The Vegan Dessert

College Drop-Outs

2010-08-03T00:49:00.009-04:00

The House and Senate of Massachusetts recently passed a bill designed as a first step toward replacing the Electoral College with the national popular vote. Deval Patrick will presumably sign the bill into law. When states containing a majority of electoral votes have passed similar bills, Massachusetts will allocate its presidential electors to the candidate who wins a majority of the popular vote, thereby ensuring that the candidate also wins the election.

This bill is perfectly constitutional, despite the objections of many of its opponents and its obvious misalignment with the intent of the Framers. Article II, Section 1: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress...." The addition of senators to the Electoral College tally boosts the representation of small states relative to populous ones. This has historically led conservatives in Congress to defend the College against efforts to replace it with the popular vote, since they tend to come from the smaller states of the Plains and South. After the 1968 presidential election, the House passed a Constitutional Amendment replacing the College with the popular vote, but in the Senate, the Southerners and plainsmen (and, humorously, Hiram Fong of tiny Hawaii) killed it with a filibuster -- appropriately, the very antithesis of majority rule. In the 1968 election, Richard Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey by 500,000 votes, 0.7% of the total, although he won the Electoral College in a landslide, winning 301 votes compared to Humphrey's 191. The election was peculiar, however, in that George Wallace won 46 electoral votes in six southern states and almost 10 million popular votes.

Although the Massachusetts legislature is still seething over the result of Election 2000, in which Al Gore won the popular but lost the electoral vote, its law might result in the heavily Democratic state throwing its lot to the Republican popular vote-winner in a future election. In 2004, remember, George Bush defeated John Kerry by a sound margin of 3 million popular votes (2.5%), but eked out an Electoral College victory thanks to Ohio. Moreover, the Massachusetts law will unlock Republican votes cast in the state, which, thanks to the Electoral College and the state's solid Democratic majority, have played absolutely no role in most presidential contests of the last 50 years.

The Electoral College has significant advantages over the direct popular vote. First, recounts will be horrendous under the Massachusetts scheme. Living in Minnesota, I can attest to the inevitability of close recounts. In June of 2009, after eight months of recounts and legal challenges, Al Franken beat Norm Coleman by 312 votes -- 0.011% of the total. And in 1962, Karl Rolvaag defeated Elmer Anderson in the gubernatorial contest by 91 votes out of the 1.25 million cast. Now imagine what happens when a presidential candidate wins by 0.1% of the vote -- a reasonably high margin by Minnesota standards. A recount will have to occur, since the margin of error is also around 0.1%. But states tally their own votes, and some states will agree to the recounts while others won't. The candidates will attempt to cherry-pick states and counties they want recounted, like Al Gore did in Election 2000 only to have it backfire. The recount will stretch on indefinitely, except, unlike in Congressional elections, there's a solid January deadline to choose a president. Luckily for the Massachusetts lawmakers, Democrats tend to win recounts because of vote-counting inconsistencies which disproportionately occur in Democratic precincts. (One Minneapolis precinct in the Franken-Coleman race conveniently "lost" hundreds of votes which resurfaced during the recount -- and went heavily Democratic.)

Proponents of the popular vote claim that it will force candidates to campaign across the entire nation. Unfortunately for the Bay State populists, Massachusetts will obviously not be one of those places. Candidates will focus on areas with high population densities and ambivalent or undecided voters. In other words, Democrats will try to increase turnout in uneducated coastal regions, and Republicans will resort to milking Texas. The parties will, in effect, cater to their geographic base. But even if attention is spread evenly over vast, sparsely-settled swaths of the country, politicians will have to take their message to more people using more money. Imagine the campaign finance requirements of running ads in every state, the necessary reliance on corporate contributions, and how beholden the government will become to business interests. The Massachusetts bill's effects run counter to its populist intent.

Consequences even more dangerous than the vast financing requirements of a transcontinental campaign could result from ascendancy of the popular vote. The Electoral College promotes a two-party system, so that third-party candidates like Ross Perot, George Wallace, and Theodore Roosevelt (in 1912) can win a sizable percent of the popular vote but few votes in the Electoral College. (In 1992, Ross Perot won 18.9% of the popular vote and not a single elector.) The usual inability of third parties to consolidate around a viable presidential candidate promotes compromise and moderation in the other two, and also prevents sensationalists like Jesse Ventura from sweeping into office. In nations where small parties prosper, democracy suffers. Israel, to take an extreme case, has a parliamentary system which allocates seats by proportion of the popular vote received. Fringe parties thereby hold seats in the Knesset and force the major parties to form ruling coalitions with them. Ultra-Orthodox MPs stymie concessions in the West Bank; representatives of the old peoples' party occupy the ministry of old peoples' affairs. In the United States, when a third party coalesces around an issue that cannot be absorbed in the give-and-take of two-party politics, a new axis shoots out of the conventional political spectrum. This is how the Republican Party formed in the 1850s, extincting the Whigs and bringing the injustice of slavery to the forefront of the Northern political conscience. Thus, third-party politics exists as a nascent, moderating threat to the established order under the Electoral College system, but does not threaten to splinter the national democratic fabric, as it would with a popular vote. What happens when someone wins with much less than 50% of the popular vote? Would it be a legitimate victory? I, for one, cast my vote against the Massachusetts scheme and in favor of our stodgy old College.

Please wake me from this coma

2010-07-16T23:58:00.009-04:00

"You said we would grow old together," the evil temptress character repeats throughout Christopher Nolan's sci fi blockbuster, "Inception." And indeed we did, after two hours and forty minutes glued in one place subjected to rambling melodrama, unoriginal shootouts, and a director's delusions of grandeur. Although this movie maintains the characteristic Nolanesque ambiance of "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" -- imagine the vertiginous skyscrapers of a post-modern city cast in charcoal hues, the chic interiors of hyper-riche hangouts, and an enemy base nestled in the snow-burdened Himalayas -- the engrossing sets serve as video game levels instead of places where the overwrought but inherently simplistic plot can develop. Indeed, the layers of the main dream in which most of the movie takes place, which are merely different sets, are called just that -- "levels."

At the beginning of the movie, we learn that people can access each others' dreams using an IV attached to a chemical router in a briefcase. Not only is it possible to steal secrets in the dream state, which is Leonardo DiCaprio's specialty, but it is also possible (so the voodoo masters say) to plant ideas in other peoples' minds. I like the premise a lot. The problem is that the plot becomes redundant, as if Nolan's lack of creativity beyond this intriguing idea camouflages itself in the repetition of a few gimmicks. For one, the dream within a dream gimmick. Yes, yes, we understand that dream states can exist within other dream states, like a Russian nesting doll. But is it necessary to have four of these going on simultaneously -- plus reality!? The dreams themselves are hardly interesting or bizarre enough to approximate actual dreams, let alone $160 million dreams (though I must caution that my dreams are especially random and detailed, as those of you who have heard about Robert Schumann crashing my breakneck game of hopscotch on neon squares in Garman House can attest). But even intentional distortions in Nolan's dreams are relatively blase. Like the street folding upside down, or two mirrors reflecting each others' images (like in a bathroom) until a character decides to shatter one and a new walkway is revealed. Nolan even resorts to Escher's staircase loop that goes both up and down as a novelty (and people had the nerve to "ooh" and "ahh" in the theater at that one!). And then the predictable plot complications that conspire to make everything resolve at the last minute and add a few million more bullets. As much as action flicks need their hordes of villainous gunmen to have the worst aim on the planet, this movie takes that contrivance to an absurd level of poor marksmanship. And the dialogue. The evil temptress character -- who unfortunately is a main plot point -- has exactly two lines, both of which grow wearisome after their first utterance -- "You said we would grow old together" and something else so dull it has already slipped my mind.

"Inception" is a feel-good movie -- you can piece everything together satisfactorily even though events are presented in an intentionally confusing manner, and the final plot twist doesn't leave you with a genuine knot in your stomach. I have to watch Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Tarkovsky's "Solaris" again. Unlike "Inception," which seems to draw from both films, they have the ability to keep me up at night thinking about their unfathomable mysteries. After "Inception," sweet dreams.

WTF America

2010-07-14T23:04:00.006-04:00

The other day, I saw Forbes Magazine sticking out of my family's pile of mail. One corner was showing, and I could see the smiling face of someone named Kristen Stewart. My first thought: "I didn't know Martha Stewart had a daughter."

I think every girl in America aged 12-18 just started hating me. Yes, up until yesterday, I had no clue who Kristen Stewart was. And before tonight, I had never seen Twilight.

What is it about Twilight that has brought me out of my two year slumber and returned me to the VD? It is not the good looks of Edward, the crazy hair of Jacob, or the audacity of Bela. It is the sick feeling I have in my stomach right now.

I understand the silly bandz fad: they can be traded, they can be hoarded, they can be worn. They're pretty cool. Lady Gaga makes at least a little sense: her individuality can be appealing and some of her music is kind of catchy (pa, pa, pa poker face). But Twilight? I don't get it. Why is America going gaga for this stuff? Why aren't Woody and Buzz gracing the cover of Forbes magazine instead of Stewart?

According to that Forbes magazine, Robert Pattinson, the male heroine in Twilight, is the 50th most powerful celebrity. He is ahead of Derek Jeter, Diddy, Leonardo Dicaprio, and Keifer Sutherland, among others. Kristen Stewart, the female star of the films, is not far behind, ranked 66 on the list.

Twilight is not a good movie. The first half is nothing but empty dialogue. Somehow, without saying anything of substance to each other ever, Bela and Edward fall wildly in love. The second half has some suspense to supplement the dialogue (the baseball scene is pretty cool, reminding me of quidditch scenes from Harry Potter), but is ultimately predictable and anticlimatic (bite Bela already!!!!!).

I returned home, after watching the first Twilight, in search of a answer to my questions. Twilight was not horrible. Yet, knowing the spot it holds in the American conscientiousness made it both maddening and curious. I can see why an abstinence-only health educator may show the film in sex-ed, but not why America would fall in love with it. There is a Twilight cookbook. What gives?

Tom Matlick, of the Huffington Post, says the films appeal to middle-aged women, who appreciate the strength and chivalry of the main male characters.

Another obvious possibility is that people are simply enamored by the attractive characters. Though I didn't see it in the first movie, I hear Jacob's got quite the hot bod, and Edward and Bela undoubtedly make an attractive couple.

According to star Kristen Stewart, the film's appeal has little to do with the supernatural and all to do with the personalities of the characters. If this were the case, though, then why have vampires been appearing everywhere we turn, independent of the Twilight characters? Furthermore, this would require that Bela have a personality, and she simply does not.

Professors from the University of Missouri Columbus have written a book about the craze: Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, & The Vampire Franchise. According to a University of Missouri press release, the communication experts found that "fans obsessions stem from the traditional, idealized romantic relationship that stresses the importance of abstinence." Still, I don't understand why this storyline would have such a remarkable appeal in mainstream America. Have parents and schools brain-washed kids this much?

College shielded me from the birth of the Twilight phenomenon and now I am confused. Can someone please explain to me what's going on? I don't see the light.

A Couple of Items

2009-01-12T15:34:00.005-05:00

Two things:

First, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has launched a new campaign called Mass in Motion, aimed at trimming the waistlines of Commonwealth residents. The plan will require fast food outlets to post calorie counts for the items on their menus. It mirrors programs in place in California, New York City, and Seattle.

The usual clique of libertarian commentators has generated a mild uproar in response to Patrick's worthy proposal. I scoff at their self-righteous stance, for as a borderline underweight resident of the Commonwealth, data posted on the menu will enable me to accurately choose the most caloric item and forstall my slide into emaciation. Fast food establishments will easily offset the tens of thousands of dollars lost to laboratory calorimetric tests by weight-conscious beanpoles' deliberate purchases of the most lard-laden, high-priced concoctions on the menu. I thank the government for safeguarding my hard earned body mass.

Second, a 13-year-old in Orange County texted 14,528 times in one month, or about 484 times a day, or about 30 times an hour, or about once every two minutes. Since this girl spends so much time text messaging, one wonders what those messages could possibly concern. She has no time between messages to generate new topics for communication, unless she's a prolific liar, so she must receive other peoples' messages and immediately relay them to the next recipient in a chain of gossip. This girl is the proverbial grapevine.

Even more surprisingly, the average 13- to 17-year-old text messages 1,742 times a month, or about 58 times a day, or about two times an hour. I imagine that a high proportion of 13- to 17-year-olds are barely literate, since they have no time to read between opening and chuckling at messages received every two minutes from that girl in Orange County. Their quasi-English syntax is constructed from "phononyms" and acronyms, they have no grammatical knowledge, and since they text message instead of communicating aloud even within earshot of the message's recipient, they have no concept of pronunciation. I had better start learning cell-phone English before verbalization ceases in 2012, or else I'll be talking to the void. This post is good practice for the more likely fate.

The Best of Valentine Dining Hall

2008-12-29T12:32:00.016-05:00

Given the name and the writers of this blog, you'd think there would be more posts about Valentine Dining Hall, the dining hall of Amherst College. Yet, when we initially launched this blog, Miller and I had very broad ambitions. We wanted a global audience--not one confined to the hills of Amherst, and so we tried to take on topics that wouldn't be Amherst specific (i.e. the top five cereals of all time or the evolution of klezmer music).

Nonetheless, with a dwindling readership, it is time to briefly pander to the Amherst College crowd. To our readers elsewhere, I apologize.

And so here are the top five meals at Valentine Dining Hall. What is a meal? Something that is not offered everyday--so anything that can be made on the stir fry or panini press on a daily basis is not eligible. And what makes a good meal? Something that makes you forget the dreadful assignment waiting in your dorm or forget the test you just bombed. Something that you come across on the internet menu days in advance, and excites you so much that you scream to other people about it. And in some cases, something that most people don't like but you do, so you can get it quickly without waiting in a long-line.

5. Chicken Gyro

This has been a welcomed new addition to the Valentine menu. So long as you don't worry about how much the chicken had to be processed to take on its odd shape, the chicken gyro is an excellent lunch selection. The bread can even be eaten by itself, if meat's not your thing. There may be some panini potential here too--I have not tried it yet.

4. Salmon with Asian Sauce

Due to the efforts of a few, many have suffered. Salmon with Asian sauce is no longer offered at Valentine, but when it was, it was great. You could put that sauce on anything, and it would be good. When students complained about the name, rather than simply relabeling the sauce, the dinning staff has looked to alternatives. While good, they do not match the unique blend of Asian sauce.

3. Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and Valentine Dining Hall celebrates it pretty much every other week. More than anything on the list, this a complete meal. From the turkey, to the stuffing, to the weird veggie mush, to the all important corn bread, you cannot go wrong. The white cake, I mean corn bread, is a day-changer.

2. Crepes Stuffed with Mushroom and Spinach

In general, I think the dining staff goes a bit overboard with the vegetarian options. Always, at the end of the food selections, there is some extravagant vegetarian entree with more ingredients than I can count. Yet, when the dining staff keeps it simple, they excel. Case in point--the vegetarian crepes. I will cut the lines for these.

1. Lasagna/Ravioli

Before coming to Amherst, I never had a proper introduction to Italian food. This was due in large part to my fear of cheese. For example, up through middle school, I only ate cheeseless pizza. However, thanks to Amherst's lasagna and ravioli, I am gradually coming out of this shell. No two menu items perk up my day the way lasagna and ravioli do. As an additional perk, lasagna is almost always served on the same day as chicken fingers, which means the line isn't too long.

Honorable Mention: Turkey Croissant Sandwiches (great on the panini press)

Discuss.

I Can't Put My Arms Down!

2008-12-24T17:11:00.002-05:00

And so it begins.

Last year, I said everything that needs to be said about A Christmas Story. All I will say now is make sure to watch it. It starts at 8 tonight and goes for 24 hours.

Year in Ideas, 2008

2008-12-24T15:31:00.012-05:00

Last year on the VD, I wrote about my favorite magazine issue of the year: The New York Times Magazine Year in Ideas. Now, I am going to write about this year's issue, though it is far from my favorite magazine of the year. For whatever reason, this year's Year in Ideas is not that interesting. Maybe my tastes have changed or maybe the shrinking ad revenues have really hurt the Times, but either way, I got through this year's issue much faster than normal, since I barely looked at some of the ideas.

Nonetheless, some were still interesting and here are my favorites:

Avian Dancing (pg. 42): It is always a bit upsetting to be on the outside of a YouTube Viral Video. For example, earlier this year, someone showed me this fantastic YouTube of OK Go Dancing on treadmills. I subsequently forwarded the YouTube along, only to be told that I was years late. If over 40 million people have viewed a YouTube before you, then you are clearly out of it. What does this have to do with the NYY mag?

This idea details a YouTube viral video I was also unaware of: Snowball the Dancing Cockatoo.

Pretty unremarkable. At least that's what I thought. However, Aniruddh Patel, senior felow at the Neurosciences Institute in California, thinks otherwise. Apparently there's been an ongoing scientific argument over the evolutionary benefit of dancing. Dancing, according to some scientists, serves a purpose greater than creating awkard encounters. It in fact "confers survival benefits through group bonding." To that end, according to the magazine, dancing should only be seen in animals with a long history of dance and music. And so the fact that Snowball was dancing seems to cast doubt on this theory, given the fact that birds do not have a history of dancing.

Patel did tests on Snowball with different songs and speeds, and showed that the bird really does "indicate sensitivity to the beat and ability to synchronize with it."

That some random video posted by someone of their bird dancing led to such scientific inquiry is amazing. That a scientist is actually playing music to a bird, to see if it can dance, is even more incredible.

Bubble Wrap that Never Ends (pg. 47): A couple years ago, my town got its hands on a tremendous amount of bubble wrap. Not sure how or why, but I am proud to say they used it in the best way possible: my town sponsored a "Bubble Pop Hop." Everyone in the town was invited to the town center, to jump, tumble, and roll on the bubble wrap. It was beautiful.

And that's why I was so excited to read about Japan's Mugen Puchi Puchi ("Infinite Pop Pop), a battery-powered chain that simulates poping a bubble of bubble wrap. The key-chain's bubbles rebound, resulting in endless pleasure.

This does pose an interesting quandary, though. Is part of the charm of popping bubble wrap that it has limits? That you can only do it when someone sends you a package and only before you run out of bubbles? That is the Vegan Dessert Question of the Day. Discuss.

Eat Kangaroos To Fight Global Warming (pg. 55): Cows fart a lot of methane. And that is not good for global warming. With a GWP of 25 over 100 years, methane is far more potent greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide. And that is why George Wilson of Australian Wildlife Services thinks that more people should be eating kangaroos. Kangaroos, it turns out, do not fart like their cow counterparts, and they don't taste all that bad either. And so replacing cows with kangaroos would play a part in delaying the destruction of the Earth via global warming.

The Spray on Condom (pg. 72): No explanation needed.

This is the first of what I hope will be several year-end VD posts. I hope you are hungry for more.

Pro-Choice?

2008-05-22T00:42:00.003-04:00

Almost everyday at Valentine, before I take my requisite bowl of Kashi Heart-to-Heart, I head over to the pizza station and survey the scene. I like to see what ridiculous creation is on tap for the day. Potato pizza? Pineapple, pepper and pepperoni? Chicken and pesto? How about plain cheese pizza?

I am generally completely overwhelmed and do not take any slice to eat. In fact, this semester, I had one piece of Valentine Pizza. There are so many outrageous creations, and I can't decide which one to eat, so I end up eating nothing.

This paradox led to an interesting Valentine conversation with the basic question: is choice a good thing? Would the pizza guy be better off sticking to 2-3 regular, solid, predictable flavors as opposed to 8-10 seemingly random concoctions. Would I consume more of his product if there was less of it?

Barry Schwartz, a sociology professor at Swarthmore College and author of The Paradox of Choice, would probably tell the pizza guy to slow down and stop making so many freaking flavors. An Amherst student showed me a YouTube clip of Schwartz talking about choice (see below for clip). In it, Schwartz lists out the four negative consequences that have arisen from the overabundance of choice:

1. Regret and anticipated regret--If the product is not perfect, then you instantly wonder what could have been. Thus, before you make a decision, you are met by a sort of paralysis, rather than a liberation since you don't want to mess up and feel regret later on.

2. Opportunity Costs--As alternative options have become more attractive, the opportunity costs to decisions have gone up.

3. Escalation of Expectations--You expect perfection; anything less, and you'll be left disappointed.

4. Self-blame--With limited choices, if a product is bad, the honus goes on the producer. Today with so many choices, if a product is bad, the honus goes on you, because you could have chosen something better. Thus you get sad and depressed for your stupid decision.

"There's no question that some choice is better than none, but it doesn't follow from that, that more choice is better than some choice," said Schwartz. Adding, "We have long since past the point where options improve our welfare."

Instead, too much choice has created a "recipe for misery and disaster" according to Schwartz.

What should we make of this world of seemingly unlimited choice, where 10 different cereals, pizza flavors and drinks are offered to us each day at Val? In certain cases, as with the pizza, I simply don't make a decision. In other cases, as with the cereal and drinks, I use habit to defeat the overwhelming grasp of choice. I eat the same cereal/drinks every meal, and establish a comfort zone. Others simply mix five drinks or cereals together at one time so they don't have to make a decision yet they still don't starve.

"The secret to happiness," according to Schwartz, "is low expectations." With this in mind, maybe I'll finally try one of Mr. Pizza's crazy creations tomorrow at Val.

On second thought, I think I'll probably stick to my Kashi and Turkey Sandwich. I wouldn't want to stray too far away from my habits with just a few days left here at Amherst.

Puff Daddy Agrees: Hip Hop is Not Dead

2008-05-20T00:05:00.003-04:00

Puff Daddy aka P. Diddy aka Diddy aka Sean Combs apparently had an experience similar to my own at Kanye West's Glow in the Dark Tour. Watch this video to see what I mean:

The Biggest Star in the Universe? Probably

2008-05-17T08:41:00.007-04:00

"I love this shit, because I own this shit."

It took nearly an hour of non-stop performing before Kanye West finally talked to the audience at last night's Hartford stop of his Glow in the Dark Tour. And the man spoke the truth--he does own the music world.

Following shorter segments by Lupe Fiasco, N.E.R.D., and Rihanna, Kanye went on an over hour long space traveling hit parade, touching on every major chart he's ever had. He was at times thrilling, inspirational, and egotistical. Throughout, he was freaking amazing.

With spaceship "Jane" there to guide him along, Kanye went on a bizarre trip through the Universe, filled with crash landings and shooting stars. It was at times depressing to see hip-hop's biggest star talk to a make believe space ship, but overall, the space theme added much to the set, including some wit and theatrics.

Kanye sang the new stuff--"Stronger," "I Wonder," "Flashing Lights..." The old stuff--"Gold Digger," "Diamonds are Forever," "Jesus Walks." And the unexpected--"All Falls Down," "Spaceship," and even "Don't Stop Believing." Every song was tinkered with for the live-concert, some more than others, to infuse them with a remarkable energy that kept the audience hopping and asking for more.

The highlight and climax of the concert was undoubetdly "Stronger," though "I Wonder" came in a close second. In both, Kanye's terse lyrics were clearly audible amid the chaos of screaming fans, blaring backgrounds, and impressive pyrotechnics.

The only down moments of the concert were "Get Em' High" and "All Falls Down," when Kanye went a bit overboard with the live-concert changes. When it takes you 30 seconds to realize what song is being played, that's not a good thing. But these were just minor flaws in a set that managed to touch every single big hit I wanted to hear ("Roses" would have been nice, but I realize it's a little to slow and depressing for a live concert.")

I'm pretty sure the rest of the concert was good, though my memory of everything before Kanye has been kind of scrambled. Lupe opened the concert with a short, sweet set. Though the seats were mostly empty, Lupe's goofy style connected with those who were there.

N.E.R.D. was simply LOUD. Every song sounded pretty much the same, as dueling drums covered up anything Pharell tried to sing. "Spase" was one of the craziest, psychedelic songs I have ever head, but other than that, N.E.R.D. did little more for me than destroy my hearing.

I was more anxiously awaiting Kanye than listening to Rihanna during her set, but the screaming girls seemed to like her. "Please Don't Stop the Music" was the highlight for me. "Umbrella" could have gone on a little longer, and it was really bothersome that the dancers never opened up the Umbrellas they were dancing with. I also didn't know Rihanna sang the "Come Mr. D.J." song, so that was cool.

Yet, the first acts could have been trash, and this still would have been the greatest concert I've ever been (note: I've been to very few concerts, but even if I'd been to a hundred, I'm pretty sure this would hold true). The "Glow in the Dark Tour" was not merely a concert, it was a spectacle.

Kanye West is not one to hide his greatness, and for that I am grateful.

"If this concert is rated B, then I want to know what is a fucking A."

So do I Kanye, so do I.

Good, Just Not my Taste

2008-01-02T09:02:00.000-05:00

Eh.

I'm not sure I've ever heard Ebert and Roeper use that word to describe a movie, but it's how I felt after seeing Juno yesterday in theaters. The movie was entertaining enough to keep my attention, but it was not memorable. It was an artsy, rebellious version of Knocked Up, and it didn't hold up in comparison.

The movie revolves around independent-minded 16-year-old Juno Macguff (Ellen Page) who gets pregnant with unemotional, undeveloped, uncool Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). At first she considers abortion, but eventually decides to have the baby and give it up for adoption. Over the course of the film, Juno must deal with all sorts of issues--with Bleeker, the adopting family, and herself--which constantly put the fate of the unborn baby into question. Will she keep the baby for herself? Will she find a different family for adoption? Will she split apart the adopting family?

All of these questions swirled through my head and led to an incredibly awkward viewing experience. The resolution to the questions is underwhelming. The movie begins to head down one track, and then all the sudden veers in another direction, without much transition in between. I know that's very vague, but I don't know how to write movie reviews, and I don't want to give away too much.

I suppose the main reason for my tepid review of Juno is that the previous two comedies I've seen in theaters are Knocked Up and Superbad. They were both two hours of penis jokes, McLovin, and tear-inducing laughter. They were in-your-face comedies that still managed to get a message across. Juno fits into a different category. It's a romantic comedy that's far more subtle. For some, this might be preferred (Juno has gotten rave reviews). But for me (a male teenager), it takes a backseat.

Ellen Page as Juno is fantastic. She is incredibly believable, and some how manages to conquer the complexity of her character. On the other side, Michael Cera as Bleeker is as uncomplex as possible. How many more movies can Cera possibly do? In life, there are certainly people that are emotionally vacant, but in a movie, such characters can get tiring.

If romantic comedies are you're thing, definitely go ahead and see Juno. But if you want to laugh-up the meal you just ate, go rent Superbad and watch it at home.

The Cauceyed State

2007-12-31T21:39:00.000-05:00

This Thursday the Iowans caucus. That arcane communal ritual may decide who squares off in the November presidential elections. Most of the candidates have focused on winning the Hawkeye state. All of their destinies hinge on the outcome.

Those candidates who did not establish an early lead in Iowa faced two fates: stagnation or surge. Initially undecided Democratic caucusgoers have sided with the three initial frontrunners -- Obama, Clinton, and Edwards. Richardson, Dodd, Biden, and the other trivial candidates have stagnated at minuscule percentages in the polls. The lesser candidates of both parties must envy Huckabee, who has experienced a remarkable surge since October. He has probably attracted the values-voters who might have supported the bygone campaigns of Brownback and Tancredo. And after Thompson's lackluster start, it was easy for an evangelical Southern candidate to pick up steam as an alternative to Romney, the flop-flipping heathen from Massachusetts.

Although Huckabee stands a few points ahead of Romney in the most recent poll, his recent gaffes could catch up with him by Thursday. The floating cross campaign ad suggested that under Huckabee's upright facade lies a cancerous growth of Clintonian insincerity. Supporting evidence for this possibility came on Monday, when Huckabee held a press conference claiming that only 30 minutes earlier, in the spirit of clean-handed politics, he had decided to pull a TV spot attacking Mitt Romney. Huckabee proceeded to air the ad on a projector, in effect broadcasting it free of charge via journalists. To peals of laughter from the audience, Huckabee insisted that it was essential to show the ad in front of the hypercynical media to prove that it existed in the first place.

If Huckabee takes Iowa, he'll be a shoe-in in South Carolina. Romney wins Iowa in the event of a Huckabee loss. The resultant windfall of publicity could propel Romney over McCain in New Hampshire, in effect deciding the nomination. McCain is currently polling in single digits in Iowa -- he needs a big assist from Huckabee.

An article in the Times discusses the possibility of an inconclusive result in Iowa. Among the Democrats, a neck and neck finish between the three top contenders would throw Edwards a life raft. He could go on to victory in South Carolina, assuming that he doesn't lose too badly in New Hampshire and Obama doesn't rally the entire black vote behind him. An inconclusive result probably disfavors Obama, who would split the radical liberal vote with Edwards in Iowa and then New Hampshire, thereby guaranteeing Clinton's victory. Obama needs victory and a clear Edwards defeat in Iowa to contend with Clinton in New Hampshire. If Clinton blatantly loses in Iowa her game could be up in New Hampshire.

The consequences of an equivocal Republican result in Iowa could be even more convoluted. National poll leaders -- McCain and, until recently, Giuliani -- obviously benefit from a near tie between Huckabee and Romney. If that situation allows McCain to handily take New Hampshire, Giuliani's investment in the later primaries would probably yield paltry returns, since Giuliani and McCain seem to derive support from similar constituencies.

The unprecendented amount of money flowing into the Iowa campaign means that a stalemate among the candidates could be considered a devastating loss of resources. Although Iowa might have marginalized its political significance by caucusing absurdly early, either a stalemate among candidates or checkmate by any one candidate in the Hawkeye state will determine the course of events in the rapid succession of primaries that follow.

Year in Ideas

2007-12-30T16:40:00.000-05:00

I have spent the past three weeks reading the best magazine issue of the year: The New York Times Magazine Year in Ideas. Little by little--during meals, before bed, in between finals studying--I have made my way through the issue, which lists the innovative, bizzare, and sometimes ridiculous "ideas" that emerged this past year.

Many magazines have December issues in which they detail the technological innovations of the year. What separates The New York Times Magazine rendition is that it is not simply devoted to technology. It is far broader and less concrete. Some of the "ideas" are technological innovations, but others are abstract concepts on subjects ranging from sports, to politics, to relationships.

I could probably do a blog post for almost every idea. However, instead I will simply list my favorites:

-Craigslist Vengeance (pg. 62): In March, a vengeful niece placed on ad on Craigslist, inviting all readers to come to the home of her aunt and "take what you want. Everything is free. Please help yourself to anything on the property." Though the ad was up for less than 2 hours, the aunts house was stripped bare--even the front door and kitchen sink were taken by a rabid bunch of Craigslisters. With the enormous readership of The Vegan Dessert, who knows what sort of vengeance I could achieve?

-Electric Hockey Skate (pg. 68): Since I have recently committed myself to getting good at ice skating, this one was particularly interesting. Some guy from Calgary has designed an ice hockey skate with a heated blade. The heat is not meant to warm the skaters foot, but rather to melt the ice below. By melting the ice, the ice skate faces less resistance and allows the skater to move faster. Several NHL players are trying out the skate. Seems kind of unfair to me. Some sort of regulation has to be put in place to set a limit on skate temperature.

-Left-Hand-Turn Elimination (pg. 80): Who doesn't hate left turns? They're stressful, waste time, lead to accidents, force you to turn down the radio volume...According to the NYT Mag., U.P.S. really hates left turns. U.P.S. has a fleet of 95,000 delivery trucks, and each time a truck must wait to make a left turn, it wastes gas and thus money for the company. To save cash, U.P.S. employs a computer program that maps out every delivery route and seeks to minimize the number of left turns, while taking into account the added distance that results from the extra right turns. Last year, the computer program saved close to 3 millions gallons of gas for U.P.S.

-Smog Eating Cement (98): This one had a special place in my heart because I actually understood some of the chemistry involved. An Italian Company produced cement with titanium dioxide in it. When exposed to light, the titanium dioxide can oxidize nitrogen and sulfur oxides (which make up smog) to the less hazardous nitrate and sulfate forms. The concrete has been proven to significantly clear up smog--pretty cool.

-Vegansexuality (103): I saved the best for last. Though I am not vegan or even vegetarian, I do for whatever reason write on a blog called The Vegan Dessert, so this idea has to some how relate to me. According to a survey conducted by a researcher at the University of Canterbury, some vegan eaters are rather reluctant to have carnivores as sexual partners. "I couldn't think of kissing lips that allow dead animal pieces to pass between them," said one respondent. "Nonvegetarian bodies smell different to me," said another respondent, "They are, after all, literally sustained through caracsses -- the murdered flesh of others." Maybe if I just eat vegan desserts along with the meat, I'll smell alright for vegansexuals, veggiesexuals, and carnosexuals.

Gameday

2007-12-29T09:29:00.000-05:00

If you somehow haven't heard, you can watch the Patriots play the Giants tonight at 8:15 on the NFL Network, CBS, NBC, My Nine, MTV, TBS, Comedy Central, the Discovery Channel, and Lifetime.

Also, if you haven't heard, the Patriots are 15-0. If they win, they will be the first team to ever go 16-0. The Giants are 10-5. They have absolutely nothing to play for in terms of playoff seeding. The coverage of the game has been obscene, but in reality, I know pretty much nothing about the match-up. All I've heard about on TV is rest. Will Eli take a snap? Will Brady go 4 quarters? Will Strahan break a sweat? I wouldn't be surprised if on tonight's broadcast, the game is not shown beyond the first possession. I can picture it now. First play of the game:

"Holy Cow! Eli Manning is not on the field! The Giants have decided to rest! The Patriots win and become the first team to ever go 16-0!"

Has anyone else watched Eli Manning and the Giants play this year? If the Patriots really are one of the best team's ever, shouldn't they crush the Giants either way?

On the one hand, ESPN has presented the Patriots as an unstoppable Goliath and on the other hand they've assumed that the game, and the fate of the free World, lies in Tom Coughlin's decision to rest or not rest his players. I don't get it.

Throughout the season, I've had mixed feelings towards the Patriots. I am a Giants fan, and I am typically ambivalent towards the Pats. After the ridiculous start to their season, I started actively rooting for them. As with Roger and Tiger, I like to watch history being made. But then came the Baltimore game, and my fandom took a 180. There is no doubt the Patriots should have lost that game. If not for a stupid time-out, the "greatest-team ever" would have lost to a Ravens team that has now lost nine in a row.

From then on, I joined the Patriot-hater bandwagon. After a game like that, the Patriots didn't deserve to go undefeated.

So tonight, I will be rooting hard for my G-Men. But more importantly, I will be rooting hard when Tom Coughlin decides not to rest Eli, for that will mark the end of the Patriots undefeated season. Right?

Food for Thought

2007-12-29T01:11:00.000-05:00

A roofer would use a zax, or roof hatchet, to cut up these slate shingles. How do I know of zaxes? Read on...

Besides my brief image caption, there's no prolegomenon to this post. My father stumbled across a website called Free Rice that donates rice to the needy when you correctly define words. The site presents you with a word and four potential definitions. If you correctly define three words in a row, you advance a difficulty level. If you incorrectly define a word, you go back a level.

Free Rice is becoming an ecumenical phenomenon. Yesterday alone, over 150 million grains of rice were donated by the website. Since the website's inception on October 7, the amount of rice donated per correct answer has been raised from 10 to 20 grains. The average amount of rice donated daily has more than doubled from one month ago.

The perspicacious reader might wonder from whence Free Rice gets money to purchase rice. The answer is internet advertising. At the bottom of the screen, small advertisements pop up for the duration of the question. I noticed that one was for Woodwind Brasswind, an amazing music superstore off I-90 in Indiana; this clinched my support for the Free Rice scheme.

Read My Lips

2007-12-27T13:48:00.000-05:00

To kick off the Vegan Dessert Book Club -- and allow me a head start on the reading -- here are a few suggestions.

Selected Poems, by Zbigniew Herbert. I'm not sure if either poetry or compendiums qualify for the Book Club, but we can leave that caveat to our lawyers. Herbert gained international fame in 1968, when the other great Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, and the Canadian Peter Dale Scott translated Selected Poems into English. I imagine that my bibliophilic uncle discovered this volume at Amherst upon its publication in the United States, and decided to send it to his nephew 40 years later as a holiday present.

Herbert's poems are simultaneously avant garde and traditional. Unique for a disenchanted Soviet bloc writer, Herbert wrote ironical streams of consciousness yet invariably resorted to Shakespearean, mythological, and classical Greco-Roman allusion. Herbert withstood the dehumanization of Stalinism and the rigors of the Polish resistance to Nazi rule and found the truest expression of modern tribulations in the ancient world. Following is a favorite of mine in Selected Poems. It encapsulates Herbert's style.

"From Mythology

First there was a god of night and tempest, a black idol without eyes, before whom they leaped, naked and smeared with blood. Later on, in the times of the republic, there were many gods with wives, children, creaking beds, and harmlessly exploding thunderbolts. At the end only superstitious neurotics carried in their pockets little statues of salt, representing the god of irony. There was no greater god at that time.
Then came the barbarians. They too valued highly the little god of irony. They would crush it under their heels and add it to their dishes."

Archives of Empire Volume I: From the East India Company to the Suez Canal, edited by Barbara Harlow and Mia Carter. The other day, a friend's father asked whether anyone reads primary sources anymore. I was pleased to squash his argument with an answer in the affirmative. In a way, Archives of Empire cheats in terms of primary source material, since it culls the best documents of British Empire during the time span of the book's subtitle. There is no dead end journey to the library, no scholarly disappointment, and also, no miraculous random find in the stacks of C level.

Yet Archives of Empire, as exhaustive and carefully compiled as the O.E.D., occasionally sends a chill down the spine of my intellect as only the dustiest and most disintegrating of tomes has the capacity to do upon discovery in the library. Required to purchase this book for a history seminar last semester, the professor never got around to using it. Instead of letting the book go to waste, I decided to educate myself on the Suez Canal. Gladstone's speech advising against British intervention in Egypt after the Arabi Uprising and further expansion of an unsustainable empire rings true to American ears after Afghanistan and Iraq. "For the romance of political travel we are willing to scour the world, and yet of capital defect in duties lying at our door we are not ashamed."

Founding Brothers, by Joseph J. Ellis. Over Thanksgiving break, I got through a few chapters of this Pulitzer Prize winning book and now have time to finish it. Just under 250 pages, Ellis's book paints biographical portraits of the marmoreal men of the Revolutionary generation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, and Burr. Ellis, a professor at Mount Holyoke recently chastised for classroom bragging about Vietnam War exploits never had, upholds the nearly mythological stature of those founders. He contends that in spite of their human foibles, they recognized the precarious nature of the democratic experiment and reached deals to give the United States a best chance of survival. (The obvious exception, which Ellis addresses, is that of Hamilton and Burr.) I'm not far enough into Founding Brothers to comment further, but this book would be an excellent founding choice for our great literary experiment.

Merry Christmas All

2007-12-25T11:01:00.000-05:00

I want to wish all our readers a very merry Christmas. Make sure to tune into TBS before it's too late. Also, if you are feeling extra lazy, the Robots 24 hour marathon on FX is pretty good as well. Oh, and I just saw a commercial for Home Alone--6 o'clock on FX!

I will be away from a computer for the next few days, so hopefully Miller will take the reigns admirably. Look forward to some very long posts.

Also, while I'm gone, make sure to suggest some books for the first ever Vegan Dessert Book Club.

The Vegan Dessert Book Club!

2007-12-24T22:13:00.000-05:00

Since I have vacation for the next five weeks, I thought it would be a good idea to read a book or two. To add some enjoyment (and motivation), I am inaugurating the Vegan Dessert Book Club. We (me, maybe Miller, and our hundreds of readers) can read a book together and discuss it.

For the next several days I will be taking suggestions. The book can be fiction or non-fiction and 400 pages or less. I am open to anything. Please make the suggestions in the comments section, and I will make the ultimate selection.

What Christmas Means to Me

2007-12-23T18:43:00.000-05:00

Some how, some way, Miller grew up without cable television. He missed, and continues to miss so much: Dirty Jobs, Man v. Wild, ESPN, Nickelodeon, Flavor of Love. The list goes on.

I guess I can imagine a world without cable. If I weren't such a big sports fan, cable TV wouldn't be all that important.

That is, on everyday but Christmas.

The cable TV highlight of the year comes every Christmas, when TBS broadcasts 24 hours of A Christmas Story. Typically over winer break I am in Vermont on a skiing vacation (since I don't celebrate Christmas). Here's how Christmas typically goes:

-Wake up around 6. Watch A Christmas Story as I eat/get dressed.
-Ski from 8-4.
-Come back to the hotel room to clean-up. Watch A Christmas Story as I wait for the shower
to open.
-Eat dinner.
-Watch A Christmas Story while I read the newspaper.
-Watch A Christmas Story while I floss my teeth.
-Watch A Christmas Story until the lights go out.

The schedule varies somewhat from year-to-year, but you can get the general idea--I am a big fan of A Christmas Story. There are so many great scenes: the one when the kid gets his tongue stuck on the flagpole, when Ralphie beats up the town bully, when Randy hides under the sink, where they have Christmas dinner at the Japanese Restaurant...

The movie is perfect for a 24 hour marathon because each scene can stand on its own without explanation. The other 364 days of the year, TBS doesn't do that much for me-they stopped the Saved by the Bell, Family Matters reruns years ago. Yet, for this one day, TBS comes through huge. Tomorrow at 8 the 24 hour marathon commences. Tune in.

Update: I just watched the first hour of the marathon. The movie is even better than I remember. Randy, the little brother, has to be one of the greatest movie characters of all time).

Incredible, No, but Pretty Darn Good

2007-12-22T22:17:00.000-05:00

Ever since seeing Ratatouille over the summer (one of the best movies I have ever seen), I've been wanting to see every Pixar movie I can get my hands on. This past Thursday, it was The Incredibles.

When reviewing Pixar films, it's not a question of good v. bad. The answer to that is implicit. Rather, it's more very good v. excellent. The Incredibles lies on the "very good" side of the spectrum.

The Incredibles has the same basic storyline of other Pixar films. The main character is unappreciated (Mr. Incredible, Remy the Rat, Woody...), becomes self-absorbed, and is recognized and humbled in the end.

The major problem I had with The Incredibles was that the main character was under appreciated and self-absorbed for too long. With Woody and Remy, I had sympathy. I looked past their self-absorption, and actively rooted for them. With Mr. Incredible, this wasn't the case. His self-absorbed phase went on for too long. He deceived his family and was a total jerk for nearly half the movie, and I couldn't look past this.

It's odd that I'm basing my critique of a computer animated film on whether or not I rooted for the main character. Yet, my rating is strictly based on how much I enjoyed the film, and my dislike for Mr. Incredible definitely impacted my overall enjoyment.

Nonetheless, The Incredibles was very good. Though I couldn't stand the main character, what made this movie stand out was the minor players--the costume designer, the insurance boss, Dash, and the mom. These were all remarkably crafted characters who only Pixar could make up. The music was also an excellent touch.

I know The Incredibles has quite an ardent following, and I don't want it to seem like I disliked like the movie. It was a very good film. All I mean to to say is that it's not going up on my Facebook profile, in the pantheon of great movies.

Correction: After an incredibly embarrassing Facebook exchange with an Incredibles aficionado I realized that the sons name is Dash not Flash. I have fixed the mistake and apologize.

Encore

2007-12-21T23:12:00.000-05:00

Most good things have to come to an end. The Vegan Dessert does not.

After a semester away, Miller and I have decided to return. We have much more to say, and we hope you, our loyal readers, still have an appetite. This blog will continue to have absolutely no focus. Miller will continue to post 5-screen essays and I will continue to post my short, but sweet entries.

This comeback is likely to last only 5-weeks, so enjoy it (and comment) while you can. This is not going to a Michael Jordan/Jay-Z type comeback. No, we expect to return better than ever, not a shell of our former selves.

I'll sign off with a YouTube video my brother showed me this evening. It's been viewed by 10 million people, so you've probably already seen it. But if not, enjoy:

To End

2007-08-29T21:53:00.000-04:00

Four score and five days ago, a blog was made. The Vegan Dessert provided a platform from which two college students could make witty remarks, write thinly veiled sarcasm, and pontificate on the world. "We have ideas, too. And everyone ought to hear them."

I stand by the founding principle of the Vegan Dessert: "Conceived in variety, and dedicated to the proposition that all ideas are created equal." Of course, the ideas of a certain JT and Miller might be more equal than others.

As the publication's readership could tell, certain traits distinguished JT's posts from my own. And after reading JT's analysis of blogging, I realized that each of us had a different vision of the Vegan Dessert.

Not to offend the reader, but to me, the reader didn't especially matter. Blogging was an intellectual exercise. Pick an interesting topic, even one you know little to nothing about. Read about it. Form an opinion. Construct an argument. Draw a pithy conclusion.

At the risk of sounding like babbling old Polonius, I advise writing for yourself. Mull over a curious topic and produce a cohesive article. People don't care how long it is, as long as they too are engaged. Even with short posts, concise paragraphs, and simple sentences, I can barely digest one post on Deadspin, because I don't care about sports gossip. Lack of focus was the Vegan Dessert's greatest asset. It ensured that friends and relatives could find at least one interesting post to peruse.

As JT mentioned, most people who encountered our blog were anonymous Googlers who never returned. This fact doesn't bother me, since they were after a specific topic. If I provided a compelling list of Disneyland attractions, that's an added bonus to the personal amusement I reaped from writing it. Think of it as Maimonides's highest form of giving -- charity with unknown individuals at both ends of the equation.

Whoever you are, thanks for reading.

Top Five Wind Pieces

2007-08-29T21:51:00.000-04:00

In three centuries' repertoire of classical music -- to ignore that vast array of boring late Renaissance and early Baroque output -- there exists one genre for which I have developed a particular affinity. For our purposes, I'll call that genre wind music, and in its ranks I don't include "band" music, or that relatively modern corpus spanning from Sousa to the present. Wind music consists of pieces for chamber ensembles usually constituted of woodwinds and French horn. Works for mixed ensemble (e.g. a small group of winds and strings) also fall into the category. The size of the ensemble usually varies between three and eight players, although certain masterworks are written for larger groups, such as nonet or 13 musicians. It is difficult to give the genre quantitative parameters because the nature of wind music is defined more by a particular sound (which I will address shortly) than by instrumental configuration and size.

The heyday of wind music came sometime between Mozart and Beethoven, but its buildup predated 1756, and its denouement lingered into the late 19th century. Gems of the wind music repertoire have since been composed independently of a popular trend toward the musical medium.

Hapsburg nobles loved music for winds, and they sponsored both commissions and court wind ensembles. Mozart wrote a great body of music for wind instruments, including concerti (for oboe, French horn, clarinet, flute, and bassoon), serenades, basset horn trios (the basset horn is a primitive lower pitched member of the clarinet family), and wind quintets (defined as flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon).

Audiences embraced the compositional mode. Beethoven's Septet for Winds and Strings was so popular that he felt it obscured the significance of his later works. When the Septet took London by storm in 1815, he exclaimed, "That damn work; I wish it could be burned!" Almost 50 years later, Walt Whitman heard the piece and waxed metaphoric in delight. "Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a hillside in the sunshine; serious and firm monotonies, as of winds; a horn sounding through the tangle of the forest, and the dying echoes; soothing floating of waves, but presently rising in surges, angrily lashing, muttering, heavy; piercing peals of laughter, for interstices; now and then weird, as Nature herself is in certain moods -- but mainly spontaneous, easy, careless…."

Most wind music is lighter than string music -- especially most pieces written for string quartet. Wind instruments are mellifluous and create exquisite overtones in harmony, whereas, at least to my ears, string quartets often emphasize unpleasant and melodramatic sawing and scratching. A wind ensemble's breathy weight can be exploited to create an amazing propulsive effect. Look to the third movement of Mozart's Gran Partita for a soothing but unstoppable impetus at a slow tempo; Hummel's Wind Octet and Partita and Mendelssohn's Military Overture (composed at age 15) both highlight the ability of a wind group to jump on dotted rhythms with powerful momentum.

The five central instruments of wind music (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon) possess strikingly different sounds. In contrast, the four primary stringed instruments (violin, viola, cello, and double bass) exhibit matched timbres when playing notes in the same register; they primarily distinguish themselves by playing in different registers. While stringed instruments interact in consort like members of an immediate family, wind instruments resemble the disparate characters of a bustling metropolis.

So here is a list of my favorite wind music:

Close call: Serenade for winds and strings, op. 44 (1878), for two oboes, two clarinets, two horns, two bassoons, cello, and double bass, by Antonin Dvorak.

Starting with a memorable opening march that would sound equally convincing on pipe organ, Dvorak infuses each of the serenade's four movements with folksy Slavonic tunes. Brahms loved the piece, and it surely helped the Czech composer gain a foothold in the international music scene.

5. Grand Nonet, op. 31 (1813), for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, by Louis Spohr.

A traditionalist composer who introduced radical innovations to classical music (such as use of the baton for conducting), Spohr constructed his Nonet in a familiar fashion. The opening movement is in sonata form; a scherzo and then an adagio follow (this common inversion of the two movements is common in Romantic music); a bubbling vivace finale wraps it up. Spohr's simple chromatic theme of the first movement resurfaces in three of the other four, providing a splendid sense of continuity.

The winds and strings are often treated as two sections of the ensemble, and in certain parts, the melody is monopolized by violin. But the most important facet of Spohr's writing is a soloistic recycling of thematic material between instruments, a feature shared by many great compositions with important wind parts.

Andrew de Alvare discusses how the piece was enjoyed by aristocrats in the Age of Napoleon. "The demanding and sometimes virtuosic parts required professional musicians available only to the wealthy, but also made the piece[s] [Spohr's Wind Octet and Nonet] attractive to a wider audience. While certain amateur ensembles did perform these pieces, they were not as popular as the related works by Beethoven [the Septet] and Schubert [the Octet]. The sophistication of these two works by Spohr, their consequent aristocratic appeal, and most of all, their popularity, are indicated by their performance in 1814 for European heads of state at the Congress of Vienna." Spohr's Nonet, permeated with subdued sensibility and subtle sarcasm, fits perfectly my conception of restoration Europe’s ranking elite.

4. Octet, D. 803 (1824), for clarinet, horn, bassoon, two violins, viola, cello, and double bass, by Franz Schubert.

Often deemed classical music's greatest melodist alongside Mozart, most critics ignore the genius of Schubert's rhythmic intensity. The combination of rhythmic drive and melodic passion makes Schubert's Ninth one of the most perfect symphonies ever composed. Look at his “Wanderer” Fantasy, "Death and the Maiden" Quartet, or "Trout" Quintet. Why are they all staples of the repertoire? Persistent, unrelenting rhythm, plus a spiffy tune. Let me describe a movement from his Octet, written as I listen to a recording by the Gaudier Ensemble.

A sudden tremolo chill in the bass punctuated by pungent wind chords launches the finale of this archetypical octet. The ensuing Allegro plods forth like a pastoral peasant, persistently shrugging off memories of the minor key opening. Schubert, with typical melodic flair, keeps your foot tapping until the unexpected reemergence of the tortuous opening tremolo. The peasant journeyman doesn't ignore the warning this second time and instead picks up his tempo, sprinting home to the buoyant syncopations of arpeggiating horns.

Composed for some of the same players Beethoven had in mind for his Septet, Schubert's Octet takes after that groundbreaking work for small mixed ensemble in certain other aspects. Both reach back to the proud 18th century divertimento tradition; both use identical instruments, except for Schubert's addition of an extra violin; both are emotionally unburdened; and both were written so as not to exceed the capabilities of small groups of musically inclined friends.

3. Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452 (1784), for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

"I consider it to be the best work I have ever composed," wrote Wolfgang to his father after the quintet's premiere in April of 1784. Mozart's pleasure was well-founded, since his composition remains enjoyable to hear and play. After assembling a group to read through the piece at the end of last academic year, I concluded that the Beethoven quintet for the same instruments sounds more difficult, but the Mozart quintet is much harder to play. Motifs subtly alter their shading as they pass between the wind instruments, with perpetual support provided by piano.

The first movement opens at a tempo marked largo. A serene piano melody accented by heavy wind chords fluidly dissolves into dissonance and back to calm, before ending on a regal chord and launching into the main allegro section. Piano once again provides melodic fodder, but this time, Mozart’s winds enter to elaborate the keyboard’s simplistic theme with stately flourishes. Alternation between innocence and pomp characterizes the whole movement; the horn finally calls it quits with an exclamation of pointed triplets.

The quintet continues with a chillingly beautiful Larghetto. A tricky melody on oboe is supported by the lower winds, but the movement's exposition soon cedes to soloistic exchanges between all the instruments. After gradually reincorporating the oboe’s original statement into a building chorus, the ensemble prematurely diminishes to a soft cadence. An abrupt minor key inclusion gives a brief reality check. But the oboe's relaxing dream refuses to dissipate, and the movement ends with a gentle sigh.

Mozart’s closing Allegretto begins with a lighthearted tune in the piano, soon redoubled by the appearance of winds. Countermelody enters as a flippant phrase that provides a launching pad for numerous variations. My favorite moment comes near the end, when the music grinds to a halt. A fugue gains force in the winds and spills into the nervous trill of an oboe before releasing its energy into a delightful march-like finish.

2. Sextet for Piano and Wind Quintet, op. 100 (1932-1939), by Francis Poulenc.

Poulenc was an insidious composer, a bourgeois nobleman who never composed for money but who frequently mocked cosmopolitan France through inane and sarcastic works. Surprisingly, he was also a devout Catholic capable of producing deeply moving music. Throughout his oeuvre, these opposing traits surface in close proximity. Often they are juxtaposed in one brief movement, like the first movement of his Sonata for Clarinet and Piano.

Individually, Poulenc’s Sextet is only moderately challenging. But a successful combination of the lines in ensemble is a tremendous harmonic and rhythmic challenge. Poulenc was a first-rate composer for winds, because his phrase lengths perfectly accommodate the instruments’ dependence on breathing. Poulenc’s colorful style accents the character of each instrument, and his bizarre harmonies produce exotic overtones.

The Sextet’s first movement commences with a raucous crescendo of speedy runs (in parallel tenths, if I remember correctly). From this cacophony, a lunatic melody bursts forth at backbreaking pace. One slow respite is generously provided in the chaotic development. Poulenc’s middle movement is titled “Divertissement,” reflecting its naïve and playful nature. Bittersweet shades are occasionally introduced, and the movement ends with staccato grunts low in the bassoon, but it is mostly frivolous, especially in a startling and jaunty interlude. The last movement is a rondo. At first, Poulenc contrasts one vivacious with another lush melody, but he ultimately abandons the witty exchange for a plangent C major conclusion.

1. Serenade no. 10, "Gran Partita." K. 361/371a (1783 or 1784), for two oboes, two clarinets, two basset horns, four French horns, two bassoons, and double bass, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In the movie “Amadeus,” Salieri first encounters the child prodigy of Salzburg at a performance of his "Gran Partita" serenade in the court of Joseph II. That "great music for winds of a very special kind," to quote a Viennese newspaper describing the piece in 1784, was an important work in Mozart's life, being the first he wrote upon moving to the Hapsburg capital.

Let's leave a brief description of the third movement largo to F. Murray Abraham's Salieri. "On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse -- bassoons and basset horns -- like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly -- high above it -- an oboe. A single note, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight. This was no composition by a performing monkey... This was a music I'd never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing a voice of God."

Mozart perfected the use of wind instruments as actors in a cast. Musicologist Alfred Einstein writes an excellent summary of the instruments’ roles in the "Gran Partita" and expounds on two of the movements. "The fascination of the work emanates from its sheer sound. There is a continuous alternation between tutti and soli, in which the part of the soli is usually allotted to the two clarinets; a constant reveling in new combinations: a quartet of clarinets and basset horns, a sextet of oboes, basset horns, and bassoons over the supporting double bass; oboe, basset horn, and bassoon in unison, with accompaniment -- a mixture of timbres and transparent clarity at the same time; an 'over-lapping' of all the tone-colors, especially in the development section of the first movement. No instrument is treated in true concertante fashion, but each one can, and strives to, distinguish itself; and just as in a buffo finale by Mozart each person is true to his own character, so each instrument here is true to its own character -- the oboe to its aptness for cantabile melodies, the bassoon likewise and also, in chattering triplets, to its comic properties. The two pairs of horns furnish the basic tone-color; but the fact that Mozart uses only the first pair in the first slow movement, a Notturno, is an indication of his supreme taste and skill: this is a scene from Romeo under starry skies, a scene in which longing, grief, and love are wrung like a distillation from the beating hearts of the lovers. The counterpart to this lyricism is found in a 'Romance' whose sentimentality is carried towards the point of absurdity by means of an oddly burlesque Allegretto, an 'alternativo.'" And nothing sends chills down my spine like the penultimate movement's final variation and segue into the conclusive roaring Rondo.

Reading through the Library of Congress facsimile along with my favorite recording (members of the Berlin Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta), I noticed that the "Gran Partita" still presents challenges to the modern clarinetist, alongside untold delights.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

2007-08-29T11:23:00.000-04:00

In life, it's best to go all in or not go at all.

With the summer coming to an end, and classes scarily approaching, I realize that this blog cannot go on. I don't have the time, energy, or motivation to keep serving the VD, and I doubt Miller does either.

It's been fun cooking up posts for you the last twelve-odd weeks. I recommend a blog to anyone with nothing to do.

With my last post, I want to go through some things I've learned this summer about the blogosphere. Think of it as my honors thesis. I've been doing research for the summer, and here are the results:

Keep it short: Long articles are for print. The Internet is all about speed, and blog posts should be simple and to the point. Ideally, a blog should have a continued button, so that you can have the first few paragraphs on the main page, and the remainder somewhere else. I couldn't ever figure out how to do this on blogger.

Break it Down: If you're post is going to be long, as I suspect this will be, break it down into short sections. That way, readers can easily pick and choose what they want to read.

Bored? Start a Blog:

Since I used a ton of excel this summer for my job, I decided to bust out some graphs. The graphs show that as my research got more interesting, the blog got appreciably worse. It was almost exactly inversely proportional. In the beginning of the summer, when I didn't have much to do at work, I would think about the blog all day. That way, when I got back to my dorm at night, I could storm through 2-3 posts a night. By the end of the summer though, my job got interesting, and the VD suffered. The big spike in the graph to the right is July 3-5, the greatest stretch this blog ever had.

Blogger--easy, but limiting: I don't know html, java, or any computer languages, but I was able to make a website for free. That's pretty cool, and it's thanks to sites like blogger. It was sometimes very difficult to format posts (like the graphs above), but for simple layout, blogger is surprisingly smooth.

Weekly Features are the way to go: Hopefully you didn't realize, but some weeks I'd have 2-3 "Vegan Dessert Questions of the Week" and some weeks I'd have none. Same is true with the "Random YouTube Video of the Day." By having this quasi regular features, it gives you a good cop-out when you can't find anything to write about.

Deadspin.com is Amazing: Many of my readers might not have heard of deadspin.com, but it is the premier sports blog on the Internet. Having had a blog for the summer, I can now fully appreciate the greatness of Will Leitch, the editor of the site. He is officially the king of sarcasm.

Don't get too Personal: My worst posts came when I was upset and felt like ranting. I had no one to complain to, so I complained to myself, via the Vegan Dessert. These posts should never have actually been published.

Think before you write: Because it's so simple to write a post, I'd often put something up that I didn't completely believe in. I'd try to get a post up too quickly, and realize hours after it was published that it didn't make sense or I didn't really believe what I had said. Unlike writers for print, bloggers don't unnecessarily have time to think about their posts between writing and publishing. The two can be simultaneous. This can lead to some poorly thought out posts.

Google Images is the Best, True That, Double True: By taking images from Google, our readership at least tripled. Not too many people search "Vegan Dessert" on search engines, but lots look for images of David Beckham, Kobayashi, or Jessica Biel. By having such photos on our site, we got a lot of inadvertent traffic. I like to believe that some of these accidental visitors actually stayed on the site and read some posts. The photo below got us the most traffic. There were a couple days when we got close to 1000 hits thanks to the David Beckham photo.

Wait a second. Never mind. I just went to look for the David Beckham photo on our site, and it's not even there any more. It looks like a lot of the photos that we borrowed are now no longer up. Maybe Google images isn't the way to go after all.

Vegan Dessert? You may have noticed that this blog has absolutely nothing to do with Vegan Dessert, and I just use it for metaphors every once in a while. The main flaw with this blog was that it had no focus. At times it focused on sports, other times politics, other times music. Because of this, there was no way we'd generate a large, loyal audience. No one knew what to expect when coming to the VD. This made it more fun to write, but made readers more skeptical to keep on visiting.

**There will be one more post in mid-September, when Kanye's new CD comes out.**

I hope you've enjoyed the VD. It's been fun.

I'll leave you with the official song/music video of the Vegan Dessert:

Video Games Turn to Steroids

2007-08-27T12:03:00.000-04:00

Growing up, I had three birthday venues--the nearby aquarium, the bowling alley and the local arcade. I don't recall anyone ever getting injured at one of my parties. There were no shark attacks, no lethal bowling ball drops, and thank goodness, no broken arms from arm wrestling a machine.

Three people in Japan, whom I don't think I invited to any parties, unfortunately experienced the latter. Now, 150 "Arm Spirit" machines are being recalled from Japanese arcades.

An AP article is on top of the story. "The machine isn't that strong, much less so than a muscular man. Even women should be able to beat it," said Ayano Sakiyama, a spokeswoman for the comany which makes the machine, "We think that maybe some players get overexcited and twist their arms in an unnatural way."

It's pretty clear that Sakiyama, a la Bud Selig, is casting a blind eye to the biggest scandal in video game history--steroids have gone digital.

I want to see a showdown between the juiced up arcade machine and Sylvester Stallone's character in the movie "Over the Top." I take Stallone. Human steroids have to be further along than those for video games.

The Hits of Summer

2007-08-25T22:55:00.000-04:00

The biggest musical event of the summer has yet to take place. September 11, 2007 Kanye West and 50 Cent are coming out with CDs on the same freaking day. Sick.

But this is the wrap-up week for this blog, and I have to say a little bit about the summer in music.

Since I lived in a college dorm for ten weeks of the summer, and very rarely drove anywhere, the summer hits some how never got old. Unlike past years, where I came to dread the hits of summer, this year I would scan the radio while driving, simply looking for the 5-10 songs that defined the season.

Out of all songs, I'd be happiest to come across "Umbrella" by Rihanna on the radio. I have no idea what the hell the umbrella symbolizes (if anyone does, please comment), but the song is great. I can easily sing (technically scream) along with it, and you can't go wrong with Jay-Z.

In a close second comes "The Way I Are" by Timbaland. What a beat. I couldn't stop playing the opening beat on my trumpet after hearing the song for the first time. The song as a whole falls apart a bit in the middle with the rapping, and that's why it's not my favorite hit of the summer, but overall, I was just a bit excited when this song came along on the radio.

The whole summer, I wasn't sure how to feel about "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Fergie. Can a guy like this song? Am I allowed to blast it on my radio? This awkwardness ruined the song for me.

As for the best album I listened to this summer, it's without a doubt "Best of George Benson the Instrumentals." I ripped the guy apart in an earlier post, but this is one of the best albums I've ever heard. Benson does not sing at all, yet I constantly found myself singing to his guitar. This CD was perfect for listening to during a long day in the lab. I highly recommend it for homework listening.

Of course, I have to mention my trip to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and my fulfillment of a life long dream--seeing Tower of Power! in concert. They were somehow better than I expected. If you get a chance, see them live. Read this too (it's one of my better posts of the summer).

Some quick hits:

Summertime by Will Smith. Recommended by brother. You must listen to it before the summer is over.

Encore, Jay-Z and Linkin Park Remix. Currently my favorite song.

Common=good. Listen to him.

The Official Song of the VD=Basketball, but Kurtis Blow. See YouTube video at bottom of post. Make sure to not only listen to the song but also watch the music video.

I'm sorry that this was a bit of a ramble, but now that I'm back at Amherst, my mind is awash. I promise my final few posts will be more direct and fluent. I've been mapping them out in my head for weeks.

(Note: The photo shows Kanye, Diddy, and 50 performing together two days ago. They, along with Jay-Z, made a surprise appearance at MSG's "Scremfest." Read about it in the NYT.)

Random YouTube Video of the Day

2007-08-24T22:51:00.000-04:00

What would you do if your parents left you home alone for ten days? Probably not build a water slide down the side of your house. But that's what some kids decided to do in this video.

Many of the VD's readers will be heading off to college in the coming days. College is essentialy 150(?) days away from your parents, so let this video be an inspiration to all:

Thanks to awfulannouncing for the video.

The Summer of Good Movies

2007-08-24T09:11:00.001-04:00

I've already written my personal reviews of the summer in food and magazines.

Now it's time for movies.

Incredibly, this summer, I batted .750 when it comes to watching a good movie.

If you take one thing from this review let it be this--don't let someone else pick out the movie you're going to watch, unless it's your older brother by 18 months.

This school year, I watched so many terrible movies because I passively agreed to watch what someone else picked out, and said was going to be great. Snatch, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, All The King's Men. They all sucked.

This summer, the only two bad movies I watched were picked out by others. They were Fast Food Nation and Little Miss Sunshine.

Little Miss Sunshine was recommended by half the civilized world. "Oh you have to see it," the girls in my dorm said. "It's such a great movie," my mom told me. I watched the movie waiting for greatness. There was no way, I thought, that so many people would recommend it, and it'd end up being a dud. The greatness never came. It wasn't a terrible movie, but considering the expectations, it was a monumental letdown. It was like the Roberto Alomar trade to the Mets, or going to Valentine Dinning Hall expecting corn muffins and getting Bunker Hill Biscuits instead. Downright depressing. Go ahead and write in the comments about how wrong I am about this one. I won't listen to you, but it's always nice to have comments on my posts.

Not much needs to be said about Fast Food Nation. Read my review. It was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. And of course, it was picked out by someone else, who I will not name but sometimes reads the VD. It was like Shepard's Pie at Valentine, or Mo Vaughn in a Mets uniform--simply terrible.

The one movie I watched this summer following a recommendation and actually liked was Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. I might have said otherwise in earlier posts, but this was my favorite movie of the summer. It was like the Golden State Warriors of 2007. I didn't expect much, but now I can't wait for the sequel. This movie was recommended by my older brother, thus supporting my earlier hypothesis.

Now, for the movies I picked out and loved. For these movies, I was the general manager. Like Omar, I knew how to build my lineup (of movies).

Spellbound. Read my review. It has so many incredible, hilarious story lines. I thought it'd be good, but not as great as it turned out to be.

Hoop Dreams. Read my review. Read Miller's review. The best documentary I've ever watched.

Ratatouille. Read my review. Read Miller's review. I've realized since watching it that I am like the common rat. I do not have any respect for fine cuisine.

Wild Hogs. I just watched this a couple days ago with my mom. I thought it would be kind of lame, with a cast of Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, and William H. Macy. However, it was really enjoyable. It was the corny, feel good movie of the summer.

Superbad. Read my review. Not as funny as White Castle, but pretty freaking funny.

I suppose the act of writing a movie review goes against rule number one of this post--don't take movie recommendations from anyone other than you're older brother. Why write a review if no one should listen?

However, obviously, since I came up the theory, it doesn't apply to me. My recommendations are universal.

If you want to list your favorite movies of the summer, go ahead. But unless your my older brother by 18 months, I'm not going to take any movie advice from you.

Next up--my summer music review.

Vegan Dessert Question of the Week!

2007-08-22T23:54:00.001-04:00

The Little League Series has reminded me of a question I've had for a very long time, and never had properly answered.

In the Tournament, there is a team from Latin America, the Carribean, and Mexico.

Oddly, this reminded me of a question that has bothered for me years--what continent does Central America belong to?

I used to think that I was an idiot for not knowing this. I was embarrassed to ask my teachers. Yet, I clearly remember once asking a Spanish teacher, and she too had no idea.

I just took a look at my Risk game board, and that did very little to clear anything up. In Risk, Central America is a large swath which stretches all the way from Mexico to Panama.

Now, I know that Mexico is considered part of North America, but below that things get very confusing. Is the Carribean part of Central America? Is Central America part of South America, or is it simply a region without a Continent?

I've always assumed that a country has to be part of a Continent, but this assumption may be wrong.

Many at Amherst have supported the Latin American Studies major. Before I can consider supporting this effort, it'd be nice to know what Latin America encompasses.

So I guess this has morphed into a two part question:

What continent is Central America a part of, and what countries make up Latin America?

I Hate ESPN

2007-08-22T20:46:00.000-04:00

Before you read this, make sure to read the previous post. Otherwise it will not make sense.

Now that you have:

I do not get ESPN Classic.

WTF?

I used to get it. I'm sure I did. But now I don't.

I'm pissed.

Now, instead of watching Kobe and Kidd on the same team, I'm going to pack for college. Why would Kobe and Co. even participate if no one in the U.S. can watch them?

Ugh. ESPN sucks. Not even Jessica Biel can make up for this.

(Note: Image from mypickspal.com)

USA Takes on the World and Inevitably Loses

2007-08-22T19:57:00.000-04:00

If a live sporting event is televised on ESPN Classic, it's going to be special. It has to be.

Tonight, at 11, the U.S. basketball team takes on Venezuela, on ESPN Classic.

I am kind of excited. There might never again be a chance to see Kobe, Lebron, Carmelo, and J-Kidd on the same team, actually trying.

If the U.S. doesn't make it to the finals of the FIBA Americas Tournament, they don't even make it to the Olympics. Even if they do make it to the Olympics, it's in Beijing, so I'll probably never watch it because of the time difference.

No Daily Show and Kolbert for me tonight. Once the Mets game is over, I'm heading over to watch what's guaranteed to be an instant classic.

If only Gilbert were playing...

Pitching Lessons from Mike Mussina

2007-08-22T19:16:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I did a post on the many magazines I was fortunate enough to get from unknowing Amherst students. I did not mention Play magazine in that post. That's because for some reason Play, like many high school newspapers, comes out every three months.

With the U.S. Open looming, Play came out this past weekend. It is without a doubt the best sports magazine out there.

Every week the The New York Times Magazine comes out, I quickly glance to see if there are any articles about sports. Nothing beats a thoughtful, well-written sports article from the NYT Mag.

Play is basically a collection of sports articles that would otherwise find their way into the NYT Mag. SI and ESPN serve the fluff, Play has the substance.

There is one excerpt from the magazine I want to point out. There is neat two-page spread titled "The Art of Pitching" in which Mike Mussina takes you through the intricacies of pitching in the majors. Yes, I know Mussina should probably not be giving advice on pitching right now, but it is still interesting.

There is one section from the spread that particularly stands out. It was under the heading "The Scuffed Ball". Here's the excerpt:

Defacing a ball brings a 10-game suspension for pitchers, who have been known to apply scuff marks using sandpaper, a belt buckle, even a thumbtack. But a batted ball can easily get scratched up on the infield dirt. "If there's a scuff, I'm thinking, 'I've gotta use this while I've got it,'" Mussina says. "It brings physics into play." A ball directs its flight to a place of less resistance. If he holds the ball with the scuff on the left side, that side will have more resistance. Thus, the ball will fight its way down and to the right, making it seem to the hitter as if Mussina's sinker is especially lively. "I may get the next ball and it's completely smooth and there's no way I can make it do that again," Mussina says. "But the hitter doesn't know that."

I had never heard that before.

Baseball is such a great game.

Lets go Mets!

Pour Me a Little Bubbly

2007-08-21T13:03:00.000-04:00

Dr. Housing Bubble diagnoses the real estate fever as starting to cool down. For our edification, he compiled two hilarious and foreboding lists of symptoms:

Real Homes of Genius: Special Edition, Lifestyles of the Poor and Notorious. 10 Southern California Homes that Prove a Gargantuan Housing Bubble.

and

Special Edition: Real Country of Genius: Today we Salute You America. Mortgage Implosions from Sea to Shining Sea.

My personal favorite of the 15 real deals advertised above is a 432 square foot rambler south of San Diego going for $299,900. Anyone want to buy my living room and kitchen for that great low price?

Subprime's bubble is popping from Wall Street to Main Street. The newest worry is over money market funds that hold the short-term debt (commercial paper) of collateralized debt obligations heavy in subprime mortgages. Money market funds are supposed to be conservative alternatives to bank accounts. Instead, managers have attempted to increase risk and thus investor yield through deceptively rated junk.

Who knew that following an economic disaster could be so fun? Don't classify my amusement as schadenfreude, because I'm not laughing at lenders with poor credit ratings, or foreign owners of America's credit garbage, or Moody's stockholders, or hedge fund managers. I am instead receiving a first-rate lesson in finance and economics at their expense. The subprime meltdown seems to be spreading to all corners of finance and the globe, drawing the observer's attention to America's gilded age gluttony and imminent eclipse as sole superpower.

Better stop writing. Time to go and purchase one of those limited-offer SoCal mansions with a scarce subprime mortgage!

Superbad is Supergood

2007-08-21T10:22:00.000-04:00

I've been wanting to write that title for the past couple days. It's extraordinary how many respected publications have used it, or something like it, and I wanted to get in on the alliteration. Whenever I finally saw the film, I was going to use that title no matter what, regardless of how good the movie was.

I did see the movie last night, and the title of this post holds true. The movie was really good.

Typically, after watching a comedy, the ride home from the theater consists of a recounting of particularly funny moments.

"Oh, do you remember this part...! But how about that other scene when...! No, the best part was where....!"

The ride home from "Superbad" was not like this.

It was more like: "Wow, that was a freaking funny movie." No one scene defines it. Each scene simply melds together into two hours of great comedy. (Though, of course, there are some elementary school doodles from the movie that I might sadly never get out of my head.)

This past year, I watched "American Pie" with some kids in my college dorm. Someone won it in a raffle, and I remembered it being a pretty funny movie the first time I saw it, so I suggested we watch it. The screening was one of the more awkward, embarrassing moments of my freshman year in college. "American Pie" is only meant to be watched by those over 17 (it's rated NC-17), but it's only enjoyed but those under 17.

"Superbad" has a fairly similar plot line to "American Pie." Some high school kids want to get with girls before leaving for college. Yet beyond that, any comparison between the two films would be insulting to "Superbad." Yes, the movie is centered around high school, but it manages not to be merely a movie for high schoolers. This is an impressive feat.

While it was filled with more vulgarity than I had expected, it does not live and die with it, like those of the "American Pie" genre.

Typically, I cannot stand movies with the "dumb cop" characters. I get so frustrated. Why do incompetent cops always get in the way of justice? Yet with this film, I didn't feel that way at all. The cops definitely fit the dumb mold, but they are likable. In fact, every main character from the movie is likable. There are no bad guys. There are just abstract obstacles that have to be overcome--talking with girls, buying alcohol when you're too young, separating with your best friend before college. What male watching this film doesn't feel for Evan, Seth, and McLovin?

Ratatouille remains my favorite film of the summer, but "Superbad" sits in comfortably at second place.

(Note: There was a coming attraction for "Harold and Kumar Go to Gitmo." It just said it's coming out in 2008. I cannot wait.)

Vegan Dessert Question of the Week!

2007-08-19T13:34:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, my brother told me about an article from the Wall Street Journal in which LL Cool J lists his favorite songs to work out to. Sounds familiar.

I'm not going to recall the list, since I'm slightly afraid of Rupert Murdoch. If you want to see it, it was in yesterday's "Pursuits" section.

The list got me thinking--do musicians listen to their own music?

When 50 Cent is working out in his gym, does he listen to "In da Club." When Diddy is training for a marathon, does he listen to "Come with Me?" When Kelly Clarkson is pumping iron, does she listen to "A Moment like This?"

LL Cool J did not list any of his own songs on the list.

Can someone get pumped up listening to his/her own voice? I wouldn't know, as none of my hits have made it to any CDs. Yet.

Maybe musicians get to a point where they can't even stand their own music. They have to sing the same songs over and over, from city to city. They're expected to have the same enthusiasm at the first stadium as at the twentieth.

50, Diddy, or any musicians out there reading my blog, can you answer my question--do you enjoy listening to your own music?

The Great Tomato Harvest of 2007

2007-08-19T13:22:00.001-04:00

For some reason, in my family's garden, we have 24 tomato plants. This might make sense for a family with 10 kids or an Italian restaurant, but neither of these are descriptions of my family. Hell, I don't even like tomatoes.

It's been a lot of fun maintaing them, though, and I'm glad we have so many.

Yet, today a minor problem developed. This morning, my dad and I brought home roughly 75 tomatoes (see photo). We already had ten in the fridge. That's a bit too many for us to handle.

If anyone reading this blog wants a tomato, drop a comment. We might be able to work something out, assuming you pay for the shipping and handling.

Top Five Disneyland Rides

2007-08-19T00:05:00.000-04:00

Every year of my post-toddler childhood in California, I relished going to Disneyland. After moving to Minnesota, my family would sometimes fly back to L.A. in the summer, and the primary object of my whining was to get to Disneyland. When I took a marching band trip to Disney World in high school, I wished I was at Disneyland instead.

Disneyland is the authentic amusement park. Even today, when driving between Orange County and L.A., the Matterhorn looms over the freeway and beckons with promises of adventure.

Stay at Disneyland all day -- no trip is complete without collapsing exhausted at a table in some overpriced cafe as the clock approaches midnight. And then stumble down to the man-made lake next to the Haunted Mansion for the overhyped laser light show. I remember canoeing on that body of water. Instead of productively paddling, I just splashed my parents.

After going on every classic ride a countless number of times, here's my well-ruminated list of favorites (which I can't limit it to five this time):

8. Disneyland Railroad: I love hopping aboard the park's steam locomotives and traveling back in time to the Primeval World of Mesozoic monsters. One of the original rides from 1955, it has remained a popular attraction and mode of transportation around Disneyland ever since.

7. Space Mountain: I used to think this was the scariest a roller coaster could get, especially since the harness didn't fasten my first time on it. An original score was written for the ride when it opened in 1977 -- Dick Dale was brought in to play surf guitar riffs for the part after you crest the first big hill. The score was based on the "Aquarium" movement of Saint-Saens's "The Carnival of the Animals."

6. Storybook Land Canal Boats: The best part of this often underrated ride is the intricate detail included in its scenic miniatures. To quote Wikipedia, "The houses in Storybook Land are fitted with six-inch doors and quarter-inch hinges that open and close, so the Disney electricians can change the lightbulbs." Unlike "It's a Small World," this ride doesn't attempt to awe with pastel overload and a catchy tune.

5. Autopia: As a young car enthusiast, this was a highlight of my Disneyland hajj. What makes Autopia most enthralling to its young and unlicensed drivers is the deceptive amount of freedom granted at the pedal (the vehicles' top speed is only 6.5 miles per hour).

4. Mad Tea Party: In my family, the teacups are a father-son bonding experience. My mother refuses to ride for reasons alluded to in the above picture. I love cranking on that central turntable with all my might, although the craft seem to exhibit an invariable maximum rotational velocity.

3. The Haunted Mansion: Jam-packed with macabre nuance, this Disneyland staple funnels guests through intricate optical illusions. An octagonal room initially drops you to the main level of the ride (the haunted house is nothing but a facade). But instead of going down, it looks like the walls are elongating up. On one wall panel that I distinctly remember, a dainty damsel dances a tightrope above a pit of hungry crocodiles. Another panel depicts three gentlemen stacked atop each other in a pool of quicksand. The Haunted Mansion's most enjoyable feature is its mix of humor and horror. In one section of the journey, one occupant of your Doom Buggy vehicle will appear in an illusory portrait alongside a caricatured ghostly manor lord.

2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Your pirate bark sails the seven seas and drops over two waterfalls in this classic flume ride. My favorite part of the voyage comes when the craft is caught in a barrage of broadsides and swept beside a rowdy Caribbean tavern broadcasting the memorable "Yo Ho" theme song. According to Wikipedia, one gluttonous rogue bespeaks such lines as, "Me belly be feeling like galleon with a load of treasure," and "I be looking for a fine pork loin, I be."

1. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride: This ride tops my list due to its cohesive plot, unpredictable path, and variety of environments ranging from Toad Hall to Hell, all while you're seated in a spiffy old car. At certain points, different groups in different cars appear to almost crash. Perishing after collision with a train, punishment for your recklessness is quickly forthcoming, but Disney's divine intervention brings you back to the entrance of Mr. Toad's entropic abode. Could it be that the common thread of my top three rides is dark comedy, their ability to impart a sense of vicarious villainry?

Random YouTube Video of the Day

2007-08-17T20:42:00.001-04:00

It sucks to be on the outside of an inside joke. Especially when the "insiders" total a couple million people.

A few years ago, such a large inside joke would have seemed impossible. Yet, thanks to YouTube, inside jokes can spread like a virus. One person finds a YouTube clip. He shows it to five kids in his dorm room. They like it, and each shows it to five kids in his or her dorm room. And so on. Soon, the world is blanketed with the joke.

Today, at a breakfast with friends, I was clearly on the outside of a YouTube inside joke, and it didn't feel good. A reference was made, everyone laughed, except for me.

Here's the clip they were referring to. It' s really not all that funny. Everyone at the breakfast table claimed it was a YouTube craze, and I'm doing my part to make sure you're not awkwardly on the outside of a YouTube, all inclusive inside joke. It's called "Charlie the Unicorn:"

A Little Help, Please

2007-08-17T11:47:00.000-04:00

Every week in Time magazine, there is a feature in which some author I've never heard of lists the five most influential books he's ever read. This summer, Dubliners by James Joyce seemed to come up more than any book, so I decided to read it.

It took me a while, but I finished the book on Tuesday. I've realized this summer that with the proliferation of blogs and on-line periodicals, it is becoming harder and harder for me to finish a novel. There are too many freaking distractions.

Luckily, Dubliners is a collection of short stories, so I was able to read it in spurts and finish it.

Now that I'm done, I'm a bit confused and actually upset with myself. Yeah, the short stories were interesting and well wrtitten, but I don't see how they fit together? What makes Dubliners great?

Maybe this has something to do with how I read the book. I didn't look for connections between the stories. I read them as isolated tales in an anthology of short stories. Maybe I should go back and read it as one large story, broken down into separate episodes.

Yet until then, I just don't get Dubliners.

Random Break.com (?) Video of the Week

2007-08-16T17:24:00.000-04:00

Earlier in the summer, I posted one of my favorite YouTube videos of all time: human tetris.

Now Japan gives us human billboard:

http://view.break.com/348583 - Watch more free videos

Now that's how we make soccer popular in America. Stick 22 guys up there, including Beckham, and I might actually pay to watch.

Thanks to AwfulAnnouncing for the video.

Beware the Two Headed Tomato

2007-08-16T17:16:00.000-04:00

Behold the siamese tomato! This was picked this afternoon from my family garden. Looking back, I wish I had performed surgery while the tomato was still on the plant to see if the two could by separated and continue to grow.

I hope that this doesn't have anything to do with the arsenic that is allegedly in the soil of our garden...

Clouds and Farms Do Not Get Along

2007-08-15T22:35:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about China's war against clouds. In order to have perfect Olympics at the 2008 Olympic Games, China is trying to control the weather with missiles. Seriously.

Though I'm not sure if the Chinese are even allowed to read this blog, I have a much simpler, safer solution for them--surround Beijing with farms.

By way of yesterday's "Science Times" comes a very interesting story about Australia's 2000 mile rabbit barrier and what it means for the continent's clouds.

One side of the fence, built in 1907, is filled with farmland whereas the other side has native vegetation. According to the article, written by Sonal Noticewala, the side with native vegetation is consistently blanketed with clouds while the farm side is clear.

The article is bizarre in so many ways. First, I had no idea such a fence existed. It turns out, according to Noticewala, that it hasn't been successful in keeping rabbits out of the farms.

Secondly, and more importantly, it's extraordinary that humans actions on the ground could impact the weather to such a large extent. The picture at the top of this post says it all. It is kind of frightening. Aren't clouds supposed to be above humans?

The irony is also fantastic. Farms themselves can actually bring on a drought. Farmers may have to find a way to trick the clouds. I suggest they try using some of Beijing's missiles.

The Tortoise Lifestyle

2007-08-15T13:58:00.000-04:00

Four days after getting home, I'm already back into the tortoise-walking routine. Wake up at 10:30, take a 20-minute shower, eat a bowl of Quaker Oat Squares topped with my mother's famous fruit salad, take out the tortoise.

As Tony persistently presses over the lawn in a preordained direction, I lounge on the front porch or deck stairway and catch up on backlogged Smithsonians and National Geographics, or read up on Petrov's Defense (e4 e5, nf3 nf6, nf3xe5 ...). Maybe last night's storm with straight-line winds tossed wood chips from the neighbor's bed into our yard, and I'll rake them into tidy piles. Or the occasional passerby on foot or wheel might stop and marvel at Tony as he nears the street, and I'll act out the role of docent.

There were a few good articles in July's Smithsonian. Sometime approximately five or seven thousand years ago there lived a common descendant of every human being on Earth, alongside a slew of uncommon descendents. Edward Hopper's first artistic success didn't come until he was into his 40s. But after the triumph of his Cape Ann watercolors in 1924, recognition and fame were forthcoming, and a Hopper retrospective was mounted at the MOMA in 1931. August's National Geographic claims that 0.13 milliseconds is all the time needed for the trap-jaw ant to accelerate its jaws from zero to 143 miles per hour, a reflex often used to spring the ant off the body of a predator. A nice map of Central America also came with that issue, but unless one discounts Asia's topography, the factoid, "Mexico: So mountainous, if flattened it would cover Asia," is patently false.

Serene like Hopper's "Cape Cod Afternoon"

Tony is constantly refining his tastes. Today, he wasn't fond of the purple flowers in the front pine grove. Those are usually a staple of his diet. Of course, his system could also be clogged, much to my detriment in the near future.

When I come down into the kitchen sometime around 11, Tony is out on the deck, violently pacing near the guard rail banisters. He pauses in midstep when I open the screen door and tentatively reorients himself toward me, expecting my crane-like arms to hoist him into flight and shuttle him onto the yard below.

A low, rotting plank of wood lies across the top of the stairs to prevent Tony from tumbling off. I quickly hop this obstacle, catching my heel on the half foot of deck behind it, and taking the first flight of steps two at a time. It is paramount to keep Tony level while holding him aloft, because his heavy back end might let loose a nice present if it is tipped back too markedly.

I make sure Tony finishes an aerial stride before depositing him on the back concrete patio. He might awkwardly stumble otherwise. If I'm lucky, Tony will take the heading toward the street, which is his longest backyard route. Otherwise, I have to frequently run over and grab him before he starts browsing in the neighbor's vegetable garden. Sometimes Tony gets caught by the prickly plant buffet edging the garden, in which case I don't have to act for another couple minutes.

Adapting to the ways of the tortoise provides as rigorous a philosophy as Confucian ritual and as calming a lifestyle as Buddhist meditation. Now I should stop zoning out Tony's scratching on the kitchen door and take him on another walk.

DO NOT Mess with Jose Offerman

2007-08-15T09:43:00.000-04:00

There's a certain novelty to independent league baseball. Unlike the minor leagues, which mostly consists of young hopefuls you've never heard of, the independent league is full of has beens who think they still have it, but clearly don't.

As a "fan" of the Bridgeport Bluefish of the Atlantic League, I've seen John Rocker close up in the bull pen, Pete Rose's son on the base paths, Jose Offerman at 2nd base, and the Tommy John as manager.

However, I can't say that I have ever been at game where the pitcher and catcher got assaulted by a player with a baseball bat.

Last night, after getting hit by a ball thrown by a Bluefish pitcher, Jose Offerman, now of the Long Island Ducks, attacked the pitcher and catcher with his bat.

From an ESPN.com news brief:

"According to the Connecticut Post, Beech was hit on the hands as he attempted to defend himself, while catcher John Nathans was hit in the back of the head on Offerman's backswing. Police said Beech, a left-hander, sustained a broken right middle finger, and Nathans later suffered from nausea, the newspaper reported."

Offerman was once a soild Major Leaguer, playing for the Dodgers, Royals, Red Sox, and several other teams including the Mets.

Now, the Bluefish CEO is asking for Offerman to be banned from the Independent League for life.

Don't be surprised if Offerman is quickly snatched by a major league team. Guys with character issues seem to be a hot commodity in sports these days.

(Photo from AP/Christian Abraham (Connecticut Post))

Why I Hate Roger Clemens...

2007-08-13T22:11:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I harped praise on aoctober.com, an MLB run website that gives fans a chance to reanact great baseball moments to try to win World Series Tickets. This week's finalists are fantastic. You have love how Major League Baseball is rewarding fans for making fun of the league.

Here's the best video from this weeks batch. It's pretty astounding that Clemens actually threw the bat at Piaza and didn't get ejected:

This one comes in at a close second, at least by my vote:

Thanks to Metsblog.com for reminding me of the website.

Watch "Law & Order" Reruns While You Can!

2007-08-13T21:13:00.000-04:00

It seems some what strange to me that former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson has basically been running a presidential campaign for the past several months but has yet to announce his candidacy.

What's the deal? Why feign suspense when everyone knows what's coming?

Finally, I think I understand. According to a brief in the business section of today's New York Times, once Thompson announces his candidacy, NBC will have to stop showing reruns of "Law & Order" in which he appears. This would be to adhere to the presidential candidate equal air-time regulations.

I don't watch "Law & Order" much. Some how, it seems like I've already seen every rerun. Are there just ten episodes of "Law & Order" that circulate over and over?

Anyway, Thompson is showing some nice loyalty to "Law & Order" fans by delaying his candidacy, and he should be lauded for this.

For anyone who wants to halt Thompson's candidacy, I have an idea. You can start a mass movement to boost the ratings of "Law & Order" reruns. Maybe the additional royalties will make Thompson reconsider his political ambitions.

Rock Art

2007-08-13T00:42:00.000-04:00

The Crafoord Prize, the Nobel equivalent for the geosciences and three other fields, has been awarded to only one paleontologist. Adolf Seilacher, the 80-something-year-old recipient, asserts that his career has been spent as a paleodetective, a sleuth in deep time. Sherlockian reconstruction of ancient events requires both scientific and artistic insight; Seilacher’s work in structural morphology and ichnology involves a surprising amount of the latter.

Ichnology is the study of trace fossils, or biogenic structures that provide evidence of the maker’s activity. Dinosaur footprints are one example. Worm burrows are another. Animal traces litter the landscape; while conducting research this summer, I began to notice the residue of animal life everywhere, in and outside the fossil record. For example, tadpoles nest in polygonal pits on the bottoms of ponds and puddles. Shallow pools in the quarries of Wisconsin house tessellations of these structures. On certain slabs in Amherst College's natural history collection, facsimiles of tadpole nests are found alongside dinosaur tracks. In fact, Amherst’s first science professor and third president (as well as my distant relative), Edward Hitchcock, correlated modern tadpole nests with those sedimentary features, although they have since been recognized as polygonal mud cracks.

Seilacher’s diagrammatic illustrations of trace fossil production are famous in the paleontological community. He identified the asymmetrical and elongate marks of Dimorphichnus as scratches left by trilobites traveling obliquely to the water current. Accompanying a description of his interpretation, Seilacher drew an exquisite overlay depicting the leg and body motions of the trace maker. To explain fractional worm burrows that cross through different depositional layers of sedimentary rock, he invoked spiraling worm networks in three-dimensional space and intricately illustrated hypothetical full burrow systems.

Trace fossils are important as both environmental and behavioral indicators. Seilacher proposed the idea of ichnofacies, or assemblages of certain types of trace fossils found in different environmental conditions. Water depth and oxygen levels are two variables that can determine ichnofacies. The pioneering ichnologist also expanded the application of trace fossils as behavioral indicators, including the proposal of a scheme for trace fossil subdivision based on function (e.g., dwelling vs. farming structures).

The reason I write about ichnology and concentrate on the field’s catalyzing scientist is that in an upcoming post, I hope to explain my summer research involving trace fossils in more depth. To appreciate the curiously arranged divots and tubes dotting rocks and speckling modern soil, one must imagine history as it transpired, the animals as they breathed. When used in conjunction, art and science provide indispensable tools with which to tackle the task.

Let's Talk About Food

2007-08-11T21:12:00.000-04:00

I'm home in CT. Miller's home in Minny. Our summer research has come to a close, and now we have nothing to do but sleep, eat our mother's cooking, and blog. In the next few weeks, we will have a number of introspective, retrospective, metacognitive posts. We'll reflect on what we did in the lab this summer, in the blogosphere, and in our lives. We've learned a lot, and we want to share some of it with you.

Of course, mixed in with this, we'll have our usual, completely random posts.

For my first reflection, I'm going to focus on all things food. With no mom to cook, and no unlimited meal plan, I did some serious culinary exploring this summer. Here are some things I learned:

No, I don't want Ketchup, or Mayo, or Lettuce on that: I am to eating what Tim Duncan is to basketball--plain, simple, boring, predictable. This summer, I realized I'll either have to diversify my gastric portfolio or accept many more uncomfortable situations. Restaurants should love an eater like me--I pay just as much as everyone else, yet I don't get any condiments, or dressings, or sauces on anything I eat. I save them time, supplies, and thus money. Yet, when I make my order, they look down on me. They judge me. They mock me. To them, I am just a lowly rat, and they are Remy. If you ask me, all dishes should start off plain, and then people ordering should have to work their way up. It should be a turkey sandwich with mayo, not a turkey sandwich without mayo. That was bit of a rant, and I apologize, but it felt really good to get it out.

Grapes are Great: This summer reinforced my belief that grapes are the best food in existence.

The Three Amherst Restaurants Worth Eating At: Earlier in the summer, I completely bashed the Amherst food scene as expensive, limited, and simply not all that good. I've essentially done ten weeks of research and have come up with three eateries that are gems in the rough. They are reasonably priced, have a friendly atmosphere, and most importantly, serve excellent food:

-Bueno y Sano. Burritos and quesadillas aren't my thing, but their salads are fantastic. A great post-exercise meal. In the intangibles department, I really like that, though it's not sit down, they have real silverware. This is officially my favorite place to eat in Amherst.

-Rao's. The best muffins in town.

-The Lone Wolf. In an ideal world, breakfast food would be served for every meal. In this ideal world, I wouldn't mind eating at the Lone Wolf all the time. From crepes to Challah french toast, this quick service sit down restaurant should not be overlooked.

Raspberry, White Chocolate Moose is the best yogurt combo ever.

Would you like some Anti-Viral Software with your order?: Early on in the summer, I noticed that at Subway there was a sign explaining how you could place an order on-line and then pick it up on the spot. I never did this, because I found it somewhat ridiculous. However, it turns out that on-line food ordering is become widely used. In an article from last week's Sunday Styles, Stephanie Rosenbloom explains that a growing number of people use on-line services to make their fast food purchasing as efficient and hassle free as possible. It's an interesting read. Next up for the fast food industry: allowing consumers to print out the food straight from a computer. Until then, I think I'll stay away from ordering food on-line.

Instant Oatmeal, So Hot Right Now: By my rough estimate, after counting the empty the boxes, Miller and I had over 110 individual instant oatmeal packets this summer for breakfast. Nothing's better for waking you up in the morning. I'm not addicted to caffeine, I'm addicted to Quaker Oats Cinnamon and Spice Instant Oatmeal.

Where's the Dessert?

2007-08-09T20:05:00.000-04:00

Don't worry. The Vegan Dessert is not finished, it's just been baking in the oven for a while.

Miller and I finish our research tomorrow, and its been a sprint to the finish. We have to make posters explaining what we did over the summer, and it's pretty time intensive. Computers can really suck some time, and for the past few days, computers have sucked all the time. As a result, we haven't had time to post.

We had planned on ending the blog this weekend, but now I'm thinking it'll stay up through Labor Day. I've been doing some bad posts as of late, and I want to end on a high note. I want to end like MJ (circa 98) and not MJ (circa 2005). Like Reggie Miller (circa 2005), not Reggie Miller (circa 2009).

So until the weekend (or maybe tomorrow night), everyone will have to remain hungry and salivating. I apologize. Sometimes it's good for you to stay away from desserts for a day or two, especially when you know something great is on the way. Think of it as if you're going to a Bar Mitzvah this weekend and want to be able to storm through the dessert buffet without guilt.

Here's a quick question of the week. Currently, on Facebook's Roshambull (RPS) application, it says "JT is a puma." Can someone explain? Thank you.

(Note: I cannot confirm if the picture is actually a vegan dessert. For one, I don't know the ingredients. But secondly, I'm not sure if it is against vegan rules to eat something that looks like it is alive.)

Subprime Blues

2007-08-07T23:46:00.000-04:00

One of God's attendant's has passed judgment. "The punishment has been meted out to those who have done misdeeds and made bad judgments," Mr. Poole declared. "We are getting good evidence that the companies and hedge funds that are being hit are the ones who deserve it.''

One month before the St. Louis Fed President's declaration, Bear Sterns closed two of its hedge funds burdened by the debt of subprime sin; 10 day prior, that same company cut the credit ratings of $12 billion of subprime backed bonds. The B-paper crisis threatens to spill into the A minus range. On Monday, American Home Mortgage, a large lender to borrowers with Alt-A ratings, the credit standing just inferior to the highest possible, announced bankruptcy. American Home's decline was precipitous, with most of the selloff confined to this last week. In January of this year, its stock was brushing an all-time high.

The Monday market session shrugged off subprime woes to prey on recently devalued shares. Many, including Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (God) and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, state that the troubles are unlikely to have significant ramifications. In their minds, unsophisticated borrowers and risk-thirsty lenders are paying the price of myopic decision making.

On Tuesday, the Federal Open Market Committee kept the benchmark rate steady at 5.25 percent. "A sustained moderation in inflation pressures has yet to be convincingly demonstrated," the FOMC members wrote. Although they noted ongoing stock market turbulence, their neutral language suggests that if we hold our breaths long enough, the hiccups will go away.

Certain visionaries foresee doomsday. That raving mad pundit, Jim Kramer, has started broadcasting his take on pessimistic insider scuttlebutt. Kramer's self-professed courageous moral stand insists that the Fed is turning a blind eye to obvious signs of economic distress. In a clip from CNBC, he breaks down. "He's nuts! They're nuts! They know nothing!" Right over the horizon lies 1987, 1990.

The heads are beginning to roll. On Monday, one of Bear Stearns's two presidents was kicked out in the wake of the dual hedge fund implosion. The Democratic Congress is issuing threats. "Use it or lose it," Barney Frank told the Fed, referring to their neglected consumer protection capacities. Federal inquiries into "predatory lending" will likely claim a few corporate victims in the coming year.

Meltdown in the subprime mortgage sector affects three main groups. Firstly are the borrowers of the loans. Subprime borrowers are defined as having weak credit histories, often including bankruptcy in the last five years, two or more 30-day debt payment delinquencies in the last year, or foreclosure in the last year. In Denver, a city hit hard by the crisis, one out of every 21 mortgages foreclosed in 2006. From 2005 to 2006, there was a nationwide 42 percent rise in foreclosures. This year, the increase is predicted to be another 33 percent.

A strong housing market postponed the disaster. Borrowers were able to refinance with their new equity. But as the market cooled and rates started resetting, the unlucky started facing untenable payment schedules. An estimated $265 billion of subprime mortgages are due to reset this year.

Suffering mortgage companies have desperately pulled in every outstanding line of credit, and loans are no longer forthcoming from financiers. Myriad lenders are cutting off their subprime mortgage arms. Today, Atlanta-based HomeBanc, Corp. announced the elimination of its entire mortgage business. Considering the number of companies that have taken similar action in the last year, there must be a sizeable number of newly unemployed.

As the borrowers started defaulting, Wall Street firms that owned pacakaged loans, called "collateralized debt obligations," took a share of the pain. The two defunct subprime-laden Bear Stearns funds folded after Merill Lynch hastily reclaimed $850 million of advanced credit.

A worrisome aspect of the whole matter is that Wall Street may lose its appetite for high-risk financing. How has the recent wave of buyouts been financed? Only partially through subprime debts; also through a wide range of other dicey tools. But in recent months, it has seemed as if leveraged buyouts are the only bull-baiters. If that action slows or ceases, from where will the stock market draw inspiration?

Top Five Disney World Rides

2007-08-07T21:36:00.000-04:00

Today over dinner, someone mentioned to me that a Harry Potter amusement part is in the making somewhere in Orlando. I hadn't heard of it, but it turns out, my friend was right. A 20 acre "Theme Park within a Theme Park" is being built within Universal Studio's Island of Adventures.

Seems like a pretty safe bet on Universal's part. I doubt the "Wizarding World of Harry Potter" will go the way of the "Carousel of Progress." Harry Potter is such an enormous franchise already (I heard today that a camp at Amherst has a Harry Potter theme).

Anyhow, more importantly, at that same dinner, my friend said that he was too old for Disneyland. He's going to L.A. for vacation and he's not going to hit up the Magic Kingdom.

What?

Too old for Disneyland? Not possible. Ok, maybe Julio Franco is too old for Disneyland. But other than that, no one.

Yes, there are some rides that I've outgrown. No Dumbo for me the next time I go to Orlando. But even when I'm too old to go on any rides, or maybe just the people mover, it'd still be worth the trip. The Disney amusement parks are not defined by the rides, they're defined by the atmosphere. Strangely, probably my fondest Disney memory is is simply riding on the monorail, seeing the different Disney hotels and amusement parks along the way--realizing that I'm staying in some completely made up world where there are no consequences beyond puking after a ride or loosing my parents for a few hours.

But I can't rank the atmosphere, so I'll rank the rides. Here are the top five Disney World rides. I'm not ranking Disneyland, since I haven't been there for a long time. Keep in mind that I haven't been to Disney for at least five years.

This was my most difficult list yet--there are so many great rides to choose from.

5. Jungle Cruise: It's funny, but I think the greatest thing about this ride is the lack of detail. If a similar ride were constructed today, you'd hardly be able to tell if the animals were real. However, the Jungle Cruise glorifies its fakeness. Also, the human element of the ride is a big plus--the best actors in Hollywood become Jungle Cruis tour guides, the second rate actors head to the big screen.

4. Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin: Unlike any ride I've ever been on. Yeah, I have ridden on other intereactive rides, but never did I actually think my gun was working and that the competition was fair. The only problem with this ride--I sucked at aiming my gun.

3. Haunted Mansion: This ride is emlbamatic of Disney's greatness. The ride itself is not too exciting, but the unbelievable attention to detail elevates it to an all time great experience. It has the stretching room, the jovial ghosts, the witty headstones. Most amusement parks have a haunted house to simply fill up room. They're not scary since the rider always knows what's coming. The Haunted Mansion, however, does not try to scare you with dripping blood or dangling skeletons. I just tries to entertain you, and it succeeds wonderfully.

2. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad: Very underrated. So many turns and unexpected drops. It's a fun roller coaster. Never are you scared out of your mind (i.e. Superman at Six Flags New England). Instead you are laughing, smiling, and joking with the person next to you.

1. Rockin Roller Coaster: A roller coaster with a story line. Because it's indoors, the ride is not too gut-wrenching, but the blaring music and great scenary contribute to making this the best ride at Disney World.

Honorable Mention: Space Mountain, Cranium Command, the Monorail, the Carousel of Progress, Living with the Land, The Great Movie Ride

Freakfest: Alien Encounter. I'm not sure if this ride still exists, but it was one of the scariest ten minutes of my life. Not at all what you expect from Disney.

Snoozefest: Hall of Presidents

Cryfest: Tommorrow Land Indy Speedway. My legs were never long enough ;(

Barf-fest: Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

Foodfest: Dole Pineapple spears by the Tiki Room

Overrated: Spash Mountain

The Summer of the Magazine

2007-08-06T18:39:00.000-04:00

Living on a college campus for the summer has its downsides. No air conditioning. Not too many students. Way too many campers.

I knew all this coming into the summer that will soon end. However, there is one perk that I had never thought of--unlimited magazines.

You see, college students subscribe to a lot of magazines and many are too lazy to change the mailing address for the summer. The college post office doesn't want to spend the money to forward all of them on home, so it simply gives them away.

Every day of my research here at the college, I have gone to the post office and looked through a tub filled to the rim with magazines. Time, ESPN, Newsweek, American Fencing, Ultimate News, The New Yorker, U.S. News, Sports Illustrated... I've come to every meal with magazine in hand, since there are rarely any students to eat with. I had planned on making this the summer of the great American novel. Instead, it became the summer of the magazine.

At first, I thought I should some how give back to all the kind students who donated their magazines. My plan was to rank the five best magazines, and maybe influence some people to stop subscribing and others to start. Then Miller said maybe I should rank the top five magazine issues of the summer. Then I thought again this afternoon, why not rank the top five articles?

Now, I have decided to a do a mix of all three--here is the best of the best of the best of the summer magazines (and a little bit of the worst). Make sure to click on all the images for enlarged versions.

Best Cover: The Economist, July 28th

Worst Cover: Time, August 6. The cover makes it seem as if boys, like Polar and Panda Bears, are in danger of becoming extinct. Not too topical if you ask me.

Best Photo-Op:Prince Fielder with Sausages, in August 13th addition of ESPN.

2nd Best High School Ultimate Frisbee Team in the Country: Amherst Regional, according to the Summer issues of the Ultimate News

Surprise Hit: Slam Magazine

Top Three articles of the summer:
-"The People's King" by Tom Verducci in the July 23 issue of Sports Illustrated. Fantastic, moving profile of Hank Aaron. It really put Bond's farce into perspective.

-"Stung--Where have all the bees gone?" by Elizabeth Kolbert in the August 3 issue of The New Yorker. Fascinating article on the "colony-collapse disorder" that is mysteriously eliminating the world's bee population. The article goes beyond the dissapareances; it explains the life of a bee keeper and the surprisingly large role bees play in agriculture.

-"All the News That's Fit to Print Out" by Jonathan Dee in the July 1 issue of The New York Times article. Great feature on the "administrators" who obsess over Wikipedia. It explains who they are, what they do, and why the do it.

Worst Single Issue: July 2 Issue of Sports Illustrated--"Where are They Now." More like who were they then? This issue is clearly catered to the 40 and up crowd. I guess their wives won't let them get the swimsuit issue so this is their consolation.

iPods: Safer, More Conspicuous Steroids

2007-08-04T10:15:00.000-04:00

This morning, I participated in a 5.85 mile run in and around my town's beach. It went well. I don't feel like puking/passing out right now, which is always a good thing. However, my time could possibly have been better if I had an accessory common on the biceps, hips, or hands of many runners--an iPod.

When I was driving to the beach, I blasted "Umbrella" by Rihanna on my radio. For much of the first half of the race, I still had the song stuck in my head, and it pushed me on through the pain. But what if I was actually hearing the song while racing? I have little doubt the extra motivation would have bettered my time.

Earlier in the summer, I listed my favorite pump-up songs of all time. For me, since I don't have an iPod, pump-up songs come before the action. Before a race I blast my radio. Before a soccer game my computer speakers are pumping. Yet during the race or game itself, I am sans music.

Sure, music won't make my legs stronger or my heart calmer, but it would give me a mental advantage. If I had Eminem blasting down the final stretch, who knows, I could have pushed myself that much harder and gotten ahead of the little woman in front of me I so desperately wanted to beat.

The race I participated in has yet to institute random drug tests or universal urine testing. I doubt anyone would go the anabolic steroids route to win my local race. However, it isn't too hard to tell who is listening to an iPod.

I say the organizers of the race either blast music for the entirety of the course or no one gets an iPod.

Sovereign Territory

2007-08-03T20:47:00.000-04:00

Before going further, if you have not read the next post below, do so immediately!

As global warming thins polar ice, Arctic Circle nations are eyeing territorial expansion. The polar seafloor contains an estimated 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and natural gas reserves. Not long ago, a Danish exploratory mission set off from Greenland with the intention of proving that an underwater mountain belt, the Lomonosov Ridge, is connected to the Danish territory's continental shelf. This week, a Russian team planted a flag 14,000 feet beneath the North Pole ice in a symbolic stake on the region. To quote the press spokesman of the St. Petersburg-based Arctic Research Institute, "It is an extremely important act for Russia ... like raising a flag on the Moon."

Before the expedition's well-publicized success, the research ship carrying the submersible stalled a day into its journey. The vessel was fixed before a nearby nuclear-powered icebreaker and state-sponsored crew from Murmansk could come to its aid. National pride rested on the explorers' shoulders.

The desired expansion of Russian economic control.

The name of their vessel, Akademik Fyodorov, helps reveal Russian national aspirations. There are two notable academicians by the name of Fyodorov who worked in geology. Yevgraf Fyodorov was a late-Romanov era mineralogist who studied crystal polytopes using mathematical methods. Yevgeny Fyodorov, the ship's namesake, was a geophysicist who analyzed polar climatic conditions and headed the Soviet weather bureau. He was awarded the Order of Lenin five times and was also named a Hero of the Soviet Union. But, probably not coincidentally, another famous Fyodorov was an explorer who mapped the coasts of Kamchatka and Alaska at the beginning of the 18th century. These men embody Russia's glorious scientific past and expansionist ambitions. Moreover, that the ship was christened in memory of a high-ranking Communist official also reveals that modern Russia has not expunged its memories of the Soviet era -- if anything, Russia strives to combine the relative stability of the Soviet Union's twilight years with the imperial prestige of Peter the Great.

No longer the other geopolitical pole, Russia has redefined itself as an energy superpower. The Kremlin runs the state like an oil company; it often flexes political muscle by cutting off oil and natural gas to Ukraine and Belarus. The E.U.'s protestations upon losing access to the critical Eastern European pipelines are invariably ignored. Some speculate that when Vladimir Putin steps down from the presidency next year, he will take over the reins at Gazprom, the state-owned energy giant.

The corporate autocracy pleases its stockholders -- the Russian populace -- with a high dividend -- newfound material opulence. Governmental rights abuses are dismissed so long as the economy booms. Unable to boast global political and military influence, especially after losing Chechnya, Russians now take pride in their resource-driven affluence. That is why the Russian media blanketed the world with coverage of the recent Arctic feat, and why Putin personally called each member of the team. In fact, the leader of the mission, who traveled in the submersible to the seafloor, and another crew member, are representatives of the spineless pro-Kremlin party in the Duma.

In 2001, Russia filed a claim to the north-east quarter of the Arctic Circle with the commission that monitors observance of the Law of the Sea. The request was denied, citing incomplete evidence of geographical contiguity. The Law of the Sea Convention allows Arctic Circle nations governance of a 200 nautical mile swath off the coast, but permits expansion of the area through sufficient proof that the continental shelf off the nation connects to the requested annex. A primary objective of the recent Russian mission was to scout the geology and geography of the Lomonosov Ridge and prove that it's an extension of the continental shelf off Russia.

Certain pundits assert that Canada's multibillion dollar Arctic Circle-oriented naval buildup heralds the growing tensions of the polar contenders. Foreign minister Peter McKay compared Russia's newest stunt to the "15th century" land grabs of colonial powers. But as global warming accelerates, Canada too will try to stake a claim on the shrinking Arctic ice and the obscured riches beneath.

Breaking News: My Night with the New York Times

2007-08-03T18:59:00.000-04:00

Our first guest submission, coming from J.J. in Minnesota.

(J.J. is a college student studying photojournalism in Los Angeles.)

At 6:30 Wednesday evening, I turned on the Channel 5 news and first learned about the disaster in Minneapolis. The eight lane bridge that carries Interstate 35W over the Mississippi River had crumbled, sending anywhere from 50 to 100 cars tumbling more than 60 feet into the river. There was no early word on casualties, but rescue workers were not hopeful.

Journalism is a bizarre profession that requires you to act against your own best interests. Fire? Go check it out. Earthquake? Take me to the place with the worst damage. Civil war? Book me on the next flight. The only thing stranger than the patterns of a journalist are those of the journalism student.

To get a job as a journalist, you have to prove you already have the chops. School can teach you how to punctuate and how to keep your interviews interesting and how to get information from public officials, but to be truly successful, you have to have the natural shoe leather skills. That means landing an internship (and therefore a job) requires you to first play journalist as an amateur, crossing police lines and making a buffoon of yourself for the opportunity to someday do so professionally.

The bridge collapsed at 6:05. I turned on the news at 6:30. My internship applications are due in November, so I was naturally in the car and headed downtown at 6:40. My camera bag is always packed and by my side, a kind of depressing artifact to my constant vigilance for disaster and suffering. All I really had to do was throw on a decent shirt and make sure I knew where the 35W bridge was.

I drove to the 28th Avenue light rail station just north of the Mall of America and spent forty adrenaline-soaked minutes making my way north to the Cedar/Riverside station, as close as I could ride to the accident site. I had formatted my memory cards, checked my batteries and mounted my long telephoto lens in the two minutes before arriving, so the moment the doors opened, I took off at a full sprint. Cities are usually the best place to be a clueless reporter because grids of streets are easily mapped in the head. Even so, I was running around like a moron.

The best pictures from a disaster always come in the first hour, when reporters are closer to the action than law enforcement. As soon as the police bring out the yellow tape, every photographer gets knocked down to the same level. I ran from parking garage to balcony to highway to footbridge trying to find a unique vantage point. After crossing back and forth over the river three times and climbing a concrete embankment out of a rail yard, I hit yet another line of police tape. I'd completed a course all the way around the site, hitting roadblocks at every point.

"Who are you with?" The best moment you'll ever have as a student journalist is when someone mistakes you for a real journalist. That's how I met Jason, a freelance writer for the New York Times. He was on vacation with his wife, a copyeditor, when they got "the call." They had rushed down with Peter, a teacher in Roseville, to see what information they could get for the Times.

I watched as they worked the crowd of first responders and bystanders for information. Finally, somebody gave them what they were looking for: directions to the Red Cross command post. "You want a ride?"

Hmm, should I get in the car with a team from the New York Times or should I sit here next to some police tape where I can't even see where the bridge is? Tough call.

The first thing you notice about a breaking news event is that information is at a premium and chaos is the standard. This seems obvious enough, but it's still shocking to step up to a police officer or a firefighter to find they have absolutely no idea what's going on 100 yards down the road. As soon as we arrived on the west bank of the river, we saw a rescue boat team pull up. They had just been sent from the east bank and were asking for directions to the staging area, only to be told it was back where they came. Even our crack investigative team (vacationing freelance reporter and editor, journalism student, and local educator/wheelman) was stuck in the dark. Every official we spoke to was about as helpful. Jason and his wife Karron did their best to interview victims who had wandered in shock away from the bridge and over to the Noodles and Company where we had ditched the car. They called quotes into the news desk in New York as I scrambled to regain a line of sight to the bridge.

In photography, height is always an advantage, so as soon as Karron pointed out the parking garage of the Holiday Inn Metrodome, Jason and I took off in a full sprint. From the roof, I could get one of the most shocking angles on the tragedy. It's one thing to see the mangled bridge on the ground from the lens of a helicopter camera; it's entirely another to see freeway just disappear. Just after taking that picture and leaving the garage, hotel staff kicked everyone out of the structure -- "Good Morning America" had called and reserved it as an "exclusive" location for it's coverage the next morning.

I rode with the New York Times crew until we reached Hennepin County Medical Center. As they went inside to talk to families, I got a call from the photo desk of the Times, asking me to get to a computer and file all the photos I had. I jogged a few dozen blocks to a 24-hour Kinkos and spent $30 and the better part of two hours writing captions and e-mailing everything to New York. I didn't make it home until sometime after 1 a.m.

One of the skills that's useful in reporting is the ability to comprehend and be aware of your surroundings while completely ignoring the long-term ramifications. All the views I had of the bridge and all the victims I talked to and all the terrified onlookers I ran past have blurred together. I hadn't really reflected on what happened until late Thursday afternoon. This was the most traveled bridge in Minnesota and it will take well over a year to replace it. Most of Minneapolis near the river is roped off as a crime scene. Though the official death toll sits at four, it would be a true miracle if it didn't rise into double digits in the coming days. The emotional and logistical toll of this catastrophe will not truly sink in for weeks.

The New York Times didn't use any of my pictures. It wasn't really surprising -- there was much better art on the AP wire from Star Tribune and Pioneer Press photographers who beat the police to the scene to capture some truly harrowing shots of brave amateur rescue operations and from photographers who'd managed to commandeer helicopters to deliver better context on the scope of the destruction. Still, what started as an act of desperation to give my portfolio a much needed kickstart turned into one of the most memorable nights of my life. I met some incredible people, both journalists and everyday bystanders. I ran, walked, and climbed almost 10 miles through the streets of Minneapolis (and my legs won't let me forget it.) I got to play witness to history.

For the first time, I'm completely confident that this is what I want to do with my life.

See the rest of the pictures I submitted to the New York Times here (flickr.com). >> Hear the audio reporting of Jason and Karron, the New York Times staffers who took me under their wing for the night here (nytimes.com).

A general (short-lived) improvement in the quality of this blog

2007-08-03T18:32:00.001-04:00

In the spirit of our mission statement, our Vegan enterprise will go out of commission as of August 10. On that date, our science hobby ends, and it would be too much strain to manage this publication without a scintillating diversion.

Why I chose my title as such is due to an influx of guest submissions. In response to a request for articles to celebrate the Vegan Dessert's long-anticipated demise, thousands of loyal readers came aboard the sinking ship. Earlier today, I received a little update from a friend and loyal Minnesotan Desserter. Please read it in the post above.

An Even Better Website

2007-08-02T20:45:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I heaped praised on actober.com, a very entertaining site with historical and acted out baseball playoff moments. Yet, the sites has its limits. There are only so many videos that you can view.

Every website must have its limits--even the VeganDessert does not have enough information to entertain you for all eternity. However, there is one site that can come pretty close to this ideal--Google Maps.

Every once in a while, during my research, I have to find an address. I head over to Google Maps, do what I have to do, and then hit the satellite tab. From then on out, I am hooked. There's so much to see.

Locally, I want to look at ever nook and crany of Amherst. Globally, I want to see cities, sports stadiums, national parks. Why pay the $1000 airfare to go Arizona and see the Grand Canyon, when I can simply look it up on Google Maps and see it without having to ride a mule? Why go on college visits with your family when you can see an overhead shot of any college without getting lost on the way there?

In all seriousness, maybe the program can't yet replace vacations, but it is pretty darn cool.

"Google Maps is the best. True that double true"

Vegan Dessert Question of the Week!

2007-08-01T22:22:00.000-04:00

On Monday, I rediscovered the Norwottuck Bike Trail, which passes through Amherst College and stretches all the way to Northampton. I went on it early in the fall, but since then, had pretty much forgotten about it.

It is awesome for running. Flat, shady, and perfectly straight.

Apparently, it is not awesome for biking. A kid on my floor said he no longer bikes on the trail since it gave him flat tires.

I think I might know why.

On the paved path, you can clearly see tiny pieces of glass embedded in the pavement. Today, on my run, I noticed a sign saying that Amherst residents had donated glass bottles which were subsequently put into the pavement.

Why? What is the sense in this?

Amherst being the town it is, I thought it might be some super environmentally friendly, recycling campaign. But I don't understand. Why not reuse the glass, rather than sticking it into the ground and messing up kids' bikes?

This doesn't affect me as a runner, and I'm going to keep going on the great trail. I was just hoping someone could explain this strange move to place glass into the path.

Shark Trespassing Week on the Discovery Channel!

2007-08-01T22:08:00.000-04:00

Long ago, before "Mythbusters", "Dirty Jobs", and "Man v. Beast", Shark Week was the highlight of the Discovery Channel lineup. It turns out that the Discovery Channel may have been slandering the sharks. This from Gilbert Arenas in his most recent flurry of posts:

I know this is random, but I just want to clear this up for people out there.

There are these things called shark attacks, but there is no such thing as a shark attack. I have never seen a real shark attack.

I know you’re making a weird face as you’re reading this. OK people, a shark attack is not what we see on TV and what people portray it as.

We’re humans. We live on land.

Sharks live in water.

So if you’re swimming in the water and a shark bites you, that’s called trespassing. That is called trespassing. That is not a shark attack.

A shark attack is if you’re chilling at home, sitting on your couch, and a shark comes in and bites you; now that’s a shark attack. Now, if you’re chilling in the water, that is called invasion of space. So I have never heard of a shark attack.

When I see on the news where it’s like, “There have been 10 shark attacks,” I’m like, “Hey, for real?! They’re just running around? Sharks are walking now, huh! We live on the land, we don’t live underwater.”

Don't be surprised if Arenas brings a suit against Discovery Channel on behalf of the sharks.

A Great Website

2007-08-01T21:16:00.000-04:00

As a promotion, major league baseball is asking fans to reenact great playoff moments from the past to try win tickets to this years World Series.

I'm not going to make a video, but I am loving the website. For one, there is a treasure trove of archived playoff footage not available anywhere else on the Internet (you can download the videos to your computer and keep them forever!). Secondly, there are hilarious videos submitted by fans.

First, the greatest catch in playoff history:

Secondly, a wonderful video submission:

Thanks to deadspin.com for telling me about the site.

My Research Project

2007-07-31T22:56:00.001-04:00

The photo to the left shows pretty much all the tangible results I currently have for my summer long research project. It is essentially a square compass, minus the needle and magnet. It took much of the night to produce and will be useful when taking photos of potential mercury monitoring sites.

Hopefully, in a week-and-a-half, when the research comes to an end, Miller and I will both have some more exciting results to share with you. Until then, you can simply stare in awe of my fantastic engineering feat.

Outsourcing as vertical de-integration

2007-07-31T22:29:00.000-04:00

Federal Judge Richard Posner, in his amazing joint blog with Nobel laureate Gary Becker, describes outsourcing as "a form of vertical 'de-integration.'" Although I doubt his is an original definition, it does clarify the nature of that overburdened term.

Modern market growth makes vertical integration inefficient. When the market for an input is small so that one large corporate buyer demands the the vast majority of the product, it is effective to merge the input supplier and purchaser. But a trend toward specialization due to larger markets increases the number of input demanders, making it sensible for input suppliers to exist independently of their customers. At root, the decision between integration and outsourcing is calibrated by, "the tradeoff ... between the agency costs involved in directing people’s work and the transaction costs involved in arms-length contracts." As Posner notes, nothing definitionally connects outsourcing and the export of domestic jobs to foreign nations. But labor outsourcing is a common manifestation of vertical de-integration.

The impact on American jobs is no different between outsourcing a component of an American company to an Indian contractor and hiring an Indian worker to work in India or the United States at that company. As the demand for cheaper foreign labor increases, the wages of foreign workers gradually reaches parity with their American counterparts. In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, a few Silicon Valley companies recently brought jobs previously exported to India back to the United States, because it was cost-ineffective to keep them abroad.

Outsourcing, in the foreign labor sense, is a tremendous asset to the global economy. It is also nearly impossible to halt. An example that springs to mind is Napoleon's Continental System, the French embargo of British imports to Continental Europe. Although French cotton manufacturers flourished as a result of what can be thought of as an extreme protectionist policy, the Continental gap between supply and demand was compensated by smuggled British cotton goods. Much of the garb worn by la Grande Armee was manufactured across the Channel.

Many of the jobs the United States are outsourcing come from blue collar industries anachronistic to a modern economy. Why should the United States preserve iron-ore mining through tariffs when Brazilians can perform the same job for less cost? Why should Midwestern farmers receive billions of dollars in farm subsidies when impoverished agriculturally-oriented African nations can grow the crops instead? In those two cases, American subsidies and tariffs stifle sensible trades.

As a result of outsourcing, Americans collectively receive lower prices. That benefit is spread across a nation, while the negative aspects of outsourcing are borne by a small number of individuals left out of work. As a result, the incentive to pursue political action is greater for those left without a job than the masses who get cheaper goods. As Robert Reich advocated as President Clinton's Labor Secretary, the government can provide a useful service by financing job retraining. Although the labor market automatically corrects without it, minimizing the time required to change jobs improves market efficiency and lessens the growing pains of "vertical de-integration."

Trading Day

2007-07-30T21:24:00.000-04:00

Some thoughts on today's trades in the NBA and MLB:

Garnett to the Celtics: So I've revised this analysis three times in the past hour. First I destroyed the trade since it leaves the Celtics with nothing besides the big three. Then, I hesitatingly approved of it, since the Ray Allen trade had gotten the team stuck somewhere between rebuilding and going all out, and this trade officially put them in the going all out category. Now, I'm going to have to admit I have no right saying anything on the trade. I always bash ESPN commentators for not knowing what the hell they're talking about, and when it comes to the NBA, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I couldn't recognize Al Jefferson if he was standing right in front of me with a Celtics jersey on.

I stopped intensively following basketball when the Knicks started sucking. All that TNT ever shows is the West, and that's pretty much all I ever watch (since I go to school outside the New York region). Now, I'm no longer an NBA fan; I'm a Gilbert Arenas fan.

Louis Castillo to the Mets: At first, this trade really bummed me out. Ruben Gotay has been playing great as of late, and I've loved to watch his Reyes like excitement. Just yesterday, I started to imagine a Gotay, Wright, Reyes infield for the next decade. However, nothing gold can stay, and this move is a great insurance policy should anything go wrong with Gotay. We know what we're getting in Castillo--a great fielder who can get on base, maybe show some speed, and has playoff experience. Can't argue with that, considering we only gave up two fringe prospects. (Sorry I used "we" so much).

Mark Texiera to the Braves: Bring it on Atlanta.

Kyle Lohshe to the Phillies: Loshe's Stats: 6-12 with a 4.58 ERA. Bring it on Philly?

Trickeration on the Gridiron

2007-07-30T20:51:00.000-04:00

When I was younger, two-on-two football at the dead-end was a highlight of my life. The field was small, and a bit awkward in shape, but the games were great. My neighbors and I would play into the night, ending only when it was too dark to see or when one of our parents called us in.

As we got older, and the field grew proportionally smaller, trick plays became more and more common. More often than not, an eternal huddle would be followed by a failed, uber-complex play. Sometimes, though, it worked.

By way of deadspin.com comes video of a trick play which went exactly according to plan. The QB pretends something's wrong with the ball and goes onto scamper for a touchdown untouched. You can draw your own conclusions, but if you ask me, a play like this should stay at the dead end and not enter an actual game.

5:-) is %-( and 8-0

2007-07-29T21:33:00.000-04:00

If anyone could translate the title of the post, I'd be thoroughly discouraged.

For those who have no clue what it means, it says: "Elvis Presley is confused and shocked."

It's written in one of the world's youngest languages: emoticon.

An article in the "Sunday Styles" section of today's New York Times describes the spread of emoticon from teenager's IMs to adult's workplaces.

"THERE was a time, of course, that emoticons seemed intrinsically youthful. Just as children shared the special ability to see Big Bird’s magical friend Snuffleupagus on “Sesame Street” — a character who was long supposed to be invisible to adults — they seemed to easily recognize that the characters 3:-o represented a cow, or that @>--> -- symbolized a rose or that ~(_8^(I) stood for Homer Simpson.

But after 25 years of use, emoticons have started to jump off the page and into our spoken language. Even grown men on Wall Street, for example, will weave the term 'QQ' (referring to an emoticon that symbolizes two eyes crying) into conversation as a sarcastic way of saying 'boo hoo,'" Alex Williams writes.

Before this post, I had never written a single word in emoticon--I'm not really the emotional type and emoticon was not offered at my high school. However, even if you do use the language, I think you'll have a hard time figuring out what some of the symbols mean. Below is a test of your emoticon IQ. The definition of each symbol can be found here. Good luck!

:-P

|-O

*\O/*

:-/

Try to translate this sentence:

JT is l:-( that the food is <*)))-{.

Here is a complete emoticon dictionary. It is very entertaining.

Korean Restaurant

2007-07-29T20:12:00.000-04:00

JT and I got a glimpse of the Korean Peninsula in Hadley, Mass. today. Korean Restaurant only has six tables and booths, and a small floor for traditional pillow seating, but there was no wait. How is this possible, when the restaurant is immensely popular amongst college students and townsfolk? Impeccable service and efficiency provide the answer.

As we drove into the parking lot, the waitstaff sprang into action. The door swung open ahead of us; we were quickly and courteously escorted to a table. Tea and water was instantaneously provided. Our waiter perfectly gauged the time we need to peruse the menu and find something not too spicy and not too squidy. JT ordered a seemingly unadventurous chicken and noodles dish that managed to exceed his expectations in ennui. I couldn't decide between exotic seafood entrees, so I settled on a medley of eel, squid, and octopus on rice. Six sides accompanied the main course: sour cucumber, spicy bean sprout, mild and hot radishes, kimchi, and soy sauce soaked potato (the taste of which still lingers in JT's mouth).

Although the quality of our food was only slightly above average by our stooped standards, it issued forth from the kitchen within five minutes of our order. Korean Restaurant chef versus microwavable TV dinner -- that would be a tight time trial. Moreover, when JT and I finished our water about 30 seconds after eating a first piece of kimchi, the waiter teleported in, refilled our glasses, and, thankfully, left the pitcher.

The only unpolished waitstaff performance came at the end, when we received change for 30 dollars instead of 20. Alerting the waitress to her mistake, we returned 10 dollars and prepared to exit. But back she came, with a box of chocolate-covered cylindrical wafers in tow, to express her gratefulness for our honesty.

One day, JT and I will have frequented Korean Restaurant enough times to deserve a small patch of wallspace. Guests write their names and brief messages on the wall; only about half are in Hangul. A memorable scribbling celebrated the signatory's first publication in the Journal of Bateriology. If at Amherst I ever accomplish the momentous, I will celebrate the occasion with a brief inscription after a Korean Restaurant dinner.

Random YouTube Video of the Month

2007-07-29T19:27:00.000-04:00

The past few weeks haven't been so great for sports.

Michael Vick got indicted on dog fighting charges. Tim Donaghy got busted for gambling. The leader, and foregone winner, of the Tour de France, was removed before the end of the race for suspicious activity. Barry Bonds hasn't retired yet. And Who's Now hasn't been cut.

If the AFL championship weren't today, this might have turned out to be the worst month in sports history.

I can't speak for the Tour de France (since the majority of Americans never cared about it), but I'm pretty sure that in the long term, these scandals will not at all negatively impact professional sports in America. Sure, Atlanta Falcons ticket sales might go down for the next few seasons and this past year's NBA playoffs may appear a bit tainted.

But in the long run, the scandals will be tiny chinks in the armor of professional sports. They'll be forgotten, cast off as isolated acts of wrongdoing.

However, if you're a sports fan and feeling a bit down with the current state of things, I've got the cure! When Miller and I were driving home from dinner, we heard a fantastic rap song about basketball. After some Google searching, it turns out to be "Basketball" by Kurtis Blow. The song, plus video, is sure to cheer you up. Make sure to watch the video till the end (or at least till the 3:10 mark).

A Good Influence

2007-07-28T21:50:00.001-04:00

After writing my comic book supervillain post, I felt the sudden urge to ramble about Dick Tracy bad guys. Instead of overwhelming this blog with evil, I graciously relented until today, when criminality got the better of me.

Dick Tracy was a phase I went through after cars, dinosaurs, and superheroes. Chester Gould created such vivid characters that I would spend endless hours acting out battles and scenarios. In fifth grade, my culminating piece of writing was modeled on Dick Tracy. No one died, but my protagonist did pop the tires of a gangster's car with bullets from a Tommy Gun. Mrs. Elder didn't approve of the violence, and my masterpiece got a V (for very good) instead of the desired E (for excellent).

Gould would have probably received a U (for unsatisfactory), because he exploited every conceivable form of death and mutilation in Dick Tracy. Flattop drowned after getting caught between the struts under a dock. Littleface's ears were amputated after a frostbitten night in a freezer. The Brow was impaled on a flagpole after placing Tess Trueheart's foot in a time-released spiked clamp. (Actually, Tracy knocked him out a window onto the pole after flinging a glass inkwell into the Brow's grotesque forehead.)

In the heyday of Dick Tracy, most of the villains were gangsters or Nazis. Pruneface (real name, Boche, an offensive name for a German in French) was a Nazi agent who tinkered with poison gas. Flattop was modelled on Depression-era gangster Pretty Boy Floyd; both harkened from the Cookson Hills of Oklahoma. Tracy's archenemy was the Big Boy, a crime boss modeled on Al Capone, who masterminded a litany of crimes and attempts on the yellow-coated detective's life. Early in the strip's history, the Big Boy bumped off Tess Trueheart's father, Tess being the girlfriend of Tracy.

The greatest facet of Dick Tracy's enemies was the vivid physical manifestation of their evil. The Mole issued orders to the underworld from his subterranean lair. Large claws, beady eyes, and a pointed snout made him a facsimile of his insectivorous namesake. Gargles ran an extortion ring, forcing his victims to buy fake mouthwash. The Evil Influence used his overpoweringly hypnotic eyes to rob and murder. For three consecutive Halloweens, I dressed up as Influence by blanching my face and adorning trenchcoat and fedora, attempting to imitate Gould's cadaverous creation. In Dick Tracy, as in comic books, the criminal is as indispensible as the crime fighter. Although comic villains never benefit from lives of crime, my imagination has stolen from them countless treasures.

The Vegan Dessert Question of the Week!

2007-07-28T20:44:00.000-04:00

I don't like too many of the Asian dishes served at Valentine Dinning Hall, be it the ubiquitous Orange Ginger Chicken, tonight's Sweet and Sour Chicken, or several others. They're a bit too heavy for my taste.

However, each time one is served, I can count on one thing--there will be a bin fortune cookies at the end of the buffet line.

Fortune cookies are great. They're fun to eat. They illuminate the world. And they are an instant conversation starter.

For example, today's fortune: "Courage is grace under pressure."

Huh?

This led to a conversation of what is grace. And then to how we (Miller and I) act under pressure.

Eventually, the conversation led to this week's important question--are fortune cookies an purely American/Western dish or are they actually served in China?

I learned this summer that California Rolls are not served in Japan (I guess I should have realized this given the name), and it'd be interesting to know if the same is true for fortune cookies in China.

Ferris Wheels Suddenly Become Cool

2007-07-28T14:14:00.000-04:00

Cool kids do not go on Ferris wheels. Ferris wheels are for those who can't stomach the other rides. Ferris wheels are boring.

This is perception I had back in the day of summer camp amusement park adventures. Why waste time and money going in a slow, useless circle when I could ride on a Roller Coaster or get all wet on a Log Flume?

Recently, though, the Ferris wheel's reputation has experienced a face lift. According to an article in today's New York Times, the once old, archaic, overlooked amusement park ride has become a trendy must have for cities across the World. Some what of an arm's race has erupted to see what city can build the largest wheel.

The race began in 1999, when the 443 foot London Eye was built in commemoration of the Millennium. It was a huge hit, and since then, massive wheels have opened or are being built in China, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. These new "observation wheels" are a bit different from the romantic, private wheels of yesteryear.

"Unlike the seating in their older counterparts, the observation wheels feature climate-controlled, rotating capsules that can hold up to 40 people, and can be reserved for business meetings, birthdays and weddings. Capsule amenities include leather seats, plasma screens, refrigerators and bars," Douglass Heingartner writes.

A ride costs $20 to $30.

Unlike the race to have the World's largest building, which can seemingly go on up forever, this race apparently has its limits.

You see, as the diameter of the wheel increases, so does the riding time, and this presents a problem. Heingartner explains:

"The call of nature is another barrier to height. 'The biggest constraint is the amount of time people need to be away from the toilet,' Mr. Vocking said. A spokesman for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, another builder of giant wheels, said studies indicate 35 to 45 minutes is the longest people are willing to wait."

It doesn't seem to far out of the question that toilets will eventually be added to each car. Heck, as the population of the World continues to grow and land grows scarcer, I say we stick houses on Ferris wheels. If the wheel's tall enough, you won't even notice it's rotating.

In all honesty though, it would be pretty cool to stick a Ferris wheel smack dab in the middle of the Capital Mall. Once Thomas Jefferson sinks, I say we re-memorialize him with a Ferris wheel.

How to Fix "Who's Now"

2007-07-28T10:32:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning to a nice little thunderstorm. With all of my day plans ruined by the bad weather, I headed towards the television in the common room. The first time I went, there was some kid passed out on the couch. But an hour later, he was gone, and I was finally able to watch some TV.

About a half-an-hour into my TV viewing, I was met by my old friend--Who's Now. It was Lebron James v. Derek Jeter.

Stuart Scott went around the panel to get initial thoughts on the match-up. Unknowingly, panelist Mike Greenberg came up with a way to some how make Who's Now great.

He said that his four year old kid would only be able recognize two athletes, and they are Derek Jeter and Lebron James. At first, I was some what taken aback. ESPN's paying him just to tell us who he kid recognizes? But then I realized that Greenberg was in fact on to something huge.

For the Final Four of Who's Now, I propose that ESPN bring in a panel of four-year-olds. For each match up, Stuart Scott should place a picture of the two athletes on different sides of the room. Whoever's picture the toddlers go to should win.

Now, does anyone know of any four-year-olds starring in summer movies?

Google Domination

2007-07-27T23:06:00.000-04:00

I need directions to the local Korean Restaurant. What do I do? Google it.

I need to find a recipe for Vegan Chocolate Cake. Where do I look? Google.

I need to determine the yearly Mercury emission rate from Mt. Tom Power Plant. Huh? Google.

I need to kill time for an hour of my life. Google Earth.

Would I ever consider using a different search engine? No.

There was a time when Dogpile was hip (cool name) and then Ask Jeeves (cool format). But now, why would anyone use anything other than Google?

The reason I'm mentioning this now is that there was an article in today's New York Times about the various mapping opportunities on the web.

Miguel Helft writes, "This fast-growing GeoWeb, as industry insiders call it, is in part a byproduct of the Internet search wars involving Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others. "

One phrase stood out--"Internet search wars." Is the battle between an ant and my shoe a war?

The article got me thinking, does anyone actually use a search engine other than Google, and why?

According to Wikipedia, in May 2007, 56.3% of the total Internet searches were conducted on Google. 21% were done via Yahoo! 22.7% used other various engines.

This is a quite a surprise to me. It's like roughly half of the searchers chose to go to Williams when they got into Amherst. Or chose to watch an MLS game on TV when they had front row tickets to a Mets game.

The rise of Google has been striking. It is the slickest, most efficient, and most powerful search engine out there. It has a hell of name too. However, it clearly has not risen as high as I thought. It will be interesting to see if it can literally triumph in the search engine "war" and put the competitors out of their misery, or if one day, another jump start will come by and become king of the web.

Latter-day Solomon

2007-07-27T22:43:00.000-04:00

Last week's issue of The New Yorker featured a lengthy but entertaining profile of Mort Zuckerman. A mogul in the true sense of the word, Zuckerman accumulates cash, properties, publications, television appearances, miles in the air, political connections, philanthropic positions, and famous girlfriends like my shoulders collect dandruff -- quickly and silently. "Zuckerman speaks softly, except when he shouts, which he does occasionally, at people who work for him or to make himself heard as a commentator on 'The McLaughlin Group,' the Sunday-morning talk show. Quiet-talking is a power tactic, and Zuckerman has mastered it."

Zuckerman, left, on a panel with Al Gore and Roger Ailes.

After amassing a fortune as chairman of Boston Properties, the power-hungry billionaire decided to play a hand in the course of history. The purchase of three influential publications allowed him to acquire such a role. The Atlantic, U.S. News and World Report, and the New York Daily News target three different audiences and provide Zuckerman a bully pulpit from which to advance his views.

As a hawkish Democrat, Zuckerman often plays a convincing neoconservative, a characteristic especially noticible in his McLaughlin Group punditry. During the lead-up to the Iraq War, Zuckerman was a strong supporter of invasion; even in 2004, his Daily News endorsed Bush. Only recently, like so many others, has he started to come around to reality. "[He] now deems the war, and the Administration, to be a disaster, though one worth seeing through; he supports the surge."

On McLaughlin Group, one often catches him after a policy mission to Israel. The Jewish State's Ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, considers Zuckerman to be a "roving ambassador to and from the United States and Israel." Often annoyed with Pat Buchanan's de facto anti-Israel rhetoric, Zuckerman takes over the group's Middle East discussions at McLaughlin's behest and maps out the real picture, or a synthesis of the pictures perceived by the D.C. emissarial establishment and Tel Aviv government.

Influence is a finite commodity, valuable due to its scarcity. Through persistence, charm, and shrewd business acumen, Zuckerman makes out with a fair share of the available stock. As the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, he holds the highest position in the hierarchy of Jewish advocacy institutions. Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, calls the rank "the King of the Jews," making Zuckerman a latter-day Solomon; a representative, in Ambassador Gillerman's eyes, of the Jewish people, not just Israel or the United States.

A small but significant clique of powerful Jews share Zuckerman's bellicose foreign policy views. Zuckerman labels Iran an irrational actor, Lebanon a haven for Hezbollah, Hamas a band of terrorists. Iraq's WMDs embodied a mortal threat to the Jewish State. Like coreligionists Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, Zuckerman often takes stances in response to the worst-case scenario for Israel. And those who simultaneously breathe the rarefied air of neoconservatism and wield political power often make decisions that create unpredictable and dangerous results.

A Call to Boycot Aquafina Water

2007-07-27T22:07:00.000-04:00

According to an article up on CNN.com, Aquafina water bottles will soon be labeled with the phrase--""Public Water Source."

In other words, Aquafina water comes from a tap and everyone will soon know about.

Gross.

Tap water is for washing vegetables. It's for brushing teeth. For cleaning retainers. But putting in your mouth and drinking it? Repulsive.

Bottled water must come from the pristine Springs of Maine or snow of Alaska.

No more Aquafina for me and hopefully no more for you.

Wait a second. I just had an idea!

Let's say you've been having Aquafina for years and didn't know it came from the tap. You've stayed healthy and been perfectly satisfied with your high quality H2O. Why not just buy an empty, reusable bottle and fill it up with water from the tap?

You'll save money, plastic, and maybe even Polar Bears. It simply makes too much sense.

Be Careful Who You Hang Out With

2007-07-26T22:07:00.000-04:00

My list of friends may soon get a little bit shorter. Or maybe just thinner.

According to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine friends do let friends gain weight.

The study, which was detailed in a New York Times article, concludes that a person is more
likely to become obese if a friend becomes obese.

In the Times article, Gina Kolata writes:

"If the new research is correct, it may say that something in the environment seeded what some call an obesity epidemic, making a few people gain weight. Then social networks let the obesity spread rapidly.

It may also mean that the way to avoid becoming fat is to avoid having fat friends."

From anecdotal evidence, I'd say you're more likely to become obese if your friends eat slow. Hardly a day goes by at the dinning hall when I eat more than I need simply because my eating partner is a sloth of an eater.

On a some what related note, Gilbert Arenas chimed in on the obesity epidemic in his most recent wave of blog greatness:

"I’m still on my diet too. It’s going well, I’m ripped baby! Of course I’m still tempted by Cheetos. I just said I’m still on a diet, but I didn’t say I don’t cheat away from the diet. Of course I do. I’m an American! We eat bad!"

Descent and Decline

2007-07-25T22:33:00.000-04:00

Not much phased Proganochelys. Equipped with neck and tail spines in addition to thick plates of armor, this Mesozoic monster even wielded a spiked club at the end of its tail. No wonder the earliest known turtle had no need for neck retraction.

Certain traits did foreshadow the form of future tortoises. Large otic openings flanked the head. Carapace and plastron armor consisted of fused dermal bone connected to the ribs. Sprawling legs emerged from fenestrae on the corners of the torso.

But only one major evolutionary event was to further alter the morphological character of the Order Testudines. Approximately 50 million years after the known specimen of Proganochelys roamed the earth, which was transpiring about 210 million years ago, turtles split into two major phylogenetic groups, the pleurodires and cryptodires. Pleurodires are side-necked tortoises. Most extant pleurodires are indigenous to Asia. In contrast, cryptodires retract their neck as one normally expects of a turtle -- they pull it in straight. The true distinction between the two groups lies in the mechanics of the jaw adductor muscle.

For many years, paleontologists speculated that turtles represent the only surviving anapsids, or vertebrates without holes in the sides of their skulls. This viewpoint was revised in recent years. Scientists realized that previous studies implicitly assumed that since turtles don't have cranial holes (temporal fenestrae), they must be most closely related to anapsids. Instead, it was proposed, why not test a phylogenetic reconstruction where turtles are a branch of the diapsids (vertebrates with two temporal fenestrae on either side of the skull) that had filled in the fenestrae? Genomic studies quickly confirmed this hypothesis, and turtle were grouped with the extinct pareiasaurs near the lepidosauromorphs (lizards).

Almost 300 million years after turtles lumbered onto the stage of life, most living species are on the brink of disappearing. Many have already passed, in our lifetimes. In southeast Asia, the situation is most dire, with over half of 90 native species threatened with imminent extinction.

The Asian turtles' predicament is driven by the newfound prosperity of China. Demanded as an ingredient for food and traditional medicine, the price fetched by chelonians has skyrocketed throughout southeast Asia. The growth of the problem has accelerated for almost 25 years. The pace of the acceleration quickened in the 1990s when the yuan became easier to convert to other currencies. To quote a New York Times article from eight years ago, "In the marketplace, the price of a single turtle can range from a few dollars to more than a thousand. The three-striped box turtle, or Cuora trifasciata, from Vietnam has a reputation among the Chinese as a cure for cancer, and Dr. Kiester said a Vietnamese collector could sell one to a dealer for $1,200 -- about six times the average annual income. As a result, that turtle has become extremely rare."

Herpetologists find more turtles at restaurants than in the wild, even in national parks. "The high value of wild-caught turtles has turned much of the rural populace of Southeast Asia into a kind of enormous net of collectors, making it almost impossible for researchers to see turtles first. For example, Dr. Platt said he considered himself lucky to have seen two Sulawesi Forest Turtles in the wild, a first for a Western biologist, though the species was readily available for sale."

Most humans are ignorant of or impassive about the fate of turtles, but not everyone has stayed complacent during the slaughter. Richard Ogust, a writer from Manhattan, metamorphosed into an activist after visiting China and observing the travesty firsthand. Eventually, Ogust accumulated 1,200 rescued turtles in his penthouse.

A highly acclaimed documentary recently aired on PBS tracks Ogust. Although I have not yet seen the movie, titled The Chances of the World Changing, an online summary informed me of Ogust's life during the filming. Unable to care for his vast number of turtle tenants, Ogust started developing a nonprofit institute dedicated to breeding and safeguarding freshwater turtles and tortoises that would also provide space for his collection. But property deals failed to materialize, and the institution could not get on its feet; public lauding never transformed into monetary support. Forced out of his penthouse, Ogust pitched a tent beside the warehouse that now housed his turtles, in New Jersey. Ultimately, the turtles were dispersed to a variety of preservationists across the country.

Turtle farming, a growing practice throughout China, is flourishing as turtles disappear in the wild. But farming fails to stem the tide of illegal harvesting, and most varieties of turtles are economically infeasible to farm, due to their long periods of maturation. The only true solution is environmental activism. Hopefully, a core of educated Asians can eventually change the tastes of their brethren. Maybe those great chelonian monuments of evolution can exist beyond my lifetime as something beside future fossils.

Top Five Ice Cream Novelties of All Time

2007-07-25T21:50:00.000-04:00

This past weekend, at the Amherst Farmer's Market, I had a Popsicle like none that I had ever had before. It wasn't of some action hero with bubble for eyes or some cartoon icon with bubble for its nose.

No. It was a cantaloupe Popsicle, and it was awesome. It was pretty small, but the sweet taste lasted until the very end, unlike other, cheaper Popsicles which lose their taste with time. It had an unusual but at the same time, was unusually refreshing.

I haven't done a top five list in a while, and I thought the time was right to make one. The cantaloupe Popsicle got me thinking to a time long ago in my life when Ice ream Trucks reigned and sticky hands were the norm. A time when you didn't have to go to a Farmer's Market to get a decent Popsicle. I've decided to list out my favorite Ice Cream Novelties of all time. If you think I've left something out, or disagree with my analysis, please comment.

Here goes:

5. Bubble Play: I wasn't planning on putting this into the top five, but then I discovered the name. Priceless. The first few bites into the hard, stubborn gum ball are always great.

4. Firecracker: The only ice-based Popsicle on the list, this is great for holidays on the beach. There are few better ways to show off the Red, White, and Blue than with a Firecracker in your hands and the coloring smeared across your face.

3. Creamsicle:I don't think I'd ever got one from an Ice Cream Man, but creamsicles are great for storing in the freezer. They have the perfect texture.

2. Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich: One precaution--do not eat this straight on, it can be killer between the front teeth. Other than that, this is a heck of a dessert. Whoever thought of mixing Chocolate Chip Cookies and vanilla ice cream was a culinary genius right up there with Remy the Rat.

1. Chocolate Covered Vanilla: Don't let the lame name fool you. This novelty might not have the glitz and glamour of Bubble Play or the Firecracker, but it packs quite a punch. The key is the texture of the outside chocolate. This novelty comes in all sorts of variety, and the chocolate coating must be crisp; it cannot instantly fall apart into splinters at contact. If produced correctly, few desserts are better.

Honorable Mention: Pop-Ups. Snoopy. Chocolate flavored soy Popsicles--I've never had one, but my mom has them so often, they have to be good.

Awful and overrated: Chaco Taco! (One of my least favorite foods ever).

Just overrated: Anything that comes in a cone.

Pathetic: The tiny, plastic cups of ice cream you have to eat with a wood stick.

Come on Down...Drew Carey?

2007-07-24T21:47:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote up a list of potential Bob Barker replacements. Drew Carey was not one of them.

I did not forget to include him on the list.

CBS announced that Drew Carey will be the new host of "The Price is Right." It could have done much better.

Drew Carey is a stand up comedian. Bob Barker was a stand up guy. His jokes were lame, but it didn't matter. There was a certain aura that surrounded Barker, which made the show so popular. He had the voice, the hair, and the admiration of all the ladies.

Carey is funny, but he is no way lovable. Furthermore, compared to Barker's majestic voice, Carey's is nasal and annoying.

Could Carey take on Happy Gilmore? No way.

It will be interesting to see if "The Price is Right" can survive. I tend to believe that Barker was bigger than the show.

Political Theater

2007-07-23T21:22:00.001-04:00

Even Joe Biden is afraid for his own life. A man caressing his "baby" -- an automatic assault rifle bought during the 1994 semi-automatic gun ban -- submitted a Youtube video asking the slew of Democratic hopefuls about their stances on gun control. Biden responded by identifying the questioner as one of those people who shouldn't be able to own a gun, and subsequently muttered that he hopes his remark won't result in his murder. Kucinich might also put the Senator from Delaware on his hitlist -- when the candidates were asked one aspect they like about the candidate to their left, Biden informed the audience that his favorite thing about the Congressman from Ohio is his wife.

From left to right: loser, loser, winner.

Mike Gravel let loose barbs upon the other candidates, accusing Hillary, Barack, and Edwards of taking money from the evil corporate interests. He also took a train instead of a jet, if anyone cares. The cameramen loved low-angle closeups of the Alaskan senator's mug as it spewed vitriol all over the stage.

Kucinich, the other zero percent chance of winning longshot, is obviously supported by telecom companies. Every utterance out of his mouth involved telling people to text message the letters P-E-A-C-E. No information was provided as to where you should direct the text.

Senator Dodd, 62 years old, of Connecticut, has a two-year-old and five-year-old at home, and finds it hard to support them on the income of a public servant. Barack reassured him after a question on the minimum wage, "You're doing fine Chris." One thing the Senator seemed secure about was his age. His Youtube campaign video stated that, in effect, growing a white mane proves how much experience one has. By that standard, you might as well vote for Gravel, or Biden. Or even Edwards, considering that he probably transplants every silver sprout with a nice brown tuft.

Speaking of Edwards's hair, why does he take fashion advice from Donald Trump? The Senator from North Carolina is quite the environmentalist, providing habitat for some endangered muskrat upon his scalp. Whenever Edwards was directed a query, the question as stated proved inadequate and was promptly changed to one that addressed a more "basic," or "underlying," issue at hand. Not even a nation that scores 29th (am I quoting Richardson right?) in some science and math test of its children against unspecified enemy countries falls for the obfuscating baloney of that Southern windbag. That's why he's currently in last, with five percent of the vote, on the Drudge Report "Who Won?" poll.

This debate stripped Bill Richardson of much of his previous appeal. Standing at his podium, bleary-eyed, belly paunched, the Governor of New Mexico touted his N.R.A. creds and effort to remove candy from public schools. Apparently all illegal immigrants will also receive free health care under the universal insurance to be swiftly implemented when Richardson moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- because "they're Americans, too," even though, technically, they aren't. But Richardson did crack one of the funniest jokes of the evening. All of his opponents shared the same likable characteristic -- they would make excellent vice presidents.

Hillary Clinton told the audience why "the best man for the job is a woman." Well, she admitted, she can't help that she's a woman. Extremely articulate and astute, Hillary even remembered the names of four video submittees from a montage sequence (albeit probably with the help of her notepad). While Richardson was up there babbling about how he wants our troops out in six months -- using the executive prerogative of the New Mexico governship, of course -- and Kucinich ranting about how he never voted for the war in the first place, Hillary wondered why the Administration doesn't even have a plan to start withdrawal, and why, when she asked about it in a Senate hearing, Bush's cronies accused her of being "unpatriotic." In the debate, Hillary never strayed into ad hominem attacks. Although she answered questions in a fashion equally equivocal to that of her colleagues, on some issues she actually propounded pragmatic-sounding proposals. For example, Hillary contends that no land troops should be sent to Darfur while they are thinned to the breaking point in Afghanistan and Iraq; instead the military should enforce a no-fly zone and provide support for humanitarian relief.

Finally, the man of the hour, Barack Obama, that upstart Senator from Illinois. The internet and myself agree that he won the debate. By staying away from anti-Hillary rhetoric and sounding like he has a vision, Barack came across as cool and charming. As summarized in his Youtube video, Barack = change, even if it only stems from his race. When asked if he is black enough, Barack replied, "You know, when I'm catching a cab in Manhattan ... in the past, I think I've given my credentials."

YouTube Puts Some Life into Democratic Debate

2007-07-23T21:10:00.000-04:00

In the beginning of the summer, for one of my first posts on this blog, I categorically bashed the planned YouTube Democratic Debate. I really enjoy watching political debates, and I thought the YouTube videos would get in the way. It thought it was too informal. Some how, I figured, it was too Democratic.

Tonight's YouTube debate was not a great debate. I got that part right. But it was great entertainment, and I'm glad they had it.

This format should not become the norm, but it is an excellent complement to the typical, more formal debates.

The YouTube debate did not uncover much about the candidates polices that we hadn't already heard. But it gave us a unusually large glimpse into the President's personalities. This is very important.

Above all else, you want to vote for a Presidential candidate that you can trust. This trust can only be established when you get to know the candidates and see who they really are. If you live in Iowa or New Hampshire, you can do this in a diner or corn field. If you live in Connecticut, Massachusetts, or Minnesota, you have to find other ways.

The YouTube debate made the candidates as unscripted as they're ever going to get on TV. Yes, the majority of responses were the typical stock answers, but there was verve and personality mixed in much more often than usual. Biden joked about the "baby" turned gun. Dodd joked about his hair. Hillary joked about her sex.

Edwards was put on the spot as to how he didn't separate religion from politics, and his response failed miserably. Gravel was challenged about his quote that American soldiers in Vietnam died in vain, and his answer hopelessly meandered to something about to ice cream (with sprinkles?).

Just as importantly, the YouTube debate was great for attracting young voters, like me. I watched the debate in a room filled with college students, and we were laughing half the time. Sometimes because of the candidates asinine answers, but more often because of their humor, or the humor of the YouTube videos. It's not often that you're going hear candidates joke about each other's wives.

As with past debates, I still cannot understand why candidates continue to completely ignore questions to instead get in their scripted B.S. The voters realize what they're doing and certainly don't like it. When at the table with Vladamir Putin, and asked a tough question on Nuclear Disarmament, do we want President Dodd to start blabbing about immigration reform? Or President Edwards to go off about wicked big business?

Part of being a great leader is responding promptly and appropriately to any situation that may arise, no matter how unpredictable it may be. By skirting around questions or completely ignoring them, the candidates do not convey a sense of leadership. Why don't they understand this and just answer the darn question? I'd rather hear a somewhat unsatisfactory answer to a question than a completely scripted response that fails to address the question at all.

Some other thoughts:

Obama Won.

Dodd, Edwards, and Richardson Lost.

Gravel, please leave.

Biden. I really like you. But just take a deep breath and calm down.

Why were so many of the questions from the East Coast? It seemed like at least 75% of the clips were from the Eastern U.S.

The opening bit, showing the YouTube videos that didn't make the cut was completely unnecessary. If they didn't make the cut, why show them? Let's hear from the candidates, not rejected YouTubers.

This feels just like ranking Super Bowl Commercials, but I'm going to have to say my favorite YouTube clip was this one:

(Image from Washingtonpost.com)

Amherst Trek

2007-07-22T21:13:00.000-04:00

To complement JT's picture from Amherst College, here's the view from the Holyoke Range.

Atop Long Mountain, looking west toward Mount Norwottuck.

Atop Long Mountain, looking southwest.

Atop Rattlesnake Knob, looking east toward Long Mountain.

Atop Rattlesnake Knob, looking north. The red arrow points out Memorial Hill at our fair College, with the towers of UMass looming only a few pixels behind as specks.

JT, another reasearch fellow, and I set off after a slightly too filling lunch upon the longest hike of my life. From Amherst College, the Holyoke Range looks like a line of hills, roughly level with the top of Memorial Hill. After traveling to the ridge, I can tell you that hill is the word used by people who haven't made the journey.

The Holyoke Range stretches over 50 miles. It represents the erosional remnants of a basaltic lava flow from the early Jurassic Period, almost 200 million years ago. Before the Atlantic Ocean formed, there was a series of failed rifting incidents in what is now the Eastern United States. Analogous to what is now happening in the Great Rift Valley of Eastern Africa, an upwelling of magma spread the crust under paleo-Massachusetts, creating a rift valley and lava extrusions in the thinnest areas. Also related to this event was the deposition of sediment in a deltaic setting inhabited by a variety of dinosaurs, resulting in the preservation of dinosaur footprints. With the lithified material currently located in the Connecticut River Valley, Edward Hitchcock, the third president of Amherst College, collected many specimens, thereby amassing the largest assemblage of dinosaur footprints in the world. It is now housed in the College's Natural History Museum.

Miller and JT Go to the Notch

2007-07-22T20:10:00.000-04:00

Sorry we haven't churned out too many posts this weekend. Usually, the weekend is primetime for posts, since we generally don't have much else to do. However, this weekend was a bit different than normal. Miller and I were busy--busy climbing to the "Notch" of the Mt. Holyoke Range.

I can't speak for Miller, but I am not exactly the adventurous type, and to me, this was quite the adventure.

Typically, to hike to the Notch, Amherst students drive to The Notch Visitor Center and go up from there. It probably takes an hour or so.

For some reason, this didn't seem right to us. A hike should not be preceded by a drive to a nicely paved parking lot.

Instead, we decided to leave by foot from Amherst, and not stop until we made it to the Notch. We didn't care how we got there; in fact, we didn't really know how we were going to get there. All we knew is that were not turning around until we reached our destination. If it meant sleeping in the woods for the night, so be it.

I am proud to say that we did not have to sleep for a night.

5 1/2 hours and roughly 14 miles (we think) in, we made it to the Notch Visitor Center. Along the way, we faced our fair share of troubles.

The Robert Frost Trail (which we thought we could take all the way) suddenly ended with a field of tall grass.

A motorcyclist completely dressed in black circled around us on a completely deserted road. He said he thought one of us was his friend. I almost wet my pants.

Horseflies. Snakes. Toads. Slopes. Fatigue. Dehydration.

If you couldn't tell, I'm trying to make this seem as hardcore as I can. It makes me feel kind of good about myself. It makes me feel like Bear Grylls--the pure definition of hardcore.

Even if it wasn't as "H" as I am trying to make it seem, it was a great way to spend a day. It might have been wiser to bring along better mapage, but it definitely would not have been as enjoyable an experience.

Next up? Mt. Everest or Mt. Holyoke. We haven't decided yet.

Whatever we decide, we'll be sure to recount our experience on the VD.

(Note: The above photo is of the Holyoke Mountain Range, taken from the Amherst College War Memorial.)

The Vegan Dessert Flashback: Playmakers

2007-07-21T11:25:00.000-04:00

I don't think I need to say much more about Who's Now. Every one's been on top of it, including Sports Illustrated, WFAN, and Deadspin.

Just now in Newsweek, I read a column by Devin Gordon that consisted of a bashing of ESPN as a whole, with Who's Now as the centerpiece. There was one line in the piece that grabbed my attention more than anything I've read or heard since T.I. met SportsCenter met Jessica Biel.

"It has led to the occasional gaffe, like ESPN's decision to cancel its well-regarded drama 'Playmakers' after the NFL complained about the show," Gordon writes.

Did he say Playmakers? Wow. I completely forgot about that show. Can I get it on DVD from the Amherst Library?

There is so much to say. I don't remember the show too well, but I'll do my best to highlight the characters and plot lines that made this one of the most audacious, ridiculous, and great shows to ever appear on the tube.

First, there was Demetrius Harris, aka DH. Played by Omar Gooding, aka the host of "Wild and Crazy Kids." DH was the up-and-coming star running back who hung with the wrong crowd and made all the wrong decisions. In the defining moment of the entire season, a doctor used a catheter to insert clean piss into DH, so that he wouldn't fail an impending drug test (he had gotten high days before). Watching the pee insertion was probably one of the most bizarre, disturbing, and uncomfortable moments ever on cable TV.

Then there was Leon Taylor, the aging veteran running back, played by Russell Hornsby. As far as I can remember, the guy was a complete di** who cheated on his wife, cheated in football, and solely cared about advancing his career. Oh, I just found some more about Leon that I had forgotten--he beat his wife.

There was Eric Olczyz, played by Jason Matthew Smith. He was big, good, and like everyone else on the show, completely messed up. He impregnated some random girl on a one night stand. He had to see a shrink because of post-traumatic stress. Yet, for some reason, he was always my favorite character.

Then there was the gay player, who had to hide his secret. There was the head coach, who had cancer. There was the equipment guy, who wanted to start a career in college coaching. And there was the theme song, which was freaking awesome. Here's a clip of the intro, to remind you of the show that was.

I had to go through espn.go.com/eoe/playmakers to refresh my memory on a lot of this. Here is a passage I read while searching the site which embodies the greatness and awkwardness of the show. It is in the summary for Episode 8:

"While lifting weights, Guerwitcz learns that Trent King went off steroids because it was affecting his performance in the bedroom. Guerwitcz uses the steroid excuse when his machinery doesn't work with August. Later, on a tip from Trent King, Guerwitcz gets help in the bedroom with some of Trent's manly medication."

I really don't understand why the NFL would want ESPN to cancel it. Shame on them.

Why Didn't I get Tommy John Surgery for Hanukah?!

2007-07-20T23:11:00.000-04:00

Today, the St. Louis Cardinals were dealt a terrible blow--it was announced that ace pitcher Chris Carpenter will have to go under the knife and have Tommy John Surgery. He will not return until the middle of next season.

Today, a teenager may have been dealt what he thinks is a terrific opportunity--Tommy John Surgery. According to a cover article in today's New York Times, Tommy John surgery is trickling down from the big leagues to little league as overworked arms lead to more and more injuries. Yet, some teenagers see Tommy John Surgery as a risk-free path towards a stronger arm and faster pitches.

Jere Longman begins the story: "While examining a 17-year-old pitcher for a knee injury last year in Nashville, Dr. Damon H. Petty was asked a chilling question by the teenager and his father: If reconstructive elbow surgery were performed on his healthy throwing arm, might he gain some speed on his fastball?"

In short, Tommy John Surgery consists of "harvesting a tendon from the forearm or below the knee, then weaving it in a figure-eight pattern through tunnels that have been drilled in the ulna and humerus bones that are part of the elbow joint," Longman writes. This is no run of the mill surgery, yet teens and minor leaguers are voluntarily going under the knife.

I hope that aspiring ball players don't watch Rookie of the Year anytime soon...

With the proliferation of Lasick eye surgery in professional sports, along with the implications of this article, I'm beginning to wonder if there should or can be a line drawn between medically related treatment and purely athletic-motivated treatment. Do we want our athletes to be artificially athletic? The outrage over steroids has shown that we do not. Steroids were initially intended for medicinal use and soon got into the wrong hands with the wrong intentions. In the coming decades, I suspect that unnecessary surgery will replace the unnecessary steroids of today as the means to cheat your way to athletic stardom.

David Beckham: Now You See Him, Now You See Him

2007-07-20T20:45:00.001-04:00

First his wife gets a prime time slot on NBC, and now today, David Beckham gets a prime time spot on ESPN.com. The Beckhams seem to be getting in every one's way as of late.

If you tried to go to ESPN.com during the day, you probably had a hard time reading much of anything. That's because the front page was largely covered by an advertisement for what was suppossed to be Beckham's first game in the MLS this Saturday. Beckham is likely not going to play because of a hurt ankle, and the ad has since been taken down.

I'm glad that Beckham's first game will not come against a World class opponent in Chelsea. I want his first game to be in Salt Lake City or Houston. I want to see his reaction when he realizes the level of play he has sunk to. I want to see if he sinks down to level of the competition or can rise above it.

I am honestly very excited to see Beckham in the MLS. However, I won't be watching until he's playing against other MLS teams.

Organist and Fiddler

2007-07-20T20:39:00.000-04:00

Anton Bruckner and Carl Nielsen are composers who revolutionized orchestral music in widely different ways. But underlying both their styles of experimentation was an obsession with thoroughgoing and methodical thematic modulation.

Bruckner as a silhouette entering heaven. He is greeted from left to right by Liszt, Wagner, Schubert, Schumann, Weber, Mozart, Beethoven, Gluck, Haydn, Handel, and Bach, at the organ.

Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, the most popular of his oeuvre since its release, passes motives through every conceivable key, mode, possible dynamic, and section of the orchestra. The observation that Bruckner's orchestral effects echo the rumblings of an organ loft remains a proper cliche. All of the symphonies' finales let loose the brass like organ stops; supporting harmonic oscillation takes after pedal point. Although his idiosyncratic style broke with tradition, Bruckner's music is exceptional in its simplicity. As the final movement of the Seventh approaches its climax, for example, the composer repeats his theme over and over, with each iteration only gaining an interval and layer of sound until the ultimate blast of affirmation. Gustav Mahler, one of Bruckner's greatest admirers, described the man as "half simpleton, half God."

A standing Nielsen with the members of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet. Nielsen wrote a great quintet for the group, and concerti for the flautist and clarinetist.

Nielsen tinkers with melodies so that even his grandest symphonic edifice bears structurally compromising cracks. His most mature music is proliferated with so many flutters that the trill and turn are more substantive than the occasional outburst of melodic meat. As a result of these meanderings, Nielsen's music is extremely hard to play. Osmo Vanska, maestro of the Minnesota Orchestra, claimed before a concert with the piece on the program that Nielsen's Sixth, subtitled "Sinfonia Semplice" ("Simple Symphony"), is the hardest symphony ever composed. Amongst clarinetists, it is common knowledge that his Clarinet Concerto is the most technically ardous piece in the repertoire -- upon receiving the manuscript, dedicatee Aage Oxenvad of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet grumbled that to have written such obscure and squeaky sequences of notes, Nielsen must have known how to play the clarinet. In contrast to Brucker's late masterpieces, which conclude with the heraldically triumphant, in full praise of the Almighty (he intended to write a major key final movement for the unfinished Ninth Symphony), the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto and Fifth and Sixth Symphonies leave earthy and esoteric afterthoughts. Composer and Nielsen scholar Robert Simpson writes, "The tense Clarinet Concerto, hitting every nail ruthlessly on the head, is the finest since Mozart's masterpiece, and the problems it raises will have powerful significance while there is trouble in the world."

Check(ers) Mate

2007-07-19T22:32:00.000-04:00

Games and sports are inherently more fun when you have a chance of winning. What fans do you think are happier: Spurs fans or Knicks fans?

But how does it feel when you have absolutely no chance of winning? Well, to figure it out, you can either start rooting for the Royals or try to beat the Chinook computer in checkers.

According to an article from NYT.com, scientists at the University of Alberta have created a computer that cannot lose a game of checkers. Named Chinook, the computer has spent 18 years playing out the 500 billion possible positions. I've heard highly unsubstantiated rumors that Yahoo Checkers is looking into buying Chinook.

I have little doubt that Chuck Norris could beat the computer, even if he started with just one checker.

The upcoming campaign against animal flatulence

2007-07-19T22:01:00.000-04:00

A recent study by Japanese scientists reveals that the production of 2.2 pounds of beef is equivalent to driving 155 miles at 50 miles per hour in an "ordinary car" in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Moral of the story: those obsessed with minimizing their carbon footprints must embrace vegetarianism.

Humorously, the majority of global warming agents released in beef production comes in the form of cattle CH4 -- gastrointestinally produced methane. Methane sequestration seems like a pork barrel proposition on the horizon.

Diehard global warming activists who can't break carnivory should try suppressing their own flatulence, with the added benefit of eliminating a negative externality inflicted upon the general populace. As a correlative measure they ought also to cut their consumption of beans.

The reduction of meat consumption not only combats global warming, but is also humane and healthy. If the United States consume less meat, maybe the nation can start averting the growth of its obesity epidemic.

In the old comic strip Pogo, the character Churchy decides to fight air pollution by stopping breathing. Unfortunately, although there are myriad ways to eventually halt global warming, none present a panacea. Small alterations of habit, like unplugging your cell phone charger, are a good place to start.

Barry Who?

2007-07-19T21:45:00.000-04:00

Barry Bonds is two home runs away from tying Hank Aaron's all time mark. He is on the verge of breaking sport's most sacred record.

I couldn't care less.

About two months into the season, I gave up hope that Bonds would simply fall apart physically and fall short of the record. Since then, I've resigned myself to a world in which Bonds is the home run king, and thus I haven't had to follow the quest towards 755. When he does break the record, I won't feel anything.

Tom Verducci has a great article in this week's Sports Illustrated, not about Bonds, but Hank Aaron. It gave me a very good sense of who Hank Aaron is, and what he went through on the road to 755. Verducci also adds some much welcomed editorializing:

"Even when Barry Bonds holds the record, Hank Aaron can still be the people's home run king--and 755 can still be the number in which we believe," Verducci concludes.

I have to agree.

25 years from now, on ESPN Classic, you'll be more likely to see Hank Aaron running around the bases surrounded by chaos than Barry Bonds jogging around the bases alone.

As for Bud Selig, I think he has to go watch Bonds break the record. If he does not watch Bonds, then what's to be done with the record books at Cooperstown? By ignoring Barry, Selig will set a precarious precedent. He will tacitly admit that Bonds cheated and that his record is illegitimate.

Was Selig at Busch Stadium to watch Mark McGuire break the single-season home run mark? I'm not sure. But if he was, then I think he has to go to Bond's games. Either that or Bond's numbers should be erased from the record books.

ESPN 1, Me 0

2007-07-19T08:41:00.000-04:00

ESPN won. They put Jessica Biel on Who's Now and I went out of my way to watch it. I don't feel very good about myself right now. For the first time ever, I felt some shame while watching ESPN, and I kept looking over my shoulder as the segment ran on.

Here is the reason Biel gave for choosing Steve Nash over LaDainian Tomlinson:

"I know what that guy looks like, and he's pretty hardcore."

Clearly, Biel was chosen to be on the panel for her sports prowess. I see a bright ESPN future for her. A Tony Kornheiser-Jessica Biel combo on PTI seems quite inevitable and unbeatable.

Given the ratings boost that I'm sure accompanied Biel's appearance, I can see an ESPN buyout of Playboy coming in the next 5-10 years.

Ils ne parlent pas anglais.

2007-07-18T21:26:00.001-04:00

Earlier today, I returned from field work that included a trip to Canada. Border patrol agents from both nations have become extremely suspicious. The traveler is guilty until proven innocent.

For the geologist, a commonly encountered problem is the transportation of rocks across borders. My professor imparted the parable of an Australian colleague who brought specimens to the United States making sure to bleach and scrub every square millimeter of their surfaces. Authorities are paranoid that foreign microbes will hitch a ride on the rock.

The paleontologist should never identify fossils as such; simply call them stones. In the mind of the C.B.P. employee, there is no difference between a common brachiopod and a Native American artifact.

Of course, there is no force field between New York and Quebec preventing the movement of microbes. But there does exist an unexpected linguistic wall. Not a single word of English dwelled in the hotel attendent's vocabulary. When my professor unsuccessfully tried to communicate our room number verbally and then with fingers, I had to intervene with quatorze. To obtain a cot for our room, I initially attempted to improvise a word for the desired object. After a couple minutes of floundering in French, I realized that je veux trois lits (I want three beds) would solve my problems.

Broader conclusions can be drawn from the lack of bilingualism in Quebec. Much of the region must be isolated from the rest of Canada or the United States. The city we visited is an outer ring suburb of Montreal, not an isolated bubble. A multilingual Quebecois colleague asked me if I thought the paucity of English speakers was at all surprising, understanding that to foreigners, there is an expectation that bilingualism is the norm. He then informed me that he was born and raised in the town in which he now resides, suggesting that geographic mobility is not common amongst French Canadians, even the most cosmopolitan.

The provincialism of Quebec is true for most of the world. In my home state of Minnesota, most natives return at some point in their lives, and a good number never live outside the state at all. Most small American cities are minimally connected to a metropolis through business, let alone foreign nations. Why should the inhabitants of a small town in Quebec need knowledge of a foreign language when most of them work as blue collar workers, or at service jobs that create a self-sufficient, although extremely codependent, local economy? The illegal immigrants of Los Angeles have few incentives to learn English although they regularly interact with English speakers. The varied dialects of provincial France yields another example, or Kafka's German in Prague.

Even as globalization allows for unprecedented economic codependence, it marches on silently through most of the world, only noticed when the Goodyear factory shuts down in that small Quebec town, or when Pop-tarts start to occupy the shelves of a depanneur. Companies extend tentacles across borders, disregarding the artificial barrier.

In some instances, globalization provides regions with greater cultural isolation. As Tony Judt points out in Postwar, tiny ethnic localities in European nations are able to rake in funds from the E.U. to preserve their cultural sanctity. If anything, these subsidies further decentralize Europe into a patchwork abstract. This centrifugal phenomenon is found even at the national level, giving more autonomy to provincial regions from the central government than at any time in the recent past--Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are an example that immediately springs to mind, in addition to Quebec.

Consider that the provenance of most of our material possessions spurs very few of us to learn Mandarin. There simply is no need.

China Fully Comitted to Combat...Clouds

2007-07-18T20:54:00.000-04:00

If you're planning to go on vacation in the summer of 2008, let me recommend Beijing. Even if the Olympics aren't your thing, China is offering a gimmick like none other--a guarantee of perfect weather.

According to Reuters, China plans on firing rockets into the sky to scatter incoming rain clouds during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. While I don't know the science involved, it seems like it would be a lot easier, cheaper, safer, saner, and possible to simply build a roof. Even I agree that sports might not be important enough to launch rockets into the sky.

Some may think that this is simply B.S. spit out by the Chinese government. However, according to Reuters, China has frequently used chemical-filled rockets to induce rain in Beijing. Now, the question is how they're going to stop the rain with rockets. Good luck with that.

Don't be surprised if one of the rockets heads towards Milwaukee...

Who Needs Harry Potter? Kenny Mayne's Writting a Book!

2007-07-17T22:32:00.000-04:00

One of the funniest segments I've ever watched on TV was ESPN personality Kenny Mayne trying out to be a ball-boy at the U.S. Open. It was priceless to see his interaction with the high school kids who were simply looking to get a great summer job (sorry, YouTube doesn't have a video).

Now, instead on TV, we've got Who's Now...

Anyway, Kenny Mayne has apparently written a book. Awful Announcing dug up a YouTube clip to prove it. I am not too sure how much I want to read a book by Kenny Maybe--comedy on TV does not necessarily translate to comedy in print. To be perfectly honest, I find his sarcasm to be a bit over-the-top at times. I'm not sure I even believe that Mayne wrote a book.

But I know I'm more likely to read something by Kenny Mayne come July 21 than something by J.K. Rowling. Sorry Harry, but I stopped caring about you two books ago.

Don't Mess with a Dog when He's Going for a Walk

2007-07-17T21:30:00.001-04:00

If there's one sport that is in worse shape than ice hockey, it is bike racing. Even before the whole blood doping epidemic, not too many people cared about it, but now, the sport is enveloped by a cloud even bigger than Barry Bond's head.

Yet today, the solution to the sinking sport came from the most unlikely of sources--a dog who lost his way.

During today's stage of the Tour de France, a dog walked across the street right where bike riders were speeding by. Let's just say there weren't any signs alerting the riders of the dog crossing. The dog colided with Marcus Burghardt of Germany and both tumbled to the ground (see YouTube clipe at end of the post). Luckily, neither were seriouly hurt.

Now why can't this become the norm for the Tour de France. Remember the simple computer games when you drive/sled/ski down an obstacle filled course, trying to avoid animals, road blocks, and oncoming trucks? Well, the Tour de France should make the game come to life. Throw some more dogs onto the track. Add some roaming cows, some landing planes, some confused children.

Make the course short, so that endurance won't matter as much. It will be a true test of hand-eye coordination (and insanity). In a couple of years, everyone will be watching.

Thanks to deadspin.com for the video.

The Vegan Dessert Question of the Week!

2007-07-16T23:04:00.000-04:00

I think of myself as a pretty avid sports fan, yet there are a number of rules/strategies that I just don't understand. Most I can push aside as too intricate or rare to bother myself with.

However, there is one unknown rule that I really want to uncover--the checked swing. I have absolutely no idea what makes a checked swing a strike. What's it have to do with the writsts? Does it have something to do with the first/third base line? What does the first/third base ump know that the homeplate one doesn't?

I hate how I can't ever yell at the TV over a checked swing, since I never know what's the right call. Checked swings can have a very large impact on a game baseball, and I am oblivious to what a checked swing is. I get the sense sometimes that no one knows what makes a checked swing.

Please help me. What is an umpire looking out when deciding whether a checked swing should be a strike?

ESPN Opens Up to the Blogging World (For Roughly Ten Minutes)

2007-07-16T21:41:00.000-04:00

Over the past week or so, I've been doing my fair share of ESPN bashing. It is, after all, pretty impossible not to bash ESPN after watching a segment of Who's Now (?).

By way of Awful Annoucning I came across a radio clip from Scott Van Pelt's ESPN radio show. He interviews Will Leitch, the Michael Jordan/Babe Ruth/Tiger Woods/Joey Chestnut of sports blogging. They talk about why ESPN sucks as well as why so many sports fans are turning to blogs.

It's a pretty short clip worth listening to. Just hearing Leitch's voice on a ESPN broadcast made it worth it for me. Van Pelt's gets props for bringing Leitch onto the Network.

Also, in somewhat related news, guess who's going to be on the 2nd round panel for Who's Now? Jessica Biel!

Her vote will count for 10% of the total, while mine (if I bothered voting), would probably count for less than .01%.

They've got some really bright ones working at ESPN--such a subtle, clever move they made. Rather than cutting the terrible, meaningless, abysmal, laughable segment and admitting a mistake, they brought in the 2005 sexiest woman alive to boost ratings. Whoever thought of such an innovate idea ought to get a raise (chances are, some 15 year old kid recommended it to his bud as a joke and some ESPN exec. overheard it).

(Photo from adverbox.com)

Top Five Summer Hits (That I Can Remember)

2007-07-15T17:16:00.000-04:00

My car doesn't have a CD player-- it only plays audio cassettes. For the past year or so, I've pledged to get a CD/Radio adaptor, but I have yet to put together the effort to actually get one.

However, yesterday I was presented with what seemed like a perfect opportunity. At my town library's annual sale, there were loads of audio cassettes, and each was selling for just 50 cents! It seemed like a perfect scenario.

I ended up getting four tapes--some classical, jazz, and MC Hammer (the last one was the big find of the day.)

Yet I now realize that I'm not going to be playing those tapes too much, at least for now. It's the summer, and that means its time to listen to the radio.

Each summer, there are a handful of songs that define the season. Each time I enter the car during the summer, I scan the airwaves, looking for these few, special songs that are deemed Summer Hits. When I find one, I can turn up the volume, clear out my throat, and start singing along to the song I have heard twenty times before. It's beautiful.

It is with this is mind that I have decided to list the top five Summer Hits that I can remember. I'm positive that I have forgotten some , and it is up to you to comment and tell me what I've missed.

Wikipedia defines a Summer hit as "a song which gains huge popularity during the summer and then almost completely disappears when the summer is over."

My definition is simpler--a summer hit is a song that you would definitely hear if you listened to Hot 97.1 New York for an hour during the summer in which the song came out.

Here are the top five Summer Hits that I can remember:

5. Rehab, Amy Winehouse ft. Jay-Z
This is the only Summer Hit on the list from the current summer. I was tempted to list the lip gloss song, but Rehab has just a bit more substance (not to mention Jay-Z). This song meets one of the most important aspects of a great Summer Hit--I can sing to it.

4. Number One, by Pharrell ft. Kanye West
This excellent single prompted me to buy Pharrell's debut album--"In my Mind." The album sucked, but this oft forgotten song is a great one. Kayne steals the show in a big way, eh eh eh, but Pharrell holds his own throughout.

3. Deja Vu, Beyonce
The start of this song is so money. When I heard the bass begin to beat on the radio, I got so antsy. Summer hits are often accompanied by great music videos, and this song has one of the best videos ever.

2. Give it Up to Me, Sean Paul
Sean Paul, Keyshia Cole, Don Corleone! This song is the definition of a summer hit. Last year, you could not listen to the radio for more than 20 minutes without hearing it. If only I could understand what the heck Sean Paul was trying to say.

1. Hollaback Girl, by Gwen Stefani:
This song forever changed the way I look at the word Bananas (B-A-N-A-N-A-S). If I were driving on a hot, sweaty, summer day, this is the number one song I would want to hear.

In the comment section, please list your favorite summer hits. Maybe I forgot some, or maybe you just have bad taste.

(Note: I did not forget Promiscuous Girl. I just don't like that song.)

The Digitization of Rock, Paper, Scissor

2007-07-14T11:55:00.000-04:00

About a week ago, Miller and I watched the Rock, Paper, Scissor Championships on ESPN2. It was pretty pathetic. There was so much glitz and glamour thrown onto a game that is defined by its simplicity. The matches took place in tiny boxing rings, the players were brought out by busty babes, and announcers lauded the player's as if they had just eaten 66 hot dogs. (I have a feeling a Will Ferrell movie is looming.) Yet, at least the players were using their hands.

This week, I was introduced to Facebook's version of RPS, called "Roshambull." It has the potential to destroy RPS.

The essential element of Rock, Paper, Scissor is spontaneity. The games can arise at any moment--in the cafeteria when there's only one brownie left, in the math class when the teacher's looking for a volunteer, on the sports field when there's a disputed call.

Furthermore, each throw must happen in rapid secession--one after another after another. The great players some how manage to think in between every throw, the decent players think in the beginning and soon get rattled, the poor players simply throw rock every time.

"Roshambull" is taking the spontaneity out of RPS.

For one, the games begin when a player gets an e-mail. Terrible. All RPS games must begin with a simple clenching of the fist and a slight up-and-down movement.

Secondly, players can take as long as they want to move. I thought for at least two minutes in between every "throw" of my first game. While I won, it didn't feel right. You are not supposed to have time to think in between rounds of RPS.

Thirdly, the game provides statistics on your opponent's history. When playing, you can see the percentage of rock, paper, and scissor your player has used in his entire "Roshambull" career. This is not the RPS that I was brought up on and learned to love. In RPS, every game should be a new day.

I am worried for my children. I hope that they do not grow up in a World where the only hand movement involved in RPS is a mouse click.

(Note: I suck at drawing, and thus did not make that cartoon. It comes from www.dorkboycomics.com)

Strange brew, eh?

2007-07-13T21:04:00.000-04:00

In anticipation of upcoming fieldwork in Quebec, my advisor instructed me to watch "Strange Brew." A spoof of life in Canada, the movie is centered on a pair of brothers (played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) who subsist on beer and jelly donuts. Not too shabby for a couple hosers, eh? But instead of critiquing the mediocre movie, let's explore the dialect of that Great White North.

Moranis's and Thomas's characters define the word hoser as "what you call your brother when your mother is in the room"--an all-purpose mild insult. Originally used to describe the poor Canadian prairie farmers of the 1930s who siphoned gasoline from the tractors of neighbors, the term hoser is a condensation of the word "hosehead." The word still carries some socioeconomic baggage. For example, if you're a big hoser, one of those flannel shirts hanging in the closet might be a dinner jacket. The expression also had significance in the pre-Zamboni world--losing ice hockey teams had to hose off the ice.

Another endemic Canadianism is that insignificant chortle dangling at the end of a stereotypical Canuck sentence pronounced "eh." Minnesotans have evolved to the point where a gentle lilt replaces the heavy-handed eh, but both affects are commonly rhetorical in nature, a sign of self-concurrence. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines eh as "ascertaining the comprehension, continued interest, agreement, etc., of the person or persons addressed." Unfortunately, the Quebecois aren't big eh enthusiasts. Maybe I'll pretend to be from Manitoba.

Another linguistic experiment I might run will involve liberal use of the the word tabernacle, in a thick French-Canadian accent, of course. A variety of religious words have taken on profane meanings in Quebec, with tabernacle being one of the more potent expressions. I'll start mild, possibly commenting "d'la bouffe en tabernacle," on how there is a lot of food. But I'm not even going to try joking about how Mozusse broke les tabernacles after drinking a little too much from la câlice. That'll get me hosed.

USC Will Win the NCAA Championship in 2012

2007-07-12T22:10:00.000-04:00

Ryan Boatright was just offered a basketball scholarship to USC.

Boatright is 14. 5-foot-9. 135 pounds. He will begin high school this fall.

Pat Forde, over at ESPN has the article, "It's a scary thought, but middle schoolers are now recruitable players."

I wish USC had been scouting me in eight grade rec. basketball--I had some sick games.

In reality, it's not too groundbreaking a story. With Freddy Adu, Michelle Wie and others, the precedent has been set that's it is never to early to stop thinking about fun and start thinking about your future.

Whoa. Wait I second. I just got a picture of the kid. This is absolutely ridiculous. USC has a good enough reputation that it shouldn't have to recruit kids young enough to require a babysitter. Maybe USC is looking to jump down to the high school circuit and dominate. There is no other explanation.

(On a completely unrelated note, the WFAN reunion weekend page is a treasure trove of fantastic radio snippets. It is great if you have nothing to do.)