Thursday, 27 January 2010

I’ve commented about this before here, but it’s really disappointing when I pick up a book and find myself fascinated by the idea set forth in the book, only to have that idea been executed poorly. Most recently, I wrote a review of God Hates You, Hate Him Back HERE.

I always seem attracted to books that rank things. I don’t why; I guess I just like lists. My all-time favorite list book is Michael Hart’s The 100: A Ranking of the 100 Most Influential Persons Who Ever Lived. Others have tried to follow suit with Hart’s book, and they’ve always failed miserably.

For example, the book 1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium seems like a good idea, but the committee of authors tried to pack too many people into too short of a book (most individuals get only a paragraph). Worse, there’s little argument given for the ranking. That’s the fun of Hart’s book: anyone could say that, for example, Buddha is more influential than Julius Caesar, but Hart explains why. But the 1,000 Years book, just lists off people. Why do they rank Columbus over Harry Truman? Who knows. They don’t say.

Another lousy attempt is The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived. Again, this sounds fun, but the authors don’t bother to say why they feel Joe Camel should outrank Bugs Bunny. I’d love to hear the argument, but, instead, they just give a brief bio on the fictitious characters and we, the readers, are left to figure out why Mickey Mouse was placed here or Tom Sawyer was placed there. A really stupid thing about this book is that they don’t even put the ‘people’ in order. When I began reading, I just assumed the first ‘person’ I came across was the highest ranked…but no. It was the 18th. Why? Again, I have no idea.

Anyways, I was at Borders Books today and I picked up the book 500 Rock Bands: A Line Up of the 500 Best Rock Bands.Though I suspected that this book, like 1,000 Years, would suffer from having too much squeezed into it (it does – a better book would have only 100 bands), I still decided to thumb through it for a while.

I think this book might be the worst of the bunch. First, my primary complaint is that, yet again, there’s no argument for why one band is placed in front of one and behind another. Do author’s not get this? If you’re going to say Led Zeppelin is the 5th best rock band of all time, a brief history of the band is totally unsatisfactory. I could find out a quick history of Zeppelin just by reading their Wikipedia entry. Instead, I want to know why the author feels Zeppelin belongs after the Rolling Stones but before Pink Floyd.

Second, I’m not even going to say which band is #1, because if you can’t guess than you must not know anything about popular music from the last 6 decades. Hint: it’s absolutely the most predictable and safest choice. But I’m okay with this selection, the dumb thing, though, is the author’s selection for #2 and #3: Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley. Have you ever heard of a band called Bob Dylan? I haven’t. The author must be referring to the person, but then she explicitly contradicts her book’s title. Sorry, Huffa, Dylan is not a band. Neither is Presley.

Third, where’s #83? As I was paging through the book, I read the entry for #82, then turned the page to #84. Assuming my fingers had clumsily skipped a page, I tried my darnedest to split apart the missing page. Alas, there was no page, #83 is just missing. So…I guess the book just ranks #1-82 and then #84-500. Perhaps her next book will have #501-1,000, with #83 thrown in as a bonus.

Friday, 28 January 2011

Today is the 25th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s explosion. A few people today mentioned where they were and what they were doing at the moment they found out. It seems many of my peers were watching the shuttle via television in their classrooms. Not me. Here’s my story:

The powers that be at my school, Sky Oaks Elementary, decided to do jack squat for the event. I had no idea a civilian was scheduled to go into space that day. Heck, I didn’t even know their was a shuttle launch planned. Instead, we went about our normal school day. A couple hours into the day, our class headed down into the gymnasium to give the cool kids an opportunity to pick on the nerds. As I walked into the gym, I put my hands in my pockets (that’s where they always were during gym) and felt a piece of paper. Oh no! It was a note form my mom telling the teacher I would need to be excused at noon for a dentist appointment. Shoot! I was supposed to give that to my teacher, Mrs. Hogan, at the start of the day. Mrs. Hogan had left the gym, so I quickly turned and ran out of the gym to look for her.

I found her in the hall walking back towards the classroom. “Mrs. Hogan,” I said, “I forgot to give this to you.” I stopped and handed her the note. It was then that I noticed she was crying. “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she said weepily, and then marched towards the bathroom.

I didn’t know why she was crying. And I didn’t care.

About a half hour later, I walked out of the gym, grabbed my coat and backpack, and walked out of the school (a daring thing to do without teacher’s permission). My mom was waiting out front and I got in the car. She had the news on, and I listened to what happened.

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

A few years ago, my wife found The Far Side Gallery 3 on sale at the local Goodwill. She wisely decided to buy it. Within the month, she also found The Far Side Gallery 1. I think this was back in early 2008.

Anyway, I just have to mention that these are just about the funniest comics I have ever read. For a few years in the late 1990s, my wife and I subscribed to the newspaper, and I always turned to the comics section. Turns out, that’s a big waste of time, since there really aren’t any funny comics. I mean, Peanuts was cute and sometimes it made me laugh. And (verrry rarely) I would get a laugh out of Ziggy. But most of that other garbage was just that. I couldn’t figure out how the comic creators had managed to get themselves published in major newspapers considering how un-comedic their ‘comics’ were.

Oh well. The only thing we use newspaper for now is to line the floor under the litter box.

Anyway, today I received The Far Side Gallery 4 and Gallery 5 in the mail via Amazon. Apart from Dilbert and Peanuts, the Far Side is the only comic strip worth reading. And, evidently, owning.

Wednesday, 26 January 2011

Today I gave my second speech in the Toastmasters’ Club.

The format was a little different this time. Instead of the usual one hour meeting during the lunch hour, we held a two hour speech-a-thon at the end of the day. There were eleven assigned speeches, and mine was tenth in line.

The title of my speech was “What Happened to Pluto?” I covered three main points:

1) How did Pluto change during the first 80 years after we discovered it?

2) What unusual characteristics does Pluto have?

3) What, exactly, does the word “planet” mean, and why doesn’t Pluto qualify?

For the first item, I gave a brief history of Pluto and how our increasing knowledge of that world meant a gradual decrease in its known mass. For the second item, I explained Pluto’s weird orbit and how similar in size it is to Charon. For the third item, I discussed the IAU’s 2006 “clarification” of the word “planet” and why that spelled downsizing for Pluto.

Sunday, 23 January 2011

At the credit union where I bank…

–Hold it right there: is that correct? Is it possible to bank at a credit union, or is that a contradiction in terms? Should I say “at the credit union where I credit union”?–

…they are currently sponsoring a contest relating to the NFL. That stands for National Football League, in case you didn’t know. The contest goes like this: guess which team is going to win each week during the playoffs. The person with the most correct guesses wins a $50 gift card.

And guess what, I am currently in first place for most correct guesses. Yep, it’s true. During the first week of the playoffs, I was correct on two of my picks. This was enough to tie me (along with ~20 other people) for second place. A few people were tied at first place with 3 correct picks, and no one got all 4 correct.

During the second week of playoffs, I picked all four games correctly. That leap-frogged me into first place with 6 correct. I am the sole person in first place right now.

Unfortunately, while I’m still in first place, I’m almost certainly sharing that spot with other credit union members now. I picked the Steelers to win, and that was correct. But I picked the Bears to win over the Packers, and that is not what happened.

Monday, 24 January 2011

I think now would be a good opportunity to discuss something that’s bugged me for, oh, about 30 years: Calendars.

The problem with calendars occurs whenever the month begins on a Friday or Saturday (well, not EVERY time, but close enough). Calendar makers must’ve decided long ago that the convention for laying out a month with such a characteristic would be to shove the 30th and 31st of the month so that they have to share a box on the page with the 23rd and 24th, respectively. In case I’ve just confused you, just look at this picture:

This is the calendar hanging in my cube at work. Notice how the 23rd and 30th of the month are “sharing” a box. Likewise, the 24th and 31st.

What’s the big deal you say?

Two answers: first, if you’re like me, then you write stuff on your calendars. In fact, for several years, I wrote things on my calendar after the fact (as kind of a journal) and then I kept the calendar in a safe place. Now I keep track of events in my life on computer, but the point is: there’s not a whole lot of room on those four days. Additionally, if something spanned the whole week, it was tough to show how it affected one day, but not the other. For example, let’s say I wanted to block off the 27th – 31st…the sharing feature makes this confusing, especially on those really stupid calendars that split those boxes diagonally (or, worse, don’t even split them at all – some calendars will just write “24/31” in the box, and that’s supposed to be cool).

Second, counting the weeks can get confusing. Today, for instance, I was in the lab at my job, and one of my co-workers prepared a solution with a one week expiration date. She walked over to the calendar to verify the date (it’s the 24th), but then she flipped ahead to February, then back to January. “Doesn’t January have 31 days?” she asked me.

I know it might sound silly that an adult with a science degree is questioning the number of days in January, but look at what she saw:

Where the hell are the 30th and 31st? Look closer: in the case of this calendar, they apparently come a few days before January 1st. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

A better solution would be to put the 30th and 31st in their own boxes on the next page. An even better solution would be to just make a sixth row. I mean, look at that calendar: there is clearly enough space on the page for the 30th and 31st to have their own rows. In fact, I have yet to see a calendar that doesn’t have enough room. It’s just laziness and poor planning.

Anyway, if you want to buy me a 2012 calendar for Xmas, you know what I’d like…

Oh – special thanks to my co-worker Nick for taking these pictures and emailing them to me.

Friday, 21 January 2011

After waiting for several weeks, a copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo finally arrived for me at the library. I picked it up a few days ago and, last night, I began reading it.

Chapter one was entirely fascinating. It briefly opened up a mystery that made me want to skip ahead to find the answer. But I stayed true to the story and forced myself to continue linearly.

I began reading chapter two last night, too, but it got boring, so I went to bed.Today, during lunch, I picked it up again and tried reading more of the chapter. It is the complete reverse of the first chapter: this time, I was paging forward not because I was excited, but because I was trying to see how long this booooring chapter was.

Basically, the story got bogged down in a courtroom tale, which is okay, but then just devolved into a story of backroom economics and international shady business dealings. ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz z z z z z z z z.

Sorry, tattooed lady, I guess I’ll just cut my loses here and return it to the library next time I go.

Saturday, 22 January 2011

The big news for me today is that I finally saw a film that I’d wanted to see for over 20 years. That film is titled Downhill (or, as it was originally titled in America, When Boys Leave Home).

You probably haven’t heard of this motion picture, and that’s okay. It wasn’t great by any means. But it had a decent story and, at less than 90 minutes, it certainly held my interest.

Downhill was directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

I was going to detail my long and varied story in trying to see every Film and TV show directed by Alfred Hitchcock but…as luck would have it…I have already told that tale IN THIS BLOG POST.

The important point is, that by 1999, I had seen all but two of Hitchcock’s films and all but one of the TV episodes. I finally watched that TV episode, and the film Waltzes from Vienna, back on March 28th of 2009. That left Downhill as the only film on my list that I hadn’t seen.

Turns out, some good chap decided to upload Downhill to YouTube a few months back and, since I periodically browse the web for this one particular movie, I finally came across it a few days ago. I saved it to my browser until I had some spare time to watch it.

I had time today.

Here it is: Downhill

Seeing everything directed by Alfred Hitchcock has long been on my short list of things I really, really, really wanted to accomplish. I seem to have been having a rash of goal-achieving lately, as only a few month back, I succeeded at achieving the goals of having more than one kid and performing a wedding ceremony.

Unlike those two long-held goals, though, this one was accomplished alone, without fanfare; just me sitting at my computer with headphones on. Kind of anti-climactic, really. When I ventured to Universal Studios to see the Hitchcock exhibit, and when I went to Oak Street Cinema to watch Dial M for Murder in its original 3D, and when I called up a video rental store in another state and asked them to ship me some Hitchcock films, and when I had about ten people over to my house to watch an old Hitchcock film that I found in a dusty bin at a hole-in-the-wall video store, I never would have guessed that it would have ended this way: me, alone, quietly watching a silent film while the rest of the world slept.

But that’s what happened.

Maybe it’s all Downhill from here.

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Due to our aforementioned shelf cleaning, we came across our 2000 edition of the Guinness Book.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Guinness Book – a book so famous, it has earned it’s own spot within the book – but let me give you my brief history with the book.

In the fall of 1987, I was once again given a book order form from school. I always enjoyed browsing through the books for sale and, on this particular occasion, I opted to purchase the Guinness Book.

When it arrived a couple of weeks later, I couldn’t put it down. I carried it with me to friends’ homes, and I brought it to school to read whenever I had the opportunity. After a month or so, my teacher couldn’t believe that the book on my desk was the same one he had just handed me weeks earlier – it was already so worn and tattered.

I absolutely loved reading about all the records. Though it was 800+ pages, I read it several times, each time astounded at the extreme nature of the records. I mean, I knew the extremes between the largest and smallest nations, and between the largest and smallest planets, but I had no idea that someone was ever that tall, or that someone had held their breath that long, or eaten that many bananas in a minute.

Of course, while Jupiter may be secure in its place as the largest planet in our solar system, other records change quickly. In fact, the final 12 pages of the book contained new and updated records that the editors had to insert last-minute before publishing.

So, of course, I bought 1988’s edition. And 1989’s. My mom bought me a full-color splashy edition in 1991, and I even bought a copy for my girlfriend in 1995 (it worked, too – she married me).

Then, in the summer 0f 2004, while walking around our neighborhood, Jennifer and I stopped at a garage sale. There, she noticed the 2000 “millennium edition” of the Guinness Book. It was only a buck, so I bought it.

But it was different than the others. There seemed to be less information in my favorite sections (science, human extremes, government), and lots of superfluous ‘records’ in other areas, such as in sports and music. Some pages were taken up almost entirely by large photos of sexy famous people, and – I swear – some of the records seemed tailor made just to fit in certain facts.

For example, one ‘record’ was “Highest paid action star to become governor.” Um…is there even any competition there besides Schwarzeneggar (I suppose Venture)? Let’s face it, that ‘record’ was just an excuse to show the Governator. Another record was something like “Highest sales for a single written and performed by a female under 20 years old,” an obvious ploy to find a way to shoehorn in a photo of Britney Spears. I could go on.

Lame.

A quick look at Wikipedia shows that Norris McWhirter was ousted from the book he started and grew into an empire, and the copyright has changed hands from the esteemed beer brewery to stupid entertainment conglomerates.

Wikipedia says:

The group was owned by Guinness Brewery and subsequently Diageo until 2001, when it was purchased by Gullane Entertainment. Gullane was itself purchased by HiT Entertainment in 2002. In 2006, Apax Partners purchased HiT and subsequently sold Guinness World Records in early 2008 to the Jim Pattison Group, which is also the parent company of Ripley Entertainment, which is licensed to operate Guinness World Records’ Attractions. With offices in New York City and Tokyo, Guinness World Records global headquarters remain in London, while its museum attractions are based at Ripley headquarters in Orlando, Florida.

(There are no references here, so take this info lightly, though it does jive with what I’ve observed.)

Essentially, then, The Guinness Book is dead. Newer versions are just glorified celebrity magazines, and older versions are out of date – easily a third of the records from my 1987 edition are no longer current.

RIP Guinness – and thanks for the memories…

Thursday, 20 January 2011

Here’s is a video of Isla having a religious experience: CLICK THIS!

We’re not sure what it is about Owen’s mobile, but she gets excited as soon as she sees it. It’s true, if she’s drowsily resting on my shoulder, and I walk into Owen’s room, she perks right up and practically starts hyperventilating as she looks at the mobile.

Also – take a look at the videos YouTube suggests you might like (the column on the right). What a riot.

And here’s another video we uploaded today: NOW CLICK THIS!

Isla has figured out how to play peek-a-boo without any help from anyone else. This is quite funny, as she will be quietly playing on the floor and suddenly decide to roll over and grab a nearby blanket/bib/burp rag and haphazardly drape it over her face. She then starts waving her arms frantically as she slips into a slight panic attack. The first time she did this, we ran to her aid immediately and pulled the cloth off her face. But she just began smiling – almost to the point of laughing – and repeated the process. It appears she has figured out that the adrenaline rush of panic (from having her face covered) is worth the pay-off of playing peek-a-boo.

She’s gonna love roller coasters.