Blast from the Past

My wife and I were driving behind a Honda Ridgeline recently.

She pointed out how visually it was very similar to another Japaneese "truck" from the 80's, the Subaru Brat:

Too funny, and too true!

More Sports

Already one sports post this week, but there a couple of things I need to write about.

The Masters
Phil Mickelson is my favorite golfer, by far. I started liking him because he's a lefty golfer. I learned to golf in college, and I golf left-handed. I was always convinced that most courses were really designed for righties and that lefties were at a disadvantage. This is probably not true, but that got me rooting for Phil. Then I was always annoyed about how much criticism he took for not winning majors and for playing too risky on the golf course. One of my friends pointed me to a great article recently on ESPN, where one of the things discussed was why Tiger Woods is so much better than Phil. The theory was that Tiger worked harder than Phil because Tiger was not afraid to not have an excuse. Phil would not work as hard because he always needed to have an excuse ready. There was some insight in this theory, but it's wrong. Phil doesn't work as hard as Tiger because Phil has been married for many years and has young children. Tiger became the greatest ever while being single with no other obligations in his life but his golf. Tiger is often compared to Michael Jordan. Few will disagree that Jordan was the greatest basketball player ever, and perhaps the greatest pro athlete ever. However, the devotion to his arguably resulted in him being a terrible (and now divorced) husband and father. I digress. Way to go Phil. Two majors in a row!

Baseball
I love opening week. I got this MLB Extra Innings package for free this week. It wound up being good timing as this weekend I was home alone. So I got to watch a few games I wouldn't have seen otherwise. This package is still not that great. There are games that aren't shown for no obvious reason. Last night there was a Houston-Washington game that wasn't shown. It wasn't on any of the other channels I get, so I have no idea why it wasn't shown. Also, these sports packages are a waste until they start being broadcast in hi-def. It's ridiculous if I'm paying $160 to get all these games but they're in standard defintion. This is especially true of NFL Sunday Ticket. If you're watching a game on Sunday Ticket, there is almost always going to be another game on your local network that's in hi-def. Anyways, it was nice to get to watch some extra baseball this weekend. I got to see Johann Santana pitch this morning and Alex Rodriguez take Bartolo Colon deep (yet again) this afternoon.

Gator Basketball
I was incredibly happy to see the announcement that Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer, and Al Horford are all staying for next year. Of course there's still time for them to change their mind, but I don't think they will. There's going to be a lot of pressure to repeat now, but that's a good kind of pressure.

Ricky Williams
For the first time in recent years, I've really got to root for Ricky as he goes before the NFL to appeal a violation of their drug policy. There's no official word, but a lot of people have said that his violation was not from marijuana, and that it is most likely some holistic-mecinal herb. That holistic medicine craziness has helped him kick his marijuana addiction, so hopefully the NFL will be understanding. Of course I am being selfish mostly. I think Miami's hot ending to last season and acquisition of Daunte Culpepper makes them one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl next year. Ronnie Brown is going to have a huge season, but Ricky is a great insurance policy and can step in at anytime and make big plays.

Brett Favre
Green Bay just needs to trade him or cut him. The guy wants to play, but not for Green Bay, but he's too classy to come out and say out. After all he's done for that franchise, don't they owe him that much? They're going to suck next year, with or without Favre. Why make your franchise's savior endure that at the end of his career. It would really scare me, but wouldn't Favre as a Bronco be scary? Or Favre as a Charger (I'm far from convinced on Rivers.) Or Favre as Buc (same thing with Simms.)

Mike @ developerWorks

I recently wrote an article for IBM's developerWorks. It was the first of two articles I've written for IBM. The second one should be online in another week or two. It was a fun experience working with their editors, and hopefully it won't be the last articles I write for IBM.

Both articles have to do with Apache's Geronimo application server. It's obvious to compare Geronimo with the "incumbent" open source Java application server, JBoss. I won't get too far into that. Their architectures are really quite similar. I would say that Geronimo is the more "crafted" of the two. It does less things than JBoss, and it's a little more "stick to the J2EE spec." However, I think when it comes to the standard app server features, it does them a little better than JBoss and it's code is more elegant. I think this is a direct result of it being more of a "true" open source project, where many different developers can contribute. JBoss is much more controlled. If you're not a JBoss employee, you're probably not going to contribute to JBoss.

National Champions

I've been dying for three weeks now to write about the Florida Gators basketball team. I didn't want to jinx them. I've seen very good Gator teams lose to team they should beat far too many times. I knew this team was different, but I didn't want to tempt fate.

Now I don't have to worry about that. The season is over and The Gators are national champs! They've had such a great season. A lot of people didn't notice them too much until The Tournament. It's easy to forget they were undefeated in late January and ranked #1. Of course they promptly lost six of their next eleven games. They had finally shown their age. The Gators were unranked at the beginning of the season, mostly because they had lost their star players from the previous year and were incredibly inexperienced. They must have learned a lot from that tough stretch in February, and were unstoppable as soon as March arrived. They easily won the SEC tournament, avenging their two losses to South Carolina (who went on and won the NIT) in the finals. Only Georgetown challenged them in The Big Dance.

So what's next for The Gators? Well a lot of that depends on if Joakim Noah turns pro. On one hand, it's hard to imagine his stock going up anymore with another year. Anybody who blocks 29 shots in The Big Dance is going to be an NBA player. He should at least have Theo Ratliff or Ben Wallace potential, and that's enough to guarantee a high pick in the draft. However, I think Joakim has a lot more offensive potential than Ratliff or Wallace. He doesn't have a great outside shot, but he can get his own shot off, especially in the paint. He can handle the ball and is a good passer (even better than fellow future NBA-er Al Horford.) With another year of seasoning, it's not a stretch to imagine Joakim developing into an Alonzo Mourning kind of player. Just look at how much he improve his game via his incredible work ethic.

If Joakim stays, then I really think Horford and Corey Brewer will stay. I think they both have NBA millions in their future, but still might stay even if Joakim leaves. Of course if they all stay ... it's hard to imagine who is going to beat them next year. But let's not start jinxing next year already!

Who can blame them if they all turn pro? They've brought a championship to Florida. It's the first college basketball championship for any team from the state, but I don't think it will be the last. Florida has been a contender for a decade now, starting with Lon Kruger's 1993 team that lost in the Final Four against Grant Hill and Duke. FSU has been compettitive in the ACC for several years now. They had a good team in the 90s also, with Sam Casell and Bob Sura. Miami was also a dangerous team this year, and should be even more dangerous next year. It may be awhile before the state of Florida becomes more a basketball state than North Carolina, but don't be surprised if it happens. Look at all the talent the state produces and the great football and baseball teams from the big three colleges. It's just a matter of time before Dick Vitale is announcing Florida-FSU games on ESPN in primetime...

Childfree?

I intended to write today about how happy I am that baseball is back, and maybe even indulge in some "let them use steroids!" ranting. However, I read this little article on the BBC about the so-called "childfree-lifestyle." It caused me some mixed emotions, so I thought I'd write about it instead.

Childfree women are women who do not want to have children. Ever. Not surprisingly such people can be the brunt of criticism. Society has always put a premium on families. Some people would argue that this is just another example of religious and cultural conformity, but obviously there are underlying advantages. A society that doesn't procreate is a short lived society. Further, people with children are probably more likely to work, pay taxes, obey laws and have kids that do all those things, too. I'm sure there have been some kind of studies on these things, but I'm not quoting such things here. This just seems like common sense.

Family size in industrialized nations has been shrinking for a long time now. Thus it was inevitable to start seeing more people who don't have children at all. Personally that doesn't bother me at all. I know how difficult it is to raise children. It is draining physically, emotionally, and economically. I think it's better for people who can't handle such things to not have children. I'm not about to start telling anybody what to do on anything, especially such an important decision.

Now I have to admit that a part of me suspects that many people who chose not have children are actually quite capable -- at least from a physical, emotional, and economic perspective. So it's easy tempting to label such people as being selfish. I won't do that. They have no obligation to have children. Nobody should make them. I think there is a "natural" desire among people to procreate. Again, there are some obvious Darwinian advantages to such a desire. So it's probably a tough decision for people to chose to go against that.

Things don't stop there. Of course some of the no-kid-and-proud-of-it types start to get rude about the whole thing. Check out this quote from a British woman is happily childfree:

I think that people who have three children are encroaching on the planet's resources - I can't believe the amount of waste that children produce.

Like I said, rude. Maybe once Jane gets past her peak productivity years, somebody should euthanize her all in the name of conservation of resources.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. As mentioned earlier, societies have always placed a premium on families. Today that is reflected in tax-breaks, at least in the United States. Of course I think we're all taxed way too much anyways, so it's hard for me to be against any particular tax break. I can understand some people thinking it is unfair, but it is an inevitable consequence of progressive taxation.

Progressive taxation is based on the principal of taxing marginal utility. If you're rich you derive less additional utility for each extra dollar you make, than somebody who is poor. Why? Well the poor person is going to spend the money on something like food, clothing, basic shelter, etc. The rich person will spend it on something less essential, i.e. something with less utility. That's why it's "fair" to have higher tax brackets for rich people.

By the same token, a person with a child receives has more marginal utility from additional money than somebody with no child. Why? The person with the child will use that money to feed, clothe, etc. for the child, thus the higher utility.

So maybe if you did away with progressive taxation, then you could justify no tax breaks for families. I don't know if that's what these childfree advocates want or not, i.e. a flat tax. If not, then that would certainly be an inconsistency in their arguments and would suggest that their stance is purely motivated by self-interest (which is ok, but generally not a good enough reason to get the majority to agree with you.)

Now some of the other things being argued against is government guaranteed maternity/paternity benefits. We don't have much of those in the US, though they are more common in Canada and Europe (including Great Britain.) I would have to concur on this one. The government should not force an employer to give maternity or paternity benefits. It should be between the employer and the employees. A government mandate of it inevitably leads to the situation where an employer would hire an employee, but can't because of the potential cost from . So instead the employer does not hire the employee, who then goes unemployed.

Race Results

Yesterday I ran in the San Jose Spring Run. I ran the 5K run. I wrote about the race a few weeks ago. It was a great experience. I ran 31:58 and finished 426 out of 1436. I finished 252 out of 603 men, and 51 out of 103 in my division (men, ages 30-39.) You can see all the results here. To see my official results, put in bib #1101. I was thrilled with the results! Here are some pictures of me running and of my family cheering me on.

This was my first race, and running in a race is a lot different than just running on your own each morning. Of course there's traffic -- passing slower runners and being passed by faster runners. For me it's easier running on a course that I know well. That makes it easier to keep a steady pace. I was also a little sore after the race, which surprised me. I run 5 miles each morning, so why would a 3.1 mile run make me sore? It wasn't the pace, since I've actually run slightly faster 3 mile splits at the start of my 5 mile run than I ran yesterday. I think maybe it's just the difference of running on the sidewalk vs. running on the road. Who knows?

So what's next? There were tons of people handing out things after the finish line. I had no idea what that was all about and was so tired that it took me a minute to process. Most of the people were handing fliers -- fliers for running clubs and other races in the area. I took a couple, and one was for The Human Race, in Mountain View on May 13. My sister Jeana will be in town visiting then, so it's great timing. I will probably run the 5K, and shoot for a time under 30 minutes.

Three Years in Iraq

A little over three years ago now, the United States invaded Iraq. I remember all too well where I was when it happened. I was flying to Las Vegas to enjoy the opening weekend of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament with my old college buddies. It was my first time flying on JetBlue, and thus I got to watch CNN live as the invasion began. Or at least "Shock and Awe" began.

It was a sobering event to happen on what was otherwise a really fun trip. My friends and I did our share of gambling, I got to lose some money on the University of Florida. Iraq kept coming up in conversations over dinner or while enjoying drinks at the Bellagio. I have an interesting mix of liberal and conservative friends, but they definitely lean right as a group. My main point of contention that weekend was that the US was not being honest about why we were invading Iraq. We all knew already that Iraq did not have WMDs. I was willing to concede that maybe invading Iraq was still justified, but I just hated that we were lying about why we were doing it.

The problem is that when your leaders are lying about their reasons, you really have to wonder about their true reasons. Maybe those reasons are still good, but what if they are not? If these reasons are kept secret, don't you have to suspect that there's something not so good about them?

That line of thought leads you into Michael Moore-land. Was President Bush just looking for any excuse to invade Iraq, maybe for reasons of revenge? Was this simply an attempt to secure oil, caused by a perception of instability in Saudi Arabia after 9/11 (most of the terrorist were from Saudi Arabia after all)? Or was this part of some grand neo-con plan to "introduce" democracy and capitalism into the Middle East?

I'm not saying any one of those things is correct. My point is that to some degree, you must entertain such theories because of President Bush's dishonesty. As for Iraq today, and the mess we are in ... I'm not going to claim to know what to do now. Just because we may have had less than noble reasons for invading does not necessarily mean that withdrawing now would be the right thing to do. It seems like nobody thought twice about the US's decision to keep a unified Iraq, despite its internal conflicts. It hardly seemed very democratic, telling people that they had to be part of the same country and they had no choice about it. Again it makes you wonder about the motivation, since clearly a unified Iraq is easier to pump oil out of.

If a full blown civil war breaks out (has it already?) can the US keep claiming that everyone it shoots is a terrorist? The sins of this invasion just keep growing and growing. It is reminiscent of the Cold War, where the US again and again let strategic goals (containment of Communism) caused it to back dictators (and future terrorists!) and thus creating more support for the very thing (Communism) that it was trying to prevent. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or a social scientist for that matter) to figure out that the US presence in Iraq has certainly driven more people to the suicide-bombing-is-endorsed brand of Islam. What would have to happen for President Bush to decide to pull out our troops? If the answer is "nothing could cause that" then we certainly are in a lot of trouble for a lot of years to come.

Google Finance

Google's new financial site, Google Finance has been covered by many today. It is widely billed as an answer to Yahoo's very successful Yahoo! Finance site. Many people like it's neato features, like the flash charts and liberal use of AJAX. Others are disappointed since it doesn't really offer much that Yahoo doesn't already offer. Personally I like it, and for one simple reasons. Ads. Or the lack of ads, I should say. I hate all the ads cluttering up Yahoo Finance. It has those brokerage ads and the big ads on the side, ugh. You have to imagine that even if Google does start mixing in ads, they will be done similar to search ads or ads in GMail. So right there, advantage Google. I also like Google's attempt to correlate news and movements in stock price. Maybe the SEC should like at this data for a company and start investigations whenever they see significant stock movement without news or anticipation of news... Speaking of Google, I finally got my Google Pages account. I'll need to play with that and maybe move my homepage off Comcast.

Searching for Mt. Hamilton

That past month or so in the Bay Area has been cold and wet. One of the few nice things about such weather is the snow it puts on top of many mountains in the Bay Area. I used to live near one of the big mountains out here, Mt. Diablo, in the East Bay. There was never too much snow on it in the two years I lived near it. Now I live in San Jose, and the mountains down have gotten a lot of snow this winter. It's fascinating for me to see the snow covered peaks in the distance. Snow covered mountains are quite novel to a native Floridian.

On the local news I've seen stories on people taking their kids up into the mountains to play in the snow. That sounds like something that might be fun to do one day when my kids are older. Just for kicks, I thought I might figure out how much of a drive it was up to the highest peak in the South Bay, Mt. Hamilton. There are so many great mapping tools on the web now, it should be easy to get directions to a local landmark.

Or that's what I thought. I immediately went to local.google.com and searched for mt hamilton near san jose. The results are terrible. Look at the top result, Mt. Hamilton Grange. Egads. What's worse is that none of the results are even all that close (geographically) to Mt. Hamilton. They're all businesses and what not, so of course they're not up on the mountain.

So I tried Yahoo local. Its results were basically the same, still terrible. I even tried MSN, err Windows Live Local. It was just as bad. Then I realized that Mt. Hamilton is a mountain. It does not sell anything. Thus search engines don't really care about it, at least not the local variety.

Now if you just search on Google for Mt. Hamilton, you find much more relevant results. Of course you don't find directions to it, which was the whole point.

All is not lost though. Luckily I already knew about the observatory on top of Mt. Hamilton, Lick Observatory. A search for Lick Observatory near San Jose produces similarly bad results on Google Local. However, a similar search on Yahoo! produces much better results.

So alas you can find directions to non-commercially viable locations, it's just not easy. Perhaps Google Earth is better suited for something like this, I haven't tried it. The search guys need to address this. I'm sure I'm not the only person to ever search for a mountain, or a beach, or a lake with the intent of getting directions to said landmark. If a search engine is good for that, then I'm a lot more likely to use that same search engine to look for directions to a resteraunt, car dealership, etc.

Technorati Tags: search, local search, google, yahoo

The Race Is On

I'm running in my first race in a couple of weeks, The San Jose Mercury News Spring Run. There's actually three races, a 10 K race, 5k run, and a 5k walk. I thought about doing the 10K, since that's closer to the distance I run each morning, but figured I would just do the 5k run since it is my first race. My top goal is not to come in last and/or be beaten by people in the 5k walk. Beyond that, I'd like to run a time of around 30 minutes. I've ran some 7-8 minute miles during my morning runs, but have concentrated much more on distance than speed. So I'll be happy with something in the low 30-minute range. The race is less than three weeks away, so hopefully these winter storms will clear out by then...

The Katrina Video

By now I'm sure you've seen the Katrina video, showing President Bush being briefed on the eve of Hurricane Katrina's landfall. As this article from the San Jose Mercury points out, this video suddenly forces us to reconsider who was at fault. Most people blamed then-FEMA directory Michael Brown, but the video sure makes him look a lot better. He seems to be the only top official who is really worried and trying to do anything about the impending disaster. Nope, it sure looks like his boss, Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff , and of course the "I'm in the middle of yet another vacation" President Bush, are the ones to blame.
It's incredible to watch Bush just sit there and say nothing through the whole thing. Now one might say that he is taking it all in and thinking hard about what to do, but that's not the impression I got. He seems very passive and disinterested, and maybe even annoyed that he has to sit through all of this. Many are pointing out that the video contradicts the President's statements about how nobody could have foreseen the levees breaking in New Orleans, since he is told in the video that that is exactly what's going to happen. That just seems to be more evidence that he really wasn't paying attention in this video. It's not that he was told and then lied about it. He was told, but wasn't listening and thus did not remember that he was told.


Technorati Tags: politics, katrina

EIT?

  This morning I saw this article on News.com: Europe aims for its own MIT | CNET News.com. Now of course I was immediately annoyed by the title. Why take aim at the world's #2 tech school, why not shoot for #1? Then after reading the article, I realized that the EU does not mention MIT at all, so its inclusion in the title (though not the body) of the article is simply the ignorance of the article's author, Jo Best. Or maybe it's not ignorance, just typical lowest-common-denominator/pop-culture, i.e. MIT is to higher learning as McDonald's is to fine dining.
  Anyways, after reading the article, I couldn't help but be amazed that the EU would really entertain such a foolish idea. Do they think that the great American colleges are a product of government sponsorship? Obviously they have noticed that universities often work with private industries, but they don't do that because of some government commission "encouraging" then to do so. American universities are not run by some government commission. This is just another classic example of central planning vs. free enterprise, and we've all seen what wins out there.

Instant Classic

Super Bowl XL is an Instant Classic. Ok, so not really. It was actually a pretty poorly played game in most ways. Last year's Super Bowl was really pretty good, except for Donovan McNabb falling apart at the end of the game and forgetting how to run a hurry up offense. The year before, New England over Carolina, was outstanding. So I guess we were due for a bit of a clunker. It's amazing that Ben Roethlisberger and Troy Polamalu could both play so badly and yet The Steelers won. The truth is that Pittsburgh has a lot more playmakers on their team, and that depth was really the difference.
Pittsburgh deserved it, no doubt. They got lucky against Cincy, with Carson Palmer going down to injury. I really don't think they would have won that game had Palmer not gone down so early in the game. Kitna had decent success, especially at first, so it's easy to "extrapolate" a big passing game for Palmer. They were certainly used to Pittsburgh's pressure defense. So they got lucky. However, The Steelers played great against both Indianapolis and Denver. Of course they still needed a little bit of good luck (Vanderjagt's missed FG) to counter the bad luck (Bettis fumble,) but they definitely out-played Indianapolis -- who was clearly the best team in the regular season. They played up to the same level against Denver, and crushed them. If they had played anywhere near that yesterday, it would have been more like 42-3 or so.
Without Polamalu's usual explosiveness and with Joey Porter contained by Walter Jones (which I didn't think would happen, but did,) Seattle could really execute the offense. Yet they just kept choking away points. Penalties in the end-zone, missed field goals, bad clock management, etc. I would have been ready to jump off The Space Needle if I was a Seahawks fan. They should have been up by at least 10 at halftime, and the game would have been radically different.
I don't think Roethlisberger's thumb was bothering him yesterday, I think he was just really nervous. And he doesn't have a coach who knows how to calm down a young quarterback. It's the same thing that happened against New England in the AFC Championship a year ago. Bill Cowher is a good coach, but one would have to say that Mike Holmgren could have probably done a better job getting Roethlisberger to play well yesterday. Big Ben certainly has the ability, as he demonstrated against Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Denver. You could just the adrenaline going crazy in him, with him taking on tacklers and throwing hard blocks.
Luckily for him it didn't matter. Big plays from Willie Parker and Hines Ward were more than enough to beat a Seattle team that could not put points on the board despite being able to move the ball pretty much at will.

Side Note 1: It was a good game for ex-Florida Gators. Darrell Jackson played even better than his stats, with two touchdowns taken off the board. Max Starks was also solid for Pittsburgh, throwing a key block on Willie Parker's score. Only bad spot was Maquand Manuel, who had played well for Seattle this year, filling in for Ken Hamlin. Manuel actually was playing pretty well until he got injured in the first quarter and did not return.

Side Note 2: I did not realize until yesterday that Mike Holmgren used to coach at Oak Grove High School. I run by Oak Grove HS every morning, as it's about two miles from my house. I knew that Holmgren grew in San Francisco, but did not know he had coached high school football in San Jose before moving on to BYU.

Stern Pirates

I saw a piece on TV this morning and read this article about people pirating episodes of Howard Stern's radio show on P2P networks. Nothing here is surprising. Of course people are going to pirate Stern's broadcasts. Of course Sirius is having a fit and promising to go after the pirates. It all begs the question, haven't we learned anything?
Look at the evolution of the original Napster, Kazaa, and now iTunes. People want to download music, they don't care about laws (Napster.) Shutting down one distribution method for this does no good as other, more efficient ones replace it (Kazaa.) The only way to really combat this is to offer the same thing legally and for a low price (iTunes.)
So the obvious thing that Sirius should do is offer Stern's shows on iTunes. They should offer them on a show-by-show basis for the iTunes standard of $0.99. In addition to that, they could offer a subscription via iTunes podcasts for say $15 per month. First off, anybody who regularly listened to Stern would spend way more money going this route than paying $13 per month for a Sirius subscription. They'd be paying more for less, since the $13 gets you a lot more than just Stern's four hours in the morning. So it's hard to see how they would be hurting themselves with this move. Additionally, it would let people taste-test Stern on Sirius. These are people who would never throw down the money for a Sirius setup and sign a subscription. However, some of those people are bound to do just that after taste-testing Stern on Sirius (assuming Stern is as entertaining as Sirius and the $500M they are paying him think he is.) So it should actually boost Sirius subscription rates in the long run. Finally, people have shown that if you give them a legal, low price option, they will pay for it over the illegal free option. Apple is closing in on a billion song sales on iTunes after all.

Bloc Party

I picked up Silent Alarm by Bloc Party this weekend. It's an immediately catchy record. Lots of great rhythms and guitar riffs. It's easy to see why they've been compared a lot to Franz Ferdinand. I think Silent Alarm is actually a much better record than either of Franz Ferdinand's records. That's mostly because of the production. Bloc Party sounds much more modern than Franz. They also have a lot more machismo and that can be good thing.
Anyways if you're a fan of guitar-driven, alterna-rock a la Jane's Addiction or Built to Spill, definitely give a listen to Bloc Party. Actually the record really reminds me a lot of Radiohead's The Bends. A lot of times Brits don't like to take themselves too seriously, but Bloc Party definitely pulls it off.

Scottie Pippen Bitter About Kobe's 81

Scottie Pippen's never really been known as somebody you'd call "admirable." Nobody can ever forget the playoff game where he refused to play because the last play of the game was drawn up for Toni Kukoc instead of Pippen. Scottie did some blogging for the NBA on Kobe Bryant's recent 81 point game. I was amazed by how classless Scottie is in the article. Actually I guess that shouldn't amaze me. What's amazing is that the NBA allowed it on their site.
The article basically claims that NBA teams don't play defense anymore. Actually I think an exact quote is that "Today defense is no longer part of the game." This is the most ridiculous statement. The NBA saw a steady decline of scoring in the 90s. Why? Partly because players were drafted more on physical talent than shooting skill, thus overall shooting skills declined. But what do you do with such players? You teach them to play defense. It's a heck of a lot easier than teaching them to shoot.
You could see this starting in the college game first. Pressure defenses really became the norm in the mid-90s. This definitely became the case with the NBA, too. Over the years the NBA has changed the rules in some ways, to try to promote more offense. Now why would the NBA do this if "defense is no longer part of the game?" Obviously if things were like the mid-80s, then they would definitely not try to help offensive players by changing the rules.
So have the rules changes created a league devoid of defense? That's hard to argue given all the recent NBA champions. Detroit and San Antonio are both outstanding defensive teams and have been for years. Before their rein, the league was dominated by the Shaq n' Kobe Lakers. They were coached by Phil Jackson -- the same Phil Jackson who coached Scottie Pippen and the defensive-minded Chicago Bulls. Did Phil just forget about defense while coaching the Lakers? I think not. One of the teams that challenged the Lakers during their run was the Sacramento Kings. They really became serious contenders once they started playing great defense.
So why did Scottie make such a ridiculous statement? Because he needed some ammo to claim that his old buddy Michael Jordan could have scored 81 today. In fact he claims that Michael could have scored 100 today. In fact he says "If Kobe could get 81, I think Michael could get 100 in today's game." Well guess what, there's no if about Kobe scoring 81. Anyways, he goes on to claim that with the lack of defense in the game that he wouldn't be surprised to see players averaging 40 points a night. Way to put down not only Kobe, but every other great scorer out there like Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, and Amare Stoudemire.
Then he goes on to claim that he thinks Phil Jackson will do everything in his power to make sure that Kobe doesn't have a game like that again. He claims that it's bad for the team. Was it bad for the Bulls all the times that Michael Jordan scored 50 or 60 points? He says that Kobe has taken a step backwards from a leadership perspective because he scored 81 in a game, since now Kobe should score 81 points a night and the Lakers should win 75% of their games.
The whole thing reminds of when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were making their magical run at 61 home runs. You had guys like Mike Schmidt bitterly claiming that if only they had played in the current era, they would have hit 75 home runs per year. It's amazing that great players from the past feel the need to belittle great accomplishments by current players. There's no reason to do it, except for their own insecurities and jealousy.

Impeach Bush (Seriously)

Yeah I know I sound like any random person from the Bay Area. However, after reading this article, I am really convinced that The President has gone too far. One of the things that the article touches, but I think is critical is exactly who was wiretapped without a warrant. The article points out that the law in question, FISA, allows for immediate wiretaps without a warrant, as long as a warrant is obtained within three days. It has been used over 10,000 times in the past 28 years with only four warrants turned down. Think about that only 4 out of 10,000 have been turned. It allows for immediate wiretaps in critical situations.
So can anyone really imagine a scenario where a wiretap is needed, but somebody decides that FISA will only get in the way? Hold on, let me rephrase that. Can anyone imagine a legitimate scenario where a wiretap is needed, but FISA will get in the way? For me, it's really hard to imagine such a scenario. So let's make the following logical generalization:

If a wiretap is needed for national security, FISA will not get in the way.

Certainly statistical evidence seems to support this. Do the math, 10K warrants in 28 years is basically one warrant per day via FISA. The odds of a warrant being turned down is < 4/10K ~= 0.04%. I don't have more detailed data, but one would guess that such a small number over so many data points is statistically insignificant, i.e. it is statistically equivalent to 0. Thus our logical generalization. So the contrapositive of statement is:

FISA will get in the way if a wiretap is not needed for national security.

Now we have a scenario where one would want to avoid FISA. Such a scenario not only implies corruption and abuse of power, but really begs the question of just what information was being sought in these unwarranted wiretaps? In the best case, maybe the government was wiretapping any Muslim who called the middle east. In the worst case, maybe the government was wiretapping people in the press or political adversaries. When there is no oversight, we just don't know and anything is really possible. Sure they can claim that the needs for the wiretaps was legit, but that does not make any sense (see above logical statements.)
That is why this practice must be stopped. It must go to the courts and it must be stopped. Further, the people responsible, and that definitely includes President Bush, must be held accountable. They broke the law and they must be punished for it. For a sitting President, that means impeachment.

Weekend Cycling

This turned out to be a good weekend for cycling. I've been cycling a couple of days a week now since I got my bike for Christmas. I expanded my routes a good bit this weekend. First up, I wanted to explore the Guadalupe River Trail. In my trip planning, I found a great site called Gmaps Pedometer. Here's the route I traveled Saturday. I took the trail out to Lake Almaden. It was very cool. Here's a picture I took with my new cell phone:



That's not Lake Almaden, it's one of the ponds north of it on the trail. As you can see it was an overcast day. It was misty early in the morning, so I didn't hit the road until the around 1:30 PM. Over nine miles on the route, definitely the farthest I've biked so far.
On Sunday, I biked a shorter route up past the hillcap area in San Jose. As the name implies, this route took me up a hill. If you click on the route link and turn on the Elevation feature, you'll see that it's about a 180 foot climb up the hill. It's actually more gradual than Google makes it look. Anywyas, that's a fun route. I plan on biking it during the week, and maybe heading over to the river trail on weekends.

Can You Hear Me Now?

My wife and I are long-time Sprint cell phone customers. Well actually, we were long-time Sprint customers. My wife wanted to upgrade her phone, which she had had for 2.5 years, but after getting some not-so-friendly treatment from Sprint, we decided it was time to switch carriers. So we decided on Verzion, because we liked their phones.
The phone I bought from Verizon is the Samsung SCH-A950. This is the phone that was being touted for awhile as "The MP3 Maestro." It's supposed to combine some iPod functionality into a cell phone. That was an interesting plus to me, but I mostly bought it because it had a good camera (1.3 MP,) EV-DO enabled, and was Bluetooth capable (albeit only for headsets and handsfree operation) for just $99. The music playing was a plus, though I did like that it could take a microSD expansion card.
So far I am very pleased with the phone. Reception is good. It seems to never show more than 2-3 bars, but the sound is great and I've had no dropped calls using it all over San Jose, Campbell, and Sunnyvale. Battery life seems so-so, but I think that's because I've been using a lot of the extras, like the camera, web browser, and yes the music player. The camera is good as expected, though it is a little slow when you use its highest setting, 1280x960. The phone has two speakers for listening to music. Of course they're not that great for rocking out to your favorite songs, but they make for outstanding ringtone speakers.
As for the music player ... well you might have noticed that I said music player, not MP3 player. The phone does not play MP3s. Its capable and did so with an earlier firmware version, but not with the current. It seems that Verizon disable MP3 playing when they added the ability to buy/download songs from Verizon's music store. My phone was running the latest firmware, so it had never had the ability to play MP3s.
This is annoying. Verizon is somewhat notorious for disabling certain features on phones in order to push people to use their premium services. This seems to be another case of this. This is probably why they cripple the Bluetooth capibilities of their phones.
So I could buy songs for $2 a pop from Verizon and play them on my phone. To do this, I also need a $15/month VCAST subscription. Another alternative was to buy a USB cable for my phone, buy songs on my computer, and then sync them to my phone using Windows Media Player. Going this route, the songs are only $1 instead of $2. If you do the sync, WMP will allow MP3s to be synced to your phone. It doesn't actually transfer MP3s to your phone, but instead converts them to WMA files and copies the WMA files to your phone.
So with all this knowledge, I came up with a slightly different solution. I have not bought the USB cable. I probably will, but didn't want to just yet. I did buy a 128 MB microSD card on eBay for $5. The price was too good not to buy it. I already had a card reader for use with my digital camera. So I plugged the microSD card into the card reader (after I had used the card in my phone, so that my phone could set up its directory structure on the card.)
Now when I opened WMP and chose to sync, it gave me the option of syncing to the card. Very nice! I did not want to go the MP3-WMA conversion route, so I just took a CD ("Is This It" by The Strokes) and ripped it to WMA. I put the new tracks in my sync list and executed the sync. Voila!
One problem, though... WMP doesn't really know where to put the files and the phone looks for them in a particular location (the "MY_MUSIC" folder.) So I opened the card up in Windows Explorer, and it had put everything in the root directory. I moved the files there to the MY_MUSIC folder, and transferred the card back to my phone. My phone saw the files and I could play them with no problem. Now I just need to get some 2.5mm headphones...

Cycling in 2006

My wife bought me a bicycle for Christmas. Here's a picture of me with it:
She got it for me to give me some variety in my exercise routine. Currently I run three miles, four days a week. Now I plan to run three days and bike three days.
It's an awesome gift, and totally unexpected. However, it's my first bike since college. I've been riding it around my neighborhood in San Jose. The city has a lot of bike lanes. In many cases, these lanes are not next to the shoulder, but about a car's width off the shoulder. Why? So that there's room to park on the shoulder. The net effect of having a bike lane plus parking room between the right lane and the shoulder is that a lot of people use this space as a turn lane. So needless to say, this can be very nerve wracking to a newbie rider.
So one thing I'm looking forward to is riding the bike on bike trails at some of the many parks in San Jose. I just need to get some kind of device for my car, so I can transport my bike to one of these parks. I've heard there's a nice one near Lake Almaden, which is just a few miles from my house. I'm really looking forward to that, especially once the weather dries up and warms up.