sketch comedy: elephant larry

one of my roommates from college, neal, was in a sketch comedy troupe at school. when some of his peeps graduated and movd to nyc, they formed their own sketch comedy group called elephant larry (i wonder if they chose that name partly because it would google well). i like their work and so wanted to let all my the readers know about them.

anyway, neal told me his friends were recently invited to film a sketch in la with john landis, the director of animal house and blues brothers. impressive stuff. a few other sketch troupes were also invited. anyway, you can see their sketch called "Tall Cop, Short Cop" here (note that the link has been a bit flaky... stupid jibjab). the sketch starts a bit slowly, but gets quite funny.

i also found some of their stuff on youtube. i think this commercial is the best:

ah japan

i was browsing around flickr and saw this sunset in tokyo.


i really enjoyed japan, and wish i was there longer. i remember doing karaoke with halldor in hakodate -- i actually have a video of halldor in action singing "it wasn't me" by shaggy.

but that video is not online, and couldn't be without halldor's consent, so instead i'll give you the original video. just imagine replacing shaggy in this video with an icelander named halldor.

nobel peace prize, bangladesh and global warming

i've been reading about the nobel peace prize winner mohammad yunus. in case you didn't know, dr. yunus started the grameen bank, a bank for the poor in bangladesh. he pushed the idea of microcredit. i actually saw him give a talk a while back, and it was very inspiring. here are some quotes from speeches he's given:

We believe that poverty does not belong to a civilized
human society. It belongs to museums.

...

All human beings have an innate skill - survival skill. The
fact that poor are still alive is a proof of their ability
to survive. We do not need to teach them how to survive.
They know this already.

--Dr. Mohammad Yunus

i was reminded of this because of the startling thing larry brilliant said about global warming when speaking at berkeley months back. he lauded dr. yunus' work but stated that it could literally be washed away by the rising sea levels due to global warming. the picture below gives a sense of this scary possibility. follow this link for more.

Pie Eating Contest at Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival

we went to the half moon bay pumpkin festival this past weekend. the traffic getting there was horrible but it was worth it, just to see small children compete in a pie eating contest. watch this video, and see the boy 2nd or 3rd from the left bang his head into the pie. watch the little girl at the right devour the pie.



these kids are amazing. i would've completely flopped in this activity (and hence i didn't engage in the adult pie-eating contest).

now to get me some pumpkin pie...

malcolm gladwell on predicting hit movies

i was at the new yorker festival last weekend and malcolm gladwell spoke about predicting hit movies. i'm not sure how you feel about mr gladwell (my friend niniane is none-too-impressed with him), but whatever you think, he's a fantastic storyteller.

i wasn't going to post about this until wednesday, because that's when the new yorker is posting the video of gladwell's presentation online (scroll to the bottom of the new yorker page), but then i saw that the article is actually online, scanned in by the company that gladwell is talking about in his article. if you read my blog, you know how annoyed i am with the new yorker not making their material more readily available, so here i am, happy to point you to it.

very briefly, gladwell is writing about a group of people who believe they can predict the amount of money a movie will make, just by analyzing the screenplay and feeding some data into an elaborate computer program. they actually do quite well, supposedly. the talk is amazing, and i haven't read the article yet, but you should read it just to learn about mr pink and mr brown, two movie analysts who are very serious about reading screenplays:

Mr. Brown couldn’t remember a single script he’d read where he thought there wasn’t room for improvement, and Mr. Pink, when asked the same question, could come up with just one: “Lethal Weapon.” “A friend of mine gave me the shooting script before it came out, and I remember reading it and thinking, It’s all there. It was all on the page."

convict smooth talks his way out of arrest

hi all,

i want to post about my experience at the new yorker festival, but i haven't gotten around to writing it up. instead, i just want to post this video, which is rather amazing. the man being questioned by the police officer in this video had just escaped from a high-security prison a few hours earlier. he had escaped from prison numerous times, and is essentially an escape expert (he's also a convicted murderer). anyway, the video is worth watching, especially to see how smooth the convict is, and how dumb the cop is.

there's nothing quite like paper

i've been watching battlestar galactica lately and i love it. it's so much better than star trek. besides the obvious benefit to having a long storyline (as opposed to one-off episodes which certainly get tiring), i really enjoy how the portrayal is not so super hitech to the point of stupidity.

for instance, they use paper. this might not seem like much, but think back to any star trek tv show or movie you have ever seen -- did you ever see paper anywhere? highly unlikely. it did crop up, very rarely, and probably with the clear hint that the people using the paper were archaic, or the paper was super old.

now think about how useful paper is -- you can scrunch it up, it can be folded, you can drop your coffee on it, you can shove it in your pocket, it's super-high resolution, marking it is really easy...

what did they use on star trek? those clunky looking pads. and did you ever see anyone tuck that pad away in their pocket? no, they didn't have pockets, and even if they did, where would it fit?

i assure you the future will have paper.

the design of everyday things

i recently purchased the design of everyday things by don norman. norman is a cognitive scientist who has thought a lot about design of everyday things. before i tell my own frustrating story of a poorly designed everyday thing, here are some quotes:

The book begins with one of don's amusing experiences:

"You would need an engineering degree from MIT to work this," someone once told me, shaking his head in puzzlement over his brand new digital watch. Well, I have an engineering degree from MIT... Give me a few hours and I can figure out the watch. But why should it take hours?

norman then nicely generalizes to exactly what i'm feeling:

Why do we put up with the frustrations of everyday objects, with objects that we can't figure out how to use, with those neat plastic wrapped packages that seem impossible to open, with doors that trap people, with washing machines and dryers that have become too confusing to use...

and he gives this simple rule which i like:

1. It's not your fault: If there is anything that has caught the popular fancy, it is this simple idea: when people have trouble with something, it isn't their fault -- it's the fault of the design. Every week brings yet another letter or e-mail from someone thanking me for delivering them from their feeling of incompetence.

now my story. my roommate has this great can opener: it cuts the can just below the top, and you just pull off the top. no jagged metal, no problems. well, almost, when you know how to use it.

anyway, i had been shown how to work it 1 or 2 times, and i needed to open some soup. no one was around, i couldn't ask questions. well, i tried every which way to get this can opener on with no success. i'm not sure how i opened that can, but i remember there being jagged edges and me just having a very frustrating experience with the whole thing. i remember wanting to throw the can and shout very loudly after that experience. opening a can should not be this hard.

i concluded that this can opener was very poorly designed because if you were a new user, you wouldn't be able to just pick it up and use it. you'd be lucky if you could. finally, on the 3rd or 4th time of seeing it function, i saw the key ingredient that showed me how to line everything up. now using the can opener is great, but what a ridiculous learning experience.

on the flip side, i came across another can opener months later, and i opened a can with it almost immediately. no one had to show me anything, and yet this wasn't your standard can opener: it also cut in a different way, and left no sharp edges. it was effortless. this second can opener was well-designed. no everyday thing should be very difficult to use for the typical consumer.

follow this link to find out more about norman and his design philosophy.

biking: be visible and predictable

this past weekend i went to a free, 4 hour classroom course on bike safety. i want to get into biking and want to do it safely here in san francisco, so i thought a class on safety would be a good start. the class was offered by the san francisco bicycle coalition, and it was fantastic.

this article from 2005 in the sf chronicle gives a good overview of what i learned (in fact, my instructor is quoted in the article). i want to emphasize one quote, because when i rode a bike in palo alto for a summer i did not do this at all, and neither did many bikers on the road:

Ride like a car: A baseline concept is taken from an old manual, "Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles." This creates visibility and predictability for cyclists. They signal, obey traffic laws, and when they need to do so, take over a lane.

the key point here is being visible and predictable. i was always afraid to drive out in the car lane, or two close to moving cars but in fact most bicycle accidents happen when the cyclist is too close to parked cars, or moves in an erratic manner. moving cars will avoid cyclists and do a good job of it if the cyclist is acting predictably.

this saturday i have the second day of my course, which is out on the road. i'm afraid, because it's one thing to say this and listen to it, it's another thing to implement it on the road. i'm in a state of intimidation right now, which hopefully i can overcome:

"An urban cyclist goes through three stages," says Bert Hill, who teaches clinics for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition at police stations around the city.

"First, you're intimidated. You try to find out rules and follow them," Hill said. "The second occurs when you gain some mastery, and discover freedom of movement. But that can grow a little too heady, and lead to mistakes. The third follows all that, after you realize you are an ambassador for cycling. What you do changes the world where you ride."

User Control and Facebook

recently seen after logging into my facebook:

"X joined the group Nobody Cares That You Want the Old Facebook Back."

and so begins our stroll into hard-to-control presentation of your life on facebook. i had been thinking about this a lot, and we had a facebook discussion in my computer-mediated communication class, which grant and i followed-up on after class. i've put together my thoughts below.

background

for those of you not in the know: facebook launched a feature which automatically publishes to your friends a news feed of the things you've been up to on facebook (and conversely, you also have this feed of what your friends are up to). for instance, you learn when your friends add new friends, join groups, change their profile, change their relationship status, etc..

but hold on, you say... "change their relationship status!" yes! "X is now single."

sort of freaky eh?

well, maybe you feel this is somewhat less freaky when you learn that facebook updated the feature to include an opt-out policy? i don't think it should be less freaky. in fact, maybe it should be more disconcerting if you care about control of your data and privacy.

issues

an issue for me is that the "resolution" was to add opt-out ability, and make opt-in the default. i think the way facebook did this falls into the collection of actions by large companies that make your data functionally less private, without adequately conveying that to the user. it also shifts the norm of online interactions and our expectations of the servers we interact with (ie this feed stuff will become the norm on facebook, just as gmail contextual ads became the accepted gmail thing).

facebook is about broadcasting yourself to your friends and people in your network, but not in this uncontrollable way. sure, in the "Old Facebook" people could scrape your page and determine when and what things were changing. but by and large people interacted with tailored presentations. now, with these feeds, a user's presentation on facebook is at least partially out of their control.

wait, you say, that user who misses their control can change their options and opt-out. of course they can, but how many will? and how many will get burned because they didn't (i already know stories of people who have been burned)? and when will we consider that we're making friendly surveillance the norm?

frankly i feel weird seeing this feed because i don't know if this is what my friend intended. did they want me to know that they recently added "candy" to their favorite activities?

facebook could have introduced this feature differently. the way they introduced this feature (no options) and then their resolution (opt-out) goes to show how little respect is afforded to users when it comes to who controls the use of their personal information.

the dentist

i was at my dentist the other day. they checked my gums and teeth and recommended that i brush and floss more. however, there were no problems, just a more thorough cleaning on their part which they attributed to my lack of flossing everyday.

now, i find that flossing and brushing take up a lot of time, so i don't want to do it more than is required to be clean and healthy. i always feel like my dentist is making unreasonable demands on my time -- if there were no problems, then why are you continuing to pester me about my irregular flossing habits?

i should've had a heart-to-heart with my dentist. essentially i want a dental sin chart: if i visit you every 6 months, then what can i get away with? can i eat more candy and floss less? what are the 6 month impacts of decreased vs increased flossing? what if i visit you every year? every four months? of course, all the possibilities are best guesses, since my mouth is a complex system.

this would have to be tailored to my teeth, as i know that some people are just more susceptible to problems, whereas others never, ever get cavities or gum problems.

My Stuff and BillMonk

i found billmonk today and i'm loving it. it seems to be mostly advertised as a way to share bills, but in fact you can upload info about your collection of stuff, and make it accessible publicly or to your friends.

anyway, i just entered in a bunch of ISBNs, UPCs and titles, and now i have a portion of my library listed online. you'll see an image of some of my stuff on the right. personally, i love been able to track my stuff, and show what i have to my friends. now my books aren't just collecting dust on the shelf (well, that is, they have *potential*).

for those of you in the bay area, if you see something you want to borrow, let me know and the next time i see you i'll hand it over. :)

Wolf Parade I'll Believe in Anything

another wolf parade song that i like. and in the video, i love the wigs!

Wolf Parade: Shine a Light

i've been listening to wolf parade (wikipedia)lately and they've got some fantastic stuff. i keep playing shine a light over and over. as usual with my blog, i can't post the song, but here's the video from youtube. actually, the video is so bad it's funny. floating heads, no matter what you're trying to say, is a bad call... and they start to glow! anyway just watch, but more important, listen ;)



the first link above has more videos (it's their myspace page).

The New Yorker Festival

i'm going to be in nyc from october 6-8 at the new yorker festival. it'll be a lot of fun and it's a good excuse to go to nyc and see family and friends. here's a blurb from the website:

The seventh annual New Yorker Festival, a weekend celebration of arts and ideas, runs from October 6th through October 8th this year, bringing together some of the most gifted artists and original minds of the day—a chess grandmaster who has launched a political movement; a physicist who envisions mining platinum from asteroids; a classical-music composer who moonlights as a d.j.; explorers who have gone to the ends of the earth, from the deep sea to the highest peaks.

i bought tickets for the following shows. if you're in town, you'll notice i have two tickets for some of the things, so if you're interested let me know. you can also see if tickets are still available by going to ticketmaster.

Friday

2 tickets
Yiyun Li and Edwige Danticat
Friday 7pm 308 Bowery

Saturday
1 ticket
Roz Chast and Steve Martin
10am Supper Club, 240 West 47th st

1 ticket
Tom Stoppard W/John Lahr In Conversation
1pm Directors Guild of America

2 tickets (conflicts with tom stoppard)
Garry Kasparov interviewed by David Remnick
1 p.m. 37 Arts

2 tickets
The New Pornographers talk with James Surowiecki:
A Conversation with Music
10 P.M. Newspace, 530 West 21st Street

Sunday

2 tickets
Malcolm Gladwell:
The Case Against Secrets
1 P.M. 37 Arts

photo conversation

no i don't smoke

healthy omar drinks icelandic oj

recently i've gotten quite a few requests for cigarettes, even when there are many other people to ask around me. in addition, when at the doctor a few months back the nurse said to me "you smoke don't you?"

no i don't smoke, and i don't carry cigarettes.

there are three good explanations for these queries. one, suggested to me, is that it's my glasses. my red and black glasses supposedly give me a european look, and the impression is that europeans smoke a lot, so ask the guy with the weird glasses.

the second explanation is that i look sickly and thin, a look some people associate with smokers. now this disturbs me. i have been prodded from time to time to improve on my thin look and somewhat unhealthy eating habits (i suspect many people reading this are said prodders). maybe i am a bit sickly. anyway i'm trying to look healthier.. one step at a time... and the steps are small and slow, remember i'm sickly.

finally, the the third explanation is that it's random and i shouldn't think so much about it. i like that one.

who is more likely to smoke in this picture?

 

performance and goffman

i'm taking a class on computer mediated communication, and our first reading is by erving goffman, titled The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (see wikipedia article on goffman and book).

the theme of the article is performance (ie how we are all performing) and how these performances function or fail to function. in some ways i didn't like the article because it was too qualitative for my liking: one-off observations merged together for some grand theory. on the flip side, quantitative observation has problems too. the ethnographer in the class pointed out that all these theory-generating mechanisms have flaws, though typically in the research community nowadays they list their methodology and assumptions, as well as address criticisms, things that this author didn't do.

anyway, i'm going to put some quotes here. note that the text is from the 1959 and so the language is a bit odd for us.

the first quote is from sartre, and i find that i sometimes do exactly this:

The attentive pupil who wishes to be attentive, his eyes riveted on the teacher, his ears open wide, so exhausts himself in playing the attentive role that he ends up by no longer hearing anything

these next two quotes suggest the unseemly side of performance in the professional space:

if attendants in a mental ward are to maintain order and at the same time not hit patients, and if this combination of standards is difficult to maintain, then the unruly patients may be "necked" with a wet towel and chocked into submission in a way that leaves no visible evidence of mistreatment. Absense of mistreatment can be faked, not order.

...

Thus, one student suggests about pharmacists that they feel that the four-year university course required for license is "good for the profession" but that some admit that a few months training is all that is really needed. It may be added that the American Army during World War II innocently treated trades such as pharmacy and watch-repairing in a purely instrumental way and trained efficient practitioners in five or six weeks to the horror of established members of these callings.

goffman emphasizes here that what's important for him is not so much what is real, but how the performance might be disrupted:

While we could retain the common-sense notion that fostered appearances can be discredited by a discrepant reality, there is often no reason for claiming that the facts discrepant with the fostered impression are any more the real reality than is the fostered reality they embarrass.... We will want to ask, "What are the ways in which a given impression can be discredited?" and this is not quite the same as asking, "What are the ways in which the given impression is false?"

the author ends with this quote from sartre:

There are indeed many precautions to imprison a man in what he is, as if we lived in perpetual fear that he might escape from it, that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition.

my band: black granite

while cleaning my sister's new place, my cousins jazib and sahir and i came up with the name of our new band: black granite (inspired by my sister's countertops).

we're working on the music but i wanted to show all of you our next album cover, courtesy of jazib:
some possible lyrics (sung in a death metal sorta way):

black granite
tenth planet
we're the reason that pluto has vanished

we're working on it ;)

promiscuous

at my cousin's wedding i heard, for the first time, nelly furtado's promiscuous (yes i'm behind the times :) ). the song features timbaland, and i liked the sound so much that i looked him up on wikipedia. timbaland didn't actually produce this song, but i went on allofmp3.com and listened to a bunch of previews of his stuff, which is fantastic. i think i'm a timbaland fan.

anyway, in an odd twist, while i can't of course link to the song, the video, with the song, does appear to be on youtube (for how long who knows...). so if you look at this post soon, and want to hear this great great sound (the song is sort of dumb, with a reference to steve nash, come on...) take a peek.



here's a link to the video.