Mark's Blog

I was cleaning the house Saturday afternoon and tuned into the NDP leadership convention on CBC by mistake. Strangely fascinated, I ended up watching a good bit of it.

The thing that really irritates me about the NDP is that implementing their policies would require a lot of money, yet their policies are almost uniformly anti-business and anti-wealth creation. I will never understand how one can continually endorse spending a lot of money without provisions for making it. You often hear the left bemoan money and capitalism, and then in the next breath call for massive public spending. News flash, it takes a lot of money to buy good health care!

Back on topic, I noticed that the CBC announcers kept on using this phrase "one person, one vote", or a variation thereof. The first time it kind of slid by me, but then they used it a few more times. I couldn't figure out why they kept on repeating this. Isn't it assumed that each voter has one vote? Finally the subject of "super-votes" is brought up, and the announcers mention that the NDP has an arrangement with labour unions so that the unions get 25% of the vote. After the vote, they do some math, and the labour votes get multiplied by some number (this year approximately 15, apparently) in order to make up the required 25%. We could debate whether or not this is a good idea (I would say no, because it seems profoundly undemocratic, but that's not my point), but why constantly repeat this completely false "one person, one vote" statement? In any case, the Canadian Alliance observer seemed fairly amused, wondering aloud to a CBC reporter what people would be saying if the Alliance gave 25% of their vote to big business.

Jack Layton, a Toronto city councillor, ended up winning the nomination on the first ballot with a healthy 53.5% of the vote. Hearing the announcer call out these fractions of a vote (to the nearest ten-thousandth), due to the voting scheme, was just a little comical. I kind of got the "limousine liberal" feeling about Layton, but that's based on nothing resembling a fact. I heard a whole lot of generalities and precious little in the way of specifics in his speech, but I'm sure he'll be able to formulate some plans as he waits a year and a half to run for office. As for the other serious candidates, Blaikie looked plain bitter throughout the proceedings, Comartin looked like he was standing in line waiting to get his driver's license renewed, and Nystrom looked resigned to political oblivion. As for the more fringe candidates, Ducasse apparently stole the show with his speech, and Meslo just kind of looked out of place.

In any case, I think everyone who's not voting Liberal will hope the NDP does well in the next election, since they are most likely to steal Liberal votes. As for me, I'm still firmly in the "Undecided" category.

I just got back from seeing Adaptation.. It's a very, very different movie, one that I'm going to be thinking about for awhile. At its most superficial, it's the story of a screenwriter who is doing the script for a movie that's based on a book. At its most complex, well, I haven't quite figured that out yet. But there are a whole lot of metaphors and symbolism and imagery and foreshadowing and all that sort of stuff that I probably would know about if I'd taken some more English classes.

The acting is extremely well done. Nicolas Cage (who I sound like, according to a co-worker) plays the above-mentioned screenwriter, as well as his identical twin brother, also a screenwriter, but a less successful one. I don't know what sort of technology is necessary to have the same guy play two roles (and they're onscreen a lot together, interacting, not 90% alternating shots and 10% obvious body doubles like the Austin Powers / Dr. Evil scenes) but it's very well done. Meryl Streep plays the author of the book, that the movie script is based on. I haven't seen much of her acting but I was impressed with this performance. Chris Cooper, who I have just learned also played Colonel Fitts in American Beauty, played the main subject of the book, a strange Florida horticulturalist with a passion for orchids (among other things). I wouldn't be too surprised if Cooper gets an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

There's a really strange mixture of fact and fiction in this movie. Some of the movie takes place on the set of Being John Malkovich, which was directed by the same director as Adaptation., Spike Jonze. There's an intriguing blend of real and fake characters, but I don't want to say too much more than that. I seem to remember a "play within a play" plot device in some Shakespeare play we did in high school, but this takes it to a whole new level.

I won't say much about the plot, in order not to spoil it. It's one of those movies you almost can't criticize, since if you do, someone will probably point out that it was intentional, and that was the whole point of the movie and you end up looking dumb.

I've cast my 9 on IMDB already, but the more I think about it the more I like it. It's at worst a "high" 9 (that's a little inside joke for those of you who've seen the movie...) and it's real close to a 10 in my book. Who knows, maybe I'll change my vote tomorrow.

I think I've gotten an RSS 0.92 feed working for my blog. So feel free to point your news aggregator (such as Amphetadesk) to my blog. I basically followed some very helpful advice and everything looks as it should. I've also added a link to the current entry on my home page.

Anyway, things I do when I should really be getting some sleep tend to go wrong, so if this doesn't work, please leave me a comment!

I tuned in for tonight's episode of the new "reality" (as if 20 girls vying to date an apparent multi-millionaire bears any resemblance to reality) show, Joe Millionaire. As most people out there in TV-land know by now, the show is a dating show similar to "The Bachelor", only this time there's a twist: the guy is really a construction worker earning $19,000 a year (not the recipient of a $50,000,000 inheritance as the girls are told). As usual, I was entertained for some unknown reason. What is it that draws us in to Survivor, Big Brother, Amazing Race, Beg Borrow or Deal, Fear Factor and all the rest? Some say it is a fad but I'll wager that reality shows will not be going away any time soon. Survivor 6 is starting up in a few weeks and every couple of months some new reality show or other starts up. In essence, they're just live action game shows. The game show genre has been around for a long time so I see no reason for reality TV to suddenly go the way of the Passenger Pigeon.

Back to the show: with five girls remaining, "Joe" (real name Evan Marriott, although for some reason they're calling him Evan Wallace) was able to take each of the out on a one-on-one date, for the first time. They went to various places in Paris including the Eiffel Tower, Moulin Rouge and for a boat ride on the Seine River and he made his usual empty comments. Frankly, this guy doesn't seem all that bright. The conversations usually alternate between the banal and awkward silences and there is frighteningly little introspection. Joe also slipped up, referring to "driving a bulldozer three weeks ago", but he covered that up by quickly saying it was 2 years ago. I don't think Zora really suspected anything at the time though. Anyway, the four remaining contestants are Zora (who I thought he would boot, given her general disinterest in him, but I think he thinks they have something in common -- maybe their lack of wealth?), Sarah (who I think he lusts for the most), Melissa M (who I think he thinks he has the most chemistry with) and Melissa Jo, a.k.a. "Mojo" (who I think he thinks is gold-digging, as if they all aren't).

As they do with anyone in the public eye, The Smoking Gun has turned their watchful gaze to Joe Millionaire, dredging up some of his modelling pictures as well as an unpaid traffic violation. Last but not least, there's a lengthy Usenet post alleging Joe is a gay escort, which pays substantially more than $19,000 a year. Who knows what the truth is... and for viewers I'm sure that's part of the appeal.

Update (2003/03/28): This blog entry appears to have gotten a number of extra hits due to my original misspelling in the title, "Joe Millionare" instead of the correct, and now changed, "Joe Millionaire". Anyway, as you probably know by know, Zora and "Joe" (i.e. Evan) are not an item, and by the sounds of it, never were.

Apparently major league baseball owners are going to agree with Bud Selig and make it so that the league that wins the annual All-Star game gets home-field advantage in the World Series. I really dislike this idea. In no other sport does the all-star game have any bearing on actual league play -- it is an exhibition game, after all. Worse still, the prize appears to be fairly significant, since the last eight World Series that have gone to game 7 have been won by the home team.

Assume the Yankees and Braves players start "trying" some more. Big deal. The Rangers, Expos and Devil Rays players still have no extra incentive to win.

I think it's insulting to the players to force some sort of "meaning" to the game. All-star games have always been an excuse to showcase the top players and reward a city, often one with a new stadium. So what if they aren't trying 100% all the time. Their allegiance is to their team, not the all-star team.

It also raises the issue of managerial strategies for the game and would create an inordinate amount of second-guessing if something strange were to happen.

If Major League Baseball is looking for some ways to spice up the game, how about inviting the best players, rather than enforcing a quota system (one player per team). How about possibly changing the rules for substitutions in the game, so there are no weak excuses when the game is tied after 11 innings?

The current system of rotating it year-by-year between the American League and National League is fair, if arbitrary. Apparently giving it to the team with the better regular-season record is impractical because of scheduling issues. That sounds suspiciously like an excuse to me, but it could be true.

I'll close off with a quick plug for Aaron's Baseball Blog, a very-frequently updated blog by a Twins fan. I stop by every day or two and he always has quality articles.

I haven't blogged for a few days so I'll write few words about Spammunition, a Microsoft Outlook plugin for (surprise!) catching spam. Spammunition is still in beta, but I've been using this program for the last three weeks or so, and aside from a couple of bugs (which I emailed the author about) it's behaved very well and caught a large percentage of my spam. It can also function as a sort of mail-filtering tool for those office emails that are deleted half a second after they are opened.

Spammunition uses a Bayesian filtering approach, which uses statistics to calculate the probability of a particular email being spam, based on the words that appear in that email, and the probability that those words are in either known spam emails or known non-spam emails. Spammunition is remarkably accurate after very little training. If it all sounds a bit technical, let me assure you that you never need to know what is going on in the background in order to use the software. The concept for the software was originally from the much-quoted article by Paul Graham, A Plan for Spam.

Spammunition has some very neat features, including a "Show Analysis" option, which shows you the probability that the software thinks a given email is spam, and also shows you a list of the most interesting words in the email, for the purposes of spam detection. There is also a subject and email address whitelist so you can ensure that certain pieces of mail do not get filtered out. In practice, however, this has not seemed at all necessary.

Time for a little movie review catch-up.

I saw Chicago last weekend. It's a musical starring Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere. It's really the story of Roxie Hart, Zellweger's character, who ends up in jail for shooting her lover and becomes something of a celebrity as her lawyer, Billy Flynn (Gere) works her defense. Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones) is a jealous star dancer who's also in jail. I liked the songs a lot; I will probably end up buying the soundtrack when it comes out. The costumes, settings and production of the movie were very well done. I gave it an 8 on IMDB. I suspect it might garner a few Oscar nominations, although it wasn't one of my favorite movies of the year (I'll do my virtual Oscar ballot a little closer to the time). There didn't seem much wrong with the movie, although I felt the story dragged a bit in the second half.

Sunday night I checked out Gangs of New York, the much-anticipated Scorsese flick. Gangs is a sweeping period action movie that maybe takes itself too seriously at times, but was still extremely entertaining. I could write about a number of things but the one standout thing for me was the acting of Daniel Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis seems to make a complete transformation to "Bill the Butcher", the leader of the "Natives" (non-immigrants) who collects tribute from seemingly half of the city. I'm fully expecting he will receive a Best Actor nomination and possibly an Oscar for this role. Gangs drags at times, being nearly a 3-hour epic, but I enjoyed almost all of it. As for the other stars, Leonardo DiCaprio was solid as usual as Amsterdam Vellon, the son of a priest killed by Bill the Butcher, and leader of a gang of immigrants opposing the Natives. However, I didn't quite think Cameron Diaz was a good casting choice. She gave her Jenny Everdeane (a pickpocket) character a bit too much of a modern personality, somehow. The movie is rather violent, although that didn't faze me. It was apparently based on real events and I'd be interested to read a bit more on the subject. I gave the movie a 9 on IMDB. It probably would have been an 8 for me if Day-Lewis hadn't been cast as Bill the Butcher.

Next two movies in the queue for me to see are Catch Me If You Can and Adaptation..

Wow. Just finished watching the Fiesta Bowl, the American college football championship. What a terrific game. The Ohio State University Buckeyes beat the reigning national champions, the University of Miami Hurricanes, 31-24. I was pretty sure Miami would win, but I didn't think that they would cover the spread, which was set very high at 11.5 points. I did think it would be an "under" game, but the overtime added 21 points, for a total of 55, six higher than the line of 49 points.

Often these national championship games get excessively hyped and turn out to be terrible games. This one was a happy exception. There seemed to be endless do-or-die plays from about the middle of the fourth quarter onwards. Both teams had "match point" (to borrow a tennis phrase) a half a dozen times. OSU benefitted from a questionable pass interference call against Miami in the first overtime (which actually had Miami players celebrating before the penalty was announced), but there were a seemingly endless number of potentially decisive plays both before and after that. OSU was called for a pass interference call in the second overtime, but Miami was unable to punch it into the end zone in four tries, sealing their fate.

I'm not usually a big college football fan, since it's so hard to keep track of all the teams and players, and it all changes around every year. However, I like the college game, one reason being the running backs are typically a bit more dominant than in the NFL. It usually makes for a great play when a running back gets loose in the secondary. As such, I didn't really care who won, but OSU makes a good champion. Miami had been lucky earlier this year against Florida State in the "Wide Left" game, and their 34-game winning streak was impressive enough. OSU played a very tough game and never gave up. Surprisingly, the running game wasn't really working for either team. Willis McGahee had a mediocre game, rushing for 67 yards on 20 carries before leaving with a reasonably gruesome knee injury in the fourth quarter. Maurice Clarett, the OSU freshman, had a mere 47 yards on 22 carries, although he did run for two big touchdowns, one near the end of the first half, and the other in the second overtime, which proved to be the game-winner.

I was impressed with Ken Dorsey, however I don't think he'll be a successful pro quarterback. He does seem composed under pressure and he definitely has the height, at 6' 5". I don't know if he'd be durable enough to take on NFL linemen though. His numbers were 296 yards on 28 completions in 43 attempts. He was picked off twice, one on a tip, and another where he apparently threw it straight at the OSU defender. I wasn't overly impressed with Craig Krenzel, the OSU quarterback. He somehow ran for 81 yards on 19 carries, although I don't think that was in the game plan. His passing was subpar, with 122 yards on 7-21 passing and 2 interceptions. I know a quarterback is largely evaluated on the results of his team, but I didn't see much from him. Most of the scrambling was out of desperation. He did make a nice throw on that 4th-and-14 to save the game in the first overtime though. The difference in this game, other than all of those do-or-die plays at the end of the game, was quite clearly the five Miami turnovers: two interceptions, the strip by Maurice Clarett after the interception, the Dorsey fumble and another fumble that I can't quite recall. The OSU defense was hyped a lot, and they did live up to the hype, but the Miami defense played extremely well and kept Clarett in check for most of the game. Kellen Winslow, the Miami tight end, had an exceptional game, leading all receivers with 122 yards on 11 catches. He'll be an NFL all-star for sure.

As for the infamous BCS system, it worked this year, despite itself. A five-year-old could have picked the two top teams this year. It's the years where there's four teams with one loss, and team A beat team B and team C had a harder schedule and this, that and the other. These teams all have a good argument, but it comes down to computers or voters. They need a real playoff. I know the whole bowl tradition is important, but it's about time they went to either a single-elimination tournament with either eight or preferably 16 teams. Miami last played on December 7, OSU, unbelievably, last played November 23, six weeks ago. I'm not necessarily opposed to a BCS-like system to pick some of the teams for this proposed tournament. They could give the champions of the major conferences an automatic berth, and then distribute wild cards according to either a computer ranking system or a committee, like in college basketball. Then, hold a real, multi-team playoff. This would be extremely exciting, like March Madness, stretching over four weeks in December. They could even hold all the bowls as well as this playoff during the New Year's week anyway, as they do right now. The bowls are all (except for one) meaningless anyways, so nothing would be lost. I suppose some might complain about the "student-athletes" having to play too much football, but let's drop the hypocrisy, these guys are athletes first.

Basically, this game was too close to call. Both teams could have won. They say baseball is a game of inches, but clearly this game was too. Fortunately for fans, the game we got to see was about as entertaining as it could have been. To Miami: tough luck and congratulations for a wonderful run. To OSU: congratulations for an amazing and unprecedented 14-0 season and a national championship.

Update (01/09/2003): I had originally written the Miami running back's name "MaGahee", which was incorrect so I revised it to the correct "McGahee". I'm usually pretty careful with people's names, and I'm sure I remember seeing it written "MaGahee" somewhere. Any ideas? Leave me a comment. Miami-Hurricanes.com, for example, seems to switch around spellings evey other sentence.