The Nerd's Eye View

Last night I went to the movies with my family, which is one of my brother's favorite pastimes for the family. We saw the new film Traitor starring the incomparable Don Cheadle. I usually avoid this sort of movie since it invariable offends and reminds me that I will always been a foreigner in this country, regardless of which passport I carry. I won't spoil the plot of the movie for those of you who might be interested in seeing it but I do have some comments about it.

Don Cheadle's character, Samir Horn, is an American Muslim, born of a Sudanese man and an African-American woman. All the scenes in Sudan take places in a yellowed light which is similar to that you'd see in these ***** photos I found on flickr. Unfortunately it was a Sudan that bore no resemblance to the one that beyond that one. The tiled walls of the homes, the turbans worn at home for no reason, the immaculate dustless streets - none of it had anything to do with the place I know. Still that was a minor annoyance and even sort of amusing to some extent.

Less amusing was the wide range of different Arabic accents when the action was "in country". It can be summed up with the Moroccan accents of the "Yemeni" policemen. While this might seem like nitpicking to most of you, just imagine a movie set, say, in Georgia where half the locals are speaking with Australian accents, the others are speaking with Scots accents and no one sounds like a local. Now I understand that the movie is not made for Arabic speakers, but it would be nice to feel like we weren't all the same.

The part that really got me, though, was the misguided attempt to show people that we shouldn't all be suspicious of Muslims who make conspicuous gestures of their faith (e.g. headscarves on women). The converse message, of course, could also be gleaned: that all Muslims are a threat, and that the threat is hidden all over the country right under the watchful eyes of good God-fearing (Christian) Americans.

It's just disappointing sometimes. It'd be so nice to be portrayed as the good guys, or at least the guys who do things that you don't agree with but understand. Yeah. That'd be pretty nice.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My folks spent last Saturday in Sedona and since I was around this weekend, they decided to go again. We got up early and then squandered our lead on the Labor Day traffic. We also lost our bid to get to the red rocks before the weather turned as had been predicted in the "news". Well we went anyway, with visions of sliding down rocks into freezing cold pools. Armed with a bag full of sandwiches and fruit, and no towels, we made it by about lunchtime and made a beeline for the outskirts of town.

The path down to the water was well worn but rocky, and as usual we were poorly prepared. With my mother in a long skirt and flip flops, we were moving fairly slow. This made us an easy target for the dark clouds that were shifting over the buttes and started making their intentions clear. The first drops were cold but small and sharp, like tiny daggers; these spies were followed by warm, bucket sized battalions of raindrops. The sparse leaves on the trees and the few trees left us exposed and ultimately drenched. Still it was really pleasant and I felt quite free as I cowered under a pine tree waiting for the weather to clear up enough to head down to the bottom of the canyon.

The bottom of the canyon seemed completely cut off from the 20th century and frankly in a time before people lived in the area. We followed the sound of rushing water through underbrush and over large logs that had obviously been deposited there when the creek was in flood. I thought back to the deluge from 10 minutes prior and the fact that the rain had come from upstream and wondered whether we'd get swept up ourselves. Luckily, the water hadn't risen that fast.

The water was freezing cold, but the sun was out again and it was hot as we dipped our feet in the creek. There were several groups of young folks sliding down the rapids, and it took us a while to get up the nerve to do it ourselves. It was so fun though! I was surprised at how fun it was, and that we actually did it. By then the rain was coming in again and we made our way back up to the car before getting some ice cream. The smell of the rain, the view of red rock layer cakes of the buttes was amazing. I always love the smell of the rain in a dusty land ...

postscript: One the way home we stopped at a roadside produce stand to buy peaches for my mother. While we stood waiting to get a bag, the proprietor gave me a small tomato, its stem still attached. I took a bite, reluctantly, and was surprised to get the full flavor of it. Since coming to America I had almost forgotten what a real tomato tasted like, since most tomatoes here seem to be bred purely for size and color. Even so-called organic, "vine-ripened", and heirloom (what does that mean anyway?) tomatoes are bland compared to the Sudanese tomatoes of my youth. Needless to say we bought as many as we could, along with some pinked fleshed Pink Pearl apples. The apples were so pink on the inside that their juice seemed like blood orange juice.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I play soccer on Thursday nights, usually in the South Bay with a bunch of guys who I met through a former co-worker. It's so late when I get done that I can't take a reasonable train back so most Thursdays I just stay at a friend's house. Since I am going to Phoenix later today, I decided I'd drive up last night, and so got to watch the sky get darker and the horizon get oranger (orangertan?) and listen to Obama's speech at the close of the DNC. As the coverage ended I turned down the volume and drove with the windows down.

As I drove through San Mateo county I was surprised that even on the freeway I could smell the trees on either side of the road and it seemed from the nearby hillsides. The road noise faded away and it was almost dark with all of these sweet scents in my nostrils and I got really confused and suddenly emotional. Getting old is a real emotional roller-coaster.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm adding a new category to my blog: energy. It's not as fleeting a concern as some of my other categories (I hear you guys groaning, especially in the wake of my charity ideas - but I promise you, things are moving in that area too. It's just really slow and I'm too embarrassed by it to report on the stumbles and falls). I've recently grown concerned (like many people) with the state of energy generation in the world. So I've written a few things about solar power and the ways to move it forward in the developing world. But I neglected something important which is infrastructure. This NY Times article brings up the strains on the US power grid that are partially due to lack of adequate growth in the electrical infrastructure. I think it's definitely worth the read.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although some of you may not see it that way. This here is an interesting explication of the whole Dave Chappelle palaver from last year. It's actually worth a read I think.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yes, finally! The Sudan has lived up to and exceeded the high standard set by Afghanistan at the Oympics, by winning a silver medal at the men's 800m. Ismail Ahmed Ismail missed gold by only .05 seconds, and was bracketed by two Kenyan runners. You can watch the exciting race at this link (so long as you are running Windows or a Mac with an Intel processor). For those who care, we also beat out Egypt in the medal count who won only 1 bronze (just like Afghanistan) - eat that!

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In case you were both wondering what was up with the Large Hadron Collider (at CERN in Geneva) AND needed some rockin' beats, I present to you Alpinekat's explanation - in verse.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the line between humans and machines. Partly for reasons of my own, and partly because my cousin has been thinking of going into robotics now that she is entering her final year of engineering school. So I've been doing a little bit of reading and ran across a profile of Le Trung. Le has built a robot named Aiko which has some amazing capabilities, such as facial and voice recognition, and fairly consistent speech - and all without the benefit of any outside support. Mind you, the robot has some bizarre aspects as well. For example it's dressed like a young Japanese nurse. It also refers to him as "my master" and wears a sock on one hand. Yes. It's creepy and possibly gross. But that doesn't take away from his genuine technical achievement.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I found this neat java application the other day. Wordle creates word clouds like the one below:

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just ran across this article about the moments of Reimann zeta functions. Apparently in an attempt to find the secret to the pattern of prime numbers, physicists in the UK have found that the moments of prime numbers start with 1, 2 and then 42! I don't claim to understand it all but there you go folks. Someone explain it to me and Ryan, get your towel ready.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 6:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In the grand tradition of the 4 month old NewCo, there is yet more change. Yep, The beginning of my employment at NewCo was supposed to insulate me from the impending end of our old business unit at Faceless Corporation. But in the space of about a month and a half, the good folks at my old business unit had their jobs saved, and two days ago I was told that my own job was now going away. That's right, in a few months our new business unit at NewCo will be no more. The tables have turned completely and I must say I think I'm taking it very well.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When I was in college I got really into the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson. In Neuromancer and the subsequent novels Gibson introduces and expands a world where the line between humans and machines is blurred. The body is an almost infinitely upgradeable machine, that is optimized and modified for a variety of reasons. The movie got me into movies like Ghost in the Shell, which took some of those ideas and mixed them with ideas preempting the Matrix. The movie revolves around a military unit composed entirely of cybernetically "enhanced" people pursuing the nefarious terrorist known as the Puppetmaster. The film is very visually compelling and the introduction is quite an elegant - yet dark - vision of what's to come. Altogether it made me question the nature of "life" and what really constitutes it.

I ran across this today and it was strangely reminiscent of that introduction. The way the manufacturers of the mannequins talk about them: their design and creation, and what they mean; it's as if they are creating real women out of the foam and plastic that they mold. There's an eerily loving quality to what they say which would be creepy without having seen or read some of the works above. Regardless it's also interesting to watch.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)