ProcrastiBlog

Ann Althouse wonders about the polar bears:

How many people look at that picture and think the polar bears were living on some ice and it melted around them and now they are stuck?

And, yes, I realize a polar bear can drown... if, say, it's exhausted and swimming over 50 miles. But basically, these things can swim 15 miles easily, at a speed of 6 miles an hour, and they use the edge of an ice floe as a platform from which to hunt. Where's the photograph of the bear chomping down on a cute baby seal?

And, no, I'm not denying that there's global warming, even as I sit here a double pane of glass away from -12° air. I'm just amused at human behavior, such as the way it is possible to feel arguments at us. In particular, we are susceptible to argument by animal. We love the animal, if it's pictured right, in a way that pulls our heartstrings.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Now, that I've calmed down a bit...

I'm still a little perplexed by the decision. Ilan played it safe last week and very nearly got sent home. He played it safe again this week and took the title. According to my sources on the Internets (including Lee Anne Wong), several of his dishes this week and last were more-or-less straight from the menu of Casa Mono (including the bay leaf dessert).

By my count, they each had one miss (Marcel's salad w/o tear-drop vinaigrette, Ilan's angulas from a can), 3 strong dishes, and one "meh" (Marcel's dessert, Ilan's short ribs). The way the show was cut, I thought the diners were much more impressed with Marcel's food. And Marcel's "meh" was at least more creative and interesting than Ilan's.

Here are the good reasons to send Marcel home that I didn't hear come out of the Judge's mouths: the salad course and the missing hamachi showed poor planning and bad judgment (even if the non-hamachi dish ended up being a hit); he's probably less ready to go open his own restaurant tomorrow, considering his style of cuisine will only work in a high-end fine dining atmosphere and he's not quite there yet (Ilan, on the other hand, could probably open a successful downtown comfort food joint next week); in short, Marcel is less capable of realizing his grand ambitions than Ilan is of realizing his own modest ones.

Still, it was a completely uninspiring end to the season. They failed to pick the obviously best chef, which was Sam. And they chose a guy who was a self-regarding, small-minded, ignorant jerk. Seriously, I think that his part in the Marcel-shaving incident---notwithstanding the fact that he never laid a hand on him---was probably worse than Cliff's. Cliff was just physically following through on the logic of the moment, and he did so without excessive malice or force. Meanwhile, Ilan stood by shrieking and laughing, egging Cliff, Sam, and Elia on. He's the only one that seemed genuinely disappointed that Marcel escaped with his hair. And after several months to contemplate what had happened, he fell right back into bullying Marcel without a second thought.

It makes me sick to my stomach. It really does.

That and the big pile of barbecue I just ate.

My faith in reality television is shattered.

Are you psyched for the finale?! If Ilan wins, I think I might cry. Here's my attempt at an objective assessment.

Marcel

Pros: He's creative and interesting. He has a sense of humor about himself and a remarkably professional attitude towards those who teased, taunted, and assaulted him. His colleagues at The Mansion seem to respect him, even if none of his fellow contestants did. He kicked ass last week.

Cons: He didn't make a single memorably delicious-seeming dish all season. He seems to lack some basic cooking chops and gets lost when he doesn't have access to xanthan gum or a thermal immersion circulator. He made foams at least as often as Sam made pickles. And, it must be noted, almost everybody on the show hated him.


Ilan

Pros: He seems to be a skilled cook. He has prepared several dishes through the season that look delicious and which the judges all enjoyed. He showed some leadership skills in the course of the season.

Cons: The leadership he showed was in inspiring others to hate Marcel. So, more your cold prickly Hitler-y leadership,* not your warm fuzzy FDR-y stuff. He's an asshole. Every successful dish he made (e.g., paella, fideos) could have come (did come?) from the menu of his restaurant. The things he made that weren't classic Spanish recipes (e.g., chocolate-covered liver) were often disgusting. Both Gail and Padma seemed ready to send him home last week.**

My Prediction: Marcel by a nose.***

Bonus Prediction: The final Elimination Challenge will not bring back previously eliminated contestants to work under the finalists: this set-up hurt Tiffani's chances last year (recall that all four helper chefs, including her own teammates, picked Harold to win) and it would probably be ruinous to Marcel. I could swear there was promo footage of Stephen Asprinio towards the beginning of the season... Maybe they'll bring back last year's contestants as kitchen helpers? Stephen and Marcel would make a great team...

* Hell yeah, I just went there.
** Although I am typically a very credulous reality television viewer, I must say that choosing Ilan over Sam last week seems to betray an interest in "good television" over "good food."
*** The "by a nose" bit is meaningless. The judge's always present it as if it's "by a nose," especially in the finale.

UPDATE: I meant to say, also, that it is obviously the case that neither Marcel nor Ilan can hold a candle to Harold (or even Tiffani) (and probably Lee Anne). That said, I will note that this is a cooking-themed reality television show and not an objective search for the Best Chef in the Universe. (I believe that's called The Next Food Network Star.) You gotta play them as they lay.

Note to George Bush: It's called the Democratic party, and you sound like an asshole. (What's new?) (Via les commentaires de Sausagely)

After my griping of this morning, it's only fair that I report on my trip to hand H's mysterious package to a postal employee in person. Before I had even gotten in line, a man magically appeared from the back room of the post office and asked me if my package had correct postage pre-applied. I told him it did and pointed to the admonitory stickers affixed. He took the package from me and disappeared into the back room, almost before I could thank him. I was in the post office for less than two minutes.

Now I only hope we don't get it back with more stickers.

Yeah, this episode reminded me of "Cheers."

Despite its use of one of my great filmic pet peeves, the revelatory dream sequence, this was one of my favorite episodes in a long time. I have little patience for the "mythological" elements of the show (e.g., the Arrow of Apollo, the Eye of Jupiter, and the Quest for Earth) and this season has been thick with them. Consequently, there have been episodes this season (particularly 3.5, "Torn," the episode that took us inside a Cylon basestar for the first time, alongside Baltar) that bored me senseless. I think the show is strongest when it's dealing with the grim reality of its characters' situation, sucking in the bleakest realities of our modern age and remixing/re-contextualizing them in surprising and insightful ways. We got a bit of that this week, a little canon of coercive interrogation with an unexpected hint of MK-ULTRA, and the promise of more to come (does anybody think the trial of Gaius Baltar may contain a dash or two of Saddam Hussein?).

Query the First: Given that BSG has a habit of omitting key events in character's relationships until they become dramatically useful (e.g., the tryst between Apollo and Starbuck that occurred half a season before we got a hint of it) and given the odd and inappropriate snuggling between Laura Roslin and Admiral Adama in this and previous episodes (see 3.9, "Unfinished Business"), may I assume their relationship is sexual in nature?

Query the Second: In this season, we have: Helo sabotaging a plan that could have ended the human/Cylon war forever (3.7, "A Measure of Salvation"); Helo "delivering" Sharon to the Cylons, to whom she may have provided sensitive intelligence (3.11, "Rapture); and Gaeta stabbing a high-value detainee in the neck. Again, I ask: is there anything a person can do to get court-martialled on this ship?

Query the Third: Is it "court-martialled" or "court-martialed"? Google is inconclusive. Blogger doesn't like me verbing "martial".

The post office has some odd rules that seem crudely designed to discourage people from mailing bombs or anthrax. For instance, you probably know that a return address is now required for all mail, lest if be delayed as "suspicious." A related rule is that a package may not display any "advertisements" (i.e., names or logos) for any company that is not the sender. It is not enough to scribble out a logo with a marker; one must cover it with brown paper-backed packing tape. Postal employees make compliance with this rule especially pleasant by being both inconsistent and snide about it.

A rule which is new to me is, I think, as follows: if a package weighs more than a pound and the postage is affixed in the form of stamps, then the package must be presented in person to a post office employee. This means: don't put it in the automated service kiosk and don't hand it to the guy in your office mail room. H tried to send a package to her cousin last week and decided to use some very old stamps I've had since five first-class postage rates ago (they were very nice "collectible" stamps that were given to me as a gift and I want to "ruin" them by using them for postage... because I'm a friggin' idiot). The package was actually delivered back to us, with several bright green stickers explaining why a piece of mail with adequate postage would not be forwarded to its recipient. (One nice thing is that they didn't cancel the postage.)

The box is now sitting in the living room, waiting for one of us to face the living death that is standing in line at the post office. Be warned.

UPDATE: That's weird. I just had my all-time least aggravating trip to the post office.

I finally gave up on ever getting my old Broadcom BCM4401 wireless card to work under Linux, so I went out and bought an Intel 3945ABG card (which is actually one of the cards Dell ships with my laptop model, just not the one I happened to get (through no fault of my own)). Out-of-the-box support from the stock ipw3945 driver. Plays nice with the Network Manager and the proprietary nVidia driver. Suspend works. Sweet.

Having taken a moment to appreciate this vast improvement in my computing situation, I will now proceed to bitch. Every now and then---say every 3rd or 4th time I suspend---the wireless card doesn't come on after I resume. All I have to do is "rmmod ipw3945; modprobe ipw3945" and it comes back fine (which is better than manually fussing with the ESSID, which I have often had to do in the past).

I filed a bug on this and one of the maintainers suggested I add the module to the "suspend blacklist". I politely asked both the maintainer and Google what and where the "suspend blacklist" is, but I've gotten no answers. There's a bunch of scripts in /etc/acpi that seem relevant, but from what I can tell, they should already being doing what I want to hack them to do. Which might mean they're not even being used anywhere anyway...

At less frequent intervals---say every 9th or 10th time I suspend---the module is "busy" when I try the unload/reload step and I have to reboot to get things back in order. I can't figure out how to find out which process has a lock on the module either...

Bah!

Wow, I thought Sam was going to take it. Marcel really stepped up and cooked this week. And Elia took a nose dive, from sweet and talented to just another bully to clawing desperately on her way out. What is wrong with her? And what is wrong with Ilan? Which do you think is more debilitating: Ilan's inability to sac up and just pretend Marcel doesn't exist, or Ilan's inability to cook anything that doesn't contain saffron?

P.S. There goes the prevailing Internet theory that the timeline manipulation (and ex post Elia-cropping) in the last episode was meant to whitewash Elia's involvement in the whole affair because she was the winner... What's the deal, Bravo? Because, if Ilan wins, none of your editing did anything to make him look any less like a quivering sack of shit... And it's got all the Internets confused and paranoid...

The presidents from JFK to Bush I (1960-1992) were all born between 1908 and 1924. That is to say, over 32 years the presidency was held by an age cohort (the World War II generation) of just 16 years. Both Clinton and George W. Bush were born in 1946, a gap of 22 years from the next-youngest presidents (Carter and George H.W. Bush). The only failed major-party nominees who fall into this gap are: Walter Mondale (b. 1928), Michael Dukakis (b. 1933), and John Kerry (b. 1943). Nobody born between 1924 and 1943 has even come close to being the president. I don't have the time to look up all the 12 million people who are running in 2008, but I'm sure John McCain is the oldest and he was born in 1936. If he is elected (and he won't be, knock wood), he would be the first (and almost certainly the only) president born in the 1930s. What's the deal? Were all the children born of the depression jerks or what?

Now that I look at it, there's a similar gap from Eisenhower (born 1890) to Johnson (born 1908). Since there's only one or two presidents a decade, on average, it sort of makes sense that the birth distribution would be uneven. But still, isn't it strange that an entire generation didn't bring forth one worthy man? Who's the all time best Washington politician born 1924-1946? Bernie Sanders? Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Dick Cheney?

A pretty strong start to the second half of the season, but... I'm losing track of which Cylons are which. And tell me: is there anything Helo could possibly do to get charged with treason? Anything at all?

P.S. If there's anyone in the world who actually checked out Battlestar Galactica this season on my recommendation, I apologize. I mean, did you understand a single word?

Fun! Preferably, the document in question will already be in a 3x5 layout. I recommend Adobe Acrobat Reader and not one of your light-weight and/or free alternatives. Now, just because you have a printer preset called "Index Cards" doesn't mean you can just go hitting Ctrl-P and expect things to work. Go to "File -> Print Settings" and choose "Index Cards" in there. Now hit Ctrl-P and maybe "Index Cards" is already chosen or maybe you should choose it now. Cross your fingers and go for it.

* This post assumes that you already set up your index card presets a year ago and have merely forgotten how to use them. I.e., that you are me. Good luck to everybody else.

I wasn't going to blog about this week's Top Chef---partly because Tom Colicchio already said pretty much exactly what I was thinking---but I'm doing some late-night web surfing while I wait for some evening coffee to wear off and I come across this stunning little factoid: the footage was edited in a way that tends to cast the participants in the "prank" in a more positive light (WTF?): they were yucking it up and shaving their heads after Cliff assaulted Marcel and, according to Marcel, the assault didn't end when he broke free and left the room. (Via Reality Blurred and Java Junkie.) From there, things get way out of hand... We have people analyzing the lighting and video quality in the footage and digging up new conspiracies.

And here's an interview---conducted before this episode aired, but months after the events depicted---with Sam, Ilan, and Cliff being totally unrepentant (which you might also guess from Ilan's---possibly fake---MySpace page). Way to class it up, boys.

P.S. Besides being a passive-aggressive jack-off, I couldn't believe Sam's whole wuss-bag, "I'll do it if you do. No, not really. You guys are crazy!" attitude about the head shaving. It's "crazy" to cut your hair really short? Even for a man? (And how long was Ilan's hair, anyway? About two inches?) Maybe it's "crazy" when your lustrous, flowing tresses got you voted New York's Sexiest Chef...?

LizardBreath makes the case for carrying puppets:

My knee-jerk reaction to "hippies", any sort of silly, embarrassing leftists, is that while I don't want to be seen with them, I probably agree with them about most things. Even if their politics are reflexive and not well thought out, they're using basically the right rules of thumb, and on any issue that I haven't thought out thoroughly myself, I'm more likely than not to come down on the same side as they do. Where I haven't figured out an opinion that I can solidly back up yet, and usually where I have, I'm lining up with the people dressed as sea turtles...

You can't successfully get anything right by trying to avoid agreeing with silly people. There are too many silly people, and they're all over the map -- no matter how sane, or well reasoned, or intelligent some position is, some absolute ninny out there agrees with it. The best thing to do is not to let prejudice affect your decision-making. But if you're going to be swayed by prejudice, and we all are, trying to avoid idiots is going to lead you astray -- better you should align yourself with the gang of idiots who you think have the best track record generally.

The preceding flurry of posts was brought on by the imminent demise of my Columbia student account, my inability to get the PHP-based PmWiki working on the NYU servers, and my realization that all of the code supporting community editing of this stuff was a waste of bits. Whereas this blog is the most parsimonious use of bits imaginable. Have a nice day.

(Non-academics: just scratch your head and walk away...)

[UPDATE 4/15/2008] I've created a shell script that simplifies the process described below: it takes an LNCS-formatted PDF or Postscript file and generates a 2-up Postscript using acroread (for PDF inputs) and pstops. Download here. Note: The script will probably have to be tweaked for system-specific pstops settings, as below.

[UPDATE 3/12/2007] The right parameters for this turn out to be a constantly moving target. Here's the command that currently works best for me on Ubuntu Gutsy:

pstops '2:0L@.8(8.5in,-.25in)+1L@.8(8.5in,4.5in)' lncsdoc.ps lncsdoc.2up.ps

acroread -toPostScript -size letter \
    lncsdoc.pdf
pstops '2:0L@.7(8in,0)+1L@.7(8in,5in)' \
    lncsdoc.ps lncsdoc.2up.ps
ps2pdf lncsdoc.2up.ps lncsdoc.2up.pdf

cat lncsdoc.pdf | \
    acroread -toPostScript -size letter | \
    pstops '2:0L@.7(8in,0)+1@.7L(8in,5in)' \
    > lncsdoc.2up.ps

pdf2ps lncsdoc.pdf lncsdoc.ps
pstops \ 
    '2:0L@.85(7.75in,0.5in)+1L@.85(7.75in,5.5in)' \
    lncsdoc.ps lncsdoc.2up.ps
ps2pdf lncsdoc.2up.ps lncsdoc.2up.pdf

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER -sDEVICE=pswrite \
    -sOutputFile=lncsdoc.ps -c save pop \
    -f lncsdoc.pdf

pstops '2:0L@.85(9.5in,-.5in)+1L@.85(9.5in,5in)' \
        lncsdoc.ps lncsdoc.2up.ps

pstops \
    '2:0@1.3(-22mm,-58mm),1@1.3(-48mm,-58mm)' \
    lncsdoc.ps | psnup -2 > lncsdoc.2up.ps

[Editor's Note] This is old material imported from my now-defunct Wiki