Here and There

Surely I’m not alone in thinking this story is huge.

This was on MSNBC? Really?

Interesting article in today’s NY Times on how (or whether or to what extent) genetics affects things such as aging and vulnerability to disease.

The story more or less confirms a long-held belief (spoiler alert!) — that longevity, like most things in life, is a game of pure chance. Just because you had a grandmother and three uncles and an aunt who lived to be 95 doesn’t mean you will live that long or longer — there are simply too many (mostly environmental) factors throughout one’s life.

That’s not to dismiss genetics altogether. As the article states:

The likely reason is that life span is determined by such a complex mix of events that there is no accurate predicting for individuals. The factors include genetic predispositions, disease, nutrition, a woman’s health during pregnancy, subtle injuries and accidents and simply chance events, like a randomly occurring mutation in a gene of a cell that ultimately leads to cancer.

It’s just to say that you can’t bake a cake without cracking an egg…er, you can’t build a house without chopping down a tree…um. Yeah. I’m bad at cliches.

You get the point. Now read the article.

Stop everything. The New Yorker magazine made a mistake.

It’s a typo, to be sure, but on page 34 of the August 28, 2006 issue (Malcolm Gladwell’s story of risk and pension funds), middle column, toward the bottom, it reads:

“…the costs of four hundred and eighty-eighty thousand dependents…”

And apparently they’ve either not received, or aren’t heeding, the polite email I sent today, because they haven’t changed it on their website yet.

Oh well, I guess there are human beings running the show over there after all.

I hate to give the Wall Street Journal any hits, but I couldn’t rightfully pass this up.

Ken Starr knows when not to quit.

Wow.

There are very few books or movies I haven’t been able to muster the strength or perseverance to make it through. Atlas Shrugged and the film-version of Breakfast of Champions come to mind.

I tried to watch Spike Lee’s Inside Man the other night, and I should’ve known something was seriously wrong when the opening shot had the unmistakably British Clive Owen monologing deadpan into the camera … speaking with an American accent. Yuck. It was only slightly less terrible than someone like Winona Ryder or Natalie Portman speaking British-English. No. You’re not allowed to do that. That means you, too, Gwenyth.

Then the movie really started, and started to piss me off. Right away, a scene in the lobby of the bank, with strangers talking to strangers as if they’ve known one another their entire lives. What about Denzel Washington’s character, whose first scene has him more or less tail-between-the-legs, his “lady” on the line bitching about something or other? Then, when he’s out on the job, his recently bold sidekick instantly becomes an earpiece for Inspector Denzel’s witty, Academy-worthy one-liners.

Or recently-held hostages speaking to their captors with a gravitas never before seen in cinematography (much less real life). Or how about this lethal dosage of cringe: the scene in which the crime-unit cops play a signal they’ve intercepted on a loud speaker, because, of course, “someone out on the street (in Lee’s beloved NYC) probably knows whatever language they’re speaking.” I paraphrase, but I don’t digress.

I turned the movie off shortly after that scene.

If Spike Lee wants to keep telling small “joints” with big implications, or big ones full of minor life detail, he should abandon all pretense of making his films “realistic.” People don’t behave the way Lee has them behave.

This movie could have gotten better had I stuck with it, but that’s not likely. Even if it did, the rest of the movie would’ve had to contend with 20 minutes of some of the worst moviemaking I’ve ever seen.

That title deserves a sub, something like: Installing software on a Windows-based PC.

Last night, I attempted to install printer software on the PC* of a good friend. After searching and searching for the optical drive on her 2006 HP laptop, and pressing what I was sure was the release button at least three times, a clunky tray opened up. I inserted the disc, and amazingly, miraculously, after only about 100 seconds of waiting, an HP installation window popped up. Great, we’re on our way, hobbled and eager.

I clicked through an eternity of “Next” buttons (though I was not once prompted for an admin password) and got to a point where I let the thing run while I went online. About, oh, 10 minutes into this, a window popped up over my browser telling me I had “A fatal error,” and after slowly realizing this didn’t mean I had killed a new law student’s notebook computer, I started (what else?) clicking “Next” buttons.

Then I was told the software will check with an HP help page and try to troubleshoot the problem. Fine. You break it, you fix it.

Alas, to no avail: Computer will now uninstall installed components and restart.

Upon reboot, I happened to notice that the printer software was (let’s say, magically) installed. I fired up Microsoft Word (because a true computer novice never learns his lesson) and typed up a quick test page. Sent that to the printer and … nothing. I checked the paper to make sure it was queued correctly and … oh, you’re probably bored by now. I’ll sum up.

After canceling my test page and completely removing it from the print queue, the page printed. Then, I powered the printer down and started it back up, at which point it proceeded to print a test page (not at my prompting). I tried several more times to print both my own test page from Word and the Windows printer test page, all with no luck.

I checked to make sure the computer was reading the printer (it obviously had in the not-too-distant past) and sure enough, it was. It just wouldn’t talk to the damned thing enough to tell it to print.

I just realized this post feels like a bulletin-board gripe.

I haven’t had this much trouble doing something so simple in years. The point here is, I don’t care how many inconvenient battery recalls and sketchy stock option schemes are tied to Apple. They simply make far-superior, completely user-friendly computers. Lesson (re-)learned.

*Though I prefer to use “Windows-based PC,” I will often resort back to the more colloquial (yet not altogether accurate) “PC.” A Mac is, after all, also a personal computer.

I heard something yesterday that reminded me of a debate I had six years ago.

“Yeah, Boston Terriers are one-third French Bulldog.”

First, and off the point, Boston terriers and French bulldogs share a common ancestor (English bulldog), but are on separate branches of the canine tree.

My real problem is this phrase “one-third.” By definition, no one (no human, no dog or other animal) can be one-third anything. Every human necessarily has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. If you have, say, three Polish grandparents and one Japanese, you’re three-fourths Polish, one-fourth Japanese.

Same thing if you have two Polish grandparents, one Japanese, and one Somalian. You’re not one-third Polish. You are half Polish, one-quarter Japanese, one-quarter Somalian.

All cumulative percentages of ancestral make-up must be expressed in halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenth, and so on.

Okay, math isn’t my greatest skill, so someone check me on this, please.

Yes, I’m playing with themes again…

Oh, and I’m working on that “about” page. Hope to have it up soon.

I neither shed any tears nor lost any sleep last night over Pluto’s “demotion” (scroll to bottom of page) to dwarf planet. I don’t even see it as insulting, but rather a refreshing further push to get to the heart of what the hell Pluto is.

Kottke.org has some funny mnemonics on our “new” solar system. MVEMJSUN…I’ve always liked that “SUN” at the outer reaches, and now it’s no longer bound by an intrusive “P.” The sun wins again.

For my thoughts on the reclassification of Pluto, see this post from a few days ago. Nothing new to add.

Google Talk celebrates its first birthday today.

I’ve mostly been using the Google Talk app (Windows only) at work, but the product is just as elegant in its browser-based form. There, you can either chat in your Gmail window, or pop-out the conversation to its own window. Nice touch.

At home, I use Google Talk though the iChat client on my Mac. Another job well done, Google team.

In other (depressing and disappointing) tech news, Apple announced a massive laptop battery recall today, and I barely survived. (I have an “antiquated” iBook G4, but it’s 14-inches, not 12.)

From questionable business practices and potential technological plagiarism to faulty engineering, Apple’s track record seems to have become a victim of the company’s iPod-oriented largesse. To put it mildly, it hasn’t been a good week for Apple.

Joe Biden is at it again, calling for the partitioning of Iraq:

The new, central reality in Iraq is that violence between Shiites and Sunnis has surpassed the insurgency and foreign terrorists as the main security threat.

Biden, who seems to be ready to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, but who fails to see he hasn’t a chance in hell of getting it, is right on this count. Hell, the older I get, the more I begin to think this country could use some breaking apart of its own.

One of the best (or worst, depending on your point of view) uses of these things we call blogs is to say what’s on the blogger’s mind. Too often, I find myself failing at said activity, electing instead to keep things to myself or close acquaintances.

Then some genius comes along and seemingly snatches the thoughts right out of my brain. It happened again this morning. The ever-so-brilliant Kottke tells it like it is.

On the subject of Hillary for President, Ezra Klein, writing in the LA Times, is on to something.

I especially like what Klein has to say about John Edwards’s chances, despite the fact that we’re still 17 months shy of Iowa.

So, it looks like Pluto will be “demoted” to something called a dwarf planet in the coming days. There’s been a sizeable buzz around the International Astronomical Union’s meeting in Prague about the union’s devising a definition for “planet.” Amazing that we didn’t have one until now.

I’d just like to say, pretty much, “who cares?” Don’t get me wrong, I cherish my own armchair astronomy as much as the next nerd. But does getting closer to the truer nature of the planet by way of coming up with a more apt definition for all planets really change the planet itself? Better that we know more about Pluto (as well the other “trans-Neptunian objects), right? Isn’t that what science is all about?

I guess I’m barking up the wrong tree, though. Status is what’s important, and Pluto is getting served.