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What your view of sports and life would be if you had too many concussions
Let's start with my original playoff predictions:
New England Patriots
Why They Can Win:
Because Tom Brady is still Tom Brady; one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history on the NFL, and he isn't far enough past his prime to be discounted.
Why They Can't Win:
To see the future in Foxboro, just look toward Indianapolis. Don't look right this second, because you may notice the Patriots are beginning to get old before your very eyes. They are the worst 13-3 team I've ever seen – they define over-rated. They can't run the ball and their defense couldn't stop a Pop Warner team, yet somehow they are top-seed in the AFC.
All this team has is Tom Brady, and that's just enough to hide the real defects in this team. There's a reason I call this the "Manning Rule."
Odds of Winning: 18 to 1
New York Giants
Why They Can Win:
Take a coin out of your pocket. This coin represents the streakiness of the New York Giants. Flip the coin. Heads, Giants win.
Why They Can't Win:
That complete lack of consistency drives me batshit crazy. Flip that coin Again. Tales, Giants lose. Eli Manning is easily my favorite player to watch in the NFL; he is like a poker player who loses a shitload of $50 pots, and just enough $10,000 ones to stay above water. This time, Eli is all in with two pair.
Odds of Winning: 20 to 1
Now that we are down to a head-to-head matchup, there are three categories to analyze.
1) What Vegas Thinks
Anybody who loves to bet knows professional gamblers pay attention to five key categories:
This discussion falls into the classic "more than meets the eye" department because it would seem to be a clean sweep for the Patriots. But the number get more curious when you consider that the above bulleted stats are from the regular season. The numbers change quite a bit when you keep them to the post-season.
Now instead of being a distinct advantage for New England, there has been a definite closing of the gap by the Giants. The numbers still point to the Patriots being a better bet, but consider the environment in which this significant statistical improvement occurred.
Boil it all down, and it means the Giants have been far more impressive than the Patriots in the post-season. This is why despite the picture painted by the numbers, the Patriots are only a 3 point favorite.
2) The On-the-Field Matchups
The Giants go as far as their offensive line, which is a unit that has played out of its mind the last three playoff games. The Patriots can't offer anywhere near what the 49ers did, and New York handled San Francisco with relative ease. Meanwhile, the front four of the Giants are going to make themselves well-know to Tom Brady's face.
Brady vs. Manning II: This time it's personal. Actually, this time it is without David "Helmet Catch" Tyree. So now it's likely to be less about Eli getting lucky, and about Brady finally showing how over-rated of a quarterback he really is. Try this one on for size: Who would had a better season – Tim Tebow with the Patriots or Tom Brady with the Broncos?
Not to mention, even sportswriters have figured out how to beat Brady. And like it or not, a lot of Brady's passing stats are heavily padded by the yards-after-catch of the Wes Welker and Rob Gronkowski's of the world.
Neither team runs the ball particularly, but the Giants have picked up their game as of late. Neither team is really worth discussing in the defensive backfield. Both teams rely on their offensive lines, big-play quarterbacks, and a couple of downfield play-makers. To me, the Giants pass-rush will make the difference.
Advantage: Giants
3) A Comparison of the Cities
The trouble here is that by judging where these teams respective stadia are located, there really aren't any cities to compare. I know that it is petty and anal retentive, but it has always been a pet peeve of mine that the "New York" Giants actually play in New Jersey. I'll even admit it is a double-standard; I don't apply this to the Jets, probably because they were treated as the little brother of New York football for decades. I get that East Rutherford is a mere six miles from mid-town Manhattan, but the concrete canyons of the city might as well be a world away from the partially-drained swamp they call Meadowlands.
At least the Patriots are sort of honest about it. They aren't trying to get you to believe that some jerkwater hick town somewhere in greater New England where they likely still burn witches is still somehow "Boston."
Advantage: Patriots
I think I'm gonna stay away from wagering on this one.
I took the G-Men moneyline last time around and would do so again if the line was more than three.
But Vegas isn't gonna fall for that banana in the tailpipe once again.
Let me ask you this. If Belichick loses to the Giants TWICE, doesn't that taint his legacy? Are Eli and Coughlin his great white whales?


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Jets hope to end season on positive note
MIAMI – Coach Joe Philbin gave his Miami Dolphins a long to-do list this week.
"Run the ball better, stop the run, protect the quarterback, pressure the quarterback, get off to a fast start, be better in ball security," Philbin said.
For a team in the thick of the playoff hunt, that's a lot of deficiencies. But the Dolphins are coming off their worst game of the year, and a dramatic rebound will be necessary if they're to reach the postseason for the first time since 2008.
Miami (8-7) can clinch the AFC's final wild-card berth Sunday with a little help and a win over the Jets.
"All or nothing," Dolphins receiver Mike Wallace said. "It's a weird feeling not knowing what's going to happen. We only have one thing we can control, and that's to play as hard as we can and win. We have a lot of motivation."
With the Dolphins playing for the playoffs, and the Jets playing for pride, here are five things to watch:
? Inconsistent teams: The Dolphins' latest loss represented another low in an up-and-down season. Eight weeks ago, when the franchise was immersed in a bullying scandal, Philbin's job appeared in jeopardy. Last week, he was fielding questions about being a contender for coach of the year. Then came a dreadful 19-0 drubbing at Buffalo, raising speculation about a late-season collapse.
The Jets (7-8) have ridden the roller coaster, too, failing to put together consecutive victories all season. They'll sit out the postseason for the third year in a row, leaving coach Rex Ryan's future in doubt.
"Ending on a good note could be huge for us," Jets receiver David Nelson said, "especially as a young team, knowing that we're capable of it."
? Postseason outlook: The Dolphins are tied with the Baltimore Ravens and San Diego Chargers in the race for the sixth and final AFC playoff spot, and none of the three teams can clinch a berth without help.
The Dolphins will make the playoffs if they win, and if the Ravens lose or the Chargers win. Miami wins the tiebreaker if all three teams finish 9-7, but loses if it's a two-way tie with the Ravens, because they beat the Dolphins in Week 5.
Miami, Baltimore and San Diego would all miss the playoffs if they lose and the Steelers win, which would give the final AFC spot to Pittsburgh.
"Take care of business and see what happens," Dolphins defensive tackle Randy Starks said. "I've been in the league 10 years, and I've been in this situation a couple of times. It really doesn't matter what happens around the league if you don't take care of business. That's the whole mindset."
While the Jets will play the spoilers' role against their biggest rivals, Ryan said there would be no satisfaction in eliminating Miami from playoff contention.
"If you're not in it, it really doesn't matter," Ryan said. "The fact that you're not in it is painful enough. You're not going to derive pleasure from knocking someone out."
? Ryan's future: Jets owner Woody Johnson and general manager John Idzik have declined to comment on Ryan's status, fueling speculation about the coach's status.
The young Jets are widely regarded as overachievers after going 6-10 last year. Ryan is 41-38 in five seasons with the Jets, has one year left on his contract and remains popular with his players.
"We all feel that Rex should be back," cornerback Antonio Cromartie said. "We feel he's the man for the job and the man who can get us to that Super Bowl."
Ryan described the Jets' current postseason drought as his biggest disappointment.
"I don't like the fact we haven't been to the playoffs for three straight years," he said. "That's a huge thorn in my side, and everybody else's."
? Rematch: The Dolphins played their best game of the season to beat the Jets 23-3 in Week 13. Miami totaled a season-high 453 yards, including a season-high 331 passing by Ryan Tannehill. The Dolphins came up with three takeaways and forced Ryan to bench rookie quarterback Geno Smith.
"That might have been the low point," Ryan said. "And we've had some low points. But that might have been the worst one, because we really got it handed to us."
? QB homecoming: Smith grew up so close to the Dolphins' stadium that as a youngster he would sit outside his house watching games on the upper-deck video screen.
The last time he played in the stadium, Smith threw six touchdown passes to help West Virginia beat Clemson 70-33 in the Orange Bowl. His first NFL game in Miami will be Sunday.
"It's always good to be back home and play in front of a home crowd, per se, where I grew up," Smith said. "We'll have a lot of family in the stands."
The Jets can only hope he plays like it's a home game. They're 1-6 on the road, where they've been outscored 214-99.

subset: commoncrawl


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"Our pressures and anxieties don't disappear just because we are sober." –Living With Sobriety, p. 18
My father was an alcoholic. Though he never missed a day of his job as a police officer, he drank daily, and it sometimes caused him a problem. For me as his daughter, I was powerless over his mood swings, harsh criticism and belittling comments. When I got older, I couldn't understand why I felt so defensive whenever I was criticized.
Because of the alcoholic environment, I had developed defenses that somewhat protected me as a child. As an adult, these defenses got in the way. The threat wasn't there anymore, but I still reacted as though it was. There was no reason to be afraid, but I felt plenty scared.
In Al-Anon, I learned that even as I grew older, I was still powerless over the effects of my father's disease. I was powerless over the effects of his behavior while he was drinking.


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Was reading this article about a Harvard psychologist talking about raising nice kids and it triggered a memory of an incident, years ago when my parents were visiting and we took them out to dinner.
The Brat (he must have been about 2.5 years old) wanted to go to the toilet and the OA and G'Pa took him to the toilet where he kept up a constant chatter. Basically he was reiterating all that I told him when I was toilet training him.
Wait your turn. Don't open up your pants until you reach the toilet. Make sure you aim into the toilet – don't want to leave it dirty for the next person using. Be careful when you zip your jeans so that you don't get any important bits caught in it. Wash your hands nicely. With soap. Again. Dry them.
This had his father and grandfather in splits and they didn't notice that they had an audience. Then he thanked his father and grandfather for helping him to use the toilet. When they were done, the gentleman (a foreigner) walked up to my son and gravely shook hands and introduced himself, as though he was talking to a grown up. And then he gave him some money (I forget – probably Rs 50 or something) and said he had never seen such a well mannered child, so to please buy him some candy with it.
The OA and G'Pa of course protested and said money was not required, the praise was enough. The gentleman must have been worried that he was giving offence in a foreign land and the OA and my dad didn't want him to think he'd breached some form of etiquette when the poor man was trying to do something nice. They kept refusing it and then he made a winning argument. He said there are very few well behaved kids these days. And good behaviour, even among adults, rarely gets rewarded. In fact, most often, your good manners, your civility, they are your undoing. They are the reason someone pushes ahead of you in a queue, someone cuts you off on the road and so on. So he'd like my son to know, that once in a while, people do notice and good behaviour doesn't go unnoticed.
They let the Brat accept the money.
One of the issues with letting kids accept money/ gifts from strangers is that it goes directly against our teachings of not accepting candy from smiling strangers. And I keep telling them kids day in and day out, not to take sweets from strangers. Not to follow someone who says Mama is calling them. And so on.
This also bothers me because it means we're bringing up our kids to be inherently distrustful. That the default setting is that a stranger is untrustworthy, dangerous. This goes against my grain because I'm a rather trusting person myself. I've let all sorts of people into my home, readers who don't blog and so on. I've had good experiences and bad, but I wouldn't change that for the world.
I realise this is yet another reason I hang around working from home when my babies are soon to be 7 and 9. Because I want them to be independent and I want to watch them make decisions, while I watch from afar.
They know that they're not to open the door if Mama is in the toilet. Not to answer the phone and say that Mama is not home. But if I am home, they answer the door while I stand a few feet away and watch them engage with strangers. I watch them cross the road. I let them buy groceries from the neighbourhood store and bring home correct change. And I know I can only do this because I am watching them with a hawk's eye. Ready to swoop in, in case of danger.
Had I left them at a daycare, they'd not be allowed this engaging with strangers. Had I left them home with a maid I'd give very strict instructions that they're not to answer the door, mess around in the kitchen, or do anything that required the maid's judgment and quick thinking. I just would not be able to trust anyone else to make that judgment call.
As the years go by and examine by choices and parenting, the layers peel away and I realise things that I haven't been able to articulate earlier. For now, this small simple act of letting them trust others while their mother watches on, is an important one for me.
A week or two ago the Bean accepted and signed for a courier for me. I watched her run her finger down the sheet, find my name and sign carefully. The delivery guy looked at me in puzzlement, wondering why I hadn't bothered to do anything, leaving the child to painstakingly drag a chair to the door, ask who he was, open the latch, climb down and sign and then climb up to lock up again.
I think teaching them nuance was important. You can talk to people, you can get to know them, as long as Mama or Dada is close by. We're such a generation of harried, helicopter parents, hovering around and not giving our kids room to grow and build their own equations with the world around them. It's a delicate balance and I can't claim to have found it, but for now, this works for me.


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Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call
Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call
Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call
Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call
To the thumping beats of Parliament's "Give Up The Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)," a giant claw on Friday afternoon dug into the building that had once held one of Twin Peaks Mall's original anchors, Sears, and began ripping into the building.
A crowd of more than 300 turned out for what the property owner, NewMark Merrill Mountain States, euphemistically called a "groundbreaking" for Village at the Peaks, which will replace Twin Peaks Mall.
But a traditional groundbreaking — ceremonial, shiny golden shovels turning deep-brown, virgin earth to symbolize a new beginning — wasn't what the audience was there to see. They were there for destruction.
The owners did not disappoint.
One young woman won a raffle prize of being the first to take a turn at operating the giant excavator. She earned a few cheers, bringing down small sections of bricks. But the real cheering began when the professionals took over, ripping down entire sections of wall to expose the steel framing and duct work inside.
"It's been a very long journey to get to this point, and like climbing any great mountain you sometimes don't feel like you're ever going to get to the top," said NewMark Merrill's Allen Ginsborg, the company's managing director and principal and its point person on the nearly $90 million redevelopment project.
He had a lot of thanks to go around, from city officials and the Longmont City Council, most of whom were present, to his own team of dozens of people that worked to put the public-private partnership together that is allowing the redevelopment to happen.
The city of Longmont has committed $27.5 million to the project, which it will recoup through the increased tax revenue generated.
Ginsborg said when the mall is up and running, it is anticipated to generate more than $175 million a year in taxable revenue.
"That's more than twice what the mall did in its best years and it only had one of those years," Ginsborg said.
Mayor Dennis Coombs thanked Ginsborg and his team for having the "guts" to see the project through, even though at times it wasn't the smoothest road.
The majority of Village at the Peaks is scheduled to be open by the 2015 holiday shopping season. It will be anchored by Whole Foods, Sam's Club and a new Regal Theatre. Other announced tenants include Gold's Gym, Wyatt's Total Beverage, and restaurants The Melt, Bad Daddy's Burger Bar and Parry's Pizza.
Twin Peaks Mall opened in August 1985 but had been declining rapidly in sales tax revenues and number of tenants in recent years. Several years ago the mall was declared blighted, and the Longmont Urban Renewal Authority — ostensibly the city council — has been working since then to find a private developer willing to partner on a redevelopment.
NewMark Merrill Mountain States bought the mall out of foreclosure in February of 2012 for $8.5 million.
Contact Times-Call staff writer Tony Kindelspire at 303-684-5291 or email@example.com


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As we all know, Apple's new "Get A Mac" campaign has been making waves, both good and bad, since it started airing a couple of months ago on TV and making its rounds on the web. One of the more recent ads, titled "Touché" features our favorite two actors (the "Mac" and the "PC") bantering about how the PC can run Windows, but the Mac can run OS X... and Windows. The PC then declares "touché," to which the Mac decides that he is making improper use of the term since the PC had never made a point to begin with for the Mac to counter-point. Touché, Mac guy, touché.
Anyway. The "Touché" ad used to make note in small type at the bottom of the screen that in order for the snarky Mac guy—er, your Mac—to run Windows, that merely "Purchase of Windows XP required," which most people assumed to imply that Apple wanted you to use their own Boot Camp. However, the folks over at MacObserver have observed (*chuckle*) that the ad seems to have changed, with the reference in the ad changing from a generic "Windows required" message to Windows and Parallels! (MacObserver seems to believe that the ad originally said Boot Camp, but many readers disagree.) The Get A Mac website also has references to Parallels on it.
While it's always been well-known ever since Boot Camp was originally announced that Apple had plans to incorporate such technology into the next major release of OS X, Leopard, this new heavy pimping of Parallels is taking some of us by surprise. At the very least, the strong relationship seems to indicate some sort of partnership between the two companies, even if the partnership is only for mutual publicity, but it could possibly mean much more. It seems like Apple is pushing Parallels very heavily lately, even over Boot Camp, which makes some Mac fans wonder whether Apple may have a Parallels-like solution up their sleeves coming up soon. Some of our Ars staff, however, believes that to be untrue, as Apple doesn't often like to pimp non-Apple products (particularly software) unless Apple has no plans for duplicating their efforts. While many have wished for Apple to create their own virtualization software for Windows, perhaps Apple believes that Parallels has already done a bang-up job and thinks that the two companies can help each other out.
Do our readers have any thoughts as to whether Apple's infatuation with Parallels indicates partnership, or secret sabotage?


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NOVATEL WIRELESS - VERIZON MIFI JETPACK (4620L) - 0GB - BLACK - GRADE B - (LOCKED - VERIZON) - This is a Grade B device. These devices will have slight signs of wear. All devices have been put through our Future Dial system and will have at least 80% battery capacity and be fully functional. You will receive the device, along with a charging cube and cable.
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I am no longer quite the Russophile that I once was, but I still think a bit about Mother Russia every once in a while. I believe it was while I was turning over in my mind the words 'all Rus' from the commemoration of Patriarch Kiril in the liturgy this morning that I thought of one of my favourite poems from my Russophile days. In his wonderful anthology, The Heritage of Russian Verse, Sir Dimitri Obolensky included two pieces by a minor poet named Maximilian Voloshin (1877-1932). The second is entitled 'Святая Русь', or 'Holy Russia'. Here is Obolensky's 'plain prose translation' arranged into lines roughly reflecting the Russian verses, with a few interesting words from the Russian in brackets:
Was it not for you that Suzdal' and Moscow
gathered the land apanage by apanage,
collected gold in a tightly packed bag,
stored up a dowry in their coffers,
and reared you as a bride
in a narrow [расписном], frescoed tower-room [терему]?
Was it not for you that the Carpenter-Tsar [Плотник-Царь]
built by the sources of rivers a spacious house,
with windows looking out on to the five seas of the earth?
With your beauty and warlike strength
were you not the most desirable of brides
for the sons of foreign princes?
But from childhood you had a liking
for wooden hermitages [скитов] deep in the forests,
for trackless lands of nomads in the steppes,
for free open spaces, for ascetics' chains,
for pretenders, felons, and unfrocked monks,
for the whistling of Nightingale the Robber [Соловьиный посвист], and for prisons. [1]
You did not want to belong to the Tsar,
and this is the way things turned out:
the enemy whispered: 'Scatter and squander,
give away your treasure to the rich,
your power to slaves, your strength to your enemies,
to villeins your honour, to traitors your keys.'
You lent your ear to the evil counsel,
you gave yourself to the robber and to the felon,
you set fire to your suburbs and crops,
you laid waste your ancient dwelling-place,
and you went out humiliated and a beggar,
and the slave of the meanest slave.
Shall I dare cast a stone at you?
Shall I condemn your wild and passionate flame?
Shall I not bow down [поклонюсь] before you with my face in the mud,
blessing the trace of your bare foot,
you homeless, wanton, drunken
Russia—fool in Christ [во Христе юродивая Русь]! [2]
I never bothered to learn anything about Voloshin beyond Obolensky's brief note that he was 'a Symbolist...chiefly remarkable for his poems inspired by the Revolution which he hated and feared, but accepted as part of Russia's spiritual destiny.' [3] However, for the sake of this post I decided to consult Evelyn Bristol's chapter on the years 1895-1925 for The Cambridge History of Russian Literature. Here is what I found:
The minor poet Maximilian Voloshin (real name: Kirienko-Voloshin, 1877-1932) grew up in the Crimea and was later expelled from Moscow University for political activity. After spending several months in Siberia he went to Paris to continue his education, and there fell under the influence of José-Maria de Heredia for his own work. After travelling extensively in Mediterranean countries, he published a collection of poetry in Russia in 1910. Though his poems are often responses to such particular geographical locations as Paris, the Mediterranean, or the Crimea, they are characteristically intimate reflections on broad cultural themes, incorporating frequent allusions to myths, history, and biblical events. he could create memorable scens of the bleak coastal heights of the Crimea, and he knew the value of small but telling details. His overall philosophy was pessimistic from the start, however.
After experiencing the First World War, the revolution of 1917 and the ensuing civil war, Voloshin wrote anti-militaristic works of which the most popular was Deaf-Mute Demons (Demony glukhonemye, 1919), which dealt with the violence and atrocities then afflicting contemporary Russia. He moved permanently to the Crimea, to Koktebel, where his house became a refuge for friends of all political and literary stripes and his poetry was infused with Christian mysticism and a new sense of mission. After 1923, however, he could no longer publish. [4]
[1] Obolensky has a footnote on 'Nightingale the Robber' which reads, 'A fantastic creature of Russian heroic poetry, half bird, half man.'
[2] Sir Dimitri Obolensky, ed., The Heritage of Russian Verse (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U, 1976), pp. 257-8.
[3] Ibid., p. xxii.
[4] Evelyn Bristol, 'Turn of a century: modernism, 1895-1925', The Cambridge History of Russian Literature, rev. ed., ed. Charles A. Moser (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 1995), p. 425.


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LAS VEGAS: One was not enough. Less than 20 months after the debut of the first Cirque du Soliel show paying tribute Michael Jackson, comes the second: "Michael Jackson ONE." Cirque president Daniel Lamarre said he'd planned two Jackson-inspired shows "from the first day we got the rights from the (Jackson) estate," with the first production, "Immortal," delivering a stadium-sized touring concert and "ONE" a more intimate affair – something closer to what Cirque du Soliel usually serves up. It's a multimedia extravaganza that often flies high, but never loses sight of its inspiration.
Saturday's world premiere attracted celebrities including musician Justin Bieber, as well as actors Neil Patrick Harris, Allison Janney and Alfre Woodard. Also in attendance were Michael Jackson's brothers Marlon, Tito and Jackie, the latter noting that most of the Jackson family would be inside the theater for the premiere except for Michael's daughter Paris, who, on June 5, was taken by ambulance from her family's home and hospitalized.
"She's going to be OK," Jackie Jackson said. "She's getting better."
The brothers said even less when asked about the family's wrongful-death lawsuit against concert promoter AEG Live, which the family claims hired Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted of involuntary manslaughter for Michael Jackson's 2009 death.
"We can't elaborate on that, because it's still ongoing," replied Marlon Jackson.
Following a dramatic week of courtroom testimony surrounding the death of Michael Jackson, the brothers seemed relieved to be revisiting Michael's life and work.
"ONE" "is all about the music" said Marlon Jackson. "This is part of giving back and sharing his legacy."
"ONE" also gives Cirque another crack at producing the ultimate Jackson tribute show.
Some heavyweight media outlets gave "Immortal" lukewarm reviews (The Hollywood Reporter, and the Los Angeles Times among them), and even Cirque president Lamarre admitted the production was being "tweaked" throughout its North American run.
"ONE" director Jamie King commented, "I think the questions with ('Immortal') was, `Was there enough Cirque? Was there enough Michael' There's where the confusion (was)."
"ONE" is very different," continued Lamarre. "It's a total immersion. So, people are going to dive into the universe of Michael Jackson."
Despite mixed reviews and initial production problems, "Immortal" was a box-office smash. According to Forbes, it was the highest-grossing tour in the United States in 2011 and the second-highest in 2012. By the time it traveled overseas, Lamarre said, "Immortal" was greatly improved and, "I cannot wait to bring back `Immortal' (to North America) for people to realize how good a show it is now."
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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This post summarizes my first experiences with Google maps turn by turn navigation. Please note that turn by turn is not supported in UK, not even as beta!
I took for a ride a hacked version of US Google maps application running on Motorola Milestone. It runs very smooth, you can use all Google maps power when searching, including post code search, which can't be done using Motonav. That's a great plus!
I have played with different destinations and every time Google was able to give me very reasonable routes – another advantage over Motonav, which tends to force me into congested streets in town centres. Google navigation reacted very fast to all mistakes on the road with almost immediate route recalculations. So far, so good.
After about 20 minutes of cruising in neighbourhood I understood why Google decided to block Maps Mavigation in UK – it cannot navigate here. Literally. It's impossible to drive using voice commands given by the navigation – it lost some turns and remaining ones were told when I was in the middle of cross roads when I had no chances of turning. To get the directions right, I had to look on the screen all the time and even though navigation wasn't easy since there are no icons displayed to show what to do next. The map itself is easly readble though.
You may also forget about roundabout notifications – with Google you don't take second exit, you just drive straight through cross roads. It's far from we all got used to.
I wish I could finish my list of complains now, but there are still two thing I must mention – both small but annoying. According to Google Navigation most of the time you drive on unknown road, which is quite strange as road names are correctly displayed on map.
Last quirk I've noticed is the most terrible voice I ever heard in any navigation (and I have tested quite a lot of them). Google decided to use Text-to-speech synthesis, which isn't very good. The voice is absolutely artificial, it reminded me early TTSs I used to play with ten years ago. And I think most of them knew how to read "road" – definitely it should not be read as "hawl".
I will be waiting for new updates to Google Navigation. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Google will turn its Navigation in really usable product. But I think I will stay with Garmin for next year or two.


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Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica
San Antonio Winery: Wine tasting, 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Free tasting of three wines from select list. Artisan wine flight of four wines from Riboli Family Estate and around the world. Cost $12. Free tour daily of Los Angeles' only producing winery. 737 Lamar St., Los Angeles. 323-223-1401. www.sanantoniowinery.com
Silverlake Wine: Wine tasting, 3-5 p.m. Sunday. Four wines plus one aperitif. Cost $20. Reservations required. Wine tasting and food truck, 5-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday. Three wines, no reservation required. Food truck out front. Cost $12. 2395 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles. 323-662-9024. www.silverlakewine.com
Colorado Wine Company: Wine tasting, 1-4 p.m. Sunday. Four wines. Cost $12. 2305 Colorado Blvd., Los Angeles. 323-478-1985. www.cowineco.com
Café del Rey: Wine dinner, 7-9 p.m. Thursday. Five-course meal from Executive Chef Chuck Abair, and varietals from Jordan Winery. Cost $135. 4451 Admiralty Way, Marina del Rey. 310-823-6395. www.cafedelreymarina.com
Napa Valley Grille: Wine Dinner, 6 p.m. Wednesday. Five-course seasonally inspired dinner, with wines from Gauthier Select Vineyards. Cost $85. 1100 Glendon Avenue, Los Angeles. 310-824-3322. www.napavalleygrille.com/westwood
BevMo: Beer and Wine Tasting, 4-7 p.m. Friday and 2-5 p.m. Saturday. Cost $2. 7100 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, 310-882-6971; 3212 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, 310-453-5600; 10984 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, 310-473-9600; 330 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, 310-855-0169. www.BevMo.com
The Wine House: Wine tasting, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday. 32 wines. Cost $1-$5. 2311 Cotner Ave., Los Angeles. 424-253-8068. www.winehouse.com
Rosso Wine Shop: Wine tasting, 5-8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Three wines. Cost $10. 3459½ N. Verdugo Road, Glendale. 818-330-9130. www.rossowineshop.com
Total Wine & More: Wine tasting, 1-7 p.m. Friday, noon-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Cost 10 cents. 19336 Nordhoff St., Northridge, 818-700-0130; 394 N. Moorpark Road, Thousand Oaks, 805-494-0108. www.totalwine.com
Mission Wines: Wine tasting, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Friday, noon-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Three wines Sunday-Friday, five wines Saturday. Cost $15. 1114 Mission St., South Pasadena. 866-367-9463. www.missionwines.com
Woodland Hills Wine Company: Wine tasting, 2-6 p.m. Saturday. Two flights. Flight 1 Theme: New Arrival Rosés: Part #5. Cost $16. Flight 2 Theme: Meritage Madness. Cost $34. 22622 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills. 818-222-1111. www.whwc.com
The WineYard: Wine tasting, 4:30-6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Cost $10. 1948 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd, Thousand Oaks. 805-230-2773. www.wineyardinc.com
Inland Valley area
Pacific Wine Merchants: Wine tasting, 6-8 p.m. Friday. Five wines. Cost $16. 210 A St., Upland. 909-946-6782. www.pacificwinemerchants.com
Joseph Filippi Vineyards & Winery: Wine tasting, noon-6 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday, noon-7 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Five wines. Cost $5-$15. 12367 Base Line Road, Rancho Cucamonga. 909-899-9196. www.josephfilippiwinery.com
Galleano Winery: Wine tasting, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Five tastes. Cost $5. 4231 Wineville Road, Mira Loma. 951-360-9180. www.galleanowinery.com
Foot Path Winery: Wine tasting, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Choose and taste six of 17 red wines. Cost $10. 36650 Glenoaks Road, Temecula. 951-265-9951. www.footpathwinery.com
Total Wine & More: Wine tasting, 1-7 p.m. Friday, noon-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Cost 10 cents. 8201 Day Creek Blvd., Rancho Cucamonga, 909-463-5670. www.totalwine.com
South Bay area
WineShoppe: Wine tasting, 5-8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. Six wines. Cost $15. 2733 Pacific Coast Highway, Suite D, Torrance. 310-539-1055. www.wineshoppe.net
Bacchus Wine Made Simple: Wine tasting, 1-7 p.m. Thursday, 1-8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 1-6 p.m. Sunday. Five wines. Cost $10. 1000 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach. 310-372-2021. www.bacchuswinesla.com
Total Wine & More: Wine tasting, 1-7 p.m. Friday, noon-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Cost 10 cents. 1505 Hawthorne Blvd., Redondo Beach, 310-542-1460. www.totalwine.com
Long Beach area
The Wine Crush: Wine tasting, 4-8 p.m. Friday, 1-8 p.m. Saturday. Theme: Barbecue Wines. Cost $20. 3131 E. Broadway, Long Beach. 562-438-9463. www.thewinecrush.com
The Wine Country: Wine tasting, 4:30-6:45 p.m. Thursday. Theme: Domestic White Wines You Haven't Had in a While. Cost $10. Wine tasting seminar, 7:30-9:30 p.m. Friday. Theme: Andy's Australian Adventure. Cost $40. Reservations only. Wine tasting, 1-4 p.m. Saturday. Theme: A Passion for Piedmont. Cost $20. 2301 Redondo Ave., Signal Hill. 562-597-8303. www.thewinecountry.com
Send information about wine and beer tasting events to Mike Petersen at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Posts From April 2009
Elijah BerleFoundation flow rider Elijah Berle shreds. Looks for his part in "Recipe for Happiness" and take a look at his latest interview for proof.
Posted April 30th, 2009 by Sinclair
Nuge CoverNuge got the cover on the June 2009 Thrasher. Yeah Nuge!
Posted April 29th, 2009 by Sinclair
A Day with DuffelDuffel is healing from his recent broken wing, here is what he has been up too.
Posted April 28th, 2009 by Sinclair
Read/Write Comments - (12 Comments)
Into the future with Angel RamierezAngel is in Colordao doing big things......
Posted April 28th, 2009 by Sinclair
Nick PalmquistFoundation flow rider Nick Palmquist has the weekly image over at Skate Daily.
Posted April 27th, 2009 by Sinclair
David Reyes / RVCA tour updateCheck out what David and the rest of the RVCA team are up too right here....
David sets up a new board while he looses his wallet.
Posted April 27th, 2009 by Sinclair
Just another weekendin Colorado with Angel
Posted April 24th, 2009 by Sinclair
Read/Write Comments - (14 Comments)
Digital DuffelThrasher Magazine just posted this of Corey. Check it
Posted April 21st, 2009 by Sinclair
Elijah BerleFoundation flow rider Elijah Berle is filming last minute Recipe for Happiness clips. The premiere is this weekend. Check the trailer.
Posted April 20th, 2009 by Sinclair
Claw Your Way To The Top in a Week!Well it has not happened in 20 years. Maybe this little self help book will make it happen in a week. That's what the cover says.
Note: Original Linnell semi nude in background as well as my boss, Transmissionator keep a close eye on my daily activities.
Get to work!
Posted April 16th, 2009 by swankzine
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AngelAngel is in celebration mode.... tomorrow he is headed back to Colorado to skate with the homies. In a few weeks he will be joined by David and Abdias and Joe from Thrasher. Good times
Check the steez
Posted April 15th, 2009 by Sinclair
Keep on Rollingthe Foundation box set ... Kicking Ass 20 Years...Keep on Rolling
Posted April 15th, 2009
Read/Write Comments - (2 Comments)
Metro Board Shop's Duffel Photoshop ContestTo celebrate the arrival of Corey Duffel's new Venture Trucks, Metro Board Shop in Concord, CA is having a photoshop contest. This is your chance to win an autographed Foundation complete, Duffel's new Venture trucks and Pig Pro wheels... And a $100 shopping spree at Metro! You don't have to live in California to compete, but you do need a Myspace!
Visit Metro's Myspace Blog for the details. www.myspace.com/metroboardshop
Posted April 14th, 2009 by jnut
David Reyes updateThis breaking news just came in...
Posted April 13th, 2009 by Sinclair
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Flow TrashHeaded out to La to meet up with Foundation flow rider Vic Zanoni
Posted April 13th, 2009 by Sinclair
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Social sluts!Yea that's right. We are working the new marketing vehicle of the decade. Whatever.
Will you be our friend!?!
Posted April 10th, 2009 by swankzine
New mini at the HQ!Finally! What a bunch of slackers. Been in storage for a few years. It's out now. It's not a 20,000 sq ft TF or Fantasy Factory but it is 16' wide and 5.5' tall!
Sweet. Let the shred begin.
Posted April 10th, 2009 by swankzine
Good Friday at the HQWhat a bunch of slackers! Get to work.
Shipper Shawn is undefeated in the strong arm contest. Think you can beat him? Come on down to TYHQ and give it a go. Free deck to beaters.
Here he is about to take Sales Master, James down.
Here he is about to take Sales Master, James down.
Posted April 10th, 2009 by swankzine
DuffelSomething does not look right here. Give your best wishes to Corey Duffel for a speedy recovery.
Posted April 9th, 2009 by Sinclair
Best Fricking Skate Tool Ever!Thought it wasn't biatch. Eight stinking tools in one including the industries only "self aligning" axle threader. And it's not gargantuan and can roll in your pocket. Available in designer red or black.
Rated #1 by the Professional Skateboarder FSU Guild.
Posted April 8th, 2009 by swankzine
Read/Write Comments - (7 Comments)
Guess Who
Posted April 6th, 2009 by Sinclair
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Sorry for being a dick!WTF?!? I didn't approve this! Ed and the Toy Machine crew pulling a fast one on me. I mean I can admit being a dick here and there but jeez featuring me in international skate mags is cut! My life is over for sure.
Whatever... I'm siked Leo Romero is on Toy Machine so I let Ed slide this time. Congratulations Leo, Ed and the TM posse.
Posted April 6th, 2009 by swankzine


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Who would have thought that cheese was made up of so much artisanry, knowledge, commitment and love?
Ingredients are heated to promote growth of the bacteria. Starter cultures are chosen to give a cheese its specific characteristics.
Curdling is the separation of the liquids (whey) from the solids (curds) throught the addition of the fermenting agent.
This process if to eliminate the whey (liquid) from the curd (solid). Proper draining is vital to attain the correct moisture content in
the cheese.
Some soft cheeses won't need to be pressed with any weight, but harder cheese must be pressed over time to make it even drier.
The final step is to age the cheese over time in a climate-controlled space. Aging allows the bacteria to produce more flavour and for a natural rind to develop.


text:
I have officially moved my blog away from blogs.lt.vt.edu to my own website: hazyblue.me, which eventually will host not only my blog, but also my teaching philosophy, CV and other professional- related tidbits. I hope that everyone will follow me over to the dark-side as I continue to write about education, technology and talking cows. I would especially like to hear feedback on my latest post (inspired by the likes of Janet Murray and Alfred Whitehead), but since I haven't set up a commenting system yet, please respond via your own blog, a tweet, or an email directly to me!
Tag Archives: vtclis13
Making Space
How to go about creating a space that facilitates learning? As we learned from Morningstar and Farmer, there is a danger of over-designing the space and often the users don't end up using the space in the way the designer intended. So we shouldn't over-design. But there should probably be some kind of structure, right? Or why create the space at all? – my brain
These are some of the thoughts that were going through my head as I set out to plan my final project. Throughout the semester a common focus of mine has been the lack of a space in my own field (Electrical & Computer Engineering) to facilitate making connections between the work that goes on in the department, both teaching and research, and the outside world.
I also became interested in many of the ideas Ivan Illich presented in chapter 6 of "Descooling Society". Specifically, how would we go about creating a network to facilitate skill exchange and peer matching? Once we have a peer-to-peer network of learners, what role does an "elder" have, and how does one become an elder?
I began by looking at some exiting peer networks and online communities that I have had either direct or indirect involvement in to see how they addressed the questions of structure, but in the space itself, and any imposed structure between peers that imposes some sort of hierarchy, or the notion of an "elder".
1 The Linux Kernel
It has been several decades since Linus Torvalds' original announcement of his new operating system:
From: firstname.lastname@example.com (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? Summary: small poll for my new operating system Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT Organization: University of Helsinki Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
since that time the Linux kernel project has grown to be the largest collaborative endeavor in the history of computing. According to one measure, there were 1,316 developers involved with the version 3.2 release, each contributing an average of 10,935 lines of code to the project. The clip found on the linxfoundation's website summarizes how this tremendous feat is possible:
There is a fairly simple and effective hierarchy in place: individual developers submit patches to senior kernel developer who in turn review and sign off on patches before sending onward to Linus Torvalds for final approval. This is the most dictatorship-like model of any of the networks I looked at, but I think it makes a lot of sense. The stability and usefulness of the Linux kernel depends on all 15 million lines of code working well with one another, a more ad-hoc "allow everyone to contribute, fix errors later" method such as the one embodied by wikipedia probably wouldn't be effective for this project. It's worth noting that the rather strict structure doesn't prevent people from maintaining and contributing to forks of the kernel other than the one maintained by Torvalds. In fact, up until recently, Google maintained its own fork of the kernel for it's Android operating system.
2 github.com
The versioning control tool
git was created by the Linux development community in response to changes in the relationship between the open source community and the company responsible for BitKeeper, the versioning control system used up until 20051. A versioning control system and
git in particular, gives developers a powerful tool with which to track changes to software projects and facilitates collaboration by automating to the extent possible, the work-flow required to review changes made by contributors and merge them into one version. But to become a contributor, or find open source projects of interest, you need to know where to look. GitHub provides a hosting service for projects using the
git revision control system as well as some social-networking features to help users connect with developers and projects that interest them. Users create profiles, much like they would on other social networking sites, but rather than posts about current gastronomic adventures, GitHub generates feeds of updates and changes made to various software projects.
There isn't really a notion of a uniform social hierarchy, as everyone is the maintainer of their own project, and may act as contributor to any other project. Individual projects may be "trending" or "featured" depending on activity.
3 stackoverflow.com
Still on the geek theme, stackoverflow is an invaluable resource to many software developers, novice or advanced. Organized into a question and answer format, anyone can post a question or an answer and the site provides tools to improve the quality of questions and up-vote helpful answers. There is a notion of currency, called "reputation", that members earn through participating on the site. Gaining reputation can unlock certain privileges that are not available to all users. With enough reputation, individuals can be elevated to moderator status, a role I would associate with Illich's notion of an "elder".
4 couchsurfing.org
Up until this point the sites I've surveyed have been what we would generally refer to "virtual" spaces. The communities and interactions exist primarily in cyberspace. Couchsurfing is a bit different. At its core it is a network of travelers who open their homes to other travelers to provide a uniquely personal and rewarding experience not available from hotels or other travel industry offerings. It is focused on helping people explore the world by connecting with other people in a particular geographic area, remote or local, so many of the interactions take place in the "real" world. However, a thriving virtual community is also an integral part of the couchsurfing experience in the form of discussion forums organized into groups of free formed topics ranging from geographic areas, to helping each other learn new languages, to everything in between.
One of the first questions asked by couch surfing skeptics is "is it safe"? There seems to be a common fear among those who do not couchsurf that most strangers are creeps who would sooner steal your wallet than let you stay for free on their couch. While most of those who join couchsurfing do so because they naturally have a more optimistic view of humanity, safety is a high priority and a clear set of community guidelines are published to help ensure everyone has a safe, enjoyable experience.
Most importantly though, is the system of references in place that enable members to rate the experience they had with other members. References themselves do not directly lead to any increased privileges in the community: members are free to use the information as they see fit. Some opt to only host or otherwise connect with people who have received a lot of positive references while others will accept hosts or guests with few or no references. I have never come across a profile with negative references. I suspect that this is not because there are no negative experiences (in fact I have heard of a couple from witnesses), but that people with negative references don't last long in the community. While there are many people who would help those new members who do not have any references yet, I think few would choose to welcome someone who has violated the spirit of couchsurfing in some way.
Separate but related to the reference system is the vouching system. This is a more formalized approach to building trust networks and is a more integral part of the structure of the site in that being vouched for can grant certain privileges, namely, the ability to vouch for others. Unlike references, vouching is intended to ONLY apply to people who have met face-to-face, though the enforcement of that rule is left to the community itself.
5 illichvillich.net
The greatest challenge I have faced in the creation of a space for learning has been to identify which aspects of the previously mentioned successful virtual communities should be integrated, and how. At its core, the inspiration came from my understanding of the role english coffee houses played in the 17th and 18th century. While the idea of gathering around a particular beverage was not unknown at the time, the precursor to coffee was ale and along with the switch from a depressant to a stimulant also came a marked change in the intellectual culture surrounding these popular gather spots. People from all walks of life were able to mingle and share ideas and the space became an intellectual breeding ground separate, but connected with the universities of the time. I can only imagine that without any set curriculum the topics of discussion varied greatly with the interest of the participants and the local events of the time.
It goes without saying then (and yet, here I am, saying it), that topics must be defined and controlled by the members. But I don't want to create yet another forum site.
Of the four networks defined by Illich to enable his vision of a deschooled society:
- Reference Services to Educational Objects
- Skill Exchanges
- Peer-Matching
- Reference Services to Educators-at-Large
I was most interested in building a Skill Exchange and Peer-Matching network. I feel that if I can create a space that is successful in that goal, the two "Reference Services" networks should follow organically, as it seems the primary challenge there is collecting the information, there are already well defined implementations of "reference services".
On the face of it, implementing a skill exchange and peer-matching network is just a matter of defining a data structure that can associate a set of skills with a particular individual and then an algorithm that will match people who have mutual skill-learning interests. That's the easy part. The challenge, which was brought up during the final presentation day, is that most people are probably not going to want to spend any amount of time entering individual skills and interests they have and those they want to learn. Ideally all a user would need to provide are links to existing blogging and micro-blogging feeds, in which case we would need an algorithm that would parse content that is already being created by each user to determine skill sets and interests. This is the challenge, and a complete lexicographic analysis is well beyond my current knowledge of algorithm design. What would be relatively straight forward is grabbing tags from existing structured feeds that provide that information. It would still depend on self-reporting, but ideally self-reporting that is already being done anyway.
The real challenge has been to figure out what more to do. What I have mentioned so far would be useful, but not particularly unique. In fact, couchsurfing already has a notion of "Learn, Teach, Share" built into the profiles, though the system doesn't really facilitate searching for people based on that information. The more I have talked with Illich enthusiasts, the more it becomes clear that the real potential lies in creating more of a platform for exploring ideas, rather than just a repository of information. The last brainstorming session I had quickly turned from the details of setting up a skill exchange network to the much more difficult questions of
- how is a unit of information stored?
- who decides what a unit of information is?
- how are individual units of information connected with one another?
- how does a user effectively navigate a space of interconnected units of information?
- how does a user track their personal path through a network of information nodes?
- how does a user share their path through a network of information nodes?
- who writes the information nodes?
- should nodes have structural support for quizzes/practice exercises to help learners decide if they have mastered a particular topic well enough to move on to another?
And then implementation details involved with all of those are of course somewhat overwhelming at this point.
I plan to have another brainstorming session tonight, with a different group of hackers and see were these ideas lead. In the mean time, I will continue to get a working implementation of a basic skill-matching network up at illichvillich.net, just as soon as I'm finished posting final grades.
And Now You're an Anstronaut: Open Source Treks to The Final Frontier
There have been a couple of blog posts recently referencing the recent switch NASA made from Windows to Debian 6, a GNU/Linux distribution, as the OS running on the laptops abord the International Space Station. It's worth noting that Linux is no stranger to the ISS, as it has been a part of ground control operations since the beginning.
The reasons for the space-side switch are quoted as
…we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable — one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust, or adapt, we could.
This is satisfying to many Open Source/Linux fans in it's own right: a collaborative open source project has once again proved itself more stable and reliable for the (relatively) extrodinary conditions of low Earth orbit than a product produced by a major software giant. Plus one for open source collaboration and peer networks!
But theres another reason to be excited. And it's a reason that would not necessarily applied (mostly) to, say, Apple fanatics had NASA decided to switch to OS X instead of Debian. And that reason has to do with the collaborative nature of the open source movement, codified in many open source licenses under which the software is released. Linux, and the GNU tools, which together make up a fully functional operating system, are released under the GNU General Public License. Unlike many licenses used for commersial software, the GPL esures that software licenses under its terms remains free for users to use,modify and redistribute. There are certainly some strong criticisms and ongoing debate regarding some key aspects of the GPL, especially version 3, the point of contention mostly lies in what is popularly called the "viral" effect of the license: that modified and derived work must also be released under the same license. The GPL might not be appropriate for every developer and every project, but it codifies the spirit of open source software in a way that is agreeable with many developers and users.
So what does this all mean in terms of NASA's move? We already know that they chose GNU/Linux for its reliability and stability over alternatives, but that doesn't mean it's completely bug free, or will always work perfectly with every piece of hardware, which after all is another reason for the switch: no OS will be completely bug free or always work with all hardware, but at least Debian gives NASA the flexibility of making improvements themselves. And there in lies the reason for excitement. While there is no requirement that NASA redistribute their own modified versions of the software, there is no reason to assume they wouldn't in most cases, and if they do, it will be redistributed under the same license. It's certainly realistic to expect they will be directing a lot of attention to making the Linux kernel, and the GNU tools packaged with Debian even more stable and more reliable, and those improvements will make their way back into the general distributions that we all use. This means better hardware support for all GNU/Linux users in the future!
And of course it works both ways. Any bug fixes you make and redistribute may make their way back to the ISS, transforming humanity's thirst for exploring "the final frontier" into a truly collaborative and global endeavor.
Something Funny about School (Part 1)
In the last "adult" class of the semester the reading du jour was Scott McCloud's "Time Frames", a comic about comics. Specifically, how the passage of time, including motion, are depicted in the medium. The discussion that started as we talked about the gap in between frames of a comic got me thinking…
Sometime in the not-so-distant past…
As Scholars are Wont to do: Poetry of the brachristochrone problem
Time is an important dimension to consider when tracing the path of a media-represented concept. This is a theme that has stuck with me since reading Brenda Laurel's "The Six Elements and Causal Relations Among Them" and coming across this brilliant bit of prose:
As scholars are wont to do, I will blame the vagaries of translation, figurative language, and mutations introduced by centuries of interpretation for this apparent lapse and proceed to advocate my own view. – Brenda Laurel, "The Six Elements and Causal Relations Among Them"
Which, should be noted, already inspired a previous post.
The particular idea that Laurel was referring to was one first explored by Aristotle over 2000 years prior, and I was struck with the eerie feeling of being transported into a conversation spanning millennia as well as minds. Like Michelangelo chipping away at a block of marble to reveal the sculpture hidden within, poets and philosophers carve away at the layers of representation in an attempt to reveal the essence of a concept encased within.
It occurred to me that the same process is occurring in the sciences as well, although usually the bricks of representation1 are mathematical symbols rather than linguistic. In a moment of serendipity, while I was musing over the conversation of this morning's class, I opened a book on Nonlinear Geometric Control Theory that, a few weeks back, I had checked out of the library on a whim. If the title means little to you, rest assure, it does me as well. This is not a topic I am too familiar with, but for a reason I can not fully explain, ever since I was introduced very briefly to differential forms in a real analysis class I suspected that the language of differential geometry had the potential for elegant representations of optimal control problems. Low and behold, I opened this book and immediately saw a paper in which the authors, Sussmann and Willems, explored several representations of the brachistochrone problem, concluding with a differential-geometric approach that they claimed as the most elegant thus far.
The brachristochrone problem
In 1696, Johann Bernoulli asked a question that has become a classical problem used as motivating example for calculus of variations and rears its head again in optimal control2:
Given two points A and B in a vertical plane, what is the curve traced out by a point acted on only by gravity, which starts at A and reaches B in the shortest time. – The bracristochrone problem
The problem itself is older than Bernoulli: Galileo had conducted his own exploration in 1638 and incorrectly deduce the solution to be the arc of a circle.3 Bernoulli's revitalization of the question is what led to the first correct answer, that the solution is a cycloid.
Sussmann and Willems summarize the various solutions to the problem as follows:
- Johann Bernoulli's own solution based on an analogy with geometrical optics,
- the solution based on the classical calculus of variations,
- the optimal control method,
and, finally,
- the differential-geometric approach
– Sussmann & Willems
[place holder for a more in-depth summary…ran out of time tonight]
They demonstrate how each successive method refines the solution space and eliminates unnecessary assumptions to approach what could be considered the essence of the problem itself. They end with the differential-geometric approach with the claim that it is thus far the best at elegantly capturing the problem, but it hardly seems like this will be the final word on such a well traveled challenge.
So it seems the path the poet takes in exploring the nature of life is not all that dissimilar from the path the mathematician, scientist or engineer takes, only the tools differ, and even then, the difference is often over stated. They are all just different colors of bricks1.
Footnotes and References
1 David, write about your brick analogy so I have something to link to!
2 worthy of an entirely separate post: through my digging around for more details about the brachistochrone problem I discovered a paper discussing it as a Large Context Problem, an approach to education that is of extreme interest to me that I now have a name for!
3 The brachristochrone problem
Sussmann, Hector J. and Willems, Jan C. The brachistochrone problem and modern control theory
Nyquist frequency of a concept?
We get stories much faster than we can make sense of them, informed by cellphone pictures and eyewitnesses found on social networks and dubious official sources like police scanner streams. Real life moves much slower than these technologies. There's a gap between facts and comprehension, between finding some pictures online and making sense of how they fit into a story. What ends up filling that gap is speculation. -Farhad Manjoo, Breaking News Is Broken
This past week in ECE3704 (Continuous and Discrete Systems) we have been exploring what happens to the information in a continuous-time signal when it is sampled and again what happens when discrete samples are reconstructed into a continuous time signal. Here is an example:
The solid blue line is the continuous time signal \(x(t)=e^-t\) and the black dots are samples of the signal taken at intervals of 0.5 seconds (the sampling period). This process of sampling a signal is a necessity of living in a (mostly) continuous-time world when processing data using a (theoretically) discrete-time device such as a digital computer. Once we have our information nicely digitized we can poke, prod and manipulate it using the wealth of digital tools at our disposal before converting it back to a continuous-time representation that we then observe, commonly in the form of visual or audible signals. The question arises: what does the act of sampling and reconstruction have on the final output that we see and hear? How faithful is the input/output relationship of our original and constructed signal using our digital technology to the ideal relationship. An illustrative example would be the combination of wireless and wired networks that make up the communication channel used to transmit the data associated with a cell phone call. Ideally, the receiver would hear an exact transcript of the audible information as produced by the caller, or at least as exact as it would have been if the two were face to face. In reality the best we can usually hope for is an approximate reconstruction that is "good enough". Here is the reconstruction of our previously sampled signal, overlaid on the original for comparison.
Clearly the reconstructed signal is not a faithful duplicate of the original, but why is this the case, and what could we do to make it better? We gain some insight by taking a Fourier transform of the sampled signal to generate a frequency spectrum which we can then compare with the frequency spectrum of the original.
The ability to view the signal from this vantage point makes some features of the sampling process easy to see that otherwise would not be obvious looking at the time-domain representation, namely, we note that the frequency spectrum of the continuous time signal can potentially live on the entire infinite frequency axis,
while the sampled signal is restricted to a finite frequency interval, the interval between plus and minus and half the sampling frequency, between the dashed red lines (it turns out that the frequency spectrum of all real-valued signals has a negative component that mirrors the positive spectrum. Who knew?).
The dashed red lines are drawn at plus and minus 2*pi radians/sec, the information starts repeating after this, shown by the green curve. Note that 2*pi rad/sec is one half the sampling frequency of 4*pi rad/sec. Viewing the information in this form allows us to intuit why we might not be able to uniquely reconstruct all sampled signals perfectly: The act of sampling is restricting the domain on which we can encode information to a finite interval, so we can conclude that sampled versions of continuous-time signals that make use of the entire infinite frequency axis will never contain all the information of the original signal, and for those signals that are naturally bandlimited we will need to choose our sampling frequency in such a way that finite frequency interval of the discrete-time signal is large enough to contain all the information in the original. This leads to the Nyquist sampling theorem which states that if the sampling frequency is greater than twice the bandlimit of the original signal then the signal can be uniquely reconstructed from its samples.
In a recent post, Adam commented that we (humans, though this most likely applies to any non-humans able to read and comprehend this just as well) engage in a sampling and reconstruction process every time we communicate a thought. Concepts and ideas live in the continuous domain (at least, so it seams, not being an expert in neuroscience perhaps one could make a sound argument that thoughts are in fact discrete, but for today's purposes I think it would not be egregiously inaccurate to compare them to continuous-time signals), and yet there are only so many words we have available to us when communicating those thoughts. What's more, we can't be sure that another sentient being will hear the words we are using and reconstruct our original thought perfectly. In fact, it's likely that this imperfect reconstruction of communicated thought results in a great deal of innovation and creativity and "thinking outside the box", so it's certainly not always a bad thing, just a thing. But it's a thing we don't really have any tools to quantitatively analyze. How much off the original information was lost or distorted by the conversion into language or another medium? How far from the original thought is the reconstructed thought (assuming we can even define a metric space for concepts).
It would seem that some thoughts, like signals, have bandlimited information content, while others may not. The feeling expressed by the phrase "I am thirsty" is fairly well understood (even if we don't really understand what the essence of "I" is). There are some variations: "I am very thirsty", "I am parched", etc. but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that particular thought can be accurately communicated in a finite number of words (generally about 3). I'm not sure I could make that claim about some others, like the concept of "I". Are there more parallels between sampling theory and communication through a medium? It would seem that like signals, some ideas can be sampled and reconstructed accurately, while others can not. Are there any tools available that parallel Fourier analysis for signals that could yield a different view of the information contained in a raw idea or concept? Does it even make sense to talk about such a tool?
ToDo: Make ECE2524 Obsolete
Why would I want to eliminate the course that I've been teaching the past four semesters, that I have put so many hours into to update content, create new assignments, written (and re-written each semester… another topic altogether) a set of scripts to facilitate reviewing stacks of programming assignments and generally had a great time with?
Well, because I don't think it should be a separate course to begin with. As many have noted, and I have agreed, ECE2524 in many respects is a kind of a "catch-all" course for all those really important topics and tools (version control, anyone?) that just don't get covered anywhere else. It is also officially (but not rigorously enforced in the form of a prereq) to be an introduction to more advanced software engineering courses, so it has the general feel of a programming course.
I think programming (and *nix OS usage and philosophy) is too important to delegate off to a 2 credit course and treat separately from the rest of the engineering curriculum, an idea that was solidified after reading an excerpt from Mindstorms by Seymour Papert.
I began to see how children who had learned to program computers could use very concrete computer models to think about thinking and to learn about learning and in doing so, enhance their powers as psychologists and as epistemologists.
Papert is a strong advocate to introducing computer programming to children at an early age and using it as a tool to learn other disciplines
The metaphor of computer as mathematics-speaking entity puts the learner in a qualitatively new kind of relationship to an important domain of knowledge. Even the best of educational television is limited to offering quantitative improvements in the kinds of learning that existed without it… By contrast, when a child learns to program, the process of learning is transformed. It becomes more active and self-directed. In particular, the knowledge is acquired for a recognizable personal purpose.
It goes without saying that a solid understanding of math is crucial for any of the STEM fields, but computers and programming can also encourage engagement with other fields as well, though that is not the focus of this post.
Along with being a useful skill to have, programming teaches a systematic way of thinking about a problem, and crucially shifts the model of learning from one that embodies a "got it" and "got it wrong" binary state to one that encourages the question "how do I fix it?". As Papert notes, and I can personally attest, when writing a program you never get it right the first time. Becoming a good programmer means becoming an expert at tracking down and fixing bugs.
If this way of looking at intellectual products were generalized to how the larger culture thinks about knowledge and its acquisition, we all might be less intimidated by our fears of "being wrong."
Some strong arguments for the symbiosis of programming and learning valuable thinking skills at an early age. But the benefits don't disappear at the college level, especially in a field such as engineering in which learning programming for the sake of programming is a valuable skill (there are several required classes on the subject, so you know it must be important. Slight sarcasm, but it's true, regardless of how cynical we agree to be about the way classes are structured and the curriculum is built for us). If programming can help engage with learning mathematics, and as a side effect get us thinking about how we think, and shift our view of learning to a more constructive one, then can't we get at least the same positive affects if we apply it to more advanced concepts and ideas? It doesn't hurt that a good chunk of engineering is mathematics anyway.
The wheels really started turning after the first day of guest-lecturing for Signals & Systems. Here's a course that is a lot of math, but critically foundational for learning how to learn about how the world works. That may seem a little embellished, especially for those not familiar with the field (Signals & Systems crash course: a system is anything that has an input signal and produces and output signal, e.g. a car (input is gas/break, output is speed), a heart beat (input is electrical signal transmitted along nerves, output is muscle contraction or blood flow), the planet (so many systems, but treating atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other gases as an input and the average global temperature would be one example of a system we would be interested in studying)). Signals & Systems provides a set of tools for exploring the input/output relationships of… anything.
So why is it taught from a set of slides?
What better way to really engage with and understand the theory than USE it? Now most educational budgets wouldn't be able to cover the costs if everyone wanted to learn the input/output behavior of their own personal communications satellite, but the beauty of Signals & Systems, and the mathematical representations that it embodies, is that everything can be simulated on a computer. From the velocity of a car, to blood flow caused by a beating heart, to the motion of the planets and beyond.
I envision a Signals & Systems course that is mostly programming. People will argue that the programming aspect of the material is just the "practical implementation", and while that's important, the theory is critical. Yes, the theory is what helps us develop a generalized insight into different ways of representing different types of systems and what allows us to do a good deal of design in a simulated environment with greatly reduced risks, especially when say, designing new flight controls for a commercial jet.
But I think the theory can be taught alongside the programming for a much richer experience than is obtained by following a set of slides. You want to understand how the Laplace transform works? What better way than to implement it on a computer. I guarantee you, if you have to write a program that calculates the Laplace transform for an arbitrary input signal, by the time you're done with the debugging, you're going to have a pretty good understanding of whats going on, not to mention a slew of other important experiences (how do you solve an integral on a computer anyway?).
Talking about the differences between continuous time systems and discrete time systems is taken to a whole new level when you start trying to simulate a continues-time system on a computer, very much a discrete-time system. How do you even do that? Is it sufficient to just use a really really small time step?
So yes, I think the best case scenario would be one in which ECE2524: Intro to Unix for Engineers is obsolete1. Not because the topics we cover are unimportant, quite the contrary, they are so important that they should be providing a framework for learning engineering.
1 I've focused primarily on the programming aspect of ECE2524 here, but those of you who know me and have taken the course with me know that the Unix philosophy is a big part of it as well. Integrating the programming aspects into other coursework would of course not address that. I'm sure, with a little thought we all can think up a clever way of introducing the *nix philosophy and generally the whole concept of thinking about a philosophy when thinking about engineering, and what that even means, with every other course. Because well, it should be an integral part of everything else we learn.
Both sides of auto-grading argument miss the point
A recent story in the New York Times covers a software program by nonprofit EdX that will soon be available for free to any institution that wants to use it. Using sophisticated machine learning algorithms to train its artificial intelligence, the software will grade essays and short response questions and provide nearly instant feedback. Naturally there are strong supporters for the new software touting it for "freeing professors for other tasks" (like what?). And just as naturally there are strong critics who have formed a group called Professors Against Machine Scoring Essays in High-Stakes Assessment. From the group's petition:
Let's face the realities of automatic essay scoring. Computers cannot "read." They cannot measure the essentials of effective written communication: accuracy, reasoning, adequacy of evidence, good sense, ethical stance, convincing argument, meaningful organization, clarity, and veracity, among others.
While criticism is certainly warranted, I find the quote to be somewhat bullish. Can these people really claim that they understand how they are able to read and measure the essentials of effective written communication well enough that they can look at a computer and say with confidence, "that can not do what I am doing, and here's why"? It very well may be that current AI programs do not have the ability to comprehend written communication to a degree necessary to assign grades, but to make the argument that the software shouldn't be used because "computers cannot 'read'", as if that were a self-evident fact is just poor communication.
Now to be fair, I disagree with the supporters of the software as well.
"There is a huge value in learning with instant feedback," Dr. Agarwal said. "Students are telling us they learn much better with instant feedback."
Ok, well, not that part, I agree with that part in principle. But what kind of feedback? Supposedly the software can generate a grade and also comments whether or not the essay was "on topic". So a student could get instant feedback, which is great, and then edit and modify, which is great, and resubmit, which is also great… and then what? What would they be learning?
I promise to be highly skeptical of any answer to that question that isn't "how to write an essay that receives high marks from an automatic grading AI".
All this talk about feedback. What about feedback for the professor? I find reading through 60 essays just as tedious and time consuming as the next out-of-place grad student in a department that doesn't value teaching, but I also recognize that reading those essays is a valuable way for me to gauge how I'm doing. Are the concepts that I think are important showing up? Are there any major communication issues? What about individuals, are some struggling, what can I do to help? How will I learn my students' personalities and how that might affect their personal engagement with the material? How will I learn to be a better educator?
Granted, even though 60 feels overwhelming, it's nowhere near 200 or more. I can't even imagine trying to read through that many assignments myself. I'm confident that if I were force to I would not emerge with my sanity intact. This problem does not go unaddressed.
With increasingly large classes, it is impossible for most teachers to give students meaningful feedback on writing assignments, he said. Plus, he noted, critics of the technology have tended to come from the nation's best universities, where the level of pedagogy is much better than at most schools.
"Often they come from very prestigious institutions where, in fact, they do a much better job of providing feedback than a machine ever could," Dr. Shermis said. "There seems to be a lack of appreciation of what is actually going on in the real world."
An "A" for recognizing the problem. But the proposed solution is nothing more than a patch. In fact, it's worse, because it is a tool that will enable the continual ballooning of class size. And to what expense? Why don't you rethink your solution and have it on my desk in the morning. I can't promise instant feedback, but maybe, just maybe, the feedback provided will be the start to moving in a direction that actually addresses the underlying problems, rather than just using technology to hide them.
Cheating by the Rules
Is it still cheating if the rules are made up?
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
- Seneca
During our discussion about Lucasfilm's Habitat earlier in the week we talked a lot about how the lessons learned by the designers for effectively building a virtual world mirrored a lot of what we knew about building a virtual world in the real world.
Woah, what? Don't I mean mirrored by our real actions in the real world? Or the real things we have built in the real world?
Not really, the more I thought about it, the more I notice similarities between the virtual environment that Morningstar and Farmer built and our own world, commonly called "the real world".
Keeping "Reality" Consistent
As we have discussed before in class, it seems that most people understand on some level that their own core values differ, sometimes significantly, from what our society visibly places value on. We talked about what it means to truly experience life and many of us painted images of being in nature and absorbing all the sights, sounds, and sensations that were available. We know what we need to sustain life (sufficient food and shelter) and we know what we need to be happy (close, meaningful relationships with those around us). And yet look at the world we have created for ourselves. Today, we essentially live in what Morningstar and Farmer called an "experiential level", this is the level in which the rules that we follow are the rules that were constructed to facilitate the illusion. It is somewhat removed from the "infrastructure level", and it seems as time goes on, there is less and less "leakage" between the two levels. Morningstar and Farmer would be proud.
To be fair, they were writing in the context of a game designed for the purposes of allowing a player to (temporarily) allow themselves to be overcome by the illusion for entertainment. If that's the goal, then yes, a leak-free relationship between the "infrastructure level" and the "experiential level" would seem necessary. But have we inadvertently set up the same type of structure in our "real" world?
It is both interesting and suggestive that we often use the same word to describe the rules we use to govern ourselves as the rules we have deduced govern the universe. The laws of physics are not ones that often are showcased in our courts of law, and yet the concept of a "law" seems to be somehow applicable to both. Is it surprising then that we often think a particular action is impossible because "it's against the law"
There was a time when many protested that humans were not meant to fly, for it went against the laws of nature. Gravity, and a dense body structure, kept us firmly rooted on the ground, who were we to argue with the laws of nature? And yet, we figured out a way to cheat.
But it's not really cheating if we're playing by the rules. We just learned the rules well enough to discover a loophole. Of course, I am somewhat intentionally misconstruing the situation. The "law" of gravity never said "humans may not fly" (and for now let's ignore the pesky question of whether or not we are flying, or our machines are and we're just along for the ride). The point is, we are continuously refining our understanding of the "laws" of nature, but the laws themselves, the underlying equations that govern the universe, are not themselves being modified with our increased understanding.
Our own laws and abstractions are of course much more mutable, but it makes sense that we wouldn't treat them as such. After all, laws would quickly loose their meaning if we were re-writing them willy-nilly. But I wonder if sometimes we are so immersed in our own virtual reality that we forget that it is virtual.
The resent series of financial "crisis" comes to mind. During the whole debacle, every time someone talked about the impending doom that would be upon us if we didn't act (or if we did, or if we acted incorrectly…) I wanted to shake them and say, "you do know we're making this all up, don't you?"
It's interesting that people will express surprise, skepticism, or disbelief when they encounter a gamer who has exchanged virtual goods for real world money to purchase and consume actual physical food. "People actually will pay you for something that's not even real?"
Why are they so shocked? People on Wall Street have known this for decades.


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Posted by Editoress on 08/2/01
Horst Kempter passes away
It is with a great deal of sadness that I learned of the death of long time friend and member of the bike industry Horst Kempter . The owner of Kempter Marketing (KMI) passed away after a lengthy illness.
Horst was one of the nicest and most honourable people I know and will be greatly missed.
The family asks in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the charity of their choice, the Lucky Harvest Project - a therapeutic riding program for persons with disabilities. The Lucky Harvest Project can be contacted through their website Lucky Harvest or by calling 450-264-0282.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - White women may be quicker to develop wrinkles after menopause than black women, and the effects seem to have more to do with age than declining estrogen levels, a small study suggests.
The findings, say researchers, may give lighter skinned women yet more reason to protect their skin from sun damage, since that may be a culprit in the earlier signs of aging among white women.
It has long been thought that darker skin is likely to be more resistant to the signs of aging than lighter skin, as the melanin in dark skin offers some natural protection against sun damage. But there has been little research into whether there are actual objective racial differences in skin aging.
In addition, while skin cells have receptors for estrogen, the extent to which estrogen loss after menopause may contribute to skin aging remains unclear.
So for the new study, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, researchers assessed facial wrinkles and skin elasticity in 106 women in their 50s who had gone through menopause within the past few years. The group included 65 white women and 21 African Americans.
Wrinkle scores -- bestowed by a dermatologist using a standard visual scoring system -- were higher among white women, whose average score was nearly double that of black women. In general, however, the women had only mild wrinkling.
The researchers also found that among white women, the extent of wrinkling varied with age, but not with time passed since menopause. This, they say, suggests that aging, rather than waning estrogen levels, may be the prime culprit in wrinkle development soon after menopause.
The theory is that white women show wrinkles sooner because their skin is more susceptible to damage from a lifetime of sun exposure, according to senior researcher Dr. Hugh S. Taylor, of Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.
"That's what we suspect may be going on, though our study does not prove that," Taylor told Reuters Health in an interview.
If that speculation is correct, he said, it should give light-skinned women more incentive to avoid overexposure to the sun.
Taylor added that the findings "do not mean that black women do not need to worry about wrinkles." But their skin may not show visible signs of aging as early as white women's.
African-American and white women in the study did have similar scores when it came to skin elasticity, as measured with a device called a durometer. And among white women, declining elasticity in the skin was related to time since menopause.
Skin elasticity may be largely dependent on structures underneath the skin, Taylor noted, and it's possible that those structures are more responsive to changes in estrogen levels -- whereas wrinkling at the skin's surface may be more dependent on factors like sun damage.
Taylor and his colleagues based their findings on 106 women taking part in an ongoing clinical trial known as KEEPS, which is looking at the effects of hormone therapy, begun soon after menopause, and the risk of heart disease. As a side question of that trial, the researchers will also look at whether hormone therapy has any effects on skin aging.
In 2002, a large U.S. government study found that postmenopausal women given HRT had higher risks of heart attack, stroke, breast cancer and blood clots than women given a placebo. Women in that study were about 63 years old, on average; the KEEPS trial is testing the theory that starting women on hormone therapy soon after menopause, when they are in their 40s and 50s, will have heart benefits.
Whether hormone therapy does have benefits for relatively younger women -- for their hearts or their skin -- is not yet known. And no one is recommending that women use hormones in an effort to thwart the signs of aging.
The current study was funded by the non-profit Kronos Longevity Research Institute, which is running the KEEPS study, and by grants from the National Institutes of Health. None of the researchers report any financial conflicts of interest.
SOURCE: link.reuters.com/ker74q Fertility and Sterility, online October 25, 2010.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.


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Dr. Hsia wants to change the market-driven approach to U.S. health care because she believes patients aren't protected from financial ruin, which should be a guaranteed part of the system. Her interview is part of AC360's series "What Keeps You Up at Night," which focuses on election issues.
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