The Beatles Complete

I am one for epic quests. We celebrated Tim Marzullo's 30th birthday this past Friday by playing Beatles Rockband. Tim is another for epic quests and adventures and instead of randomly picking songs, he decided that we were going to play all the songs, album by album in chronological order. After toasting to some fine Sonoma Merlot, we began to play at around eight in the evening.

I was introduced to the Beatles by my first guitar teacher at the age of 13. One day, after he had been teaching us for a few months he asked my brother and me if we listened to the Beatles. We both shook our heads and said that we never heard of them, much less listened to the songs about the Beatles. He made no response and the look on his face was beyond shock. That anyone would be so ignorant about the greatest band ever was a sort of cosmic error that needed to be immediately rectified. I think he came the very next day to drop a compilation album and either it was my brother or I who asked, "Are they pretty good?". All he said was, "Listen" and left.

I still remember that the first song on Side A was "Love Me Do". The wonderful and loud harmonica intro followed by three thumps on the drums and Lennon-McCartney singing "love, love me do" in unison. I was hooked. I listened to the whole album without a break and I wondered what was I thinking not to have checked them out before. They were awesome! This was the time when most people (including myself) were listening to Bryan Adams. It was that and learning to play an instrument that really got me started into collecting and listening to music.

From that point, I wandered forward and backward in time. My head literally exploded in the next year with all the sounds of the 60s and 70s. Everyone starts their musical exploration at some starting point, a place which is sooner or later forgotten. My starting point has been the Beatles, which has remained as a sort of a center which I return to no matter how far I travel. Every time when I return to them I always find something new and interesting that increases my appreciation for their genius.

Rockband and Guitar Hero dumb down of the effort required to play a real instrument (See old post). Does this inspire people to really take up learning to play? or is it a cop-out from actually learning one. For a party game, Rockband is great. The simplicity does make it inclusive and levels the playing field for musicians and non-musicians. My own experience of listening to some of the songs that I had not heard before, or not listened to very carefully, made me want to go back and learn to play them.

We finally got done at one in the morning. We had made it through every single one of the 45 Beatles Rockband songs and number of bottles of beer and wine. It has inspired another epic quest: to listen to all the Beatles albums in chronological order starting from Please Please Me (1963) through Let It Be (1970).

----
Beatles fans often declare allegiance to either the McCartney-is-better camp or Lennon-is-better camp. That is indeed silly. What I do wish is that the under-appreciated songwriting skills of Ringo Starr are given a nod. I absolutely loved this song, it got stuck in my head over the weekend.

For a Dollar more

It was pouring all day and I decided to do the unholiest of unholies which is to drive to work. I got there, parked and then made my way to the parking meter and decided to pay. The meter maids in Ann Arbor are pretty diligent about dishing out the parking tickets.

At the parking meter some people needed help. They did not know how the machine worked. It takes credit cards and cash and has a bunch of options. I was glad to help. In the meantime, more people showed up and were waiting behind me which included my advisor.

When it was my turn, as I never have cash I had no option but to use my credit card. The machine just would not accept my credit card and like most places won't take American Express (there go my Delta skymiles). I tried this three times and the machine would not obey my commands. Given my masterful support performance a few minutes earlier, people in line knew that I was no newbie at the machine. It truly did not work. I said loudly, " Damn, this machine won't work. I have no cash". Then the girl behind me asked me, "Do you need a dollar?". That was pretty embarrassing. I said thanks and said that I would prefer to borrow the dollar from my advisor who was in line behind her. I was thinking that borrowing a dollar from someone I know is better than from a complete stranger.

My advisor Daryl pulled out dollar and responded with a priceless remark.
"I have been supporting this guy for years. What's a dollar more?"

Quiz master for the week

Dinesh Krithivasan has done a stellar job for over 300+ questions, posting one almost every day on the U M Quizblog: http://umqc.blogspot.com/. While he recharges his batteries, I will be running the questions for a week or two.

Googling is encouraged (though I doubt where it will get you for today's question). It's a homage to quizzing in an oblique way. For those who worked out the answer already - you know what I mean.

Pew Science Quiz

Excellent post by Raghu K. on the results of the Pew Science quiz. He wrote a longer article in the Michigan Daily.

Among the scientists polled, 87 percent think evolution is true and 84 percent agree that human activity is the cause of global warming, whereas the corresponding numbers among the public are 32 and 49, respectively.

Surveys like the Pew study are useful in alerting us to differences in opinion between scientists and the public, especially on scientific issues. It’s crucial that these divides be bridged to improve the quality of debate on social issues.

I took the Pew Science Quiz and got all the questions right(wipes brow an breathes sign of relief!)

Yes, Word was and still is with God.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." John 1:1-5

MS Word crashed about half a dozen times and it really put the Apostle John's quote in perspective for me. Everyone knows MS products are crap. Of course the worst among them has to be MS Word. I learned my lesson a few years ago and stopped using Word for anything longer than 2 pages. LATEX combined with WinEdt works splendidly and I have written most of my work using it. The real advantage is that it has never crashed and thus I have never had to scream in frustration.

I do have nice things to say about Notepad which I do use frequently and it is perfectly adequate for most things. Microsoft, as my friend put it, is not a software company, but a standards company. You use it not because it is good, but because everyone else uses it. For the millions out there, if the damn thing crashes, you know MS WORD is still with God. Only he knows its mysterious ways. For the rest of us it's CTRL-ALT-DEL.

Pounce and Bounce

A veteran quizzer once told me that quizzing was not so much about knowing stuff, but was more about entertainment and having fun. I disagreed at that point thinking that such a remark was an act of high treason. Over the years, I have realised that quizzing is not a knowledge test. If it were so then quizzes would be like exams - timed and written. A written and timed test is the fairest way to judge who knows the most. All teams get the same questions, no question of order or luck. The team/person that got the highest number of correct answers would walk home with the prize. That's not the point, is it? The point is to have fun.

Over the years, people have obsessed over the best format that minimizes luck and ensures that the team that knows the most (read: best) wins. Quizzing innovations is an activity which has almost become a kind of cottage industry among quizzers with time on their hands. I am about to add more to that body of literature. That being said IMHO, my experience suggests that there is no point looking for the Holy Grail of a perfect format. A good quiz depends on ensuring three simple things in order of importance:

a) The format should be the 'modified infinite bounds with a midway reversal'.
All questions have equal points, the next question to the team to the left/right of the team that answered it. If the question is unanswered then the original teams gets the next question. Order reverses halfway during the quiz.

b) A long quiz.
I think for 5-6 teams there should be at least >40 questions. A factor of 10 is ideal. Even the old system of rounds with pass-direct questions (full points for direct, and half for a pass question) would be okay provided the quiz was long enough.

c) Questions, questions, questions.
The greatest evil is not the format, or the order, or marking scheme -- but bad questions. If questions are set correctly, spread over different topics evenly, and are of similar difficulty then the quiz will be fair and the best team 'should' win.

In practice, luck and order does play somewhat of a role even in the modified infinite bounds format, though b) should take care of it to some extent. The critical issue is to normalize questions in some fashion. Why normalize? Each quizmaster (QM) has his/her own personal strength (read: fetish) and quizzes as a result tend towards personal idiosyncrasies. The good QM is diligent about this and goes about setting questions keeping in mind those biases (knowing the QM and his/her strengths can help you work out the answer, cause you can guess what he/she knows, and how he/she sets questions). One way to do it, as is usually done for big quizzes, is to have two or more question-setters with divergent interests.

Despite the best intentions of the QM(s): all questions are not equal, some are more equal than others. A QM may think that a question is reasonably difficult, but may turn out to be a sitter. On the other hand, some questions are way too tough and end up being unanswered. Personally, if more than 10-15% of questions end up this way then the QM did a bad job. You cannot go about an weigh each question for difficulty.

The other aspect is that there should be some drama, some element of excitement in a quiz. I am a fan of 'buzzer-rounds' which have fallen out of favour in recent times. It provided that adrenalin-rush and rewarded quick recall and reflexes which are sadly missing from the current slow-cooking style. The current trend is away from the fireworks and some quizzes have written components at the start. This is bad, bad, bad.

Long story short. I tried out two innovations at the quizclub. Each team was given two wildcards to allow them to Pounce or Bounce a question.

Pounce: You can attempt a question out of turn. The team has to write down the question or tell the quizmaster before the question is attempted by any of the other teams in regular fashion. There are no negatives and a correct answer get full points.

Bounce: You can bounce a question to the team of your choice. If team doesn't answer it correctly they get -(full points), and if they do answer it correctly they get the full points. Regardless of the outcome, the team bouncing gets the next question.

The rationale behind the Pounce rule was to ensure that sitters can attempted by all. In the past, with great difficulty I have resisted urges to destroy the chair I was sitting on, or strangling the person who smirks when handed a sitter as a direct while I was left wringing my hands in despair. Often, close quizzes are decided on the basis of which team got slightly easier questions. This is where the Pounce comes in. Jump in on question out-of-queue. Grab a sitter. Of course, a team can misjudge the opponents knowledge and would end up with the question in the regular course of events.

The rationale behind the Bounce rule is to induce some excitement and additionally serves as a handicap for the obviously better team(s). There are always going to be a few questions that seem so unreasonable and tough that no one can answer them and a weaker team can either direct it towards the strongest team, or to their closest rival to level the playing field. Of course, if a team is really good and they can actually answer the question that seemed 'too tough' then all the better for them.

Innovations in practice:
This weekend when I tried these out and found the results mixed. No one team used the Bounce rule. They all played too nice, perhaps fearing retribution. The Pounce rule was used by all teams to good effect. Only once out of six times did a team not answer the question correctly. In all six cases, the team would not have got the question in the regular order and judged the moment of 'pouncing' correctly.

This was the casual Saturday quiz and not the best testing ground when there were only three teams and no one was too worried about winning or losing as there was nothing at stake. I curious to see how this works out in a longer, larger quiz more at stake. These rules do favour teams that can fake emotions of knowing or not knowing answers depending on the situation. A tight quiz can almost be like a poker game.
You can sometimes work out the answer being seeing who knows it.

Update:
See analysis of the Infinite Bounds on the BCQC blog that waxes philosophical on this topic. Looking for the link to a list of the more innovative formats proposed. Anyone?

Cross-listed on BCQC's quiz blog.

The wise man

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
-Robertson Davies

This quote was too long for twitter which is the ideal sort of thing for this kind of stuff. Cutting the quote into two tweets would not be fair.

Wonderful insight. A mad notion is more dangerous than being chased by a mad woman - I can buy that.

Party Politics

I don't like people. Which is why I don't understand racism. Of all the things that you could hate someone for, you are going to go with 'color'?
-Shalom Auslander (quoted approximately) in today's episode of This American Life

Unlike Mr. Auslander (interesting name for a misanthrope!), I do like people. Usually it's hard for me to shut up up at parties, but occasionally I do listen and it's just as much fun. Of course, at parties where people know only a few other people, everyone is being very nice and polite to each other. It's supposedly called the 'cocktail party' syndrome. Though, I think that actually having cocktails would loosen a few tongues. Since this party was a high school graduation party, coupled with the fact that it was for an Indian kid, the alcohol was securely locked up. In any case, Indians are not so much into drinking as they are into eating. There was good food and plenty of it!

*
It's always too late when you realize how good you really had it. I was trying to pass myself off as a student and heaping more food onto my plate when someone blew my cover. Suddenly, I had to stop eating and say something intelligent. I surprised myself, given the short notice, that I managed to say something a few profound sentences, throw some technical terms and then went back to my eating. Personal Rule Never, never disclose your dissertation title or topic voluntarily. No one is that interested. The only people who ask you about your PhD topic are the ones who have similar degrees themselves, or are potential aspirants for one. The rest of humanity screams, "You didn't have to. You had me at Dr.?" The biggest bummer has been to lose my 'student' status. Suddenly, prices for conferences, movies, museums, and even the gym have gone up. You are expected to 'grow up', start wearing nice clothes, and stop pretending to be a starving student. Paradise Lost!

**
Cricket has a slight emasculating quality that does not really qualify it as a sport, IMHO. I enjoyed cricket and played it often. It's really impossible to avoid. My style of batting was 'hit out or get out' and thus extremely suicidal. I almost always got out being caught off a mis-hit, never bowled. There were a few times that I was run-out and it was because of some turd of a person at the other end who wouldn't risk it. I stopped following cricket after I got here. There are ways and means to play and follow cricket, but the sport did not have that sort of attraction for me that I would bother waking up at odd hours, or attempt to download some obscure software to watch bootlegs. Now an Indian not showing adequate enthusiasm for cricket are possible grounds for loss of citizenship, or at least the love of your friends.

The talk at the party was mercifully not about cricket (which I didn't know anything about), but about Indian politics. Like cricket, this interest was also abandoned after I landed in Columbia, a.k.a. the home of the brave and free. It seemed rather peculiar that Indian expats love to talk about Indian politics even after embracing American citizenship. At this party, I did not hear American or even world politics being discussed at all. It seems odd that while most Indians vote Democrat, their visions and views of Indian politics and policy are so much like the Republican agenda. It is bewildering to keep track of the sudden shifts and current math of coalition politics. Given my lack on interest in Indian cricket or politics, I am one strike away from losing my status as an Indian citizen. I am wondering what's gonna be the third strike.

We are not in Vienna, anymore Dorothy!

The abuse is finally showing. My body has been lately rebelling against coffee and I have to limit my intake to one cup a day. Oddly, the un(in)dependence from coffee has coincided with my graduating. Having switched to tea as the post-prandial drink of choice, I bravely discover the brand new world of tea.

Apart from region of origin, coffee is mostly coffee. The variety in coffee drinks comes from the method of combination and preparation. The basic tea leaf comes in more varieties than coffee. If you manage to stumble into one of the specialized tea houses like (eg: Argo tea) your problem won't be deciding between a grande or venti, but in deciding whether you want to have the South American matte or hibiscus tea. The choices are bewildering and it takes a while to develop a taste for the more exotic varieties.

Starbucks, the bellwether of the coffee industry, has recently reported to indulge in some stealthy, sneaky practices. In my opinion it's not so much the local coffee shop, but public tastes have shifted to tea. Coffee shops aren't as hip as they used to be. My own anecdotal observation supports more new tea-houses in Ann Arbor than coffee shops. The self-respecting hipster would rather be caught drinking tea than sipping a latte.

Personally, drinking tea from a bag is quicker and less messier than brewing coffee, especially an espresso shot. Of course, the right way to make tea is to brew it fresh with tea leaves and not use tea-bags. I treat this as coffee rehab, so nothing fancy.

Next year's trend: lemonade and energy-drink bars.

Classical Convention

Today's issue of the BBC magazine describes proper clapping etiquette:
To Clap or Not To Clap.

At a rock concert it is considered acceptable to applaud like a maniac, whoop, holler, punch the air, and even shout "rock 'n' roll" at the end of every song, should you see fit. But this is not the case in the world of classical music. You will find aficionados who sneer at "those people who clap after every movement". And the Time Out listing magazine's classical editor Jonathan Lennie has caused a minor kerfuffle in this rarefied world by going one step further and criticising those people who clap the microsecond a concert is over. In an open letter to the "Loud Clapping Man Who Sits Behind Me At Concerts", Lennie wrote: "Having sat through a long and profound work, why do you have to start making a racket as soon as you perceive it to be over?"
... He insists that for some sombre pieces, a period of dignified silence after the last note is played is essential to appreciation.

These conventions have been around for a while and as Alex Ross points out(New Yorker article) most of these conventions are bourgeois inventions. They made classical music such a class act in the middle of the 19th century. He quotes James Johnson’s “Listening in Paris,” describing a typical night at the Paris Opéra in the years before the French Revolution:

While most were in their places by the end of the first act, the continuous movement and low din of conversation never really stopped. Lackeys and young bachelors milled about in the crowded and often boisterous parterre, the floor-level pit to which only men were admitted. Princes of the blood and dukes visited among themselves in the highly visible first-row boxes. Worldly abbés chatted happily with ladies in jewels on the second level, occasionally earning indecent shouts from the parterre when their conversation turned too cordial. And lovers sought the dim heights of the third balcony—the paradise—away from the probing lorgnettes.

He further writes:

In other words, the opera served mainly as a playground for the aristocracy. The nobles often possessed considerable musical knowledge, but they refrained from paying overt attention to what the musicians were doing. Indeed, silent listening in the modern sense was deemed déclassé. Johnson quotes a nobleman writing, “There is nothing so damnable as listening to a work like a street merchant or some provincial just off the boat.”

And to think of all that clamor about clapping at the right moment.

Novel Use of Cap and Trade

After this morning's 9am weekly lab meeting, I think it's time to adopt the 'cap and trade' idea used for carbon credits to discussions and questions during lab meetings. The idea occurred to me as someone droned on and on for the umpteenth time with impunity. There are always people who fear too silence, especially their own, during a meeting. They feel obliged to say something no matter how irrelevant or tangential it may be to the question at hand. Then there are those who take an unbearably long time to report on their activities of the past week. The 3-minute timer in their heads never goes off.

I put forth a Cap and Trade Meeting format for all the efficient managers of meetings everywhere. Assuming a lab group of 12 people, we start off with everyone getting 3 questions and 5 minutes of talking time. If you feel obliged to say more or cannot control your natural enthusiasm then you have to buy 'talking time' from someone who would rather be quiet. The currency of exchange can be money, or even something arbitrary, or more useful (as in the case of the present author) a mug of coffee.

This balances fairness and freedom. You can't really avoid the noise polluters from polluting but it does provide an incentive to talk less and talk more sense as a consequence. The wonderful aspect is that perhaps there will be a time when no once wants to say a single word and everyone preserves their talk time. Ah! then that silence will be so golden. It will be a Zen moment.

Outliers - Old Wine in a New Bottle

Malcolm Gladwell has a gift for sticky phraselogy, and why not? he wrote an entire book on it. His first book The Tipping Point made 'stickiness' a new buzzword. If his first book was about how things/ideas manage to cross a threshold after which there is no looking back, his latest book Outliers is about success itself. He looks at the fundamental reasons for success.

If you don't have time to read through the 300 pages of the book, don't be alarmed. It has chiefly four points. To be successful you need:

1) To work hard (>10,000 hours at something).
2) To be at the right place at the right time.
3) To be only above average smart, but not a genius.
4) To leverage or adjust your cultural advantage/ disadvantages.

None of the above are anything but conventional wisdom. Yet, the book is an interesting read only because Gladwell is so incredibly gifted at paraphrasing the obvious and coming up with interesting examples.

The 10,000 hour rule at first seemed a very good quantification of expertise, but then you realise that it's fairly obvious. A PhD takes about 10,000 hours of work (5 years x 50 weeks/year x 40 hrs/week), and about the same amount of time if you combined an undergrad + master's degree.

Once armed with the right stuff, we all know we have to also be located at correct spot in space and time to even have a chance to grab the opportunity when it comes knocking. It's an interesting observation that being born around 1955 was a good thing for Jobs, Gates, and others as it enabled them to jump into the PC revolution. Ultimately, is this really useful? We are simply unaware what skills will be valuable in 20 years that we can prepare. It's mostly just dumb luck to a large extent that some people come out on top.

We all know that to simply be smart is not enough. This reminds me of Richard Feynman, reported to have an IQ of 124 (just above average), who joked that winning a Nobel prize was no big deal, but to do that with an average IQ of 124, now that was genius!

There is no need to waste any more ink on cultural environment and the important role that it plays in eventual success. Sometimes it makes me guilty to think about my own accident of birth. There was at least one kid running around begging for a meal, who if he had half my advantages while growing up, would have done twice as much.

Most of Gladwell's work is good journalism, but he often falls short of good science. The most astounding leap that he makes is to draw the conclusion that rice farming teaches patience that makes Asians better at math since it teaches persistence and attention to detail. There is something to be said about language and how Asian languages are more calculation-friendly in terms of syntax. But, mathematics is not just merely arithmetic. Even if we consider calculation efficiency as an indicator of math skills, it would be interesting to show that American-born Asians who don't speak their mother tongues are somehow worse at math than their Asian counterparts who do. Indian languages are perhaps syntactically worse as we have more unique words for numbers than English, yet we are pretty good calculators. Why? A quick reason is that we have large families and children have to learn to add and count fast. I dislike these 'gee-whiz' sort of explanations.

Not much love

The local independent bookstore in Ann Arbor - Shaman Drum is closing down and is selling everything at a 35% discount (really 35%, not just 'up to 35%'!). I went there last week and it was a like a a garden that was picked clean of the most beautiful flowers. I know of people who have been camping out there for days.

However, after some searching I did get a few books that I have always wanted at a nice knocked-down price and I wondered how they ever escaped the notice of the thousands of other book lovers in the City of Ann Arbor.

Shaman Drum has(d) the best and most knowledgeable staff and a great selection of books. It was a bookstore's bookstore. It's always great to have people around who can not just show you around, but also make great suggestions and tell you that your choice is excellent. Of course, good service is appreciated, but not everybody would like to pay extra for it. For a college town, it did not have such great discounts compared to Borders across the street. Perhaps, there is something fundamentally wrong in having a book-lover or music lover run a bookstore. I have yet to see them make money on a consistent basis. Either you are a lover or a seller.

When I checked out the lady at the counter packed my books in a Shaman Drum paper bag that read: "Shaman Drum Bookshop (www.shamandrum.com)" on side, and "Love your Local" on the other. Apparently, not much love for the local and independent. Like the paperbag this local, independent bookstore is going to get recycled too.

Please PISS Off!

Rafa has pulled out of Wimbledon citing tendinitis and there won't be any epic final. This is a huge disappointment to everybody. I was reading some articles on The Championship and it was pointed out that since Federer got married he has not lost a single game and is 12-0 at this point. A perfect example of idiotic sports statistic. Nothing really wrong with the observation. It's fact. The annoying aspect is the sneakiness of the implied inference. To imply that Federer has become sort of super-human after his marriage, is what I call a pathetic inference from sports stat(PISS). The writer went on to suggest that Nadal should get married to his long-time girlfriend to improve his record.

It's almost impossible to watch any kind of sport w/o some appearance of these aberrant phenomena. With all kinds of data available and human tendency to find some sort of pattern in any collection of junk, our screen gets filled with these PISS facts over the course of the match. It's great to get a breakdown of the spots where the service lands, or errors on the forehand over the course of the game. These are concrete things that matter in the context of the current game, more so because they are temporally quite close to the matter at hand.

Most sports, and tennis in particular, is decided when one ball lands wide, or when one party makes a crucial error, or takes a single risky shot. He gets broken and the set is finished. At such moments, players aren't really getting any better or worse cause their former girlfriend is now his wife.

In reality, the players play and the counters count. As watchers, let us watch and spare us the PISS.

Federer and Nadal: Memento Mori

For quite a while Federer the Master lived atop a high, inaccessible peak. A life of ease. He lived even above Superlatives, above everyone who stepped on a tennis court, bathed in glorious Apollonian light. He was the supreme artist. Opponents did not quake in fear when they faced him, they just stood and let the Master do his thing. The guy was Perfection personified.

Then like in a Greek myth came along Rafa, the lion tamer from a magical island in Spain. This was a hulk whose topspin was like human dynamite. Only he dared to scale those Olympian heights. He showed that at least on the red clay he was the master of the Master. Finally, at Wimbledon in the Master's own backyard green he shattered the myth of invincibility. Youth triumphed over experience, muscle over elegance, and will over tradition. It was an old prophecy that since Federer was right-handed and dextrous, his vanquisher would be left-handed and sinister. Rafa, showed that Federer was no God, a King nevertheless, but still a mortal. The mountain was illusory; it was just a high pedestal. Rafa proved that again in the far-away Land of Oz.

Then they said that Rafa was the new King. He was born of a human mother but fathered by a God. Since then there have been two kingdoms - Federerland and Rafaistan ruled by two mighty warriors, both demi-gods. No one dared disturb the two Titans when they clashed on red, blue or green.

Since Wimbledon 2004, if you are not named 'Federer' or 'Nadal', you are not going to win any major tennis championship (They won 18 out of the last 20 Slams). With the odd exceptions during the Australian Open in 2005(Safin) and 2008(Djokovic), the Big Two have strangled everyone else.

For the last four years the French Open has been open to all players, but not for winning. You are welcome only if you are content to get the participation certificate. Of course a certain Swiss wasn't too happy to sit back and get the runner's up medal year after year. So this year, with the exit of Nadal the French Open became very interesting. Gone was the aura of Nadal's invincibility on clay. The crown rests rather lightly.

On one hand we had the rising stars and then old King, so to speak. Federer has still been a dominant force despite his losses to Nadal. But, this is a different Fed. There have been fewer and fewer easy matches, as opponents have dared to take a slug at the Master. King Federer is not that poetic master any more. His mental makeup seems more fragile (human, did anyone say)

The Murrays, Djokovics and Del Potros have been genuine contenders, Princes-in-Waiting for the final act of regicide. Then suddenly out of nowhere comes Robin Soderling, who in comparison to the new princes is like the street urchin who crashes the party and finds himself at the banquet table. I have great respect for his game and current form. This Swedish gunslinger simply unloaded on biggest baddie ever to step on the clay court. So earth-shaking was this event that the other princes in waiting got killed in their own gunfight. He later showed that this was no mere flash in the pan.

So what should King Fed do? Reward him for his giant-killing skills? or slaughter him as a proxy for his nemesis? As King Federer has looked less and less regal in recent tournaments, even Robin Soderling can fancy his chances. From the Soderling-Gonzalez game yesterday, Federer cannot be tentative. He has to step on the court like a champion. Soderling is no long distance runner. He managed to get it done, but blew a 2-0 lead and was 4-1 down in the final set in the semi. Federer is perhaps the best closer the game has seen. The only way to get Fed these days is to win the first set and then try to stay ahead. Monfils almost succeeded in his QF by keeping it tight, but then he lost it mentally and let go of the rest of the match. Soderling seems have veins that have ice in them.

The key to the game tomorrow is going to be the first set. If Federer wins the first set then I guess Soderling can bank on a also-ran, 'I did my best' refrain. However, if the Robin of Spring does win the first set, we are in for a thriller.

On a side note: When we talk of legends, we also have the soothsayers--That silvered-haired Bjorn Borg does have a black tongue. Last time he predicted quite confidently that Nadal would win both the French and the Wimbledon. This time he predicts that compatriot Soderling will go all the way. The commentators said that he sent Nadal a thank-you note to ensure that his 5-straight record was kept intact. I guess this time, Robin got a thank-you note for keeping is his 4-straight record at Rolland Garros intact.