soap" stemed from horrible experience: early soaps still contained un-neutralized lye which can do horrible things to tender membranes.

Wealthier people could afford scented soaps which also had the lye neutralizing.  Still, the popular depiction of historical characters usually show them at our modern level of cleanliness.  (Some reviewers of a show about John Adams made a point of commented that Paul Giamatti, playing John Adams, was made up to have dirty finger nails.)

Which brings me to the image.  How likely is is it that someone the age of the woman depicted would not be grimy from the woodsmoke and dust?  (I would quote from Farley Mowat's description of smelling Inuits before seeing them, but much of his writing has been documented as fanciful in detail.)  Grime does not come off without soap.  You can trust me on this.

On another matter, how likely is it that the left halter cup would stay in position without support?  I'll let woman and clothing designers debate that.


But the unlikelihood of her top staying the way it is depicted  reminded me of James Lilek's humorous analysis of Art Frahm's illustrations: An Artistic Study of the Effects of Celery on Loose Elastic http://www.lileks.com/institute/frahm/). Frahm's illustrations featured shapely women experiencing catastrophic elastic failure in a public space resulting in underwear bunching at their feet. (The reference to celery is that most of the pictures had celery poking out of the woman's shopping bag.)

If you need a gentle laugh, James Lilek's blog, http://www.lileks.com.

What the bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep! Tourette's

I was listening to an interview with a person who had Tourette's syndrome when there was a bleep which kept on going.  I thought "Whoa!  That's one huge string of obscenities." 

The announcer finally broke in to apologize for a technical problem with the audio feed.

Two Gay Things

The recent revelations that the pro basketball player Jason Collins was gay (/sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/news/20130429/jason-collins-gay-nba-player/)  might have prompted a recent discussion among high school students in the pool's locker room.

The general consensus seemed to be that they didn't actually care who was gay or not, but they'd want to know to avoid awkward situations.  In their case it ment avoiding asking a lesbian out for date or using the wrong language around a gay kid.  They each professed to know someone who was gay and had no problem with him. 

I wondered what their use of the term "that's so gay" means.  I think they mean something is dopey or uncool.  It'll be interesting to see if the phrase is still around or if the meaning changes in the next few years.

On a related note, I finally heard what must be a camp classic: "In Spring a young man's fancy turns to fancy young men."

Personal Financial Advisors or a Fool and His Money ...

Perhaps as a nod to gender equality the saying should be modified to "Fools and their money are easily parted."  But, that's not what I wanted to talk about.

I was listening to a rebroadcast of an On the Media interview, How Personal Finance Led Us Astray  with Helaine Olen, author of Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry  Her position was that the only people getting rich in the financial advice business are those giving the advice.

Nothing new here.  In 2009 Jon Stewart famously took on Jim Cramer ("If I only followed CNBC's advice I'd have a million dollars today -- provided I'd started with $100 million.").

Besides the big names, Jim Cramer and Suze Orman, there was one name, which had a faint ring:  Dave Ramsey.  A quick web search found Financial Peace U:

Sounds hokey to me, but what stays with me was an NPR interview a year or so ago with a Christian clergyman who gave financial advice.  I think it was with Ramsey.  What I remember so distinctly was a clip from a female caller.  the woman was asking for advice so she could become financially independent and leave her marriage.

I searched in vain for  the interview on line because I think the phrasing was critical.    Her husband had said something like "You'll never be able to make it by yourself."  The adviser's response startled me: "Does he beat you?"

"Yes."

Anyone in social services might have been just as quick to recognize the situation, but it stunned me.

I usually associate faith-based financial dealings with scams.  Web searches may turn up a link to Christian Financial Credit Union which advised their members about a scam using their name:

Need more?  There's a January 2011 post, "An Overview of Religious Financial Fraud on http://christianheadlines.com:

It's a sad compendium of embezzlement, investments coverups, insider deals, fraudulent tax shelters, flipped property fraud, excessive compensation, and insurance fraud.

The article is not exhaustive. The scams run from Brazil ($2 billion (yes that's a "B") for the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), to America (claims of $1 billion was money laundered annually at Oral Roberts University, yes, again a "B"), to Ukraine ($100 million business venture fraud).

Makes one think seriously about going back to worshiping trees again.

(In this regard, I remember with great fondness a line from one episode of Mash, the TV show.  Trapper and Hawkeye created a fictitious personnel record for a new doctor.  For religion they list, "Druid", then change it to "Druid reform - he worships at bushes" - a clear reference to reform Judaism.)

Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind

This may be really old, but it's new to me. It's a line I'll have to use in class with attribution. From the Madam and Eve comic strip from early in March of this year:

Kwame Kilpatrick Guilty of More Than Stealing

Unless I'm mistaken Kwame is mixing stripes (on the shirt) with plaid (on the tie).

You can read about how he went bad at the Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/12/how-kwame-kilpatrick-went-bad.html).  Nothing new, except that the corruption (misappropriation of funds and kickbacks) occurred as the Motor City was going down the toilet.

Rich Little's Impersonation of Brad Pitt

The Sunday, January 20, 2013 issue of the NY Times carried a story about Rich Little, premier impressionist in American comedy.  I was struck by his comment:

“It’s much easier to do Humphrey Bogart than Tom Cruise,” he says. “How do you imitate Brad Pitt? George Clooney? Wouldn’t mean anything.”

He's right.  What would be imitated?  The great voices are gone.  Have stars have become character actors?  Frank Caliendo - a name I didn't recognize - gave credit to Rich Little and said that his impersonations are of sports figures.  I doubt that I'd recognize them.

After thinking about it for a moment (I couldn't hold the thought much longer) I wondered if the most recognizable impressions would be of characters or the impression of a political figure acting as a famous cartoon character.  It wouldn't be a superfluous effort with so many of our politicians doing their own unhinged imitation of an elected official.

Traditional Values/ William Rees-Mogg

The obit of William Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times of London contained this passage:

He incensed some Times readers in 1967 with a lead editorial in which he attacked the severity of jail sentences imposed on the Rolling Stones’s Mick Jagger (three months) and Keith Richards (one year) for drug offenses.

“If we are going to make any case a symbol of the conflict between the sound traditional values of Britain and the new hedonism, then we must be sure that the sound traditional values include those of tolerance and equity,” Mr. Rees-Mogg wrote, under the headline “Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?”

Also in the article was a ripost which can be tuned to many occasions.  (I suspect I've seen variants on this before.)

Lord George Brown is a better man drunk than the prime minister is sober

It's a near relative of Winston Churchill's reply to Lady Astor exclamation, "Sir you are drunk!": "And you are ugly.  However, in the morning I will be sober."

Benedict XVI Resigns

The world has not been waiting breathlessly for my comments about the February 11th announcement by Pope Benedict XVI that he would resign on February 28th, but, inasmuch as I've not put anything up for a while, here goes:

The end of John Paul II's life was alternately described as a pathetic old man clinging to life unaware that his time had passed or "a testament of faith".  The last being a statement of a Catholic nun.

I'm sure that in relevant religious communities "a testament of faith" is clear enough description by itself.  Not to me.  After web searches and reading descriptions of testaments of faith in several religions I sort of get it: it's the will of God and the individual will take the lumps because that's what God is dishing out.  The individual recognizes or accedes to God's will (as if there were a choice).

I decided many years ago that the simplest explanation for why bad things happen to good people is because that's the way it is.  It doesn't require anything divine.  It doesn't require a divine plan.  Stuff just happens: brakes fail, metal fatigues, someone goes postal.

Back to the pope.  For some reason I think of the two popes as JP2 and Benny.  (I think the "Benny" comes from a "Prairie Home Companion sketch in which Guy Noir, the private eye, guided the Pope around incognito.)

My guess that Benny saw how the organization lost direction under JP2's decline and wanted to avoid doing the same.

In my opinion the best joke about the Pope's resignation came from Father James Martin, cultural editor of the Jesuit magazine America: "Boy he's sure .. certainly has raised the bar when it comes to giving something up for Lent." (The official NPR transcript reads: "And my second response was, boy, he certainly has raised the bar when it comes to giving something up for Lent." ~http://www.npr.org/2013/02/16/172175231/how-will-catholics-react-to-popes-rare-retirement)

News 12 Helicopter Video

In the aftermath of yesterday's snow storm Newsday posted a News 12 video on its site (News 12 is a Long Island all news TV station): Chopper 12 over abandoned cars in Lake Grove.  As the camera zoomed in I fully expected the flash of a drone strike.

 

What does that say about our world?

On the Internet, nobody cares if you're an imbecile

This whole thing of "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" has gotten a little out of hand and has morphed into "On the Internet, nobody cares if you're an imbecile."

~ http://www.weeklystorybook.com/comic_strip_of_the_daycom/2012/05/ask_clique_and_claque.html

I was grading a student's drawing I noticed that the arcs didn't seem to join flush to the horizontal lines. 

Zooming in and sure enough.

A look at the top revealed a gap and the lines which should have ended at the horizontal lines extended beyond.

When I asked the student why the dimensions were off he responded:

I was just eye balling, I didn't realize how serious it was to follow the units, I thought they were just reference

I didn't and still don't know how to respond.  He's an Engineering student.  In my mind that means something.  All manner of snarky comments suggest themselves from a lament about American higher education to the hope that he, like many students, will change his major to avoiding domestically produced goods.