A Land of Rohan

50/50 Movie Review

2013-12-26T00:06:00.000-08:00

A touching film about a young man who goes through cancer. I feel the entire movie screams out tropes, grouchy old men who do drugs, young doctor, touching best friend, over protective mother, main character learning that his friends / family truly care and have their own problems. But it doesn't fucking matter, because it's well done and you like the characters. They're awkward, they are kind, and they do a good job at pulling on your heartstrings as you root for Adam to make it at the very end. The best thing is that the few shining moments of comedy and the hilarity of it all shines through this film like a beacon, the moments of just awkwardness made me laugh and smile. That's all I need to say about this movie and I would highly recommend it if you want to watch a somewhat serious movie with slight comedic undertones.

Sleep Tight Review (Movie)

2013-12-24T22:15:00.000-08:00

As usual, I was searching for my next horror movie and the movie that came to my attention was Sleep Tight. This 2011 film was written by the same Spanish director as the zombie movie REC, which was well done and certainly scary. Though his sequels going into the origin of the zombies in similar scenarios are less entertaining but he seems to have a franchise, so I'm not going to judge.

So the first thing is that this movie is not a horror movie, you might want to label it as such because it is somewhat creepy how amazingly well adapted this man is at doing the cruel and terrible things he does, but it is not strictly scary. Not in the sense that the Oprhanage is scary.

The movie starts out with the main character Cesar, an apartment complex concierge who primary goal in life is to make his tenants unhappy to alleviate his own unhappiness. He does this with small subtle changes to everyone's lives in order to ruin them. The older single lady with her precious dogs, the young teenage girl, the overnight maid and her daughter, and our main character: the young gorgeous Clara. But unlike the others, Clara refuses to stop smiling. Her happiness shines through regardless of the small but terrible inflictions that Cesar piles upon her.

At this point the rest of this review goes into spoilers, but I would recommend watching this movie. The twists are not overly complex, but they are subtle and you can enjoy the story of how much effort this man goes into inflicting his sadness upon others. The story continues but never gets boring, the pacing is well done, and the only thing I would say negative about the movie is that there are perhaps some minor plots holes that don't really ruin the movie for me.

Cesar's actions are subtle. Injecting sodium hydroxide into Clara's lotions, infesting her apartment with bugs, the treatment of Victoria's dogs in order to kill one. Everything causes pain but in a way that seem like it comes from either your own actions or bad luck. The blame is never strictly on Cesar and that's where his brilliance shines throguh. It's enough to suspect something odd but never enough malice and intent to realize it.I have to appreciate this ability to set up these scenarios in these brilliant ways.

The other thing is that I enjoyed the conclusion. The conclusion can be predicted if you tie everything together in a way and make some assumptions on what is going on. But you have to make a connection on step beyond what you see in the movie, though the movie does finally reveal in a more obvious way what that extra step is. I believe if you can predict the ending of Se7en, you can probably guess what's going to happen in ths movie. But for me the movie kept me paying attention well enough that I couldn't take time to think of the next step. The pacing of the movie comes into play here and does well. Though I don't believe the hint is as obvious as in Se7en.

The thing about Sleep Tight's ending is that it wasn't planned by Cesar in the begining, this wasn't some grand master plan that went according to his will. He adapts, he changes small things, he continues making differences and mistakes and has to figure out small changes to his plan. In the movie, he drugs her every night and sleeps next to her, but later on in the movie they show that he was in fact also raping her, thus causing her inpregnation. While I can imagine this is part of a bigger plan in order to confuse and destroy her, maybe it is for his own pleasure, you can't really tell. When the boyfriend comes back, he figures the tension of the pregnancy if it happens could destroy the relationship. When confronted with the boyfriend though, he ends up murdering him and sets it up a suicide in order to destroy Clara. The thing is that he knows that she thinks it is his, and that is intesnse. I don't know when exactly he plans and how long in the process that he realizes that could be a source of ultimate misery for Clara, but he does eventually. He then reveals to her the entire story after she has already had the child.

I truly enjoyed how much the story adapts and changes to accomodate this changing things, it's less grand than the twists in the Prestige or Sixth Sense, but it's there. You can see the small reveals that lay out his plan and how they will tie together in the very end.

The acting in the film is decent, I don't remember any superb acting beyond Cesar but they all played their roles fairly well. But when you're making a movie about a psycopath, you care more about the psycopath than all the auxillary characters.

I would honestly rate the movie very highly in my movies of things to watch, and I would recommend it for anybody who doesn't mind the thriller movies and enjoys unravelling plots.

Discworld Series

2013-05-13T00:04:00.001-07:00

So around the beginning of the year I decided I would just starting reading the Discworld series since I found Good Omens an amazing read. I started out with suggestions from my friends since order of Discworld doesn't matter (at least that's what I told). I read Guards, Guards, Guards!, Mort, Going Postal, and Eric (Faust). I enjoyed Guards and Postal, Mort was decent and Eric was just terrible, so I looked into a bit more into the Discworld history and found out that their is actually a type of linear story to the books.

While each book can be read independently, the major story arcs follow certain characters. They are Death, the City Watch, Rincewind and the Wizards, Witches, and Moist Von Lipwig. There's also Tiffany Aching but the books were aimed at Young Adults so I decided to skip them entirely.

Here is my quick review of the arcs and stories:
Death: While an amusing set of books, the masterpiece of the series is The Reaper Man. If you enjoy hearing the story of what happens to an immoral personification as he becomes human this is the story to read, it even has a separate story about the consequences of Death becoming more mortal. Reaper Man is also the only book that's more about Death than anybody else. Mort is about Mort, Death's apprentice and the rest of the books are about Death's "daughter" Susan.

Susan's stories go from meh, to more amusing, to the best. She is just not an interesting character except if you consider her over the period of three books as she develops into a bad-ass. Hopefully, her character is done forever with the end of Thief of Time, which I feel is a great conclusion to her story and probably the only story worth reading involving her. Hogfather is about Susan and about the fairy tale characters and it's not a bad story but as Susan infuriates me as a character who wants to be normal but isn't. The bad guys of the story, the Auditors are uninteresting and boring until the last book as well where they actually interact with the world. Just read Repear Man and Thief of Time. You can wiki the rest. Susan doesn't really develop into anything much in the earlier books anyway.

This is a bit of a spoiler but you can skip this sentence if you want: The thing I found most fascinating is that Death is the way he is because humans believe him to be that way, thus he is personified in his current form. But humans have a hard time giving a human shape to the idea without giving him certain human attributes, thus explaining Death's desire to replicate certain human things such as a bed without actually needing to sleep. I thought this was incredibly depressing, Death wants to be more human because humans believe him to be more like a person, but can never achieve it because humans can never make him into a mortal for he is still and always will be: a belief.

Witches & Wizards: I'm sure this is interesting to some people but I disliked the magic in Discworld. So the sheer idiocy of the Wizards in how they solve problems was just not to my taste. I prefer my characters to be somewhat competent, not just lucky. Witches was better in that sense, but I just never got into the characters that I did with the other arcs. I read two books of each series and I didn't care to read more.

Moist Von Lipwig: Going Postal was an excellent story about a conman using his powers for something more worthwhile, running the post office. What he would do next is always great to hear, how is he going to get out of this mess! Read Making Money as well if you liked Going Postal. If you're expecting something new then you're not gonna get it, it's the same themes and jokes but with a slightly new story. I realize that's pretty common in a lot of Discworld novels, it's the same theme repeated. But if you like the conman turned good type of stories, Moist's arc is great. Expanding into the golems was interesting as well.

City Watch: Oh man, City Watch is the BIG series in Discworld and follows the stories of Sam Vimes, Captain Carrot, Fred Colon, and Nobby Nobbs. I have to admit, these hold a special place in my heart because of all the books, these explore the other cultures and politics of Discworld the most, and for me fantasy novels are all about world building. Guards, Guards, Guards! is the great introduction to the characters and has the best explanation for dragons I've heard in a while. Men at Arms is the beginning of a bigger arc about the other races in Discworld and the issues with that, standalone it's a decent read. Feet of Clay ramps it up again with an intriguing story and probably one of my favorite stories in the City Watch series, introducing golems. Jingo is weak a big allegory about British and Middle East relations, while The Fifth Elephant more than makes up for it and introduces the politics of Uberwald and Igors, it also further explores Angua's (female werewolf in the Watch) family. Night Watch is viewed as one of the best Watch stories but I god damn hate time travel stories so much. Thud! is a nice little mystery story you get into the political involvement of the City Watch into more species affairs. Snuff is the last book written and the last City Watch story and it's a great little book and could settle much of the final character fates for Vimes, Nobby and Colon. I feel Prachett is trying to provide conclusions to some of his characters at this point with Snuff. Hopefully he resolves Carrot and Angua's stories in another book.

De Worde: A single book about the newspaper, it was ok.

Rodents: A GREAT book about rodents who become intelligent, it was aimed at kids but it was kinda dark. I read this through a night trying to finish it, probably one of my favorite standalone books in Discworld.

Small Gods: An excellent story about the Omian religion. I wish it had a better epilogue, more than the hints in the other books that were given about the religion's fate.

Monstrous Regiment: Story about a woman trying to infiltrate into the military, not a bad book but not the best, it just gets ridiculous at the end, too ridiculous for me.

So overall, Discworld sticks to a few motifs and themes, the books arcs don't tend to wander in terms of story and characters. If you enjoy one book in a series, you will probably enjoy the rest except for Death, where I feel certain books stand out and the others do not.

The biggest thing that got me was that I had to look up the definition of words. At least once per book, I had to stop and look up the definition of a word because while I understood in context I wanted to know it's full definition. Not sure if that's a testament to my small vocabulary or that Pratchett has a much bigger one.

The only thing that I really dislike about this entire series is that I'm probably not going to be all that interested in reading anything for a while, it's going to take another excellent book for me to get back into reading again. After I finished all the Dresden Files novels, I didn't read a book for quite a while... It actually took Good Omens to break me out of the funk of not reading after that.

Life Philosophies - Stoicism

2013-03-17T20:24:00.000-07:00

Stoic - A person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining.

The word "stoic" is associated with apathy or lack of feeling, but stoicism is not about banishing all emotion, just the negative ones. Stoicism is a philosophy of life. A philosophy of life is a way to live a GOOD life, which is separate from religion which is about to live a MORAL life. The intentions, how you deal with the world, that is what incorporates a philosophy of life.

Stoicism can be summarized as thus: Live a life where you are happy with what you have currently and what is present. Not in the sense that you should not never strive for better things, but in the sense that the present is the present and you should enjoy it. It should not be about pleasure or comfort, it should be about regardless of the circumstances you should be able to experience joy.

So to introduce myself to Stoicism, I researched some background and read Guide to Good LIfe: Art of Stoic Joy

History of Stoicism

Stoicism started as a philosophy in Greece by the philosopher Zeno, who adapted a few other philosophies and made Stoicism. It was then spread as a school of philosophy and adopted by a few prominent Romans, the most famous being Cato and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. An offshoot from Cyncism, the basic idea being that you should enjoy the good things in life but you should not cling to them. You should also avoid the more carnal pleasures such as sex and wealth, things that you should not pursue ever. Zeno disagreed on that point and form his own school allowing Stoics to be wealthy but not cling to that wealth.

Tenets of Stoicism

Negative Visualization

One of the primary tenets of Stoicism is the visualization of what could possibly go wrong, perhaps your parents could die or you become disabled. The second part is to visualize how you would deal with that. This gives you two benefits: it helps you appreciate your life as it is right now and that it could be much worse off and it helps you realize that even the things you can imagine excluding death can be handled. It's annoying, it would be troublesome, but by no means it is the end of the world.

Another aspect of this negative visualization is that is also a preventive measure on the opposite idea. Where you think of how something could be better. Anyone ever have that moment where you wish something more exciting was happening, or you wish you were someplace else, or you committed to something and you're missing out on something else fun and now you regretted your decision? This is for that scenario, instead of imaging what the other event could be like and how amazing it would be. Instead visualize staying at home sick or something so you appreciate where you're at. At least that's my modern day interpretation of the idea.

Some people can undertand that there are people who are in the world who don't have running water and can appreciate just having that. Or having full control of your body, or being able to eat whatever you want, there's tons of things that you can look to make sure you appreciate your life.

Separation of Control

In life there are three things: things you can control, things you can influence, and things you can't control at all. Things you can control includes your ideas, your virtue, your dreams and aspirations, things that are within the realms of your own thought process and decision making process. The things you can influence are perhaps winning a ping pong match, you don't have full control over wether you can win or not but you have partial control over your own body and your ability to win. The things you can't control include what others think of you, fame and fortune, and the past.

This idea is prevalent in LOTS of religions and philosophies throughout the world, of letting go of things you can't control. The Serenity Prayer goes:

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."

No Control

The things you can't control are things that influence your life all the damn day: the weather, traffic, perhaps a teammate screws something up. There is no point in expending any time worrying or trying to fix these things, nothing you can do will influence them in anyway and they are out of your control, ESPECIALLY the actions of others. Getting frustrated when someone else screws up has no benefit, everyone will make mistakes.

Some Control

There are things you have some influence and control over, the example in the book repeatedly was playing tennis. I'm going to use ping pong as an example since that's more relevant to me. I could say "I want to win a game of ping pong", so what do I have control over? I have a semblance of control of my own body and my own ability, but I have no control over the other person. Maybe they are exceptionally good today, maybe they aren't, either way the other player creates a variable of instability that you cannot control in this scenario. So instead of making the external goal of "I want to win this game", make an internal goal of "I will do the best of my abilities" or "I will focus on getting a good top spin". This puts everything in your court (pun intended, maybe that's just tennis, do ping pong matches courts?)

Full Control

The last items are the things you can control entirely. These are things like your own moral values, dreams, and your choices. Morality is the biggest indicator here because the pursuit of virtue is an important part of stoicism, you should strive to live a just life and a life according to reason that goes beyond our base evolutionary concerns. You should help your fellow man since that is part of ensuring a better environment for all.

The most important thing you have control over is your own ability to make choices based on your desires and impulses, not in the sense that you can prevent these desires and impulses but that you can control them. That you can push past pain or that you can avoid the short-term pleasures. Avoid eating that donut now so you can have body you wanted (if anybody tempts me with a donut after this blog post I'm gonna be pissed). This leads to the next tenet of Stoicism actually!

Make yourself uncomfortable

Another tenet of Stoicism is the intention to make yourself uncomfortable, at first the author mentions walking around barefoot or turning off the heat during a cold day and I thought that that was the most retarded thing I have ever heard. The point of this intentional discomfort is to give you two major benefits: to train you when those discomforts occur and to make you appreciate comfort when you have them. As I said, the examples he first stated sound dumb but the idea was sound. But other discomforts include things such as exercise or public speaking, things that make you challenge yourself. Thing that make you feel socially awkward or uncomfortable, its the basic idea of going outside your comfort zone. The man who has handled all types of discomfort will not have a fear of the discomfort in the future.

Basically, this comes down to willpower. And just like making yourself uncomfortable is important, controlling your own pleasure is also equally important. A critical aspect of stoicism to deny yourself pleasure sometimes, if there are chocolates at work you need to deny yourself this pleasure in order to control your will power. So one tip they have developed on this, to avoid yourself pleasure you can substitute one pleasure with another, if you somehow resisted eating chocolate that day, you can at the end of the day take pleasure in the fact that you have gained some semblance of self control and feel vindicated in that. The pleasure of self control can be something that can hold you off on more short-term pleasures.

On Compliments and Anger

The biggest thing about Stoicism that I found interesting was that you should shrug off and ignore compliments. Compliments should not give you pleasure; for one pleasure is dangerous and having the willpower to control pleasure is important. If you derive pleasure from compliments you might start seeking them out which in turn gives other people the control. You have put validation in the hands of others instead of yourself.

How many of you spent your time checking to see how many likes on Facebook something got? Wether a new picture is super liked or super commented on, this is all external validation. Reteweets, favorites, whatever. Klout scores? It's all putting your self-worth and control in the hands of others, do you want to be influential? The influence and fame is all things that Stoics feel that you should not pursue, for you are now giving control over others, not yourself. Is that what they are for? I know I've done it and I have a bad habit to check facebook far too often. This is of course null if you perhaps work in social media, where the garnering of these likes / favorites are a sign of your influence.

Insults are the same way, they should not be taken to heart as they are usually a slight offense. From the book:

Take the insults of your fellow humans to be like the barking of a dog. When a dog barks, you might make a mental note that the dog appears to dislike you, but you would be a fool to become upset by this fact.

Kinda rude way to think about it but it's the same idea, if someone insults you, ignore it and shrug it off. It does no benefit to work on a counter insult, honestly it's best to respond with humour. I will append something on this idea though that Stoics do not address. Of course criticism from someone you respect is another story and should not be taken as an insult, but should be thought about but the Stoic philosophy never seems to address this? It's kinda a weird little missing piece of this entire thing. Criticism and insult cross lines depending on who it's from and how they phrase it, so be careful about that. But even the idea of not being invited to a party that others are invited to is insulting, why be insulted? Why bother yourself with it?

This of coures leads to anger, it is easy to be angry and even righteous anger has a great feeling to it, when you know you're right and can be angry over it but it's important to get rid of these feelings too. The first thing that you should always do with anger determine if you can do something about it, are you angry about something you can control? If you can, you should change if it. But usually we get angry at something out of control, and that is when anger is pointless. It makes us frustrated and drains us and unless it can be funneled into something productive what's the point of it? If you're angry over something you can influence, say you're angry at a friend over some slight that he or she did. You can talk to them, address the scenario and understand the reasoning and help ensure that this kinda situation doesn't happen again. There are better things to do in life than be angry over something.

Pursuits & A Simple Life

One philosophy of stoics is the idea of living a simple life. Of course different stoics argued about different levels of simple life and wether you can have a simple life living in a palace or not, but the point is that while you can have wealth, you should never cling to it. The point of a good life and a good outlook on life is that you can enjoy the simple things and the complex things but never grow attached to them.

The example in the book hit a little close to home for me personally, he mentions the man who feasts on delicious delicacies and thus will never appreciate the simple things. I know I had this situation where I had spicy edameme in Tahoe last year and now normal edameme doesn't taste as good. So I've lost my previous love of a single food because of a taste of something better.

This is one of the tenets of Stoicism that I'm not sure I agree on, I understand now I can't really appreciate regular edamame anymore now that I know something is better out there for me but this is a pretty easy slippery slope to settle in life. More importantly, what did I like about it that I know that I enjoyed it so much, will that help me discover other things that I enjoy as much? Why can't there be something better for me out there and I should constantly pursue it? Why live a simple life and only eat bread and water when you can enjoy great tasting food. The Stoic argument would be of course that someday you will not be able to enjoy that food and being sad about it would just be a disappointment.

I understand that reckless consumerism is bad, and when you buy things in order to get that thrill of having something new and that small pleasure of it. You should buy things that will provide you pleasure for countless times and not something that will do it once. A good habit is to avoid everything that you will use "one day", there's no point in having those "one day" scenarios excluding first aid kits and medicine. Things that will reduce my time and effort freeing my pursuits I can also willing agree on. I feel a simple life is important but pick and choose the things you own carefully.

Fatalism

This is a very simple note, do not worry and fret about the past, keep your mind in the present and the future. This all relates to the idea that you cannot control things and the past is something you can never ever control.

Issues

The one thing that I have a problem with Stoicism is that I don't fully comprehend how it works with ambition. I guess the idea is your happiness shouldn't be tied to something outside of your external control. Example: the kid who wants to be an astronaut. He will have to work very very hard to do it, he will have to put in a lot of time and hope the right circumstances work out. But without that line drive without that desire and ambition, can he really do it? He'll be competing against countless others who are more recklessly pursuing it. Can stoic philosophy work with those who want to pursue something grander and greater than themselves or does it go against it? Stoicism is rarely declared as a religion or anything of the sort thus it is hard to find out if people who have achieved great things are also stoics. The lack of a missionary part of the stoicism is also critical to this. Aurelius as Roman Emperor could have spread Stoicism but because of the way the philosophy is structured, it has no reason to spread.

I have not summarized some other parts of the book that he mentioned that I felt were just not all useful. Including: how to deal with a nursing home, the philosophical soundness of Stoicism, wether modern interpretations can fit with the more religiously defined reasons for Stoicism, and a lot more history.

Another weird thing in the book is that I feel the author has taken this to an extreme, he mentions explicitly that he seeks discomfort and insults just to test his resolve. It almost sounds like he has created a fetishism around testing his own ability to handle insults.

Final Notes

So obviously stoicism does not apply to everyone, but the author argues that everyone should have a philosophy of life. The regrets of the dying tend to circumspect around one thing, they wish they had spent their time differently because what they sought and pursued ended up not being as rewarding (I worked too hard, I wish I had spent time with friends & family, etc). Stoicism says what you have right now is rewarding if you view it as such and the mindless pursuit of things that such as fame and money have no benefit. This is where I can agree with the philosophy, having a framework so you can enjoy your life regardless of what goes wrong with is important, maybe looking back on it I'll regret the things I didn't do?

I'm not sure if stoicism could be a valid philosophy for myself but I feel it has good advice.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Summary

2013-02-16T10:11:00.000-08:00

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is a nonfiction book by Michael Pollan published in 2006. A ton of people have already read but it just came to my attention recently, but I found the book fascinating. The book is split into three main sections: Industrial Farming, Organic / Pastoral Farming, Pollan's venture into gathering and hunting his own food.

I never read the 3rd section, Pollan's writing was getting on my nerves and I wanted more information about the process of the food industrial system than about his philosophy of food.

This is going to be a long post, but trust me, the book is significantly longer and this gets most of the ideas of the book in a shorter summary.

The Industrial Food Complex / Big Farm

It's all about the corn

The first chapter of the book tells the tale of a man AND A MONSTER*, ok not really it's all about humanity and corn. Corn was originally grown in the Americas and spreading from Central America to North America.

Corn is a co-evolution species (probably not the right term), it has no way to spread it's seed (the kernels) because it grows in a husk. Something has to remove the husk and spread the kernels. more similar to fruit as opposed to other wheat or grains. But why did corn become so popular?

First, corn is great at absorbing nitrate, which is what plants crave. It's stupendous at it, better than a lot of other plants and it can pretty much take over an area.

Second, it's easy to breed, the separation of the male and female organs make crossbreeding corn incredibly simple.

Third, it's chock full of calories! It's full of deliciously succulent complex carbohydrates.

Corn is actually ideal plant for humanity's consumption, but why was it picked for the industrial food complex? While a multitude of reasons exist, I believe one of the main reasons is that corn can be made infertile.

The biggest problem with producing and making seeds is that you can only sell a farmer the seed once, the plant will produce seeds on it's own after that making the entire capitalistic enterprise pointless. Except corn, corn has a special property that if you mate two inbreeds, you can still produce a high yield corn but the children of that corn will produce significantly lower yields as you continue down genrations. This is called the F-1 hybrid. This also makes the corn incredibly homogenous, allowing machines to easily plant and gather them for the harvest.

A little foray about Nitrate!

So nitrate's kinda cool. Remember vaguely in history class about how there are nutrients in the soil that get fucked up if you over farm it? Yeah one of the major ones is nitrate. That's why farmer rotate crops and why #2 crop in the US is Soybeans, they put nitrate back into the soil.

But there's only so much nitrate and the world is pretty big now, but we can feed them all thanks to a little invention of Synthetic Fertilizer (in the form of ammonia, ammonium nitrate), using some high heat and pressure you can make some nitrate rich soil. Thanks to the German scientist by the name of Fritz Haber who figured it out. He won a nobel prize for his achievement in 1918, ironically he ia also the father of chemical warfare. Helps feed the world and destroys it at the same time.

Nitrate runoff is one of the main sources of farm pollution, certain cities downriver from farms in Iowa have Blue Baby Days, where the water is so full of nitrate it will cause infants to turn blue. It eventually does go into the Gulf destroying tons of sea life there.

Why do we subsidize corn?

So far we know that corn is high yielding, profitable, and an amazing crop, but everybody knows its all about farm subsidies right?

So food has this little hairy situation called inelastic demand, no matter how much you supply or don't supply, demand stays about the same. We can't really eat more than a certain amount of food (even if we are getting fatter) the demand does not respond to the supply. So during the 1920s and 30s the great depression drops the cost of food down to almost nada. So FDR sets up a New Deal policy to help farmers stay in business.

The government will buy up your corn during surplus years in order to keep prices up. The government will give you a loan for the amount you bought, during famines the price will get too high and the government will give you back your corn to sell allowing you to payback your loan to the government. This keeps a high and a low price available at all times and everybody is happy!

Well, until the 1970s. Russia wanted corn, they had a bad year and America agreed to sell it to them, but the famine was bad in the US too, so corn demand was getting higher due to international reasons but the supply was stagnating, suddenly we have a food crisis. The price of food was too high so Nixon got his Secretary of Agriculture to make it cheaper.

The policy was switched, and the era of cheap corn was born. Instead of a loan that you had to pay back when there was an under supply, farmers were paid the diference. If the lowest price was set to $1.42 and you were producing corn at a market price of $1.22, then you would get $0.20 from the government for every bushel. That's it, new farm policy.

What does this change though? It changes the policy to basically support, KEEP MAKING CORN. You'll get $1.42 for it regardless and as long as it's cheaper than that to make, you'll be fine. This has created a system of cheap corn being produced all over the United States and creates a necessity to use this corn. Pollan puts down an excellent analogy, food is no longer food to the US Farmer, but just a commodity, just like gold or anything else. Goldman Sachs actually has corn futures, stocks that are based on the price of corn.

So how do we use this corn?

Cattle and why I'm going to stop eating beef

So we know that cattle are forced to eat corn now but what are the problems with that?

A cow takes almost 3-5 years to get it an ideal weight for consumption on a grass diet but on a diet of ground corn, beef tallow (for fat), and chicken meal (for protein) they can grow a fully grown cow in about 18 months. This new stock helps these cows grow faster and unnaturally larger significantly faster than ever before. They used to provide beef meal but the USDA has banned that since it caused mad cow disease. But here's the thing, cows aren't made to handle grain, they eat grass. So the corn in their stomach makes their stomach far more acidic, which in turn wears away the linings of their stomach and causes acid to spill out of their stomach damaging their other organs.

The corn also produces a gas that can suffocate and kill a cow, so the cows on the "farm" are constantly monitored and given tons of antibiotics and hormones in order to manage all of this. The rise of acidic stomach in cows also produce diseases that start being able to survive in human bodies, the cows natural stomach Ph is neutral so any diseases in the cow probably won't survive our acidic stomach, but these new cows are getting diseases that we can in fact acquire. Greattttt.

They're kept in such tight badlocks that they basically end up walking around in their own feces too. Awesome.

I've actually never been a big fan of beef, growing up Indian really never acclimates you to the taste of beef, I mean I might enjoy a steak or something occasionally but even then I do that medium rarely (you should laugh / groan right about now). The discussion about the whole trying to force an animal to go against it's natural diet has just turned me off on the entire thing. Chickens and pigs can eat corn and grain quite easily and while they have other problems themselves, I tow the line with fucking with the natural digestion system of a cow.

What can I make with corn: Those things on the ingredients that you never know wtf is it is.

So corn is an awesome plant in that the complex carbohydrates and the structure of it can be manipulated and utilized in so many ways. The peel is removed to turn into corn oil, the starch is separated from the protein which helps give you gluten. The starch can then produce an array of sugars and simpler compounds. If you can't produce some nice fructose and glucose (high quality sugars), you get maltose, a less sweet sugar. Finally after all that, everything else is put into a vat with yeast and made into ethanol.

HCFS is a special compound that has the same sweetness as sugar, developed by the Japanese in 1960s. It's easily produced from corn and is now one of the main byproducts for the processing industry. Combined with American tariffs on sugar, HCFS is a great deal for american companies.

I'm impressed by the fact that we somehow utilize a near 100% of the corn to produce things, but of course these fake sweeteners and sugars have go somewhere and that means producing something that we've never seen before!

So here comes, General Mills. Originally an actual mill, it produced and created tons of other products most famously cereals. These cereals and produced foods are actually made in an interesting way, instead of creating a tie to the food it originally, they create a brand. You don't really know what cereal is do you? I mean the first thought that comes to mind is "grain", but in actuality the cereal companies are so highly processed that they can actually swap out the compounds with other sources, you can get the same food from corn, wheat, or soybeans, depending on whatever is cheapest to buy at the time.

Processed foods in general are all about actually separating you from the food source, they are not really patentable so the only way you can differentiate yourself in the market is to provide a gimmick (Cinnamon Toast Crunch or special marshmallows). In realty, a lot of our food is like that. Chicken McNuggets became incredibly popular in the 80s and are basically a staple of the american diet. I can continue listing things, PopTarts, cereal bars, hot dogs, oreos, it's actually been a while since I've been in a grocery store but I'm sure the list goes on.

Here's a cool little piece of info, by using a mass spectrometer to identify base compounds, we can detect how much carbon-13 from corn is in a food product.

Soda is about 100% corn, a milk shake is about 78% (wait what?), nuggets are 58% (including the carbon-13 in the chicken), a burger is 52%, and fries are about 23% (the coating and the oil).

Organic Farms

Origin Story and how it is today

The roots of the organic movement came from communies in Berkeley and other enclaves all around the United States in order for hippies to get into a sustainable lifestyle. This movement eventually blossomed bigger and bigger until about the 80s and 90s when after articles about what really goes on in your food, food recalls, and countless other things brought organic farming into the mainstream. These small farmers who were trying for sustainable crops had to become big, and I mean big big, so they sold out. They started incorporating industrial machinery and other big farm processes into their system. Other farms just sold out to major food producers who just wanted to cash in on the organic bandwagon.

Combined with Whole Foods and other major retailers switching to regional distribution centers, the small locally organic farm became more of a big farm. Whole Foods doesn't make as many deals with smaller farmers, but deals with two major monoliths in California. Earthbound Farm and Grimmway Farm's Supply, who provide more than 80% of the organic produce in California, are just some examples.

What does Organic Mean?

The Federal Government has standards on organic, you can't be using synthetic fertilizer, you can't be injecting your animals with antibiotics, no pesticides BUT you can use certain organic synthetic elements in your food. In the 1990s big organic farming companies argued against the law that prevented synthetic elements being banned from organic foods. The basic argument was thus: if people want an organic twinkie, why the fuck not?

In their defense, they have a point, using organic produce and meat is better for the environment overall because of the ban on pesticides and drugs in the production of these elements, but at some point, can you really have a healthy TV dinner that's organic?

Even the laws about "an animal must have a pasture" are vague, the chicken coops in some of the organic farms that Pollan visitsed had a outdoor area but for the most part the chickens stayed in their houses and never ventured outside. During his visit, he had to wear a suit inside the coop because the farmers were worried about the chickens catching diseases. The fact that they can't use antibiotics but still put them into these small closed wire frames is not exactly what you think of when you hear organic.

The organic farms till and retill the soil in order to get weeds out, this does its own damage to the environment, but allows them not to use pesticides.

Another big issue with the new big organic farms is that the only way for a properly sustained land to survive is crop rotation, you have to vary and spread your crops but the demands of a modern economy does not sustain that. Certains crops must be grown as much as possible or shipped from overseas. Where does your organic tomato come from? California or Argentina?

These big organic farms are just a question of how much industrialization can really be put into farming without somehow corrupting it. Pollan quotes an theory about farming: you can't mix the industrial and the pastoral, they operate at different scales and the requirements of each system are different. Sustainable farming and industrial farming can never really mix.

Sustainable Farming

Pollan visits a farm called Polyface Farm out in Virginia that takes the sustainable farming idea to it's logical extreme. Polyface not only constantly rotates crops, it utilizes and grows a nearby forrest in order to reduce wind, it relies on the chickens to clean out the mature of the cows, it rotates the cows and chickens in a carefully guided path through the fields in order to keep the grass growing strong and healthy. The entire system is built on an equilibrium that does not grow to market demands, it is the complete opposite of what should be working in an industrial economy. It's limited, it will give you chickens in the summer but never in the winter. BUT it produces delicious and high quality food. Pollan raves about how the eggs from Polyface are significantly superior and the fact that their sales team uses them to get their foot in the door at major restaurants throughout the area is a testament to that.

The chickens are prepared, defeathered and bled out all on the farm and then sold to locals who want to buy them. Pollan dedicates a LOT of the book to this farm and just the intricacies of how it works, this is just a brief summary about how it is possible to do an entirely sustainable system but that just requires significant more amount of work on the part of the farmer and a less reliable system than the industrial way of "input in" -> "output out".

The sustainable farming idea though has a few major issues coming from the Federal Government, the USDA requires that all meat be processed (the chickens butchered on the farm are a weird loophole) through a federally inspected facility. This facility adds almost a $1 to the cost of the final product for Polyface farms and goes against the idea of sustainable farming all done locally. The Polyface farmer argues against it and the attempt at creating an organic local inspection facility by another farmer proves to be complicated as the amount of meat they process is not worth the cost for the USDA to keep an inspector out at their facility. One question I haven't been able to find on the internet is if organic meat goes through the same process that regular meat does, I imagine they just don't have enough organic meat going through to justify their own facility and I imagine the USDA doesn't regulate it, so the same chemicals that wipe out bugs and god knows what else is probably also applied to grass fed cows not grown with antibiotics.

Dilemmas and Quandaries and those Moral issues

Vegetarianism

You can argue that vegetarianism should be the norm. We have enough protein from different sources that we can easily reduce and remove meat from out diet but we do not. So how can we justify killing other animals for the sake of a simple reason that they taste good? This is purely from a philosophical standpoint that if you believe in equality that you should not eat meat.

Argument 1: It's Natural
It is natural for species to eat other species but as humans, but we should able to rise over our base instincts and natural responses. I've always disliked this argument in any case one of the best features of humanity is that we can rise above our natural instincts, endangered species protection is important to a lot of us even though it provides us absolutely no benefit to us as a whole.

Argument 2: It's not like they understand or feel it
We know that animals feel pain, it has been proven and shown repeatedly that a lot of the higher level animals can even suffer and be distressed from previous pain.

Argument 3: They're just dumb animals. they aren't sentient
So here is where it gets kinda weird, if you base the claim that we can eat other species based on their intelligence he argues that infanticide or the killing of people who have been mentally disabled or crippled can also be justified. Babies and the mentally disabled both possibly lack sentience, the ability to have subjective experiences and perceive things. You can argue that babies will eventually gain sentience but you can't for the mentally retarded, at least not with current technology. So if you somehow devalue other species based on intelligence, why not our own?

Argument 4: It goes against tradition
Tradition as an impediment to advancement of society and humane treatment of millions of living beings cannot be used philosophically as a sound argument.

What it really boils down to is that unless you mind being a speciesist, someone who discriminates against species, you can't justify vegetarianism. Of course these arguments are from a philosophical standpoint, from a practical standpoint you have to account for culture, the cost, and even the aspect of just having to deal with decision making. A friend of mine even mentioned that she occasionally she'll think about stopping being a vegetarian just for the ability to not have to worry as much about what she's eating. There are lots of practical issues with being a vegetarian and it requires significant effort currently though I imagine it's probably easiest in the San Francisco Bay Area, I know in France it's almost considered offensive to be vegetarian because of cultural stigma.

The definition of equality

One thing that I found interesting is the definition of equality. Not everyone is purely equal, we know that, some people are smarter, some are better athletes, it's not about equality in the sense that everyone should be treated and given the same attention.

That's not what equality is, equality is the equal consideration of interest. The interest of the person is taken into account, if you want to try to be a lawyer, you should have the full ability to become a lawyer, only the factor of HOW well you practice law and should be the factor. You should not be discriminated on based on intelligence, race or anything else, only on how well you can perform it. If you have a natural talent at it, of course you will perhaps get more attention and have an easier time getting into a prestigious law school but the point is that you should have the same equal attention.

This is of course a simpler definition, but I found it an interesting definition of it.

If you're more curious about the philosophical arguments for vegetarianism you can read the book Animal Liberation by Peter Singer.

American's Obsession with Diets

What would you say is the american diet? Hamburgers? Meat Loaf? Pizza? Chinese food? This is where I lose track of Pollan honestly, he argues that there isn't a strong american diet and a significant lack of food culture in the United States. I didn't grow up American, I grew up eating Indian food with occasionally forays into fast food and the celebratory Sizzler's for special events (don't judge me here allright, I grew up in a small town, Sizzler was nice).

Except for perhaps portion size, I'm not sure what the distinction of "American food" is, what the hell does that mean? Mexican food you think of tacos, burritos, specific ingredients. Hell, even Russian food you might think of potatoes and stews but I'm not sure what you think of when you hear American food except perhaps fast food and maybe steak and bbq.

Pollan argues that the weak american food culture is the reason why diets are so popular in the United States, because there isn't already a strong attachment to a certain cuisine we are able to change it. While you might consider this a healthy choice, he also states that diets in other regions not only because of cultural norms, but because of a evolutionary reasons. The diet is developed because it is healthy eating, the french somehow consume tons of wine and cheese and eat large meals but they do them over a long period of time. The Japanese diet is incredibly well selected and portioned to point where obesity is almost a non-issue in Japan.

So Americans tend to choose fad diets and diets based about the concept of macronutrients of whatever other thing that is shown to be super useful (I believe the current thing is get lots of omega-3 acids, nom nom nom).

Final Notes

Pollan's take on the food system can be summarized to: industrial food is unnatural and not sustainable, it causes massive pollution and the transportation of this food is a major environment impact. Processed food makes determining what you're consuming exactly incredibly difficult to discern. While he never proposes a solution explicitly I imagine he would want something alone the lines of Polyface farming which is sustainable and cyclical in nature that produces minimal waste, though perhaps a less extreme version that would actually ship and grow larger than the acreage that Polyface does.

The second focus while he doesn't talk about as much in this book is eating should be an important part of your day. Lots of people just tend to eat at their desk or while watching TV, eating is just another activity to do and work on instead of really enjoying your food. As a percentage of our income, it has significantly reduced and while that sounds good, it comes at a cost. On this point, I wholeheartedly agree with Pollan, I eat lunch at work and I always try to eat lunch with my co-workers. Why? Because it slows down my eating and it gives me time to enjoy my meal along with having fun. I'm going to try to make the change in my weekend habits as well, try to use it to go out and have fun with friends instead of just ordering in.

I've also significantly reduced my beef consumption as the damage it does to cows is disgusting and while I don't think my decision to eat less beef will affect beef consumption in the United States, I would rather not participate. Though trying to avoid it proves to be sometimes difficult as I had sausage on my pizza and relatively sure that includes beef.

One issue that Pollan kept doing was he is skeptical of the idea of just carbohydrates, protein, fat and mentions how there are different types of each substance that need to be taken into account for, he is critical of nutrient science and scientists just trying to add x or y back into the food, but then he talks about the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, which have only recently shown to beneficial. His skepticism on some nutritional science but not all nutritional science I find highly suspect.

He also comes off as a very liberal mindset that focuses on this pastoral dream. This never really resonated with me and I never fully understood it but that's not really a criticism of him. The only other thing I would say is that he was super liberal was apparent in his writing and how he expressed himself that it was almost a turn off since he takes the liberal mindset of a loss of practicality for an ideal that might not exist. His lack of focus on solutions in this book and just presenting cool ideals is a testament to that.

P.S. I hope somebody got the Hunchback of Notre Dame reference in the first line of the corn post.

Resolutions

2013-02-02T17:56:00.000-08:00

New Years Resolutions are a nice way to frame your changes, I know people tend to be "just do the change you want to do all the time" and this is true, you should always focus on the changes you want. But resolutions allow you to give yourself a time frame for that change. This post is running a bit late but I've had it in draft for a while (I'm posting this in February).

So 2012 for me was a big year, it was the first year that I felt like an actual adult, I had left InDinero (a small startup that I was a part of that I was unhappy at for various reasons), I had started my first job where I felt confident in my abilities and felt I was making a real significant impact. I set up a lot of things that I wanted to do for 2012 and I'm just gonna talk about them here and talk about 2013.

Most of this blog post is just personal stuff so not really as informative as my other blog posts since it's mainly just about me :P

2012 Resolutions

Running a 10k

Man, I was not confident my abilities here when I set this. My resolution was run a 10k by the end of the year. So as of now I can run a 10K pretty easily without too much effort and I've done a personal half marathon though I participated in very little official races throughout the year. RunKeeper has me running about 300 miles this year, and additional 80 or so miles of walking because I was mostly walking long distances in the beginning of this year.

Start riding a bike to work

This got changed slightly, I try to run to work whenever I can, it's been inconsistent since November because of all the travelling and holidays interruptions but for the most part I did start running to work. It's about 3.5 miles so a 2-3 times a week 5K.

20 Pullups in 2 minutes

Not even close....

Travel

I went to NYC in September with Karina and Kees and probably one of the best experiences I've had, it was such a great idea with great people. I didn't travel overseas technically until January 2nd 2013. My first trip to Europe and overseas for vacation and not just hopping through to India for family.

Build your own project

I buit my Chrome Extension for FB events to google calendar, I feel that was a success and I have a lot of users who use the extension, I wish I had more support for it but unfortunately the original extension still gets most of the traffic, not sure how to resolve that issue and help people go to mine instead. I'm now at 1,123 users at the time of this blog post.

Start Mobile Development

I barely made this, I've started on the mobile team at work and I seem to be slowly learning and picking up things as I go along, though it's going to be a while until I'm really comfortable in the environment.

Try a new restaurant every week

I tried a lot of new places in the city but at this point I've basically eliminated every place nearby and I have to start venturing further and further out to get stuff. So it's become harder to constantly try new things, I've gotten into the habit of eating that damn Super Quiza at Taqueria San Jose, so delicious.

Write a blog post every 2 weeks

Oh man, this was missed by such a large margin that I can't even believe. I wrote a few blog posts this year but I basically took the entire summer off and didn't write anything. I have a few posts here and there but nowhere near every 2 weeks.

Resolutions for the New Year 2013

Under 8 minute mile on a 10K

So my 10K time is about 9:45/mile right now, but that's way too slow. I want to be able to run at least under 8 minute/mile 10K and hopefully faster than that, not sure how to go about doing that right now but I figure it's going to require more than just running but actual strength training to get my legs stronger. I know a under 8 minute isn't that much but it's enough for me right now.

Read a book a week

So last year I read a decent number of books, I was mostly listening to them which takes forever though so I've picked up a Kindle this year and I'm going to read as many books as possible. I've already finished 3 discworld novels and a few other books, I'm going to try to continue to make time for reading on my book while listening to books while running. I'm probably gonna finish Discworld first and then move onto other series. In the past year I finished Ender's Game series, Heinlein's major works, and Foundation Series.

Pick up a sports hobby

I mentioned last year I would pick up something, but I'm going to actually do it this year. I'm still debating between Capoeira, yoga or swing dancing. I don't think they are mutually exclusive though.

Handle myself in a venue alone

This one is kinda weird but I'm still super shy when I'm alone in a venue where people aren't supposed to meet each other like a party or meetup. If I have one person next to me I can be myself but alone I become super shy. I'm gonna try to work on that so I'm not that anxious anymore when I'm by myself.

Publish an app in the app store

Not sure what I'm going to build, but I'll build something, I feel since I need to just publish anything, even if it's something small.

End up with less stuff after each month or remove any non-essential stuff

Expect me to give away some things throughout the year, I've already removed a lot of stuff but I just want to be able to know what I have off the top off my head without looking through all the boxes and stuff for that occasion that might never come up.

Hit up Asia

I'm gonna travel to Japan this year god damn't, I kept saying I would last year but postponed indefinitely I will go this year damn't. I'll work out something since I ended up using a lot of my vacation time for my first trip.

Meditation

So I actually picked up a bit of breathing and meditation in the morning and it's been really useful, I want to be able to properly zen out for more than a few minutes right now.

If you have any advice, information, criticism, or encouragement, please don't hesitate to post!

Foundation Series Review

2012-12-18T22:39:00.000-08:00

If you're a fan of science-fiction you might have heard of Isaac Asimov. He's more prolifically known for the Robot Series, which consists of countless short stories about the Three Laws of Robotics and its consequences. But he wrote another series called The Foundation Series.

The basis of the Foundation Series is the discoveries of Hari Seldon who develops psycho-history, the mathematics of the prediction of human society as a whole and his prediction of the downfall of The Empire, a galaxy wide organization and his efforts on creating The Second Empire.

The book series consists of 7 books.

Foundation
Foundation and Empire
Second Foundation
Foundation's Edge
Foundation and Earth
Prelude to Foundation
Forward to Foundation

Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation

The first three books are the first three written by Asimov and consist mostly of short stories of the efforts and intriguing ideas of Psycho-History. This is where Asimov shines, he takes a concept or a series of rules and he exposes and expresses all the strange ways that it could be exploited, misinterpreted, and formed. The Foundation is formed as a project for an encyclopedia but is truly meant to be the start of a new empire. Throughout the series the people of the Foundation face threats, rogue barbaric worlds, conquerors and they deal with them through multiple means, religious, trade, and event military might. I would highly recommend Foundation and Foundation & Empire as any sci-fi and especially history person would read.

Second Foundation is where things get a little strange as it goes further into the Second Foundation, which consists of telepaths who are trying to ensure the right path of the Seldon Plan to the Second Empire. The books are good but I feel the mental trickery of the entire series is lacking, I did enjoy the books as a long who-dun-it type of series though.

Foundations' Edge & Foundation and Earth
Ok, this is where psycho-history goes away and it becomes about characters. I love the series for the characters and it's exploration into the inner workings of the Second Foundation, I even enjoy the series but the core concept the book and the plot is based on is... lacking. I feel it's too unreasonable and too unexplainable. Even the later book's concepts are weak.

I think the reason for this lacking work is because

This is Asimov's longest work, he mostly wrote short stories and this book is almost three times as long as any previous book
He was forced to write it at the behest of his publishers
He wrote it almost 30 years AFTER the foundation trilogy

I didn't even waste my time reading Foundation and Earth as it was following the same line and I honestly didn't care for the character after the reveal of their origins and reasoning in the end. Nothing felt that interesting in their adventures.

Prelude to Foundation & Forward the Foundation

After the success of Foundation and Earth, Asimov decided to write up prequels more about Hari Seldon's life.

Prelude is written basically as a small adventure story which consists of maybe 3-4 short stories about the same character. They read very much the same and honestly I was plodding along the entire series.

Forward the Foundation gets worse, instead of being an interesting small short stories it becomes more about the character Hari Seldon getting old and it seems to focus entirely on his legacy and his age rather than any true plot or reason.

Prelude and Forward were written primarily as Asimov's LAST books and I believe he wrote them in order to draw parallels between his life and this character. His complaints about age, legacy, and contributions to science are truly the ones that matter all make sense from someone who is dying and is trying to draw parallels. I believe if you want a bit of insight into Asimov in his old age you can read Forward the Foundation.

Summary

So quick summary, read the Foundation Trilogy and skip the rest unless you want a bit of insight into Asimov's later life with Forward the Foundation.

The Power of Habit

2012-11-17T13:23:00.001-08:00

The Power of Habit is a psuedo-science book about the formation and breaking of habits. I enjoy reading psuedo-science books as they have useful tidbits of information that are useful with a bit of fluff around them. Power of Habit cites their studies and information and follows up with notes on things that were not clear.

The book is split into three parts: The Habits of Individuals, Habits of Companies, and Habits of Societies.

The Habits of Individuals

Habits are a three step process. A cue, a routine, and a reward. Cues can be locational, temporal, based on mood, based on other people, or following an action. Routines and rewards are self-explanatory.

A strong habit has one tendency different from just regular cue/reward cycle and that's craving. Craving is when you anticipate the reward during the routine, which is usually a sign that the habit is formed.

The way to form a habit is to start a routine based around a cue that you know will end up in a reward that you desire. So for athletics, concentrating and repeating the same actions over and over again (a successul hit is the reward) and identifying the cues in order to do that hit is important. If you do and drill and practice the same thing over and over, your reactions will start becoming habitual. I've actually been applying this to ping pong as much as I can, trying to repeat the same motion over and over again with my hands in order to get the motion of the paddle correct. When the ball comes with top spin, I try to hit it back with the same motion. Now I just gotta work on my backhand :/

The way to break a habit is you need to identify the cue and change your routine to get the reward. The example used in the book was at 3 PM the author would go eat a cookie everyday. Instead of going to get that cookie, he would instead try different routines. He would hang out with co-workers, he would go eat an apple, he would go walk around the block. The identification of the reward (a break from work) didn't require the daily cookie and he found that walking around the block helped better. The reward might have been hunger satisfaction or something else, identifying the cue and reward are probably the two most important parts of forming and breaking a habit. Once you can do that, even with a few lapses you can eventually change your routine.

Successful advertising is based around creating habits that form based on cues or rewards that weren't normally there. An example is licking your teeth to make you remember to brush your teeth was a successful advertising cue in the United States when toothpaste was first taking off. Cool little tidbit. Listerine intentionally burns in order to get the reward link of a clean mouth with that burning.

The Habits of Companies

This was probably the most interesting section of the book and analyzed how companies manipulate what they present to you and how habits form inside companies outside of policies.

Target

So in 2010, Target started collecting ALL the information they possibly could about their customers. Buying habits, where they shopped, where they used their credit card, online information, anything they could they collect. Then they analyzed it, so their first target (see what I did there?) was a great industry: pregnant women. Pregnant mothers spend TONS of money. So they took the customers using their baby registries and analyzed their purchases. Based on what you were purchasing, they could identify what trimester you were in and wether you were pregnant or not. Vitamins usually were an indicator of stage of pregnancy.

The best part is then they would send you ads to help you to come to Target, but they can't just announce they know you're pregnant, that's creepy. So they would intermix their baby ads into your advertisements of lawnmowers. That way it seems like everyone is getting ads for diapers, not just you. One dad even went to the store to complain to Target that their teenage daughter got an advertisement with a coupon for baby ads and he was pissed, a week later he found out his teenage daughter was pregnant.

Radio

The second case study was the music industry. So when playing music on the radio, there are songs that DJs know as "bath rock", music that is so tepid and familiar that you will never change the station (anything by Maroon 5). Because these songs are familiar, they are played constantly on the radio in order to keep you from changing the station. BUT, the music industry also has statistical models on what songs are going to be major hits, the example used in the book was "Hey Ya" by Outkast. The song initially did terribly because it was so different that people changed stations when it came on, but when they put it between two bath rock songs, it became far more popular and proved to be a massive hit.

Again the tactic of puttings things familiar around something that a company wants to sell comes up.

Alcoa

The majority of habits inside organization section revolves around the two cases.

Alcoa was doing terribly until Paul O Neill took over. His entire company philosophy didn't revolve around profits or income or revenue, he sought one thing: safety. That's it, he would focus on getting Alcoa to be the safest company in America.

While this sounds strange, it worked because what happened is that employees were given privileges to do things that revolved around better safety giving them greater control over their own environment. When employees are told to push back against management for "safety" they also tend to be able to push back on other reasons, including efficiency and improvement of the process.

The managers on the other hand were held super responsible for every safety incident. Every safety incident had to be reported to O'Neill himself at the top. Which means that the feedback systems between employees, managers, directors, and district heads all had to be a much tighter loop, they would get retribution if they didn't report a safety incident quickly.

The basic idea is that O'Neill focus on safety allowed for OTHER behaviors to come out of his primary focus. You don't need to control company culture to the point where you need to define rules but you need to be able to have priorities and have your employees focus on those priorities. It's better to set up the rules so that failure is encouraged with strong risk tasking rather than discouraged.

King's Cross and Institutional Knowledge

But at the same time company culture can create negative habits as well. King's Cross had a rigid bureaucracy where you weren't supposed to mess with the other sections. The ticket collectors don't check the escalators, nobody calls the fire department except for the safety inspector, etc. What happened one day was that a passenger noticed smoke coming out of an escalator and notified a ticket inspector, the inspector did nothing about it because it wasn't part of his section.

Later on that escalator caught on fire. When the safety inspector finally heard about it and checked it out, the blaze was full burn and they had to evacuate the station. Unfortunately, he didn't know how to operate the sprinkler system because the information was sent to the wrong department and that department head didn't forward the information as sharing information and passing on messages was discouraged. After the firefighters finally came, their hoses had trouble reaching key parts of the flame as they were hooking up to the above ground hydrants instead of the hydrants inside. Quite a few people died that day.

The main faults were identified that 1) The ticket inspector should have reported it right away, 2) The departments should have shared the information about both the sprinkler system and the hydrants, even if they aren't in their own department 3) The firemen should have used the hydrants inside.

BUT here's the thing, while 2 is just incompetence, 1 and 3 are based on institutional habits from previous experiences. Ticket inspectors were told to always stay in their booths because when they helped customers they would delay lines, so their priority instead of safety was set to staying inside for efficiency. The firefighters also had the same situation, they had trouble operating outside hydrants sometimes and that caused major issues, so they all agreed that they would use their own hydrants from now on even if it wasn't the best option available. These small habits form inside companies and they are very hard to root out until a critical emergency happens (ie the fire at King's Cross), and only then will there be change.

Institutional knowledge and habits are very hard to break as we tend to do things a lot of habit and just old situations that are no longer valid, it is very important that I think everyone is critical of the habits that form inside your workplace and that you push against them when they actively reducing productivity.

Habits of Societies

This section was fluff and the author was trying hard to add more to his book. It wasn't very good and the observations being made were far-reaching and terribly inaccurate. The only interesting piece of the information was why Rosa Parks started the Civil Rights movement vs other people in the community who also stood up against the bus law. Rosa Parks was a VERY active member of the community, and when you get enough people together for her, you get a peer pressure effect. If enough of your friends are doing something, you will do it too. I have no clue how this ties into the habits but it was an interesting point on why some movements take off and others do not.

Impression

My overall impression of the book was very positive, I loved the first two sections and while I kind of summarized them, reading the author's writings on them yourself would be better. I also didn't cover everything he talked about and only things that I thought were interesting and relevant. You might also get a different impression of the habits and information that I did of course.

Hunger Games Trilogy

2012-11-10T12:05:00.000-08:00

I figured I would read the Hunger Games since it seems like a quick read and would be a bit more action packed and simple against the slower pace books I'm reading.

First of all, I actually did like the series. I wouldn't re-read them again but I did enjoy the books. I even had a few times where after I stopped reading I wanted to find out what happened next and was anticipating reading more.

The books are entertaining, the story is compelling and I do like all the characters. They all have their own emotional depth and reasons for doing the things they do, some are one-dimensional but most are interesting or at the very least if one dimensional have an interesting quirk or charm to them. Katness is probably the least entertaining as she is the narrator and spends most of her time whining, but I would expect that from a teenage girl.

The world is a bit weak and the explanation and back story of the world is dropped in favor of the current story. I would be curious about the history of Panam and it's origins and why the Districts exist, the entire structure of 13 districts around a capital feels a bit strange, almost feudal. Which might be what the author was going for but didn't really seem right to me at any point. The open areas of the districts seem different too, I might expect sectionalism from something like Midgard that needs to be constantly contained but I never get a reason for why people don't expand beyond the 12 districts? Or why they don't try to farm more land outside the area, is it irradiated? They have hover craft and somehow can get fuel to power cities.

The story is realistic, far more than any other story aimed at teenagers that I have read, while some things go beyond belief. While Katiness does advance the story and help start the rebellion, she doesn't do it through some super human charm or ability, she's is just a normal girl who was lucky enough to be hunting most of her life. That's all, her abilities are tied from that and having a lot of good people around her. This is pretty different from most narratives that involve teenagers where the teenager is somehow special, or gifted, or something amazing (Harry Potter, pretty much any anime, etc.). I mean she's not totally normal, but I always worried that they were gonna link her dad to something really crazy and conspiratorial or something, but nope her dad was just a good guy who died in the mines.

The major thing that made the series slow and dull at times was the romance. The freaking love triangle was annoying. Especially since it was a bunch of teenagers in a weird situation and while I understand that appeal was necessary for the book, it was done terribly in the books. At least in Harry Potter it's a side story, but here its central stage and that bothered me to no end. I was glad when she said Gale was just a friend in the beginning but nope, GAH.

Another issue that I found was that you could probably remove large parts of the book while retaining the story, the events of Book 2 were ignorable and I feel that they were added for fodder and increased storyline vs having some grander purpose and clear intent. Especially the second half of the 2nd book were just, freaking end it already. OH MAN OYSTERS? OH SHITS.

The third book feels a bit pieced together and the conclusions about what happened to the world isn't there, but this book was about the story and the characters, not the world, so it was expected. The epilogue does cover Katniss and the main characters.

Overall, if you want a story involving interesting and charming characters with interesting and somewhat more realistic story, then the Hunger Games are a real quick read for your effort, but if you want an interesting world then I would stay away. World building isn't the author's strong suit. I walked into this book not expecting to be amazed.

Opinions involving Spoilers
*Spoilers*
After they start the rebellion and even during the Hunger Games, Katniss role in the war is great. She's always seen as a figurehead a symbol of the resistance but not told to fight, once she does fight she does ok but is grievously injured both times and is lucky to survive. Even during the final raid into the capital her actions are selfish and in the end don't amount too much. Maybe it provides a diversion away from the rebel attack but for the most part she mainly just loses her fellow soldiers and doesn't accomplish her end purpose. I loved that part of the story, she tries so hard but in the end she's just a seventeen year old girl in a large war, the soldiers and attacks end up doing most of the work. The fact that she is taken seriously at all comes from a necessity of using her and some appeal that she has to the people around her.

The death, the destruction, the fact that sometimes even the mayor's daughter doesn't get the privilege of leaving District 12 before it's bombed is all great, tons of people die which is what to be expected in war and her fellow soldiers. I never felt anything happened where it's a roll your eyes moment that I usually get in other novels aimed toward middle-school kids, the coincidental and serendipity of things lining up just perfectly.

I felt the touch of Gale having created the weapon that killed her sister though was... a bit reaching. While understandable and helps give away the romance part of Gale's appeal because he is permanently tarnished, that's about it.

Argo Movie Review

2012-11-06T09:20:00.001-08:00

Plot Synopsis:

Based on true events, Argo chronicles the life-or-death covert operation to rescue six Americans, which unfolded behind the scenes of the Iran hostage crisis-the truth of which was unknown by the public for decades. On November 4, 1979, as the Iranian revolution reaches its boiling point, militants storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. But, in the midst of the chaos, six Americans manage to slip away and find refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador. Knowing it is only a matter of time before the six are found out and likely killed, a CIA "exfiltration" specialist named Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) comes up with a risky plan to get them safely out of the country. A plan so incredible, it could only happen in the movies. -- (C) Warner Bros.

Review:

So Argo is slow paced spy thriller movie along the lines of perhaps Tinker, Soldier, Sailor, Spy and perhaps Munich (with substantially less violence). I think the movie was good but not amazing. it got a very high rating on rotten tomatoes because I think it's still an enjoyable movie regardless of its flaws but its flaws make the movie subpar compared to other spy movies of its genre.

The plot and the pacing of the movie are top notch, the only time I got really bored as when they were travelling to Iran but other than that I liked the planning phases, the Hollywood time, and the actual execution of the plan. I liked Ben Affleck in the role and the characters around him did an excellent job.

There are only two major complaints of the movie are near the end.

The first is that they rely on the "down to the last minute" form of artificial suspense. The bomb maker cutting the wire with 1 second to spare kind of suspense. The scene at the airport has great suspense with them getting pulled into questioning about their passports and stuff, but then you have this stupid suspense about the Hollywood characters being stuck outside their studio because of some filming thing. That seems artificial and almost like do you really have to make the phone call thing so last minute? The final thing is that the Revolutionary Guard chase the plan out in a car and I'm not sure what the plan is... Why didn't they just shoot the plane or something? If they show I'm sure the pilot would realize something and try to stop or SOMETHING. it was just such a gratuitous chase scene.

Second is the only characterization of the main character as a family man. I'm not entirely sure how that fits into the rest of the movie and I feel it takes away from him as the central character in some way. I feel that Ben Affleck added it for some affinity to family stories that he has that I don't fully comprehend. The scene at the end where he hugs his wife with the giant american flag waving in the background is just laugh out loud worthy.

The one cool thing though that they showed at the end was how a side by side comparison of the photos involving the real event and the movie and how they tried to take very much into account the iconic scenes from the movies and the characters and tried to portray them as realistically as possible. Except for the fact that the real person that Ben Affleck plays is Latino. That was funny. I was like wait what? Of course they also made his wife and children white too, that was just kind of amusing actually.

TLDR:

Watch if you got nothing better to do but I wouldn't go out of your way to see it. Better spy movies include Munich and Tinker, Soldier, Sailor, Spy.

Some Like it Hot - Movie Review

2012-10-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

I don't think I can watch this movie without thinking two of the three characters are so... annoying.

Tony Curtis' character is the saxophone ladies man who always gets his friend Jack Lemmon into lot of trouble. Jack Lemmon is the nice guy who doesn't seem to have any luck. Monroe is the dumb blonde.

Tony Curtis character is an annoying asshole, the entire time I can't seem to find any redeeming quality on why Lemmon is friends with him. He plays uninterested and tricks the Monroe character and takes advantage of Lemmon and lots of women throughout the movie. He's charming and quick witted and the dialogue between him and Monroe is pretty good but that's about it. He seems to tell Monroe in the end that he's no good but she has fallen for him anyway... which seems kinda dumb.

Monroe's character is a dumb blonde, like seriously just a regular dumb blonde. Regularly saying she's kinda stupid.

The only redeeming quality of the movie is Lemmon is hilarious. He's the comic foil the entire time and the situations he gets in are hilarious, having to dance with a male pursuer, having to deal with a bunch of girls who end up having a party in his bed and even the very last scene is great.

Feedback Systems need to be both ways: the Chrome Extension store needs an update

2012-10-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

Have you ever left a bad review? Sometimes a product doesn't work well or you had a bad experience at a venue? A ton of us do it, because we want to have our complaints heard, partially to vent your own frustrations and partially to help others avoid your same frustrations. People read and judge on reviews and star ratings, amazon and yelp are two great examples where reviews matter a LOT, if you have really bad reviews on either of those sites, it's probably costly.

There's another important part of this review system though, and that's the part where the business owner / seller gets to respond back. I think very positively when owners on Yelp respond to criticism on the site, it shows that they care about the feedback they are getting and it's a way of addressing the concerns and issues of their own customers. I've left bad reviews and owners have reached out to me to address complaints or explain why somethings are the way they are.

Sometimes these bad reviews are misunderstandings, I've ordered ribs from a place and they came cold! I complained and I found out apparently they are served cold, it's a style of ribs that the place has. I then updated my review to reflect that change and shelved my complaints about the temperature.

There's one review system that I despise now and that's the Google Chrome Extension Store.

I wrote an extension on the store to let you add facebook events to your google calendar, I was frustrated with the export feature on Facebook only allowing you to either it yourself or download an ICS file, both which require extra steps in order to get them on google calendar. There was actually an extension that already did it, but it proved unstable and was broken for months when the Facebook event layout changed, so I built one that work with the Facebook Graph API. I believe it's a bit more robust and less prone to breakage.

I put it up on the store and I got users (I have to admit, having random people use your app is a great feeling) and I even got some good reviews!

Then I got some feedback and bad reviews, one user was complaining about the fact that she couldn't find and install the app, wait what? Apparently I miscommunicated in my description of the extension and people thought they needed to install the app on facebook, which they don't. It will ask for an authorization request the first them they use the feature, but guess what? I have no freaking clue to tell them that. I spent a while trying to find out if I can respond to the user, I went to their Google+ profile and I have no way of messaging them, there's no point of contact in order for the developer to address the concerns of the user. It was an incredibly frustrating experience overall.

My extension only has 700 some users, but if somebody was really building something that was going to be used by a lot of people I imagine this lack of feedback would be incredibly frustrating. Thankfully the small change that I needed to make was obvious and the reviews pointed that out but I imagine some reviews are more vague or confusing on how to solve and would require help from the users.

This is a serious concern with any type of review system, the chrome extension store is just one example but the Apple App Store and Google Play Store have the same damn problem. Reviews are great for the users but without any tools for the developer to address and contact these frustrated users, what's the point?

Health Insurance Around the World

2012-03-25T21:29:00.004-07:00

So recently I watched a Frontline documentary about Health care around the world and while I recommend watching it, I'll provide a quick summary of the following nations: Britain, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland.

Here's the netflix documentary if you want it! http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Frontline_Sick_Around_the_World/70098734?trkid=496624

Britain
The British system is government run, everyone goes through the NHS (National Healthcare System). From my understanding is that NHS runs the entire system. There is separate private insurance in which you can go to private facilities, but if you have NHS you go to NHS hospitals.

You go through a general practitioner to get to a specialist, the wait times can be long, much longer than the United States but comparable. The entire system is funded through taxes but healthcare for the most part is free. They recently have been adding market innovation (such as letting you choose the hospital, etc) to keep prices and wait times down, but that has caused a few hospitals to shut down.

Japan
The Japanese system is private insurance companies and private hospitals, but the governments sets ALL prices. I'm serious, ALL prices, the cost of bandaging a cut less than 6 inches is 450 yen. That's how precise they set prices. You either get your insurance through your company or you go to a community run system in your area. The prices are set in stone though and adjusted every 2 years. The severe limitation of the system though is that doctors are not paid very well, and that many hospitals and clinics actually run in deficits, so the sustainability of this system is not 100% known.

Germany
The German system is simliar to ours except your premium payment is determined based on your income, higher the income the higher the premium. You can also opt out of the government run system and run with private insurance if you choose to. Insurance companies are not allowed to make any profit, and I'm not entirely sure what their incentive is, the video mentioned something about how the people running the system get paid more for more customers so I guess the insurance pay is commission based? The hospitals and doctors are mostly privately run. The prices in the system are kept down by reducing doctor's salaries, doctors make about 50% less in Germany than they do here. Drug prices are also negotiated and set by the government.

Taiwan
Instead of choosing private insurance, the entire system is run through the government's insurance program though hospitals and clinics can be privately run. This keeps the administrative costs down and provides the most benefit for the entire system as the insurance provider is the government who will pay the prices negotiated with the providers. The major issue is the same as Japan, the government has to borrow significantly to pay the providers because the desire to keep premiums for citizens down. A bit Orwellian though if you're using your insurance too much you'll get a "visit" from a government official.

Switzerland
The Swiss choose a system similar to Germany in the sense that you are required to get insurance but you can choose where to get it from. The insurance companies are not allowed profit from basic care but can make profits from incidentals (private room, etc.). The swiss drug companies are also doing well but they get a good chunk of their profits from the US unregulated system where they can set more market based prices. Since the insurance companies can't make too much from the basic care, they try to provide premium services and better prices and also keep their own administrative costs down.

Commonality
So a few common elements to almost all these systems include:

Insurance is required, you must either get it through the government, private employer, or community based organization. Many low income people are subsidized and their insurance paid for.

Insurance companies are not allowed to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions.

Doctors and hospitals have a lot of set prices fixed, from my understanding this is where the WTF it cost me that much comes from in the US. I'm not entirely sure the system in the US but I assume prices are being set by providers so the profit is significantly higher. An example of price fixing is Japan sets the price of an MRI at $97 (at the time of the movie), that MRI costs $1600 in the US. Of course the machines in the US might be better than the ones in Japan so the cost per MRI might be higher, but still seems ridiculous that the prices are so varied. I know Medicare does this and I assume each insurance agent also does it, but it might just be that companies in the US just charge differently.

Another important distinction between other countries and the US is that the US has 82% of R&D in biotechnology globally. The costs we pay with drugs and treatment allow the rest of the world to be subsidized without significant hit with R&D (at least that's one theory behind higher US prices).

Side note: Canada
Canada's system I think is similar to Taiwan's system, government insurance with private hospitals. Though I think Canada's insurance is provincial instead of national.

If the documentary got something wrong or I misunderstood something please comment and I'll make a correction.

59 Seconds: Change your Life in Under A Minute Summary

2012-03-08T21:33:00.001-08:00

So I've been reading a book called 59 Seconds: Change your life in Under a Minute. The book is just a random and sporadic collection of trivia and facts backed by scientific study.

So here's some cool things that you should get from the book that were backed by scientific study ( please note healthy amount of skepticism even if backed by studies). The bold ones are my favorites and I think that most interesting.

Talking about traumatic experiences hasn't scientifically been proven to help, though recollecting things and writing them down can help.

Small acts of kindness toward others are good for both you and the other person.

Write about three things you are grateful for & three things that have gone well in your life at the end of week in order to improve happiness.

The purchases with the highest feedback are experiences and not material possessions (ie a trip vs a new laptop).

Rewards reduce the enjoyment of most activities as does payment. Volunteering to do something and getting paid to do it will lead to different rewards.

When interviewing, it's best to admit a weakness early in order to show honesty and strengths later to show modesty.

When you do something embarrassing most people don't notice.

When you're near perfect, people will think your mistakes are humbling but if you make mistakes a lot, people tend to think your loser (Pratfall effect).

Dreamers are less likely to attain their dream jobs as they dream and not focus on the small steps that are required to get there.

You will get more alcohol in short wide glass than in a tall narrow one (bartenders tend to know the exact shot but in general people will pour more into a short wide one).

Have a mirror in front of your fridge or kitchen area, the reflection tends to keep your from eating as much.

People who gossip or bad mouth people tend to be correlated with the bad behavior of the person they are bad mouthing.

People introduced during a meal are most fondly remembered.

When focusing on something, you tend to eat more. If you start out at a normal place and then slow down for the last half of your meal you will eat less.

Having your unconscious work on problems is a regular theme in the book, if you are working hard on something try taking a break by playing a game of sorts, sudoku, crosswords, etc. This works with both creative issues and making decisions. Knowing your options, then distracting yourself, then making a decision quickly helps a lot.

If you walked into a room and picked out your 5 favorite objects in the room, the more the objects are shared with your significant other or are related to them the stronger your relationship tends to be.

Owning dogs reduces stress and improves lives, owning cats apparently does not? (not sure about this one, I think pets in general improve life)

Playing hard to get apparently doesn't work in dating

When speed dating, the more selective you are the better you are considered. If you're attractive and successful, you tend to be considered less desirable because people assume something is wrong with you.

Groups exaggerate the inherit biases in them, if you have a group of slightly violent people they will rebound with each other and do more violent acts. Same with ideologies, etc. Even mixed groups tend to take the extreme of one or the other after a while.

Salesmen have a few easy habits.

Try to make it into a deal by offering additional stuff (think infomercials, you get a 2nd knife for free!)
Start small to get something people will do, then ask for a bigger sell later.
Start big and outrageous and then negotiate down.

Liars are not fidgety or anxious, they tend to just be thinking more. Less fidgety, more pauses, less likely to give a full answer, more ums, and less straight answers are all signs of lying. People will lie less in email / texts / recorded conversations.

When praising children, remember to praise them for their hard work and not their intelligence, kids praised for their intelligence are less likely to try harder things in order to keep that praise.

Try writing your eulogy in order to get an understanding of what you want to accomplish in long term goals.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - Movie Review

2011-12-31T10:16:00.000-08:00

Rating: 4/5

There is a new movie called Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, and Spy which is an excellent spy movie. So first thing first is that this is a spy movie, not like James Bond but more a slow mystery movie that you just have to watch.

The first thing about this movie is that they are not repetitive about key plot points. They only mention some key points of the movie (they are mentioned in Helping Plot Points without spoiling things). I missed or wasn't paying key attention to one or two scenes and that made me vey confused in the movie when scenes relying on me knowing that was important. The opening is also very boring and I kind of fell asleep.

Helping Plot Points
So a few important plot points you should know are the basic premise of the movie is that Control and Smiley are kicked out of the agency over a particular incident you'll see in the film and that more importantly CONTROL dies. For the longest time in the movie I thought Control was a position or something and not a person. So all the scenes with Control are flashbacks.

For the most part though the rest of the movie is subtle and excellent and ties in everything really well together. I highly do recommend watching the movie in your home instead of in theatres so you can pause and look back on things and maybe discuss stuff with friends. I would also skip the first 20 or so minutes of the movie as it is very very boring first 20 minutes where almost nothing happens and they just have shots of Gary Oldman doing routine activities (I guess to symbolize his boredom with retirement).

The Blues Brothers - Movie Review

2011-12-29T19:58:00.000-08:00

Rating: 3/5 Stars

The Blues Brothers are a pair of brothers played by the late John Belushi (Animal House) and Dan Akryod (Ghostbusters), they are criminals who are also the head singers for a band known as the "Blue Brothers". The movie is about their redemption, it's a fairly basic comedy.

So the best thing about this movie is the song, they have Ray Charles, James Brown, Arethra Franklin and Cab Colloway all do songs in the movie, which are all great songs with awesome dance numbers. They also do quite a few good covers including one of the theme for Rawhide. Watch it.

The humor in the movie is on and off, some of the jokes are great and hilarious but then others fall flat especially a lot of the chase scenes and police involvement humor. The best jokes are the ones that are subtle lesser jokes or a few physical jokes. But I think the movie is still amusing to watch as a kind of movie to watch in the background and not paying too much attention to it, since most of the humor is pretty in your face and you can get it even without paying too much attention. Plus you can always stop to watch the songs.

Amadeus - Movie Review

2011-12-29T17:18:00.000-08:00

Rating: 4/5 Stars
Watch it! It was good but not the most amazing film ever.

Amadeus is a film about two composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salerie. The movie is basically about Salerie who has worked hard and sacrificed much to God in order to perform music, even a vow of chastity. Mozart though is the young and crazy genius, arrogant, rude but brilliant. So this of course clashes with the self-sacrificial view of Salerie.

The movie is 3 hours long and the most interesting thing about the movie that it never has boring drama, there is always something interesting and relevant to the post going on. The characters and the clashing between Mozart's wild life and Salerie's quiet brooding and plotting of Mozart's fall alternate well so you don't really see and get a passage of time. I wasn't really sure where 2 hours of the plot really went, it seems that it just melded well. I'm not sure if my idea is clearly expressed here but I believe the simplest way to say it is the movie is never boring and the passage of the 3 hours is easy.

Little Things
I loved the little musical accompaniment when they read sheet music, they would hear the music in their head and I'm kind of curious if people who can read sheet music actually can hear the music that is on the sheet music being played in their head. It was probably the most interesting device in the movie.

*Spoiler*

Strangeness
There was one scene that I was a bit confused at, when Salerie demanded Mozart's wife basically meet him at night in exchange for giving Mozart a role teaching the Emperor's daughter, he sends her away. I'm not sure why he sent her away, maybe the vengeance could not be satisfied with carnal lust? I wasn't entirely sure about that moment. I would imagine taking his wife would be a considerable revenge on him. Also, the fact that the wife NEVER ever said anything or even hinted that Salerie should not be trusted to Mozart, even without telling him explicitly about the incident I believe most people would do that.

One other thing irked me, one of Mozart's wife's lines sounded modern, or at the very least rough and common. It just stood very separate from the rest of the dialogue and speech in the rest of the movie, it just gave off the impression of 20th century speech vs 19th century speech.

Also if the maid looks familiar it's because she's from Sex and the City. Really not sure why I recognized her but I did.

Theme
The theme of the movie is kind of sad though, the mediocre regardless of how hard they work and suffer for their craft shall be outdone by the truly genius. Salerie's works became forgotten while Mozart's did not, perhaps as pennant for his sin or perhaps just because he never had the insight of Mozart.

There was an interesting article in a book called the "Black Swan". In the modern age, you compete against not only against other local craft but against all the great musicians of the past whose music has been kept. What bands were forgotten or not allowed to grow because people decided to go see an accomplished band like Led Zeppelin or even Tribute Bands who only play the music of other bands. Why pay for a local composer when you can hear Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven? At the same time it's great that we have it and we don't need to forget greatness, it was just a cool little thing to think about it. Maybe it helps everyone by raising the bar, maybe it doesn't.

Event Horizon - Movie Review

2011-12-25T04:01:00.000-08:00

Rating 3/5
Worth watching but don't go out of your way to see it.

I would say Event Horizon is Sphere meets Doom/Alien. Combine sphere's creepiness and aspects of fear and crazy shit happening with Doom's space opera all in a high tech ship / area and you get Event Horizon. The fact that they all came around the same time is an interesting fact.

The movie has some proper creepy moments and some aspects of real terror but then combines that with terrible graphic effects and just bad scenes with giant explosions that remove the creepiness. Combine that with some just terrible imagery that isn't just to gross you out and you get a movie that while has great parts, also has quite terrible parts. If it had stuck with the creepy vibe and just kinda played on the fear aspect instead of creating this Hellraiser like villan it would have been better off.

Also the captain's plot and story is so freaking cheesy and terrible, I'm not sure what exact scene it was but I was just going "Dear God, this is just exasperating listening to this guy".

* Spoiler *
I mean seriously? The final fight scene is just stupid, he basically punches a manifestation of hell? Oh come on, this is just silly. I liked Doctor's Who version a bit better than this, at least that one had the ability to manifest himself psychologically in a body which helps him do all his actions, this aspect of hell / demon could somehow manifest himself differently and do a bunch of stuff that doesn't seem plausible but then at the same time couldn't prevent the good guys from winning.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - Movie Review

2011-12-25T02:11:00.000-08:00

Rating: 4/5
Watch it at least once!

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a prequel movie to the famous Planet of the Apes. It's actually a pretty decent science fiction psuedo action movie. The entire story starts out a bit slowly, but gradually around midway it gets substantially better with Cesar the main ape having to start become the leader of the apes. It's gradual and interesting development of Cesar from just pet ape to full grown adult.

The characters in the story were typical characters, the sympathetic hulk man gorilla, the wise looking Orangutan (a nod to the original I believe).

The only thing that was annoying was FAR too much foreshadowing that was too obvious, not even simple red herring foreshadow, just blinding obvious nods to previous films and future developments in the movie. You can garner a bit from the trailer, but there is so much you can figure out just on your own. The limitations of the bad guys as one dimensional and not very interesting was also a weakness, but the strength of this movie does not rely on its petty villans but it's strong hero.

* Spoilers *

The movie itself though has a few weakness, the amazing disease and it's consequences are a bit annoying. I believe the writers were trying to set up a franchise and thus gave lots of hints and tidbits toward foreshadowing and other tips toward other films as well. And it's been confirmed that there will be at least on sequel. The movie ends on a bit of a cliffhanger (in the sense that the story can continue a LOT in future developments but the basic premise is there). I think the director basically said, this is MY Batman Begins. The start of my franchise and trilogy for Cesar the Ape instead of Batman.

Everything ties in a bit TOO neatly, like the fact that he is allowed to do human testing and that he has vials of the work in his home even though he knows it's a virus with strong abilities to infect humans. That was a bit of a uhh wait really? Also the entire premise of a virus that somehow damages and kills humans but makes apes just super smart is a bit strange. This is one of those, everything just kind of fits together a bit too eloquently there, I actually wish they had not mentioned anything about the virus or any type of mention of how humanity ends in the first film and mentioned or further developed it in future films. But it gives them leeway and more power to do what they want and START the film where they want, they don't need to figure out mankind's end in the sequels since mankind's end is already setup, though it's a fairly weak end.

When Harry Met Sally - Movie Review

2011-12-24T23:30:00.000-08:00

Rating: 5/5
Great Movie!

When Harry Met Sally is a romantic classic and honestly I understand why it's a super classic.

The plot explores the idea of "can men and women just be friends?". The story is basically driven around that concept. The entire story both characters are charming, cute and somewhat realistic. Both characters are annoying and have significant bad points when they are younger but both mellow and grow out of their points after long lasting relationships in their mid 20s. But they both find each other serendipitously over and over again (which I admit is the significantly most implausible part of the movie).

Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan are both charming and quick witted. The movie also introduced a few major concepts in dating ("Rebound guy" and "high-maintenance"), at least that's from Wikipedia. The speech at the end is very cute too.

Also it has the famous Deli Scene, one of AFI's 100 quotes. It seems a lot of the famous parts of the movies are actually from Ryan and Crystal themselves with a bit of originality and structure from Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner.

*Spoilers a bit*

The only issue I can see with the movie is that you KNOW it will end with them together, it has to. So it's just a matter of WHEN rather than a matter of if. So it's a bit unsettling on that hand because through all the posturing and etc you know the answer to the question. The movie is more about HOW they get there and how they talk about relationships rather than the actual ending though.

The answer though seems to be basically that all the married couple who talk about their relationships in the movie are basically love at first sight or talking with each other and breaking up but basically NONE of them start friends, only they start friends and they basically end up together.

So the answer to the question I guess is that the men and women can't be friends because sex will get in the way but most relationships don't start out as friends but all those seem to have ended happily?

I've read quite a bit of articles about how friendships into relationships are always tricky and troublesome because unlike When Harry Met Sally, those attractions are one sided (Referencing Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs and quite a few reddit posts).

Hanna - Movie Review

2011-12-24T20:10:00.000-08:00

Rating: 2/5 Stars
Not worth watching

An interesting barebones action-revenge movie with lots of choreographed action scenes and a basic government conspiracy plot. Nothing much else to watch it for. If you like Taken then you'll like this movie. But if you want a plot and not just interesting fight scenes with a mediocre set of bad guys, then watch Hanna, it's a fun movie in that regard.

Troll Hunter Review

2011-12-24T09:17:00.000-08:00

Rating: 3/5 Stars
If you got nothing better to do, watch it.

Troll Hunter is a mock shaky cam movie about Trolls in Norway. In Nordic Culture, Trolls are similar to Trolls in Lord of the Rings, big giant creatures who eat people but are susceptible to sunlight where they will turn to stone or explode. More akin to wild beasts though without any communication in human speech. The other part of Troll mythology in Nordic Culture though is that Trolls eat Christians, I'm not sure the rational or biological explanation for this and the movie never covers it, just takes it for granted as true. The movie covers a few kids who follow Hans the Troll Hunter as he talks about his experiences and takes down trolls with them (he seems to be a bit annoyed that he doesn't get overtime pay, so he's willing to divulge state secrets).

The movie itself is worth a watch if you have nothing else to do since it is fun to watch and while there are lots of scenes of nature and moving around (and at one point the camera is at an angle that's impossible from the filmmaker perspective) that could have been cut out of the movie.

The characters don't have much personality except for Hans, the Troll Hunter himself, but they are true to their form and never do anything too unnatural or outside of reasonable action, which is something I always hate about movies like this, because somebody always does some dumb shit move.

The CG and action scenes are not too bad, it's a shaky cam so lots of oh the camera fell! Oh nightvision! Oh god everyone is running and not paying attention. If you dislike that type of action, you will not like this movie I expect.

Umloud Ideas

2011-12-10T00:13:00.001-08:00

So I had a great time at Umloud and I couldn't help but start thinking of random ideas for next year band ideas and in general. I really do want to participate assuming I can remember to get stuff together to do something.

Beat It - Michael Jackson

So you basically have the gang war going on stage, the sides are led by a guitarist + singer on each side with other people in the back dancing. One group wearing all red, the other all blue.

The instrumental introduces the main singers and the guitarist in their respective costumes. The others are kept back. The first start, the red singer starts it up. Sings until the first "Beat it". The blue singer then picks up the other half "Don't be a macho Man!" until the second Beat It.

Then the rest of the crew comes up on stage and some choreographed dance for the chorus!

During the non-chrous parts, each group does their own little confrontation number (similar to the thing during the Flash Mob but a bit showier and in your face since it's a smaller crowd).

Then of course more chorus dance! Maybe a little show offing by each group leader (dance off!)

You then have the instrumental solos split into two somewhat distinct parts. The red guitarist goes up first and plays a part of the solo. With the red people chanting behind him, "Red! Red! Red!". Then the second part of the solo goes up and does his part with his team going "Blue! Blue! Blue!".

Then of course everybody comes back together for the last set of chorus.

The only thing is I can't think of how to incorporate the drummer (can you skip the drummer?)

Ain't no Rest for the Wicked - Cage the Elephant
If you've heard the song, it's pretty easy to do on stage. Listen to it!

So the first part is the guy singing about talking about the pretty little thing, he sings about it until he asks her, "why do you do this to yourself". Then she goes up and sings the rest of the part of her song until he talks about the second guy.

A guy comes up and puts a nerf gun to the main singer's head while the main guy is still singing until he asks the question again. But then he does his part using his gun, maybe dressed up punk/nerf gun.

Then you have the thing about the preacher and the cop come up on stage and do the arrest, but then the cop and the priest do the next set of chorus. Then everybody else comes up on stage to do the last chorus.

Gay Bar - Electric Six

I think the only way to really do this is to take the music video for Gay Bar and expand it into multiple presidents AS MANY AS WE CAN. Gay Lincoln! GAY WASHINGTON! Gay Obama?! Only thing I could think of.

Side note, the Electric Six songs on Rock band suck, Gay Bar is the only good one.

AC/DC - Kiss - Queen - Styx
Honestly I mainly would do these because they are all kinda fun songs and just have a great amount of awesome rockness but at the same time a lot of people know the lyrics (or at least the chorus for most of their works).

I realize that not all of these songs are (or ever will be available) on Rock Band... :(

Ender's Game, Speaker of the Dead, Starship Troopers, and a Tipping Point: Book Review

2011-12-05T21:23:00.001-08:00

As I have run out of socks for use in everyday life, I must spend tonight doing laundry. That means that I do not get to go outside for a walk. So I'm going to do some typing about books I've read (ok really I've listened to all these on audiobooks while walking, interesting fact I have walked at total of 80 miles in the month of November).

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (READ!)
Ender's game is set in the future after two devastating wars with an alien species known as "The Buggers". The main protagonist is a little boy named Ender who has been chosen for Battle School, the training ground for the International Fleet. He starts his training at the tender age of 6.

Ender's game is easily one of the more interesting sci-fi books I've ever read. There are lots of imaginative concepts such as the Battle School Games. Fighting and teams mechanics in zero gravity battle. If you like the more technical parts of science fiction, then I would highly recommend the book. As a story, it still holds up as interesting and entertaining though somewhat repetitive at times.

One Point, I think Ender's Game should be read when you are younger (not really possible now eh?). Most of the major characters in the series are children, Ender never reaches past the page of 10 or 12 in the book. So it's really hard me to grasp the mentality of how it was like as a kid so I feel some of the book is lost to me since I can't really associate with the protagonist. They are very mature for their age, they constantly repeat that they are "not children", but the fact of the matter is there is a childish naivete to all the characters that exists.

One thing though that some of you might not know, and many of you probably will, is that Card wrote Ender's Game because he wanted the back story for his 2nd book Speaker for the Dead. The entire book is just a way to write the backstory for Ender and he couldn't fit it in 30 pages.

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (READ!)
A word of warning, the book starts a bit slower than Ender's Game. Card likes to start slow with the non-main characters. You actually don't meet Ender until about a 1/3 way into the book and the story doesn't really reach that mysteries start unravelling until about 1/2 way through the book. But the explanations (while sometimes predictable) are great.

I believe Speaker for the Dead has the real moral that Card was trying to get through. While Ender's Game is interesting, there's nothing much of substance and thought behind it. It's a lot of technically interesting (Battle School game mechanics, IF mechanics, etc.). Speaker questions the ideas of alien species, morality, and the interaction between humans and aliens. And more importantly, it has the real point of the story. How we evaluate other people's lives and how we treat others is not simple, not straightforward. I can't get too much into the book without spoilers for Ender's Game.

The one thing that always bothered me about the book though is that there isn't anyone bad. Like no person with non-reasoned sense of selfishness or maliciousness. I mean there are people who somewhat selfish and hostile, but never malicious, never harmful, just misunderstood and lost. It's actually really touching how people can ruin lives even though they have the best of intents.

Starship Troopers by Robert A Heinlein (MAYBE READ)
Starship Trooper is mostly recognized by the movie and while the movie is a straight up action movie by the same director who did Robocop, the book is more a philosophical discussion.

So the basic premise of the world is that the Federation is run by the military, you must serve a term in the military in order to vote, be a citizen, and hold office. The military is a very similar to our current one, an all volunteer force with two main sections: ground forces (the mobile infantry) and air/sea/space forces (fleet). Unlike the movie though, all the mobile infantry are equipped with crazy battle suits so by mobile infantry they mean rocket propelled giant mobile armors bouncing around firing nukes at people.

I think the book has some interesting ideas and it's still required reading for West Point. Heinlein wrote it in 1959 so the idea of an all volunteer force with specific and tight command was predicative. Some other concepts that he mentioned are part of this world are that the Federation has capital and corporal punishment in a public setting (that means both hanging and floggings in the public square). No such thing as West Point, all officers come up through ranks with required drops.

Heinlein talks a LOT about democracy shortcomings and just in general about some aspects of our society that he deems silly, such as a juvenille detention system, a full democracy, the lack of true punishment. It seems that it's very strict society (Signaporean?)

Before you just denounce it as a wild stupid idea, the basic premise that the military is the only ones allowed to vote is this. The people who are willing to sacrifice and put their lives on the line for the sake of the Federation AND make it through boot camp with all the mental and physical evaluations, are the people worthwhile to lead the nation in terms of citizenship. Basically, if you give everyone a vote, then they shall use it selfishly for their own desires, only when you put it in the hands of people who are willing to put their team / humanity above their own desires / lives then do you have a proper voting electorate.

Of course this doesn't at all address the horrors of war and all the soldiers who are incredibly suicidal and suffer PTSD and god knows what else. I think the fact that Heinlein never did active warfare duty is a very much an important factor when he doesn't consider what impact the post-military life of a soldier is.

While I think the idea of EARNING the right to vote is important by putting some kinda distinction, the practical aspects of how that would administered and determined make it moot. Still interesting thought process.

A Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (DONT READ, except for one section*)
Pop psychology, basically a series of examples to demonstrate a very thinly constructed argument about how basically marketing works and how stuff becomes viral. I think it's a kinda interesting about how he characterizes 3 types of people who basically make something popular. Connectors who know lots of people, mavens who are information specialists about a thin slice, and salesmen who can sell something. But he doesn't really tie everything together to form anything cohesive, just a few small points that seem obvious.

*I actually really enjoyed the piece about the start of Sesame Street and how children's psychology and their own studies impacted how the show was going to be made as well as how they illustrated and did a lot of their skits in order to make them have the biggest impact on kids learning. I would read THIS section and only this section in the book. Everything else is meh.

Stop using Adblock

2011-11-10T14:43:00.001-08:00

Adblock is a Chrome and Firefox extension that blocks popups and advertisements. I know a lot of people who use it, and even I used to use it. I thought it was a necessary part of the browsing experience.

There are two main reasons why I stopped using it:
I started to use Google Chrome. This was quite a while back and Adblock didn't work on chrome then. So I decided to go without it.

The second reason was when I worked at Yelp and an employee noticed that AdBlock started blocking Yelp ads. It felt hypocritical that I blocked ads but worked at a company that relied on advertising.

At first I thought I could just whitelist sites, but then what about one time blogs that have good articles? Why deny them advertising revenue. Think about how many sites rely on advertising that you use. Reddit, Facebook, Google, news, Imgur, almost all profesional bloggers, webcomics (Questionable Content I've always noted specifically).

So I stopped using AdBlock and honestly the experience hasn't been that bad. There are a few sites that pop up obnoxious popups that get through Chrome's built in pop up blocker. But for the most part, ads aren't that bad. The age of the really really obnoxious ones have been stopped or perhaps I browse a different set of sites than I used to? Either way, I haven't had too much trouble or annoyance.

I'm going to cover a few things I've heard in support of using AdBlock or things I've heard when I mention I feel that it's wrong to use AdBlock.

I don't click on the ads anyway.
Doesn't matter, the fact is that most advertising is actually impression based. Newspaper ads, Television ads, none of which you interact with, the point is to get the message and positive association out there. Think of the Old Spice Commercial, you didn't click it, you didn't interact with it, but you still watched it right? That's impression advertising. It's brand awareness, you trust what you've heard before than what you haven't.

I don't want to support certain sites that have ads
Then stop using them.

Flash ads blast my CPU and cause it suffer and weep uncontrollably.
I use FlashBlock to prevent flash ads, a lot of sites are sensible enough to fallback to a HTML ad if the flash is blocked. Also Flash is dying with the web in general, people are relying less and less on flash and advertising will be no different. It's somewhat of an excuse but the fact is that Flash is really just terrible on a mac. (this also prevents audio ads automatically playing)

Some ads are just annoying (playing music, video, popups etc)
So here's the thing, if somebody really does have annoying ads, and you believe the website is a good service, then tell them that their ads fucking suck and not to allow those ads.

They do have some say in what ads appear on their site if they complain.

If they aren't going to change it, then maybe you can use your consumer powers and not visit that site anymore?

What if I just whitelist the sites I use the most?
What about one time visits to blogs? Would you remember to whitelist them? Do they deserve no revenue just because you aren't a regular visitor?

My connection speed is slow, every kilobyte counts! / I have a monthly cap!
This is a reasonable excuse in my opinion.

I'm only one person, why does it matter, its only one impression?
You already know the answer to this, it matters from an individual perspective. Group think and excusing things because you don't think your contribution matters is a pretty weak argument. It's not about what others do, but about your own actions.

I will be first to admit, this is somewhat biased. I'm a software engineer at a web development company, I have lots of friends who work in the field, thus many of friend's companies rely on advertising revenue in one way or another. (VerticalBrands: the company I'm working at right now does not make it's money on advertising but it does use advertising to get customers!)

If you are a software engineer, stop fucking using AdBlock now. We ALL have at least one friend who works at Google, or Yelp, or Facebook, or somebody. Even if the company doesn't rely on advertising as a revenue source, I'm sure they use it as a source of getting new customers.

I got this last reason for AdBlock from reddit and it's also excusable.