Matrix Reloaded

Saw Matrix Reloaded last night. What a disappointment.

First, the theater screwed up the projection, so the top 20% of the movie was projecting off the screen and so was invisible. Then they stopped the film 8 or 9 times trying to get it right, each time losing two or three minutes of plot, so the confused writing became even harder to follow. They finally got it down to 5% off screen before they gave up, so we watched the rest of the movie with everyone missing top inch of their hair. Everyone could have been bald, I would never know.

Second, the movie itself was badly directed and cut. The pacing was all wrong -- some of the fight scenes were intolerably and pointless long, for example. Why have a fight scene drag on for 20 minutes when the hero can, apparently, simply choose to fly off at any moment? It is illogical! And the writing made no sense. One speech by M, and the entire populace goes from frantic worry to sex orgy. Yeah, that could happen. And how come there were no old people or children at that meeting/party? It was just very dumb.

And there were a number of logical flaws in the basic writing. I admit that the premise of the first movie was weak, an old SF cliche from way back, but on the whole I really enjoyed the original. The writing made sense within its own logic, it was consistent and the mayhem was original. The sequel, by contrast, was confused and derivitive, repetitive.

The two things that annoyed me the most, however, were (1) references to things that hadn't happened in the original, but in the video games, so non-gamers like myself were left hanging, and (2) the explicit "to be continued..." ending. If it says "to be continued next episode", it television, not movies. Even Star Wars draws to some kind of self-contained conclusion at the end of each episode, but this was just lame -- tune in next $30 to find out what is happening? And even then, not really know unless you've seen the intervening video games?

Bite me.

Shubenacadie Photos

Following our trip to Disneyland, we went out to Halifax for a conference. While there, we went out to Shubenacadie Wildlife Park, and I snapped a few wildlife pictures. I also got a couple of good shots of squirrels in Point Pleasant Park. Nothing exceptional, but I was impressed that my little pocket digital (a Minolta Dimage X) was able to get even half way decent shots (the originals are much crisper than seen here, since I obviously had to compress the images fairly severely for posting on the web) and am quite pleased we we doled out the money for it. Since the camera slides easily into my shirt pocket or Mary's clutch purse (it is 3.25" x 2.75" x .75"), it is always with us. The convenience, combined with the instant feedback and the elimination of film costs, means that we are takiing way more (and generally better) pictures than a year ago.

Disneyland Part I

We went to Disneyland this year for a number of reasons: At five, my daughter Tigana was old enough to fully enjoy it, young enough to still believe in the magic (though on the flight down, she turned to us and asked, "So the princesses that live in Disney, are they the real ones or only pretend ones?" Quick-thinking Mom forestalled the crisis by shouting, "Hey, what's that over there!" thus allowing us to dodge that bullet for the nonce); with another baby on the way, this was Tigana's last chance for a vacation as a single child; Mary needed something concrete to celebrate passing her Ph.D. comprehensive examinations. The actual timing of the trip kept changing in response to Mary's Ph.D. program constantly shifting the timing of her comprehensives; advice we were getting from informants on weather and crowd conditions at Disneyland; and the necessities of our day jobs. In the end, Mary booked our Disneyland trip immediately after her comps, and immediately before a conference in Halifax.

When I say, "immediately after comps" I mean that literally: After two 8 hour days of examinations, she got in a car and drove with us the seven hours to Edmonton (we booked our flights out of Edmonton so Mary's parents could look after our dogs while we were away), and having thus arrived in Edmonton after midnight, went immediately to bed so we could get up the next morning for a 7AM flight to Vancouver, and hence to California. Considering that Mary was exhausted from months of holding down a full time teaching position, writing papers for her Ph.D. courses, prepping for the comprehensive exams, and then actually writing the exams, all while suffering the myriad symptoms of first-trimester pregnancy, well, this may not have been the most auspicious beginning for our trip.

Indeed, a couple of weeks before we were scheduled to leave for California, Mary's leg gave out. Mary has chronic back pain, but the pregnancy began pushing on the sciatic nerve, crippling her left leg completely. Mary was in tears to think her trip ruined, but it must be said that this complication turned out to provide an unexpected benefit for Tigana and I. Turns out, if one is in a wheelchair, one's family uses a separate wheel chair entrance to the rides, which completely bypass the regular line-ups. We had planned our trip before school lets out in the States, so we arrived during low season when lineups were still only 45 minutes to an hour per ride, but I don't think we ever waited more than five minutes. (Some rides have special easy-to-board wheelchair cars, so we would have to wait for the ride to cycle through to that car, or wait while another wheelchair party ahead of us took their turn, but compared to the regular lineups, this was as nothing.) Thus, it was not uncommon for us to do five or six rides in an hour, compared to others completing only a single ride in the same period.

This was not entirely appreciated by Mary, who was, of course, still stuck in a stupid wheel chair for much of the trip and in considerable discomfort. Whenever Tigana and I would go into one of the kid's performances, for example, Mary would have to sit in the back of the theater while Tigana moved as close to the performers as possible. Mary became quite frustrated being parked in front of blank walls while Tigana and I went off to climb a jungle gym or poke around some exhibit. And we discovered that well meaning staff and tour guides would sometimes relocate Mary three or four times before pronouncing themselves satisfied she was not in the way, which sometimes left Mary feeling more like luggage than a person. Being pregnant, in pain and nauseous no doubt contributed to feelings of abandonment, so the wheel chair was definitely a mixed blessing from Mary's perspective.

But Tigana and I reveled in the absence of lineups, our ability to pile up our souvenirs and packages on Mary's lap, and even short cuts through customs and various airport lineups. Thus, Tigana's first experience of Disneyland was very different than most kids facing the typical four-hour line-ups.

And I must say that Mary and I enjoyed the trip much more than we had expected. Not only did we have the satisfaction of observing Tigana caught up in the magic of meeting her various princess idols, but many of the older rides turned out to be extremely nostalgic for us, and we even enjoyed the new rides. We were particularly impressed by Aladdin, a full-scale Broadway-style, live musical spectacular , complete with the Caves of Doom elephant, the city of Akkaba, an elephant processional, and a flying carpet that zooms out over the audience. I thought it one of the best theater productions I've seen in years, though only 43 minutes long, the perfect length to keep the attention of kids like Tigana. We had great front row seats, so one of the camels actually came close enough for Tigana to pet during the procession scene. Pretty cool!

Disneyland Trip Part II

(Apparently, the trip report was too long to put into one post, so I have split it into two parts here.)

The other aspect of the trip Mary and I particularly enjoyed was meeting up with Adrian Fischer, former buddy of mine and currently Director of Entertainment Operations at Disneyland. I remember 20 years ago asking Adrian what he wanted to be when he graduated, and he talked at length about his interest in being a theater producer, perhaps on Broadway, and then pausing and saying, "either that, or maybe running Disneyland." Well, 20 years later darned if he isn't indeed running all the theater at Disneyland. He oversees approximately 1500 productions a week, including the aforementioned Alladin.

Posing with Adrian Fischer, Director of Entertainment Operations, Disneyland, in his Long Beach, California home.

Talking to Adrian was amazing because within five minutes it was like old times again; and Mary and Tigana took an instant liking to him. Adrian was full of amazing anecdotes about his experiences as a producer and executive, which Mary (being a management professor) found as fascinating as I did; and since we introduced Adrian as "The Boss of Disneyland" to Tigana, he was pretty much guaranteed a place on her list of favorite people! I got to spend three evenings with Adrian, which I felt a bit guilty about because he was of course working during the week and had house guests on the weekend, but it was the first time we'd seen each other in person in nearly 15 years, so what the heck. I was surprised at how easily we found picking up the conversation from where we last left off, and how comfortable it felt; or to put it another way, just how much I had missed Adrian.

It was also great seeing Adrian's home. He has an astounding place, with the kind of furniture and décor one usually only sees in magazines. I was particularly impressed by some of the pieces that Adrian had designed himself. (I asked, "Where do you find a carpenter to do this kind of craftsmanship for you?" To which he made the obvious reply, "One of the guys from Dinsey in his off hours." Well, duh!) I often wonder what happened to that old gang of mine, and Adrian is certainly one of the success stories.

On the Cheap

We did the flights down on airline points, so airfare was essentially free. We had originally intended to stay for free with Adrian in Long Beach (his home includes a guest suite complete with separate entrance), but in the event, Mary's first trimester condition required frequent naps, so we needed to be within walking (wheelchair) distance of Disneyland, so we opted to stay in one of the three Disneyland hotels instead. We decided to splurge and go for concierge service which gives you free breakfast, videos, and so on, and had a great 14th floor view of California Adventure (the Disney theme park adjoining Disneyland.)

The view from our Paradise Pier Hotel Room

Fortunately Adrian was able to give us one of his employee vouchers so we paid about half what the room normally goes for. And Adrian was able to sign us in to Disneyland for free each day, so that was another huge savings! But we still managed to spend a bundle. I don't know how most families manage it, but I must say I thought Disneyland provided value for the money, and was a much better experience than I had expected.

Trip Photo Gallery

Middle of the night...

... I startled awake. I quickly replayed the last 30 seconds of short term memory to see what had awakened me. (The same mechanism that allows students to answer questions when teachers call on them mid-daydream. They may not have heard the question until their name was appended at the end, but with luck, they captured enough on tape that they can rewind, replay, and answer before it becomes too obvious they weren't paying attention.) All I could find, however, was a quiet "Robert" from my wife. But my startle response had included a loud (okay, screamed) "What? What is it? What's wrong?" so Mary was already answering that "There's something…could you check?"

So I check on Tigana, and she is sleeping soundly. The dogs have followed me out of the bedroom, and checked out the rest of the house, come back and report everything is fine. I return to the bedroom.

"Tigana's fine, and if there were anything wrong the dogs would be barking."

"You're right," said Mary, obviously much relieved. "Thanks."

"What did you hear?"

"I felt a presence."

We'd been through this before with our previous pregnancy. "It's probably just the baby," I said.

"You're right, I'm sure that's it."

And then I thought about it for a minute. Mary had been feeling the baby move for a couple of weeks already, so it wasn't just that the baby moved for the first time, like last time. And, when I reran the tape again, I thought that perhaps something did kind of brush past me there in the ether. So, as I climbed back into bed I raised the possibility, "What if this is the precise moment in the pregnancy where the baby becomes a person? What if you suddenly felt a presence because the baby had suddenly become one?"

"Interesting…" was the only response I got before Mary drifted off back to sleep. Well, 3AM is not the best time for a deep theological discussion. But, I can't help wondering.

Phone Booth (movie)

Saw Phone Booth last night. Recommend it if you're in the mood of a tense little thriller. Would make an interesting stage play. Has a certain something... Decent writing, I guess.

I'm off to Disneyland tomorrow. Then a conference in Halifax. Assuming Air Canada is still flying. So not likely to have any entries until late June.

Have a good summer.

Everything I Learned in Grade School is False

I have been noting for some years now that everything my grade 3 teacher taught us was wrong: For example, I clearly remember her laughing at me when I pointed out that the bump on Africa seemed to fit into the corner of South America and telling me that, "the continents don't move, silly!" Then along came plate techtonics. Or the time she explained atoms were the smallest things and laughing when I asked what they were made out of. She had apparently never heard of quarks, though she really should have been. And etc. But I must confess that as the list of things I was taught and have always believed true but now turn out to be wrong, grows longer, it is starting to bug me.

Here the latest brain hurting discovery: A team of researchers headed by Lene Hau has found a way to slow the speed of light to a complete stop, and then restart it. Previously, Lau and her colleagues reduced the speed of light to 38 miles per hour (the speed of suburban traffic) -- Nature 397: 594 (1999).

NASA-funded research at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., that literally stops light in its tracks, may someday lead to breakneck-speed computers that shelter enormous amounts of data from hackers. ..."This could open up a whole new way to use light, doing things we could only imagine before," Hau said. "Until now, many technologies have been limited by the speed at which light travels." The speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second (670 million miles per hour). ... Hau's team accomplished "light magic" by laser-cooling a cigar-shaped cloud of sodium atoms to one-billionth of a degree above absolute zero, the point where scientists believe no further cooling can occur. Using a powerful electromagnet, the researchers suspended the cloud in an ultra-high vacuum chamber, until it formed a frigid, swamp-like goop of atoms.When they shot a light pulse into the cloud, it bogged down, slowed dramatically, eventually stopped, and turned off. The scientists later revived the light pulse and restored its normal speed by shooting an additional laser beam into the cloud.

As a long time science fiction reader, the news release immediately brought to mind the Bob Shaw "slow glass" stories, in which windows made of slow glass show scenes that were on the other side of them years before. See, for example, Light of Other Days.

And to think my elementary school teachers did not approve of SF. In the long run, SF has proved more often right than they were!

I wasn't sure how I felt about the "frozen light" news release, though, until I read Dennis Valdron's reaction:

Bugger this. Whatever happened to the good old days when the Universe was
not accelerating, there were only four fundamental forces and you damned
well knew where you stood with the speed of light. Goddamn kids, mucking
around with universal constants like the gain on their stereo system. Mark
my words, no good will come of this physics hooliganism!

Seems to about capture it for me!

New House

So Sunday, Mother's Day, I'm out in the Park with Tigana while Mary takes a nap. In the Park Tigana runs into Evyn, a friend from school. I end up talking to the Mom who I have not met before because Evyn's drop off and pickup times are different than Tigana's so our paths have not passed until now. We have a typical parents' conversation, and 2437 hides and seeks later, go home.

Monday, our real estate agent phones to say she has found the perfect house for us. Mary is at work, but I go with the agent to see it. (The agent says "no" when I suggest waiting until the next day -- the house has come on the market at noon today, and she needs us to see it today while it is still on the market.) Ten minutes into the tour I am saying, "How do I sell Mary on this house, because I have to have this house!" The agent drives me home just as Mary arrives. Back we go to the house as I try to constrain myself from prejudicing Mary. Five minutes into her tour, she is saying, "I have to have this house." We go home and write up an offer with the agent. Tuesday they accept the offer pending inspection. Wednesday we join the Inspector going through the house and the news is mostly good.

Half way through the tour I pass the kitchen fridge and happen to notice a piece of kid's art identitical to one of Tigana's. I do a double take, and a moment later realize that this is Evyn's house. I meet the Mom Sunday, buy her house Monday. Weird small world sometimes. (And of course can't help thinking that had the conversation turned to houses, we could have saved ourselves a sales commission, but hey, it's okday to keep things professional.)

By Thursday we have signed the final papers. We take possession August 1. We can hardly take it all in, but suddenly we're moving.

For those interested, here are pictures of the house. Patience, I've loaded way too many photos on this page.

Census Data

This just in (forwarded by John Herbert) Census data What I love about this item is the demonstration that a lot of the statistics we rely on are dependent on the accuracy of self-report information.

More big news brewing, but once again have to wait to see if the deal goes through before announcing it here.

Mary has a little lamb

Hmm, Monday's post did not include the picture I had hoped, and the same glitch has zapped the editing button so I cannot go back and edit that entry. So I will try again, somewhat inelegantly, by repeating the entry here:

In the Year of the Ram...

Mary is having a little Lamb.

In honour of this announcement, I have been spending my normal blogging time uploading the Tigana baby essays to my website. I'm only about half done, but there is enough there to remind me what it was like being an expectant father before. It was interesting reading where I had written that I would never have put Mary through what it cost her to have the pregnancy had I but known how hard pregnancy is on women, but I obviously cannot make that claim again this time. We went into this knowing exactly how rough things can get.

But I am sooo excited. Almost as excited as Tigana was to learn that she is going to become a big sister. November seems a very long time away to Tigana, who is already hugging mommy's tummy half a dozen times a day, whispering to it, "Be a girl!"

I think it is a girl, but based on nothing more than our "sense" of these things, but we are careful to tell Tigana "your baby brother or sister" so as not to set up any expectations.

Okay, let's see who is reading this blog by posting this simple rhyme:

In the year of the Ram...
Mary is having a little lamb.

Important safety note to self: Do not use a rotary toothbrush at any time mustache exceeds 1/4 inch below edge of upper lip.

Here (courtesy of Holly Gunn) is a fasinating site:

Museum of Unworkable Devices
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm

Chicago (Movie)

Went, somewhat reluctantly, to see Chicago Saturday night. Niether my wife nor I are very big fans of the American musical, but living in Lethbridge, we had run out of other evening-out options. To my great surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I think there were three elements that elevated Chicago above the usual run of musicals.

First, the music was carefully separated from the 'action'. The integration of these two elements through cutting and thematic matching was not only highly effective, but very different from the usual musical where the characters go about their business until suddenly bursting into song mid-scene. I have never felt comfortable with this former approach, which lacks for verismilitude. If I were walking through a mall and various retailers suddenly burst into a big musical number, or a factory floor or an office or where ever, I don't think I would join in so much as freak. So I much prefered Chicago's careful distinction between staged musical numbers and movie clips.

Second, this sharp division allowed each format to work to its own best advantage without worrying about creating impossible seques between one and the other. The result was the staged musical numbers came across as just that -- I can't remember when I last had the same sense of being at a live performance while in a movie theatre. The staged numbers (perhaps thanks to the improved sound systems of recent years) felt very much like I was in the second row of a live musical and could have reached out and touched the performers. Live musicals of course score several points over a recording, but in this case the performances were a lot better than one could ever expect from a live caste. The immediacy of a live performance with the advantage of the multi-take, top star caste, was fairly unique in my experience.

Third, and what brought it all together for me, was that there was a compelling logic for the music. Unlike the typical Hollywood (or even more so, the typical Bollywood) movie where characters often appear to sing for no reason other than it is expected, here the musical number was the key metaphor of the art. The lead character being a chorus girl saw her life story portrayed as a series of musical numbers, so the numbers when they occured come across as the heroine's interior dialog rather than as some artificial construct. As a metaphor for the heroine's self-image, her perceptions of events (the tapdancing lawyer in the production of the court scene, for example) the music was great, high art. This contrasts every sharply with the pointless ness of most musical numbers in most American musicals, and made the whole exercise intellecually respectable for me. That the music itself carried a great deal of social commentary was an added bonus.

And, I must say, I really loved some of the music.

So, I highly recommend the movie to anyone who has not seen it yet. And you won't hear me recommending many musicals.

Quote of the day:

A list serve member commenting on an odd email he had received:
"It seems to be Hare Krishna spam. Now there's a sentence that
would have meant nothing to our grandparents."

Rising Expectations

Today was end of term. I can still look forward to a couple of weeks of marking, wrap up meetings, committee work, and other end of term tasks, but today was the last day of classes.

My wife (who teaches in the Management Faculty) came in looking a little down.

"What's wrong?" I asked, having expected to see the usual satisfaction that comes from having concluded yet another successful semester.

"Oh, well, you know that test I said the morning class bombed? Well, I had to hand it back last thing, so they left on kind of a grumpy note."

"Oh, that's too bad," I said. "But you said over half the class failed that test, so you can't really expect them to be overjoyed."

"I know, but it means I only got applause from two of the classes this year."

"Applause?"

"Yeah, both of the other classes applauded, but it was, you know, a bit disappointing that it wasn't all three classes."

"Applause?" I asked, a bit incredulous.

"And only one of those was a standing ovation. The other class just kind of sat there when they clapped, you know, and it was quite short. And then they just left."

"Applauded?" Definitely incredulous.

"The MERGE class was good though. That was a standing ovation and it went on quite a long time, and they all came up after and shook my hand and thank me. That felt good. But it was only the one class out of the three."

"A sustained, standing ovation?"

"I must be slipping. I think it was because I was sick so much this term. It put me off my stride, even though I only missed a couple of actual classes. I just didn't have the energy this term."

"You're disappointed because you only got one standing ovation and one other applause?"

"Well, yeah? Don't they applaud for you?"

I didn't know where to begin to answer that one. NO, they don't, doesn't seem to cover it. I not only have never gotten an ovation, I've never met anyone else who has gotten one either, or even heard of such a thing before. And my wife has come to see this as a routine expectation.

And I didn't get nominated for a teaching award in my first and second years of teaching either.

And she has published more than I did this last couple of years, and has received more critical acclaim for her theorizing this year than I ever have in the past decade. (Indeed, the latest edition of Steven L. McShane's Canadian Organizational Behaviour is already citing her work, whereas I haven't made it into any of the big name textbooks yet.)

And she is one fabulous babe.

All this before she has even officially finished her Ph.D.

Must be time for me to retire.