Author Archives: Anand Sarwate

spidey underoos

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I’m not sure if I ever had Spiderman underwear, but according to the movie, the costume rides up a bit. I suppose that’s what you expect from a Sam Raimi movie, and I thought that the humor saved Spiderman II from the fate of Daredevil, which was one of the worst action movies I’d seen in a while. Ben Affleck, ugh.

Dr. Octavius tells Peter Parker in the movie that he heard Peter was “brilliant but lazy” and exhorts him to work, since great things only come with hard work. The second film’s use of aphorisms and advice quoted and requoted in different contexts is clever but overused.

Not very coherent thoughts on the movie, but it’s worth seeing at the matinee price in Champaign ($6.25). Hurrah for the midwest!

information overload

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ISIT is a pretty huge conference — for every paper that I see presented, I miss 7 others in parallel sessions. Oftentimes they put very popular papers in small rooms, which only enhances the crowdedness I feel. Today is the last day, so things are thinning out a bit, which is nice.

A frustrating thing I’ve come to realize is that it takes me a woefully long time to figure out that a paper is pretty uninteresting. I spend a fair amount of time trying to really understand what is going on, often in spite of the presentation, only to have a conversation with another group member about it later on that makes it clear that the result was not that interesting. Of course, “interesting” is subjective, but perhaps it is best to go into talks with a healthy dose of skepticism to avoid the rollercoaster ride of excitement and disappointment.

A second problem is that the nametags are hung around the necks, so if you try to read the name of a female conference attendee you invariably look like you are ogling her chest. Given the gender ratio at this conference it must make it awfully uncomfortable for them.

no cookie

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My paper was rejected from Globecomm with a 2/5 rating (weak reject). And it was rejected for reasons that are entirely related to my poor exposition of the ideas. Nothing like a good heaping plate of blame and guilt to dull the sharp edge of summer.

to use in my thesis

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Here’s a good quote I heard at the conference yesterday:

Tom Cover: Is there a theorem that says the capacity is the directed information?
Speaker: Actually, you proved that in 1989.

Classic. I need to remember that one for the chapter in my thesis on “previous results.”

vetting our scientists

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The LA Times has this story (free, reg. required) about the Bush administration’s new rules governing Health and Human Services (HHS) employees’ attendance at World Health Organization (WHO) meetings. Under the present system the WHO invites experts to serve on panels. However, Tommy Thompson’s spokesperson claims:

No one knows better than HHS who the experts are and who can provide the most up-to-date and expert advice. The World Health Organization does not know the best people to talk to, but HHS knows.

The new system requires all requests for government experts to be vetted by the political appointees in HHS.
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toasters to politics

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Kenji passed on a juicy little tidbit today that I had totally missed. Apparently the founders of MoveOn, a lefty political action committee (PAC for the lingo-savvy), were the founders of Berkeley Entertainment Systems, creators of After Dark, with it’s famous flying toaster screen saver. I was always fond of Satori, myself. Pre-After Dark we had Moire-cdev. Ah, back in the day, when you needed ResEdit to change the icon appareance on the desktop.

If you want a fancy schmancy flying toaster, you can get it for OSX.

sins of the flesh

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The festering possum corpse that was under the new house has been removed. This begs several questions — why did the landlords insist that it was a rat when in fact it was a much larger creature with a much longer ETD (estimated time of decomposition), why didn’t they just go ahead and remove it earlier if they could, and why does this make me even more stressed out than I was before?