More New Anime

Wow... there are a lot of promising shows this season. Here are some more that I investigated this weekend.

Ghost Hunt
This show is based on a series of novels written by Ono Fuyumi, who also wrote Twelve Kingdoms. However, the tone is really completely different; it takes place in a high school and is somewhat more light hearted. Taniyama Mai is a ordinary student who gets roped in to be the assistant of Shibuya Kazuya, a "ghost hunter" hired by the school to investigate paranormal activity regarding some construction. But Kazuya, with his tech-heavy psychic researcher style, is not the only one called in on the job. A miko, an Australian Catholic exorcist, and a Japanese medium are on the scene as well. With their various and sometimes conflicting styles, they proceed to try to solve a ghostly mystery that seems to increasingly become more dangerous. The character designs are pretty, but also pretty standard; nothing really innovative. From the first episode, the show seems to draw its strength from the character interaction between Mai and Kazuya, as well as between the different groups of paranormal investigators who are cooperative but have very different methodologies. If they do it well, this show might be interesting and worth watching. If not, it could be boring like Gakkou no Kaidan. More episodes are in order.

Sokou no Strain
The comment in this show's ANN entry said "A science fictional adaptation loosely based on the novel A Little Princess." I've never read A Little Princess, but I would be surprised if it had as much death as in this show. The setting is basically that humans have spread out across space using near-light speed propulsion (subject to relativistic effects). These space faring humans are divided into two factions, Union and Deague. Sara Werec, the main character, is on the Union side and is training to be a mecha pilot to go fight on the front lines, 130 light years away. She is motivated to do so because years ago, her older brother, Ralph, left to do the same thing. Given long distances, becoming a pilot and joining him on the front is the only way she can ever see him again. The first episode is extremely action packed. She and her 3 teammates are on the cusp of graduating and heading to the front. They're filled with hope and potential. They play around, have a little romance, and are a fun bunch. Then, the Deague stage a mysterious sneak attack and without fanfare, Sara's comrades are all killed. Sara herself is shocked to discover that her own brother seems to have somehow led the sneak attack in a traitorous and seemingly physics-defying appearance. While this episode was quite engrossing, the series seems to be structured to have a really punchy first episode, followed by a reset and more standard story development in the remainder of the series. Not a bad plan for drawing viewers in, but that means I will need to watch more episodes to decide if this show is any good. I hope that this is actually a good mecha show with a female lead (which there seem to be very few of) rather than a dating sim in disguise. Oh, and some spoilers about A Little Princess might be helpful for me to understand what that ANN comment was getting at.

FLAG
This show's style definitely targets an older audience. It uses more "mature" character designs (smaller eyes, larger lips), less emotive voice acting, and more subdued pacing. The setting is close to modern day, a UN military operation in some middle-eastern country. The main character Shirasu Saeko, a photojournalist made famous during this war because of a picture she took titled "Flag" when the UN force liberated the capital city. Now, the UN has called her back as the official photographer for the deployment of a new type of weapon, a mecha, that will be used to bring about a final binding cease-fire. The pacing is very subdued, almost like a recap, with heavy narration by one of Saeko's friends, a video cameraman, who is not with her but gives commentary as if these events are in the past (which they may be). Surprisingly enough, this show makes 3 for 3 in new shows that I've watched that are worth continued investigation and were not completely wretched right off the bat. Something about this show reminds me of Speed Grapher, although it could just be the camera motif and nothing specifically meaningful.

Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto
Well, that was a complicated start. So, like the title implies, this show occurs during the last days of the shogunate prior to the Meiji Revolution. (This period seems to get disproportionate coverage considering how short it is relative to say, the whole Heian era). The main character seems to be a man of few words, having probably spoken under 10 words the whole episode (although I was cooking at the same time so I could've missed some lines). There's a some name dropping of folks like Sakamoto Ryoma and Katsu Kaishu, some sword fighting action, and some seemingly supernatural events; plus, some imperialistic westerners armed with pistols thrown in for good measure. The episode was actually pretty interesting, although it was so all-over-the-place that I couldn't get a sense of where the show is going. Another show that's going to need more investigation before its fate can be determined.

Hanoka
Weird. Not exactly a new series. Apparently this show was televised, but is entirely animated in Flash as size 5-minute shorts. While the animation does seem to push the limits of Flash, it really can't compare to the animation in any ordinary show. The color details are high-budget is, but the movement is distinctly off. The settings seems to be some kind of futuristic war where the side which the viewer is observing is losing but has one final secret weapon being rushed into service. It seems likely that this secret weapon is some girl equipped with weaponry a la SaiKano, but there's no way to be sure. Given how downright painful the graphics are to watch, I probably won't be proceeding any further, despite the very short amount of attention required.

Sweet Valerian
This is a morning short, like Mini Moni Yarunoda Pyon or Mini Moni The Documents. Kanoko, Pop, and Kate are magical girls who, when transformed, form the Relaxation Combat Team Valerian, a team of human-sized bipedal rabbits. Their enemies are the Stress Team, a bunch of short guys who fly around in a UFO with a big "su" on it and seek out stressed out individuals to transform into stress monsters. The Valerian post-transformation battle cry is "Come forth, Seratonin. Appear, Dopamine!" (Valerian is an herb that, like St. John's Wort, has antidepressant properties). Interestingly enough, CLAMP did the character concepts. I wonder if this morning 5-minute time slot is reserved for only the fluffiest of content, since this show is just about on par with Yarunoda Pyon when it comes to serious content. (On par being, totally devoid.) Still, for what it is and the short commitment, this show is pretty amusing.

New Anime

A new season has started, and there are new shows to examine. One good thing about really recent stuff is the forced pacing; it's impossible to get too engrossed and go through a ton of episodes in one stroke.

Pumpkin Scissors
Watched the first 2 episodes. A long WWII-themed war between nations has ended. Some find the opportunity to use their violent skills for personal benefit irresistible, some find it difficult to readjust to peace-time, and still others have found ways to exercise their sense of justice despite the lack of overt warfare. Alice is the leader of the Pumpkin Scissors war relief unit, traveling across the nation, generally righting wrongs. She is driven by an (over)zealous sense of justice (think Amelia from Slayers) and utterly optimistic. Roland is a former member of the 901-ATT (anti tank trooper) squad, drifting aimlessly until he meets up with the Pumpkin Scissors. He's a one-man tank destroying freak of nature, but otherwise huge, quiet and shy. Together, they encounter various bad guys left over from the war, who tend to have tanks for some reason. No problem though, Roland is good at destroying them. The character focus is on the contrast between Alice and Roland's personalities. The military supporting cast is very FMA-ish. Although the OP song is really cheesy, there is character and story potential here, but also the risk of being bad-guy-of-the-week. I'll keep watching this one.

Code Geass
Watched the first episode. Sunrise mecha show with CLAMP character designs and an amusing dose of anti-Americanism. Japan has been invaded and taken over by the "worlds only superpower", the brutal New Britannia Empire, which "coincidentally" occupies the geographic area of the modern United States. Employing mecha, the New Britannia Empire, Japan is now known only as "Area 11" and under military occupation. In an odd twist, the angry (and kind of sadistic) main character randomly gets involved in some top-secret "thing" being transported by the military, but rather than getting control of a mecha, he gets supernatural mind control powers. However, he has grown up hating the empire and I'm sure he'll use his new found powers to get some mecha and blow away some bad guys while enduring a heavy dose of angst. These Sunrise shows have often failed to be interesting enough to hold my long term attention, but the combination of CLAMP designs and bad "Americans" warrants more viewing.

Red Garden
Watched the first two episodes. Gonzo animation about girls attending an elite New York City high school who get embroiled in some kind of weird, possibly supernatural, suspense/mystery. This show exudes high budget, and although it's hard to tell where the story is going, there seems to be a lot of potential. Plus, all that NYC action. The wilderness in ep. 1 is almost certainly Central Park, since the Roosevelt Island tram depicted in the same episode gets off at 59th and 2nd. The school is a little trickier, since it requires subjective interpretation over how "elite" it is. The "Oniisama E" feel of this school would seem to indicate that the writers intended the school to be high up on the eliteness scale (although I would doubt any school in the NYC area would really be like that). Also, given the depictions of school life, it seems unlikely to be a parochial school. If that's the case, the school is probably one of the Ivy Prep schools, or possibly the Hunter College High School, which is selective and highly ranked. Only 3 of the Ivy Prep schools are in Manhattan. Dalton and Hunter are on the upper east side, Trinity is in the Wall Street area, and Collegiate is on the upper west side. None of these schools is particularly close to the tram, although the semi-warehouse district and water view might make Trinity the most likely candidate. This show is definitely worth more watching.

D.Gray-man
Watched the first two episodes. 1800's-ish setting involving a supernatural struggle between the devilish "Earl of the Millenium" and an organization of "exorcists" dedicated to prevent the destruction of the world. So far, the story is reasonably interesting and holds together, although this could definitely change. What this show really has going for it is the really pretty character designs and some pretty interesting (yet grotesque) designs for the Earl's minions. The overall structure of the show seems to definitely ride the TYPE-MOON "eye candy gothic" wave (e.g. Fate Stay/Night or Tsukihime), but is, so far, a far less boring tale. I'm so far sucked in for at least a few more episodes.

Naan Adventure

Based on Naan Recipe II, the ingredients are:

• 2/3 cup warm water
• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (1/2 pound)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup ghee (4 tablespoons / 2 oz / 57 g melted butter)
• 2 tablespoons plain yogurt
• 2 teaspoons kalonji (onion seed)

I'm going to try going with a AB-style sponge starter instead of just proofing the yeast in sugar water.

1. Whisk the water with the yeast and sugar until the yeast is dissolved. Add 3 ounces of flour. Cover and let stand in a cool place for a few hours.
2. Sift remaining 5 ounces flour and salt three times into a large bowl add the yeast mixture, half of the ghee and all the yogurt. Mix into a soft dough then knead on a floured surface for about 5 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic. Place the dough in a large greased bowl, cover and let stand in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours or until the dough is doubled in size .
3. Punch down dough then knead for 5 minutes. Divide dough into 6 pieces. Roll each piece out into 8 inch round naans.
4. Cover an oven tray with foil and grease the foil. Brush the naan with a little of the remaining ghee and sprinkle with some of the kalonji. Cook naan one at a time under a very hot grill for about 2 minutes on each side or until puffed and just browned.

Challah Results

So, as per my previous post, I made challah. I decided to try to make it sweeter so that it could be eaten w/o adulteration by adding some honey and chopped prunes into it.

I prepared the dough as indicated in the recipe. Added the honey in during the initial mixing process, then set the dough aside to rise. During the first rise, I chopped some prunes up using my hand blender's chopper accessory, and then soaked the chopped pieces in water to plump them. This turned out to be an error in order. The soaked prune pieces got really waterlogged rather than plump, and carried too much water with them into the dough. Plus, they were chopped too fine so they lacked texture. I should've plumped whole prunes and then chopped them with a knife by hand.

After adding the watery prune mass into the dough, the dough got really wet and sticky, so I had to knead it out a bit by hand with more flour to get it back into shape. Then, I manually rolled and stretched it into one long snake that I looped around into a round loaf. Then, the second rising, an egg wash, and into the oven.

Overall, the challah came out edible, but not as great as I had hoped in a number of respects. Problems were:

• Not as sweet as I wanted probably due to overwashing of prunes and not enough honey
• Loaf much tougher than I wanted

I have two suspects for why the loaf was too tough:

• Too much kneading (especially after watching the "Dr. Strangeloaf" episode of Good Eats)
• Mistake where I used 100% bread flour instead of the specified mix of AP and bread flour

AB took the dough out of the hook while it was much wetter than mine. I added flour until the dough was much less sticky, although I was still in the bounds of the recipe. Both of my suspected errors would lead to too much gluten formation, which would lead to a tougher loaf.

I also was able to consume only 1/3rd of the loaf, part with dinner and part as french toast the following morning. Then I had to leave town and froze the unconsumed portion. It remains to be seen whether or not it will survive the cold.

Random Wines in Iowa

Had dinner at this small "world bistro" place in downtown Iowa City. These guys had reasonably priced ($4) half glasses on their wine list. (Half the price of a full glass! Who would've thought!) I was pleased to see the Leitz Dragonstone Riesling on the list (I never normally see any wines I recognize anywhere), but they didn't have it by the glass.

Artazuri, Garnacha, unknown vintage
Deep, inky red (or it couldve been the lighting. But definitely darker than Pinot). Meaty start, but bold and long fruity middle and finish. Not much of a nose though. Interesting varietal, but probably wouldn't buy a whole bottle of it.

St. Urbans-hof Riesling, unknown vintage
Very citrusy. Slightly floral start, then acid (I love acid), then a grapefruity and slightly efervescent finish. Pleasantly sweet. Very solid, especially what must be a reasonable bottle price. Definitely the same-day crowd pleaser buy option. I got a bottle of Christoffel at Whole Foods in Seattle for a bbq w/ Greg-Lillian-Dave-Cynthia. Forgot to record the details. A little too sweet (it was a spatlese) compared to acid for me, and too much petrol-minerality to be broadly pleasing. This riesling would've been a better pick.

The food at this place was also pretty good. The onion soup was not at the limit of my salt tolerance like it is at most restaurants (and I have pretty salty tastes), and the steak salad I ordered medium-rare actually came medium-rare! The gelato for dessert was kind of bad though, it was full of ice crystals and was slightly gritty, as if it had melted and refrozen. Oh well, almost perfect.

Challah Adventure

While I mull over what I want to do about baguettes, I want to try out other kinds of bread. I've gotten 2 requests: naan from Jerry and challah from Ben. Two in one weekend seems like a bit too much work, but since Rosh Hashanah starts today, it seems like challah is in order.

I'm gonna go with a self-proclaimed "Ultimate Challah" recipe from cnn.com, halved to be just one loaf. The 6-braided loaf described on that page seemed a bit too challenging, but I seem to have been offered a way out from this recipe which indicates that Rosh Hashanah challah should be formed into a round shape.

Halving and converting the recipe to weights I'll have:

• 1/2 scant tablespoon (1/2 package) active dry yeast
• 7/8 cups lukewarm water
• 1/8 to 3/8 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2.5 large eggs
• 2.5 cups bread flour (12.5 ounces, 354 grams)
• 1.75 cups AP flour (8.75 ounces, 248 grams)
• 1/2 tablespoon salt
• Optional: 1/4 cup honey
• Optional: 1/4 cup raisins
  

1. In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Add the sugar and the oil and mix well with a whisk or a wooden spoon. Beat in 2 of the eggs, 1 at a time; then gradually stir in the bread flour, 1 cup (5 oz) of the all-purpose flour, and the salt. When you have a dough that holds together, it is ready for kneading.
   
   
2. To knead by hand, place the dough on a lightly floured surface. Knead well, using the heels of your hands to press the dough away and your fingers to bring it back. Continue, turning the dough, for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and elastic, adding the remaining .75 cups (3.75 oz) of all-purpose flour or as needed.
   
   To knead by machine in an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook, knead for 5 minutes on medium speed, or until smooth. You can also process half the dough at a time in a food processor fitted with the steel blade; process for about 1 minute.
   
   
3. After kneading, place all the dough in a large oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rest in a warm place for 1 hour, until almost doubled in size. You can also put the dough in an oven that has been warmed to 150 degrees for a few minutes and then turned off.
   
   
4. When the dough is almost doubled in size, remove it from the bowl and punch it down -- the rougher you are, the more the dough likes it. Return it to the bowl, cover it again and let it rise in a warm place for 30 minutes more. Or, if you have to go out, let the dough rise slowly in the refrigerator several hours or overnight and bring it to room temperature when ready to continue.
   
   
5. Form into a round
   
   
6. Let the challah loaves rise another hour, uncovered. Fifteen minutes before putting the loaves in the oven, beat the remaining egg and brush it gently over them. Five minutes later, lightly brush them again. Then sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds and let dry a few minutes.
   
   
7. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake the loaves on the middle rack of the oven for 10 minutes. Then reduce the temperature to 375 degrees and bake for 30 minutes more. Turn off the oven and leave the loaves in 5 minutes longer to get a dark-golden crust. Remove and cool on a rack.

Self-Spreading Media

A little over 8 years ago, Greg and I made an AMV for the Otakon AMV contest. Our prime purpose in making this AMV was to win. We determined a category that would best favor our effort; a song and theme that would be the most likely to win the maximum votes. We placed second in our category. After the whole contest was done, the whole thing was pretty much gone and forgotten.

These were the days before divx and any kind of Internet-based video delivery. Although we used all-digital non-linear editing to create the video, nobody but me had the original video file. The other contest entrants received copies of our AMV on VHS, and that was about the limit of our distribution. Hard drive space was expensive and fragile and over the years, I lost just about all the digital media related to this project.

But, somehow, our Evangelion clone-themed AMV did not fade and die.

I first got a hint of this in 2004 when it turned out that some current CJASers had actually seen this video somehow. But just this morning, Jerry discovered a version of our video on YouTube. Turns out there are at least 3 copies of our video posted to YouTube (one with over 20,000 views), but most interesting to me, is that the one that Jerry found is not a digitized-from-VHS version.

Someone completely re-mastered the version with identical music cuts, and effects, but with new high-quality footage.

That's a lot of effort. We once considered doing this ourselves, but lacked adequate motivation. This person obviously has the skills to be making his own AMVs, but instead decided to remake ours. In the part where we did our own animation, this fan traced and re-animated the cut. He even used his retraced version of this animation as his profile image at animemusicvideos.org and credited us by name.

And, this guy is from Sweeden. The global power of the Internet.

Subtly Snapping Phones in Half

There was an article on Slashdot yesterday about fake home videos on YouTube that are actually ad campaigns or depict fictitious activities. One video hi lighted was of a smiling woman easily snapping a Samsung cell phone in half while saying "Samsung handset, easy to break at one try!"

The underlying article was kind of interesting, but it was this Samsung handset example that really caught my attention. Such vivid imagery represents some very powerful yet very subtle manipulation. If there's anything that I've learned from the various literature that I've read is that these sorts of things are inescapably influential on the decisions we make. A viewer of this video will make an almost unconscious connection between the brand/device and the concept of "easy to break." And, almost counter intuitively, the most susceptible people would be the ones who say "oh, what an obvious attempt at manipulation! I won't fall prey to that." and then promptly put it out of their minds.

Robert Cialdini's "Influence" teaches about the subtle and inescapable effects of various kinds of influence tactics. The implication from the book is that rather than try to ignore or forget the manipulative event, the only way to combat it is to acknowledge its irresistable effect. Then, when a decision arises where the incident might be relevant, one would consciously remember the influencing factor and then deliberately use analytical techniques (e.g. focusing purely on quantitative qualities) to mitigate the bias. I expect there's probably an expiration so by the time you forget to remember, the influence is probably gone as well.

Bread Results

Updated 9/19/2006, 8:30AM - Added last paragraph about how the leftovers got consumed and what they tasted like

So, in our last episode, recall the plan was for 3 versions of the same baguette recipe: short ferment, normal ferment, long ferment. The goal was to hold all other variables constant and explore the role of fermentation alone.

On Friday night, I assembled 1 baguette's worth of dough in my kitchen, bundled it up, and then put it through the prescribed first rising in my network closet, which turned out to be a perfect 80 degrees F.

Four hours and two punch-downs later, I put it in the fridge to rise slowly overnight.

The next day, I got up and made a batch of dough large enough for the remaining 2 baguettes, put that dough straight into the fridge, and then left for 2 hours to run errands.

I returned from errands, unglazed quarry tiles in hand (more on this later), and divided the dough from that morning. Half went back into the fridge, the other half went into the network closet for its first rising. More errands.

Then, I took the fridge dough (short and long ferment batches) out and set it out to return to room temperature. Quarry tiles got rinsed off and set into the oven (6 each on 2 shelves), which got set to 500 degrees to preheat.

After the dough had been out for an hour, I got the medium ferment batch from the network closet and shaped each batch into a loaf. The instructions for loaf shaping were kind of cryptic, so I sort of did some folding, but mostly pushed, pulled, and stretched. For some reason, the medium ferment batch was really springy and hard to shape. I also accidentally re-kneaded the medium ferment batch even though the directions said to try to keep the large bubbles intact. The short and long ferment batches stretched really easily and held their shape and I was able to get them much longer (too long really). The loaves then rose for 40 minutes and went into the oven.

Now things get strange. The recipe calls for regular oven, 500 degrees for 12 minutes, then 400 degrees for 30. However, after 12 minutes, the loaves were clearly done. My guess is that the recipe expected the oven's temperature to really drop during loading, whereas the stored heat from my quarry tiles retained most of the heat. Thus, much faster baking. I'll have to take this into account and do a tile vs. no tile experiment at some later point.

My dough shaping skills are weak, so the loaves came out all kinds of misshapen as the pictures show. (Ignore the car keys and the hard core leveling yardstick thing. They're an artifact of the errands I was running and have no relation to the bread making process.)

The final taste results were kind of hard to interpret. All the loaves came out way crusty even though I used no crust development techniques (e.g. pans of water or misting). The short and long ferment loaves were noticeably denser than the medium ferment batch. The short ferment loaf tasted kind of flat, like a water cracker. The medium and long ones seemed also a little flat, but perhaps a bit more flavor. It was actually pretty hard to tell them apart, particularly since the crust caramelization had some really strong taste. I wonder if I didn't let them sit at room temperature long enough. I probably should have let them re-acclimate in the network closet rather than on the kitchen counter.

The loaves were consumed with a variety of toppings I got, a Wensleydale (which I've only heard of in Wallace & Grommit and never tasted before), Brie, some cultured butter, and Nutella. The Wensleydale was very dry and had signs of long aging. It tasted like a long aged cheddar with a smoky or ashy taste added in. The Brie was too cold and didn't taste like anything. Also had some of the Grapeleaf Pinot with the bread, which was also too cold (but got to be the first resident of my new Pek). What I really could've gone for is some of my Bordeaux futures brought back from the future, but I'll have to wait until I'm 40 for that stuff (2 more years until I even see the bottles).

We finished about half of each loaf of bread and I consumed the remainder over the next 2 days mainly by slicing them into small pieces and toasting them until crunchy in my microwave-grill. Some I ate with cheese, some I stir fried in with some leftover stir fry. The medium-ferment loaf got eaten first(next morning) and tasted cracker-like. The short-ferment loaf got stir fried the next evening and was overwhelmed by the accompanying flavors. The long-ferment loaf got eaten the evening after with cheese (like the short-ferment one) and definitely had a noticeably present bread flavor. However since the long-ferment loaf was eaten a full 48 hours after baking, it's unclear how that flavor (positive) formed.

So what's next:

• Tile vs. No-tile
  
• Loaf shapes (including loaf pans of different types: ceramic vs. silicone vs. aluminum)
  
• All-purpose instead of bread flour (I used an unbleached flour that was labelled "great for bread" instead of all-purpose flour. If this was actually bread flour, that means that it had more gluten protein than AP. This probably makes a difference since this recipe called for AP and cake flour. Since cake flour is virtually gluten-free, the overall mix has less gluten than AP by itself. Thus if I was using bread flour, I almost certainly had too much gluten for the recipe.)
• Micro-additives like milk, yogurt, sugar, oil, or egg which should change the texture significantly
• Macro-additives like olives, fruits, or nuts
• Whole wheat flour
• Potato flour
• Naan
  

So many variations, so little time...

Bread Adventure

Since I was a wee lad, I've liked baking bread. However, preparing bread is a time consuming process involving various rising and punching, and my travel-heavy lifestyle makes it difficult to practice. Plus, I've never really taken the time to study the various aspects of preparation that give bread different kinds of flavor. But due to some random good luck, I'm gonna be in town from today and over the weekend!

Before I get into various kinds of additives, I want to get a handle on the basic taste of unadulterated bread. So first, some research:

• Simple: http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/bread_satori.htm
• Detailed: http://www.baking911.com/bread/101_intro.htm

I'm not a huge fan of sourdough, I greatly prefer the taste of sweet French rolls and baguettes. So, I'm going to investigate various yeast doughs, where fermentation seems to be the key difference. Being that I don't want to hunt down a lot of different kinds of yeast, I'm going to stick with the garden-variety powdered kind found easily in the supermarket and experiment with different fermentation methods. Meaning that out of the basic ingredients (flour, water, yeast, salt, kneading, time) I'm going to be mainly experimenting with time and keep the other variables constant.

According to that baking911 site, the basic yeast rising lifecycle for a bread is:

1. First rise (unshaped lump)
2. Shape into loaf
3. Second rise
4. Bake

If using instant powdered yeast, this can be reduced to:

1. Shape into loaf
2. Rise
3. Bake

A cold-rise can be added by allowing either the first or the second rise to occur in the refrigerator. If performing the first rise cold, the dough should return to room temperature before punching it down for the second rise. The duration of a rise varies, and is generally calibrated to whatever it takes for the volume to double.

I'm going to go with a basic French baguette recipe (convenient because it doesn't require loaf pans) and divide it into several smaller loaves with different rising procedures:

• Stock recipe:
  
• First rise: 4 hours (with a punchdown at 2 hour and 3 hour marks)
• Second rise: 40 minutes
• Long fermentation test
• First rise: 4 hours + overnight in refrigerator (punchdown at 2 hour mark and before refrigerating)
• Second rise: 40 minutes
• Short fermentation test
• Second rise: 1.5 hours

Need a warm place to rise, I'll either use a warm oven or maybe the network closet.

Stay tuned!

Fundamental Attribution Error

In "The Tipping Point," Gladwell cites a variety of different studies and concepts that he summarizes in support of his theses. In two chapters, he talks about the power of context on perception and decision making. One psychological phenomenon he cites is the fundamental attribution error.

Take some people and have them watch two groups of basketball players shooting baskets. One group tosses balls in a well lit court. The other in a dimly lit court. Obviously the ones in the dimly lit court perform more poorly. However, if you ask the onlookers to judge how good the players were, they will invariably say that the ones from the well-lit court were more skilled. Even if you tell the audience that the dimly lit court causes the players to perform more poorly, the watchers will still judge the well-lit court players to be more skilled.

The bias, even when explained, is inescapeable.

Humans, various studies have shown, are irresistably drawn to explain people's behvaior based upon fundamental attributes (e.g. a person's character or skills) rather than environmental effects (e.g. weather, temperature, lighting conditions). Even with prior warning and explanation, we can't resist.

But I can't believe that we should just blindly give up, throwing up our hands and saying "oh well, I'm screwed. I can't make good decisions." There must be a way for the prepared mind to compensate to some degree.

One idea that came to mind comes from Robert Cialdini's book "Influence." The concept is that rather than resisiting or being (over-)confident and saying "ok, I understand and am immune," we can compensate by acknowleding our bias and realize that no matter what we do, our gut intuition will be wrong in these cases. That acknowledgement should hopefully then focus us onto other guideposts (like some kind of quantitivative benchmark) to lean on, away from our unreliable impressions.

The Rule of 150

I picked up the book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell 2 weeks ago and found it to be a very entertaining and quick read. So, I followed up last week and bought his earlier book, "The Tipping Point." Gladwell writes for the New Yorker and that magazine style of writing comes through in the book, making each chapter a very engaging tale of its own.

There is actually so much engaging info in these books that it's hard to absorb it all. It's very entertaining to read, but it goes so quickly that I need to review in order to actually internalize the info. So, I'm going to try writing about it, bit by bit, and see if I can remember various topics better as I go along. I left "Blink" at home this week, so today's post is from "The Tipping Point."

In one chapter, he talks about social behavior in humans and primates. It turns out that there is evidence to indicate that the main driver for our large brain size (and intelligence) is social relationships. Look at primate community behavior, there is a pretty consistent relationship between social group size and brain size. This has some interesting ramifications for modern human social interactions because if you look at the group size/brain size curve for primates and extrapolate the relationship to humans, the group size you get for our brain size is 150 people.

The hypothesis here is that as a function of our evolution, our brains are wired to effectively manage social relationships that include up to about 150 people. Gladwell then investigates this 150 person number in modern communities and social structures (e.g. companies) and finds that this "magic number" comes up often. In one example, he looks at the W. L. Gore corporation, makers of Gore-Tex and other high-tech products. Their company is designed around the rule of 150. The story is that during the growth of the company, they found that the largest effective size of a slice of the business (e.g. marketing, manufacturing, sales all rolled together for a given product or segment) was around 150. So, they organized their company around this principle, having buildings designed to house exactly 150 people and organizing the business into self-contained 150-person units. They find that there is remarkable alignment and performance in their business when the manufacturing people and the sales people are wrapped together in the same social unit.

Solid Toiletries

I awoke the morning of August 10th to an e-mail from a co-worker warning us not to carry any liquids onto any flights we may have that day. Thus, I was forewarned and saved from potentially delay-inducing errors. (All delays are the enemy! Travelling every week, they really add up.) Thus begins the saga of no-liquids traveling.

By traveling back to basically the same place 3 weeks in a row, I've managed to postpone the problem of toothpaste and moisturizer (I use hotel-provided shampoo and conditioner) but, inevitably, I will have to face the problem. Fortunately, some comments to Rourke over the weekend about how there must be solid toiletries out there somewhere (and if not, market forces would quickly move into adjust) caused him to go out and do most of the research for me. (I also am not important enough to have a secretary make 43 identical toiletry kits and mail them out strategically across the country.) Thanks Rourke!

The one remaining item is moisturizer, since he doesn't seem to use any. Fortunately, a page dedicated to the topic was close at hand (a quick google for "solid moisturizer") and it seems like an unscented stick of Surgeon's Skin Secret is my best bet.

I'm also a little torn about toothpaste. Hotels have tiny tubes of toothpaste easily available at the check-in desk. However, the toothpaste that the EWR Sheraton had was some of the nastiest I've ever used. I'm not sure if I could stand using that toothpaste 3-5 days a week. The a solid alternative is tooth powder, a really old school product. But there are some potential problems with this plan. One is that these powders all seem to be excruciating natural and contain no fluoride. Another is an amusing comment from the FlyerTalk forum that reads:

Had my first tooth powder experience after arriving in GRU with no security issues in sfo or ord. It reinforces my belief in rational markets. There is a reason, absent of TSA, that of the 100 sku spaces alotted for tooth pastes, gels, and powders, only one is set aside for powders. Do not buy tooth powder stock unless you think the TSA ban is permanent.

Not exactly a glowing endorsement. Rourke says I should just use the hotel toothpaste. I probably will get a little tooth powder to carry around as a backup and generally rely on hotel-provided toothpaste.

Technical Sarcasm

I just read an interesting article in ACM Queue magazine (ACM is the professional organization for CS people) railing against "silver bullets" in software development, tools or practices that are supposed to solve all difficulties and magically make projects successful. Unfortunately, there is no easy way out and the author expresses his frustration that after years or experience, people don't seem to understand that.

But what amuses me is his vividly sarcastic writing style, coming up with ridiculously concrete examples like:

Still reeling from the powerful implications of what I had read, I began to wonder if placement of any content in the context of XML would somehow lead people to believe it to be of hallowed or divine origin, and having some implicit warranty of accuracy or correctness. I decided to test this premise and composed an e-mail to my 12-year-old daughter, hoping to sway her on an opinion she has been very unwilling to yield upon many times in the past:

<sanctified_declaration>
  <addressee> Alanah </addressee>
  <message>
    Hi Sweetie, I really am not the weirdest Dad of all
    the kids in your school.
    Love, Dad.
  </message>
</sanctified_declaration>

I was optimistic that if she were to read this declaration within the context of XML, our long-standing dispute would finally get some resolution. Unfortunately, things did not work out as I had hoped, and my ploy served only to reinforce her unyielding position.

New Anime

Well, a few weeks into another new season and there are, as usual, a lot of new shows. I decided last weekend, to pull a bunch of first episodes of new stuff and see if there was anything worth watching. As it turns out, some were good and some were really bad.

Ergo Proxy
Probably tied for my favorite show this season. It's one of those dystopian future/dysfunctional society sci-fi settings reminiscent of Texhnolyze. Like Texhnolyze, there are tons of mysteries and the viewer is left constantly guessing about how to piece together the various story elements. However, Texhnolyze's fatal flaw was that it was too confusing with too many character threads and every character knowing more about the world than the viewer (although I really like the genre, I never finished Texhnolyze). Ergo Proxy seems to avoid that trap by focusing in an a single main character who acts as the audience's tour guide and doesn't know more about the situation than we do. Plus, there's much less unnecessary beating and dismemberment. The art and production value are also both kickass.

xxxHolic
The other tie for favorite show this season. I liked the structure and stories in the manga this is based off of, and the anime doesn't disappoint, adding stylish artwork and very clever color schemes into the mix in a way that accents the plot and themes. The stories have a self-contained dramatic quality that is most reminiscent of Tokyo Babylon, as far as CLAMP works go, and is probably some of the best writing since TB as well. (Tsubasa Chronicle was an unfortunate disappointment that was like a watered down Card Captor Sakura but lacking all the stylish characters and personalities.)

RAY the Animation
Watched 1 full episode of this. It's a Black Jack spinoff about this girl that was saved by our favorite scarred doctor and grows up to be a brilliant wandering surgeon following in his footsteps. The problem is, while the show has the same serious medical drama tone of the Black Jack anime, RAY is full of weird gimmicks. Ray is not only a brilliant surgeon, but has x-ray eyes that she uses to dramatic medical effect. In episode 1, she is roped into performing surgery on a dying yakuza member by the director of a hospital. But for some reason, this director is a hulking bearded giant of a man with an eyepatch and a peg-leg who has staffed his hospital with ass-kicking martial arts expert nurses (who beat back a horde of yakuza who come to the hospital to interrupt the operation). Sure, Black Jack is sometimes a bit over-the-top, but this is ridiculous. Still, the structure of the show has potential and I'll give it 1 or 2 more eps to prove itself.

Demonbane
Zhang, being way far up on the anime-game tieup scene, would probably laugh at me for even considering watching this show. Needless to say, it sucked. Couldn't even get through the whole episode. By the time they introduce the 8th girl with huge breasts covering all the major fetishes after 10 minutes, I knew that there was no hope. Do not watch this show!

Tokko
Summaries seemed to indicate that is was a modern-day supernatural mystery show that had potential. Summaries did not say that this is a sis-con police fetish show. Not as unwatchable as Demonbane, although I didn't make it through the whole episode of this either. (I was interrupted by meal service on the plane and couldn't bring myself to come back to it.) While on one hand I feel like I should sit out the rest of the episode for completion, I don't know if I can. It certainly won't last past episode 1.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Cliche servicey high-school comedies are interminably boring to me. However after much positive buzz about this show (in particular a directive to watch at least 2 full episodes since ep 1 is strange and out-of-sequence), I was convinced to give it a shot and wasn't disappointed. Perhaps it's not everyone's cup of tea (Doris found it unexciting), but this show has a particular combination of wacky characters and wacky humor that totally cracks me up. I find this show quite creative, non-cliche, and very amusing. One could summarize this show as being about a wacky title character who ropes her schoolmate comrades into all sorts of crazy ventures, but then there are aliens, weird magic, and various apocalyptic scenarios that gum up the works.

Ouran High School Host Club
This one almost slipped under the radar, but a positive mention from Lawrence put it on my list. It's a shoujo high school comedy (thus non-servicey and with less familiar cliches) with an amusing premise. Prevalent in Japan and other parts of East Asia are "hostess bars" where female employees cozy up to male patrons to get them to buy larger volumes of watered down alcoholic beverages. The setting for this show is the reverse-gender concept at an elite private high school (and with tea instead of booze). I've seen two episodes of this. The first is really worth watching, even if you're not sold on the whole concept of this series. It's fast paced and full of wacky and amusing humor. The second ep. was also good, but hints that the series formula might end up being in the vein of CLAMP Campus Detectives (not that it's a bad thing, but the unique hook in CCD is that they were strangely mature elementary school kids which this show doesn't have). The art style is an kind of cute classic shoujo, kind of like Rose of Versailles or Onisama E, except cuter and non-angsty.

GITS: SAC2
So, this isn't new and I watched it for the first time quite a while ago. I just finished re-watching it because it's very plot and detail intense, and my first viewing had such long intervals between sequential episodes that I didn't get a lot of stuff. This show was really really good. What especially makes SAC2 worthwhile is that besides being a good political and covert-ops tale (like SAC), there is a lot of really good character drama and development in this series. There is considerable character build leading up to a strong climax in the last episode in addition to excellent plot build. Particularly exceptional is how multiple character punchlines as well as a strong plot punchline all coincide at the last episode in a way that was so well-built, that the multitude of events doesn't seem rushed, compressed, or forced. There's even time for an epilogue. Watch this show!

Vibrant Copy

“More delicate than Hen’s Eggs – The pears in this gift box have been nurtured through spring frosts, summer hailstorms, autumn winds – and the harvest itself. They’re a scarce commodity, available for only a brief time, with rarely enough to go around.”

A few months ago, my mom sent me a box of Harry & David pears. Included in that box, was a card with eating instructions and boatloads of flavor text, a portion of which is duplicated above. The prose on this card is really over the top, check out this segment:

“Get set to enjoy one of life’s purest luxuries, a hallmark of living well. We call them Royal Riviera Pears – highly prized, extremely rare, truly magnificent. When they are given and received, Royal Riviera Pears bring people together in the tradition of sharing – strengthening emotional bonds and making memories across generations, between families, and among business people.”

Man, who writes this stuff? (Actually, I’ve asked this question to Jen, who works in marketing, who named the person at in her workplace who is responsible for writing these sorts of things.) Moreover, how can I learn to write this stuff? Imagine the possibilities: “Get set to enjoy one of enterprise software’s greatest luxuries: model-driven J2EE performance management…”

Okay, maybe not. But I am putting together abstracts for some Otakon panels that, if accepted, will be printed into the program guide. Sure, virtually nobody reads those things and goes by the 3 word title in the schedule, but if some vibrant copy attracts even 1 or 2 extra people, it should be worth it. If you know where the wiki is, you should be able to find it and give me some feedback. :)

Napa w/ Slava

Slava was in town this week; Rourke and Jen decided Napa would be a place to go. And of course, Napa means vising wineries.

Outpost Winery
This was a very small place, but very nice. There was a fantastic view and a very nice main and guest house. We got to see the winemaking and barrel storage facilities as well. Despite the small scale, the ergonomics of the property seemed really good. They building layouts seemed very efficient and well designed for the work that is supposed to occur on premises.

'04 Zin - Closed nose, but smooth tannins. Will it be good later?

'05? Cab - very interesting tastes, also smooth tannins

The Zin was only bottled 1 month ago and the cab was a barrel sample. Both were very muted tasting (apparently because of their youth) but had interesting flavors. The fruitiness and smooth tannins made both of them seem like they have a lot of potential.

Grenache - Peppery nose, meaty caramelized body. Roast beef in a glass

Also go to take barrel samples of 3 different Petit Syrah clones that also grow on different parts of the hill. The tannins were again, shocking smooth for something so young. When commenting about that, we were told that they use a multi-day cold soak process which makes the tannins smoother. This process may also diminish some of the "structure" (something which I can not yet detect but Rourke can) of the wine, but because they are using hill fruit, there is more than enough tannin and structure to withstand that. Valley fruit, they said, can't hold up to this process.

Neyers Vineyards

2004 El Novillero Vineyard Carneros District Chardonnay
Bright, fruity, dry. Pretty good, not buttery at all. Like a more tart/bright Brewer-Clifton. The only thing here I liked.

2004 Old Lakeville Road Syrah
More savory and tannic, not peppery or fruity.

2003 Neyers Ranch Cabernet
Big fruity nose - herby and pineapple? Herby body.

2003 Neyers Ranch Merlot
Oakier, really tannic

2004 Pato Vineyard Zinfandel
Slightly oaky, somewhat hot. Slightly caramel finish

Biale Vineyards

2004 Old Crane Ranch Zinfandel
Very fruity! A little hot. Needs air.

2004 Black Chicken Zinfandel
Not my favorite

2003 Hill Climber Syrah
Very extracted, not sure what flavors.

There were more, but allergies and palate fatigue dimished my ability to taste. The only thing here I really liked was the Old Crane, which I'd want to decant for a while before drinking.

The IPO Flipping Game

According to an e-mail I received yesterday, as a long-standing Vonage customer, I am elegible to receive an allocation of IPO shares. Now, while I have been a satisfied Vonage customer, I'm not sure I'm confident in Vonage's long term value as an investment given the intense competition in this space. I saw Jim Cramer comment on Vonage on Mad Money a few days ago, and he was pessimistic on this offering's long-term prospects, but bullish on it's value as a day 1 flip.

And that's what I'm mulling over now. Do I have the appetite for the IPO flipping game? Well, many factors go into this. One, how much would I be willing to potentially lose on a learning experience? What strategies would I employ? A laddered series of limit orders? A dollar cost averaging strategy over a period of hours? What about fees?

Definitely, I need to do some research. In particular, I need to start with the following:

• What is the historical performance of day one IPOs?


• For the last 2/1/0.5 years?


• For technology IPOs?


• For IPOs of comparable size?


• Are there any common trading patterns?


• What are various analysts' target prices for various time durations?

Plus, there are other complications. The IPO will happen on May 23. Unfortunately, that will be day 1 of an on-site POC I'll be doing, so I won't be able to be glued to a ticker all day. How does this affect my play book?

Lots of work to be done here.

Dashe Tasting

Bad Rourke and Jen convinced my to go to the Dashe pre-opening open house and buy a boatload of camping crap from REI instead of sand drywall and do my laundry. (I did however, get to experience Rourke be "worse than a gun".)

There were lots of wines here, but only 2 that I found notable. Didn't have the energy to note the others (and didn't taste them all):

2003 Zinfandel Todd Brothers Ranch Old Vines
Plummy nose, bold fruity taste. Good with heavy food (yum, sausage!)

2005 Dashe Late Harvest Zinfandel
Still as good as ZAP, yum yamamomo. This one is a must buy. Probably my favorite late harvest red. Much better than the Ridge '01 Petit Syrah Essence that I brought to Thanksgiving in Texas (which, while highly rated, I didn't like all that much. Too hot and oaky). In contrast, this is very fruity with balanced tartness and doesn't taste hot or oaky at all. Despite its youth, the tannins aren't harsh at all.

Covey Run 2003 Riesling Ice Wine

Rourke had a bottle of this in his pek that he let me taste.

Very well balanced sweet/tart with pleasant fruit flavors. Not extremely fragrant and short finish, but very nice still, especially for $20.

Farewell the red soldiers

The April 15, 2006 issue of The Economist featured a small sidebar article of the same title as this post. It described a growing "problem" for police in China where increasing numbers of people have names that use highly obscure characters that are not supported in the Chinese language input software they use. The answer? Ban all such problematic characters.

But what really amused me is the opening sentence of the article which reads:

"Long gone are the days when Chinese parents often chose such names as Hongbing (Red Soldier), Aihua (Love China), or even Kangmei (Anti America) for their children."

Since all Chinese characters have meanings as standalone words, the oddity of having a name with obvious linguistic meaning is always overstated if name characters are translated literally. While some modern American names do have commonly used linguistic meaning (e.g. "Felicity" or "Summer"), most do not (e.g "Jane" or"Anne"). However, the idea that some real Chinese person might have such a clearly political (and dated) name strikes me as... hilarious.

Hi, Anti America, nice to meet you.

Offscreen Characters

I watched The Chronicles of Narnia a while back and at the time, it really got me in the writing mood about all of the non-principal characters in the movie. (Then the post languished in outline form for a few months before getting written up.) It seemed to me that the human kids had it really easy compared to all the other denizens of the oppressed world behind the wardrobe. Sure, there are some character conflicts and challenges that the humans need to overcome, but that seems to pale in comparison with the unseen hardships endured by all the other creatures of the land, who have been tortured, frozen, and otherwise subjugated for many years. It just seems fundamentally unfair that this bratty kids show up, and after a few weeks of relatively minor trouble, become the rulers of the land.

But of course, life isn’t fair. The reward one reaps is not at all related to the suffering one endures. Since nobody else in the land had the ability to do what the human children were able to do, nobody else was even in the running to reap any kind of reward. The kids are the only game in town, and they’re in the fortunate position of not really being in competition with anyone for the prize. It’s a matter of whether they choose to grasp it or not.

In the real world, we’re faced everyday with the problem of being caught in a game of relative advantage. Resources are finite, and their distribution is based on the relative advantage one party has over the other interested parties. But, as in Narnia, the amount one suffers has nothing to do with this game. It’s about the amount that one can offer.

That has interesting ramifications on the strategies to play the game. Since the game is about relative advantage, that means that both building up oneself and tearing down an opponent are equivalent in some way. The question is, in a multiparty environment, is it easier to build up oneself or tear down every opponent? Well, that depends on how many opponents there are. Theoretically, in a 1-v-1 scenario, +1 for me or -1 for an opponent should be the same. But, it seems to me that in most real world scenarios, it’s very difficult to even define all the parties in the game. There’s a gap between the game that one perceives and the game that is actually being played. MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook are locked in combat for the social networking market. Does Facebook even perceive the others as opponents? This just in, News Corp swoops in and buys MySpace. Now the game has changed. Even if one has a pretty good perception of the game at any given time, how should one play given that the game is ever-changing?

So then, is the focus primarily on building oneself up?

K&L Bordeaux Tasting

2003 La Fleur St Emillion Dry, tannic. Slightly astringent/bitter. Need time

2003 Beausejour Duffau, St. Emilion Less piercing dryness, oaky, somewhat hot, tart, frutier

2003 Haut Beausejour, St. Estephe Coffee, meaty nose, savory, hot, tart-ish, low-oak

2003 Carbonnieux Rouge, Pessac-Leognan Fruity nose, tannic, menthol/eucalyptus finish, low-oak

2003 Gloria St. Julien Not acidic, coffee nose, buttery somewhere, not tannic

2003 Fonbadet Pauillac Green, herby, something medicinal at the end

2003 Clerc Milon, Pauilac Green? Palate fatigue, tart

1994 Pichon Lalande 1.5 Pauillac Herby, not fruity, somewhat tart, smooth, not oaky

1995 D'Yquem Sauternes Balanced swet/tart, a little hot

Sizing Saga

So over the last couple of months, I've been trying out ordering shirts and pants from these on-line Thai tailors where you send them a set of detailed measurements, they sew the item to those specs, then mail them to you. Then once the items arrive, you hope that you measured right and they tailored it correctly. Shirts have been a good experience; for some reason, off-the-rack shirts are sized with 2 parameters, collar cicumference and sleeve length. From there, everything else is supposed to follow. It should be clear why this isn't really that accurate. Plus, the smallest sleeve lengths carried in stores are usually slightly too long for me. Pants, on the other hand, are sized by both waist and length, so for the most part, off-the-rack is pretty close to the detailed measurements approach.

For a long time, I had no idea how women's' clothing was sized, although recently learned that they're done primarily by number. Just 1 number. That seemed pretty inaccurate to me, and seems to lead to a tremendous industry of immense effort trying to find designers with suitable sizing, chasing down brands and stores searching for that magic mix of appealing design and matching fit.

There were two related articles recently in the New York times on this topic which greatly amused me. The first article is a first-person story (NYT-DressingRoomHope.pdf in the stash) related the main article with such amusing choice lines as:

"Like many women, my experience shopping for pants is often an exercise in futility... after 15 minutes of yanking and zipping, I return the whole pile of ill-fitting clothing, and leave the store annoyed and empty handed."

The main article (NYT-FitLogicWomensClothing.pdf) covers a new method of sizing women's clothing with some amusing euphemisms like:

"According to Fit Technology, more than 90 percent of women over 35 fall into three body types: straight silhouette, curvy and pearlike, which the company labels 1, 2 and 3."

"The creation of vanity sizes -- intentionally smaller than an objective size, to flatter the buyer — has introduced pure guesswork into shopping. A size 10 from one clothing manufacturer is a size 8 from another and a 12 from still another."

I love "pearlike" and "vanity sizes."

On the more serious side, thre is also an interesting (although not unexpected) prisoners dilemma situation described by these two quotes:

"Then there is the reality, however counterintuitive it may be, that retailers and clothing makers thrive off sizing confusion. Consumers who find a brand that fits are likely to stick with it and a standard sizing system would encourage them to visit other stores."

"36 percent return a product every year because it does not fit. Those returns equal 12 percent of all clothing sales. As a result, industry executives say, women shop at fewer stores and buy fewer clothes than they would if sizing were more transparent."

White Burgundy Tasting

Went w/ Rourke after work to Vino, Vin, Wine on California St. in Palo Alto. All were white burgundies except as noted. This place does boatloads of tastings, a different one nearly daily.

1. Bernard Movey 2004
Tart and fruiting, slightly bitter/grapefruit finish. Oakier and dustier as it got air.

2. 'Les Champlains' Simon Blanc 2002
Buttery nose, popcorn but tart. Weird. Very interesting, buttery finish.

3. Bourgogne Aligote Arnaud Ente 2003
Tart grapefruit, bitter finish

4. 'Clos du Chateau' Puligny Montrachet 2004
Less tart, fruity. Very Puligny. At $25, very reasonable. Probably the one to get. Rourke agreed.

5. 'Heautes Coters de Nuits' Meo Camuzet' 2002
"Corn" nose, dusty taste, buttery finish. Tastes kinda bad, but good finish.

6. Roulot 2003
Fruity nose, Smooth, not tart, bitter/grapefruit finish

7. Denis Montet 2003
Preserved plum nose, not tart at all, still hints of fragrant preserved plum

8. Arnaud Ente 2003
Not tart, smooth, slightly woody

(Red, not white burgundy). Cote Rotie Jasmin 2002
Tannic, spice nose, tart. Shiraz-ish but lighter. Long finish.

Snakes on a Plane

Actually, this title was probably not a good choice, since it just feeds into the idea of "grass roots" Internet blog publicity... but oh well.

Heard a program on "All Thing's Considered" (link to audio) on NPR today that totally cracked me up. Since it's NPR, it's easy for you to listen in too! (If the direct RealPlayer link doesn't work for you, try going to the page for the piece and click the "Listen" button.)

Apparently there's all kinds of fan products around this movie, even though it's not scheduled to be released until August of this year. One's curiosity can be mostly satisfied by the article on Wikipedia and the links contained therein.

Raillery

I watched that recent "Pride and Prejudice" movie, starring Keira Knightly, over the weekend and found it pretty good. The cinematography was very interesting and less "Hollywood", which I guess is to be expected since studiocanal is listed in the production credits. One thing that stood out for me when watching this movie was the manner in which the characters often conversed. It was all very polite (at least verbally), but some of the banter stood out in the way it lacked... well... it's hard for me to put a name on it. I guess the best word to describe it would have to be a Japanese term I learned while taking Prof. Whitman's linguistics and culture class. Much of the banter seemed to lack in tatemae, which I suppose could be described as a kind of social politeness.

For example near the beginning of the novel, Jane falls ill while visiting Netherfield, Mr. Bingley's manor (he's actually just renting it but close enough). Jane stays there to recover, and Elizabeth drops by to see how she's doing and ends up staying as a guest for a bit. In this scene, Elizabeth is sitting in a room, reading, while Mr. Bingley, his sister, and Mr. Darcy are having a conversation in the same room. Darcy is talking about the qualities he looks for in women and Elizabeth seems so incensed by his words that she can't continue her reading and bursts in:

"Then," observed Elizabeth, "you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished women."

"Yes; I do comprehend a great deal in it."

"Oh! certainly," cried his faithful assistant, "no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved."

"All this she must possess," added Darcy, "and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading."

"I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any."

"Are you so severe upon your own sex, as to doubt the possibility of all this?"

"I never saw such a woman, I never saw such capacity, and taste, and application, and elegance, as you describe, united."

It seemed quite presumptuous for a guest in someone's house to suddenly break into a conversation in such a forceful manner. Maybe it's an artifact of my own cultural upbringing, but I can't imagine doing something like that while a guest in the home of someone with whom I was barely acquainted and was currently taking care of an ill sibling. I think that even in the presence of the most heinous remarks, the most I might do within this setting would be to depart. However, I found the repeated instances of conversation such as this, quite amusing and that it created a really good opportunity for actors to express themselves in performance adaptations. Did people in this era really converse like this? I dunno, but it is amusing for the reader, which is good enough for me.

But then, yesterday, while I was in Phoenix, I was listening to a show on NPR there that's not broadcast on my local NPR station. The guest on this show was Stephen Miller who was promoting his new book, "Conversation: A History of a Declining Art." One of the subjects he covered was the declining art of raillery, which he says was a common form of conversation in the 18th century, but is almost completely absent in modern conversational style. He described raillery as a kind of good natured repartee or perhaps even a light-hearted argument, where the participants verbally jousted with each other over some topic but always with a light-hearted and pleasant manner. There was an immediate connection between this subject and the movie I had watched just a few days prior. I started to wondering if the manner of conversation that had so stood out in my mind was characteristic of that time period and what kinds of social consequences that had in interpersonal relations.

So of course, I had to go find a Borders to visit between the end of the work day and the airport and try to get the two books. "Pride and Prejudice" was obviously no problem, but I was not terribly surprised that they didn't have Stephen Miller's book. So I bought what I could get and will have to order what I couldn't on Amazon.

And then on the plane ride back, I was watching ep. 14 of SAC2 for the third time. (I'm watching SAC2 a second time, but I'd watched ep. 14 an extra time cause I really like it and showed it to Ben and Catherine.) There was some interesting related topics in there too, but that will have to wait for another time.

Amusingly Trivial

From ANN today, "A Most Bizarre 6-Fingered Story".

A very light article about manga trivialities. There's something about the way the story is structured, where the author goes to great lengths to develop and support a thesis that happens to be relatively trivial, that greatly amuses me.

There is one particular quote that I hadn't heard before and is an interesting data point for the record:

Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy) initially had 4 fingers. It is well-known that the inspiration for Atom came from early Disney films, and a character called Mickey Mouse.

Mickey Mouse had 4 fingers, so Atom was drawn with 4 fingers as well. Later, when Mr. Tezuka met with a Disney employee who had worked on Mickey, he asked why Mickey only had 4 fingers, to which he got the following response:

"Because if you animate him with 5 fingers, it looks like he has 6 fingers when he's moving."

After that, Atom was drawn with 5 fingers.

Of Surveys and Scheduling

From exec-l, it seems like Fall nominations just happened. The following-year Fall scheduling process that happens in the previous Spring is pretty much the most important planning event of the year. In many respects, it is the only real planning event of the year, which strikes me as error prone since the showing's schedule is determined by a consensus mechanism with no set direction or goal, but I digress (this isn't the topic I want to talk about). Accepting that scheduling is done with a pick-your-own-goal kind of multi-unknown-purpose theme, I've always wondered that a least for my own goals and for the unknown (but likely overlapping) goals of other e-board voters, what kind of information would allow us to each come up with our own best possible decision.

The biggest problem (really a very common biggest problem), is the issue of unknown factors. In particular, most people have not personally seen all the shows and require external influence in order to come to a decision. A close second, is that it's hard to figure out what the results of that decision might be. The first issue is self-explanatory. The second is more complicated. Let's say I had a goal of trying to pick shows that would increase the size of the audience, equalize the gender balance, and increase the level of education of the audience. For audience size, I might think that more popular shows (e.g. higher ANN ratings) would be more attractive, but at the same time what if everyone has seen those shows already and would be driven away? For gender balance, I might think that shoujo-genre shows would be more attractive, but what is the mechanism by which females would learn about and choose to attend? For education, I might think that more "fringe" shows (e.g. Tale of Genji or Angel's Egg) might broaden peoples' horizons, but it might also drive them away.

Ben started the reviews site in the e-board repository last semester, which seems to get people significant information about shows they have not seen, in an easy centralized manner. There seems to be interest in this, and if people get in the habit of contributing and reading it, people's general level of knowledge should increase. But summaries only get us part of the way there. Dossiers are often written to attract people to a show, focusing in on aspects that would convince a person to start a show. While there is some attempt to structure things to balance present and future expectation (e.g. with the "how strong is the second half" question), in reality, the general motivation will be to induce an unknowing person to start the show, not a person in the middle of watching the show to finish. To some extent, the quantitative ratings statistics carry some of this information. A higher rated show is more likely to have a satisfying start and finish (since others found it satisfying), plus we also get a sense of what the overall public feels about the show. Thus, someone evaluating the show could combine the numerical rating with their own attraction of elements of the show and weigh them during a voting decision. However, these numerical scores carry their own problem. How do we know how these ratings by unknown thousands of people on the internet relate to how CJAS members will react? (People won't like a show just because we show it. Say you have a bunch of people who don't like comedy. If you inundate them with comedy, they won't learn to like it. They'll just leave.)

Of course, these issues are nothing new. But, I was re-visiting the topic of surveys recently, and realized that the answers to a lot of the issues could be found in existing survey data. So, I took the FA03, FA04, and SP05 survey data and did some analysis on the derived statistics for each show. In particular, for each show, I analyzed the following variables:

• Fall mean rating
• Fall std. dev.
• Fall # responses
• Spring mean rating
• Spring std. dev.
• Spring # responses
• ANN # ratings
• ANN # people indicating they've seen part or all of the show
• ANN arithmetic mean
• ANN arithmetic std. dev
  
• ANN weighted mean
• ANN Bayesian score
• Was the show shown as a series (0/1 dummy variable)

My analysis is not yet complete, I've done a Pearson's-R correlation table and some initial regressions. There are some interesting results that I want to note before I dig for more data and write up a more detailed analysis:

• Moderate (0.5 <>
• High correlation with high significance between Spring mean and ANN Bayesian score
• No relationship between Fall # responses and ANN Bayesian score
• High correlation with high significance between Spring # responses and ANN Bayesian score
• Low (0.3 <>
• High correlation with high significance between Spring # responses and shown as a series
• No relationship between Fall mean and Fall # responses
• High correlation (R > 0.7) with high significance between Spring mean and ANN # rating

The differences between Fall and Spring are particularly notable, but also preliminary. There is one big problem, I can't find my SP04 survey data. Thus, my Spring semester data set is small (n=11). Another issue is the stats having to do with # responses. By itself, # responses isn't necessarily that meaningful except to determine statistical significance and perhaps do chi-square tests between shows. What I really want to use this for is a "butts in seats" estimate for a given show, under the assumption that you only rated a show if you saw it. Thus if you didn't see a show, you didn't rate it. But in order to measure these "drifters," who enter only for their favorite shows and then leave, I'm assuming that we surveyed everyone who walked in that night, w/o missing anyone. If we only survey at the beginning and at break, there will be a significant time-based bias. For these particular semesters, I'm pretty confident that the survey results are pretty thorough, since I administered them. For future semesters, I'm hoping that surveyors have been and will be similarly aggressive administering the survey.

Caveats aside, it's quite interesting that series drive increased # responses so much more in the spring than in the fall. It's also interesting that ANN ratings drive # responses significantly in the spring, but not the fall, and also that those same ratings are much more correlated to CJAS ratings in the spring than in the fall.

When I did some preliminary work on regression models to predict the CJAS rating based on ANN data, it was interesting and shocking to me that the multiple-R on my best multiple regression on Fall mean was in the 0.6-ish range, whereas it was in the >0.9 range on the Spring mean. This would suggest that the ANN data are a good predictor of the audience's impression of a show after seeing the whole thing, but not as good a predictor of the audience's first-half reaction.

What I eventually aim for is getting some statistically significant model that can predict the audience's reaction to a show based on factors we can discover or control at the time of scheduling.

The Price of Living

Continuing from my last post about the cost of drugs (and by extension, health care in general), I left off with the question: why is the cost of the cancer drug cocktail mentioned in that BusinessWeek article $250K/year?

Certainly marginal cost is a lower limit, and microeconomics tells us that in the long term, competition will drive price to equal marginal cost. However, these new drugs are not even remotely close to the "long term" yet. Rather, these drugs are priced to match a customers' "willingness to pay" at a level that maximizes profit. Microeconomically speaking, this is monopoly pricing since at this early stage of a product's life, there are few to no competitors. It is the ability to skim this surplus profit during the period between pure monopoly pricing and pure competitive pricing that usually spurs people to do new and innovative "stuff."

So, who out there is really willing to pay $250K/year? Are there really that many super-rich people out there who can afford this? Well, from the 3rd paragraph in the article, obviously not. Most people who get these drugs have insurance. It's the insurance company that really is the first line when it comes to willingness to pay. Why will an insurance company pay a certain amount of money for an expensive drug? Well at the core, an insurance company will pay if its subscribers are willing to pay the shared cost of the drug to counterbalance the risk of their needing the drug. But also, in most circumstances, if the drug is approved by the FDA for a given live-saving purpose, insurance companies will be required to pay for it, and thus subscribers will also be required to pay for the shared cost of the drug. Under these circumstances, it seems that an insurance company would end up with a price that would be a combination of several factors:

• Cost that subscribers are willing/able to bear
• Cost to put up hoops to make subscribers jump through to get the drug
  
  • Including the related cost of bad press, government sanctions, etc...
    
• Cost of alternative treatments with similar efficacy
• Level where reasonable third parties (e.g. voters/government officials) would consider the drug companies to be charging an unreasonable price

This turns out to be quite a cost. There are so many people afflicted with illnesses and are desperate to live coupled with pricey drugs and procedures able to meet their needs. This would lead to tremendous pressure on insurance companies to spend. In this environment, the insurance premiums can quickly be pushed up right to the edge of what subscribers are willing and able to pay. So how much life are we buying?

Well, I did some google searches and pulled up some OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Prof. Azis, my macroeconomics professor, called it the "club of rich countries.") data about health care spending. Let's take a look at how much we spend and how long we live compared to other developed countries:

Well, from this data it looks like we spent a lot more money than anyone else, but aren't really buying much (or any) life. Now, there are other data axes that I'm not examining. For instance, most of the spending in the US is private (e.g. individuals or insurance companies), whereas in most other countries (which have nationalized healthcare), the majority is public (e.g. government). These expenditures also include elective procedures (e.g. cosmetic surgeries, sports injuries), which are also more prevalent in the US than elsewhere.

Why is this the case? Well, that's a complex issue. There are many policy arguments over this data, and I don't really know how conclusive any of it is, since this topic is heavily politicized. I do recall one guest on NPR a few weeks back talking about this subject. I can't remember who it was, but she looked over spending, life expectancy, and customer satisfaction data across different wealthy nations, especially comparing nationalized health care to the private system we have in the US. Her conclusion was that the reason the data comes out the way it does is because in most European nations, the budget for national healthcare is fixed. Thus, patients whose illnesses have progressed beyond a certain point will no longer receive treatment, and expensive diagnostic technology (like MRI's) are applied in a more judicious manner. This is in contrast to the US, where treatment is typically provided (by an insurance company or by Medicare) for as long as the condition persists or the patient dies.

Recall the second paragraph of the article excerpt where a Belgian study notes the high cost of Herceptin treatment. The implication here (in line with the guest on NPR) is that cost is a factor for whether or not a treatment is adopted for use within the national health care system there. In the US, treatment is dictated primarily by the efficacy of the procedure. Certainly, it's not absolute. Because of the issue of co-pays and off-label usage, there are many situations where an American patient may choose not to receive a certain treatments because the cost is too high. To a large extent, though, it is the entity that bears the smallest fraction of the cost (e.g. the individual with the $30 copay) that makes the decision rather than the entity that bears the largest fraction (e.g. the insurance company or Medicare with the remaning $5000+ bill). Still, who wants to be the person who has to choose who lives and who dies? Isn't it much more comforting to let everyone have their chance, slim as it may be? And politically, who would withstand the cries of hundreds or thousands of widows, widowers, orphans, etc... whose loved ones were denied treatment? In a nation of hundreds of millions, this may seem to be insignificant number, but politically incensed individuals are potent beyond their statistical representation.

And really, what is better? If we need to spend more to save just one, ten, or a hundred lives, who can say that it is or isn't worth it? America is a very wealthy nation with an extremely strong economy. If any nation can shoulder this burden, it is the United States. But of course, there is no easy or definitive solution to this issue. The best I can hope to do is just understand it better.