The Mousetrap

In my best David Frost accent -
"According to the Guinness Book of World Records the Mousetrap by Dame Agatha Christie is the world's longest running play. It was first performed in 1952 at the Ambassador Theatre and is still running today at the St. Martin's theatre."

As a quizzer you tend to pick up all kinds of mostly useless information and I knew this fact before I had read any of Agatha Christie's works. The Mousetrap was a really cute Christie trap since it got me interested in reading her books, except the play in question which was hard to get hold of. Finally, I did get hold of the script and I was a little disappointed with this just-about-average Christie plot. I can imagine that the lighting, the colorful cast of characters and the eerie-in-the-context tune of the The Three Blind Mice might make a stage version more appealing, yet one would not think that this would be the story that will keep audiences entertained for 50 years. In any case, the play is a rich source of all kinds of trivia and the Wiki Page explains another question I always had - "Okay, you have the book and the play, where's the movie?"

BTW: For a long time, Guinness was more the book than the beer. Well, you live and learn.

Expose to Propose

A local naked story which might have been caused by the summer heat.

How's Life? It depends on the liver

I have already confessed . Now, since I have my a coffee machine on my desk a couple of cups a day is not uncommon. Coffee addition along with periodic depression and frustration are one of the occupational hazards of being a graduate student. In a recent trip to Pittsburgh, we wanting a quick caffeine fix so that we could stay awake during the talks. We stepped out in search of a coffee shop and I wondered, "How many minutes (seconds) does it take to wander in a college town without seeing a sign for a coffee shop?"
According to me - less than 100.
After obtaining our daily caffeine fix from the coffee machine, my labmate Tim and I often joculate (joke + speculate) if coffee drinkers will be in the position smokers find themselves today. In a few decades will studies show that excessive coffee drinking poses serious health risks? Will we ruefully say, while desperately trying to get rid of a serious coffee addiction -
"In our times everybody drank coffee. A pot of coffee a day was not uncommon. There were coffee shops on every corner and places like Starbucks were seen as cool places to hang out. Now they tell us that it is bad. Eat tofu instead."
So far, all research has shown that there are clear benefits to drinking coffee and the latest finding about coffee is even more encouraging Coffee & your Liver.

Protest, but protect yourself

If you try this at home, or in your city in addition to a helmet and a pair shoes I would highly recommend wearing bike shorts.

Inspiring story of a scientist

Please ignore the previous post. Even picking up the telephone might be rather unnecessary. This is a truly inspiring story of Theodore Hapner who has taken great risks to take the scientific method into uncharted waters ...

"Only months after abandoning a tenured position at Lehigh University, maverick chemist Theodore Hapner managed to disprove two of the three laws of thermodynamics and show that gold is a noxious gas, turning the world of scienceÂ?defined for centuries by exhaustive research, painstaking observation, and hard-won theoriesÂ?completely on its head."
(Read more...)

I would like to see such stories published in the Reader's Digest under the Stories to Inspire You section.

Academic Snake Oil

Got this in an email this morning and I would like to share it others who just might want to get on with life.

"Contact us NOW to receive your diploma within days, and start improving your life!

Bachelors, Masters, MBA and/or Doctorate (PhD)

NO ONE is turned down.
Call Now 7 days a week.

1-206-984-0002

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, with the following degrees, here is how much you can
expect to make in your lifetime:
High School Diploma: $1,100,000
Bachelors Degree: $2,100,000
Masters Degree: $2,500,000
Doctorate: $4,400,000
You Need a Better Degree, and we can Help!
Obtain degrees from Prestigious Universities based on you life experience.
NO ONE is turned down.
Call Now 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.

1-206-984-0002

Regards,
Professor. Barton Vick "

I am thinking of ordering two doctoral degrees.
Quack! Quack!

Burmese Days

See review of George Orwell's Burmese Days on the Lit. Blog

1-888-5-OPT-OUT

Another Friday afternoon; I fish in the mailbox and there is the usual pre-approved credit card application. Those folks in Wilmington, Delaware and that place in North Dakota must really love me to keep sending me this stuff again and again, often more than once a week.
I walk upstairs and enjoy the ritual of brutally ripping the envelope. It is so flattering to get these mails from them extolling my excellent financial record and my credit rating that they have made the 'simple' decision of pre-approving me for their Platinum/Gold/Rewards card with its customized clear plastic design with x % Cashback bonus/0% Intro APR/Balance Transfer. This time I saw a note at the bottom written in the fashion of the statutory warnings on cigarette packets:

You can choose to stop receiving prescreened offers of credit from us and other companies by calling toll-free 1-888-5-OPT-OUT

Really? I could be free of these people? who unfailingly find me despite the fact that I have moved 6 times in 3 years and given them no hints! (Yet, magazines that I subscribe to have not managed to implement this auto-detect mechanism. Why?) These people have persisted year after year, week after week despite the fact that I never once took up any of their offers. Now, I have the chance to be free of them forever. I almost pick up the phone to call and then hesitate.

If I take this step, there will be no more mails in the mailbox on most days. If it wasn't for them the mailman would think that I was probably dead or had moved without a forwarding address. I mean these people are the only ones who write to me in the old-fashioned way, using snail mail, and acknowledge my existence on this planet. Compared to email spam, this junk-mail is rather benign. These are people who flatter me by sending me these lovely letters and not the ones who try to demoralize me by suggesting that I need to enlarge my ___ ! Who in the world is willing to write testimonial after testimonial to my exemplary character and fiscally reponsible self? And what about all that fun of ripping open those envelopes and then gleefully chucking them in the bin? I am not quite ready to say good-bye to all that. Take me off your list... but not yet.

Update - 8th June, 2006
Not surprisingly, most folks have been irked by the junk. For more practical suggestions see: Reduce Junkmail.

The NPR Effect

Ann Arbor is full of cheapskates like myself who listen to NPR either constantly or more than necessary. As a result, in such liberal, college-town communities there is a rather strong NPR Effect. Say, you are driving around and some author is talking about his latest book. It is an interesting book and you would like to read it but,
a) You are too cheap to buy books, or
b) You have no money to buy more books, or
c) You have no space to store more books,
then the best course of action is get it from the library. BUT, if you are a couple of days late in placing a 'hold' on the book then all I can say is, "Good Luck!". I had to wait for 4 months to get Dennett's book. I have already waited 2 months for Michael Pollan's latest book - The Omnivore's Dilemma(I was 83/110 at one point). A large part of the blame rest on NPR's shoulders for this delayed gratification. Reading books from the library can be edifying in more ways than one.

Advice from Langston Hughes

For me, birthdays and New Year's Day are the days on which to pay heed to utterly common and unoriginal pieces of advice. This time: Read more poetry. Why? Last night, I discovered this gem by Langston Hughes and realized how the poem provides an answer in an oblique way:

Advice

Folks, I'm telling you,
Birthing is hard
And Dying is mean
So get yourself
Some loving in between.

- Langston Hughes

100 Things To Do Before You Die - Vol. 2

Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans
- John Lennon

Last year I made a List of 100 Things To do Before you Die. Actually, there aren't a 100 things on the list. It is easy to come up with a sexy, catchy title like that, but it's much harder to actually do these things. Over the past year, I have earnestly tried to get to some of the items on the list and it takes a lot more planning, effort and persistence than I initially thought. Mere enthusiasm can take you only so far. Many of the items on the 100 List will take a year each to complete.

One of the things that I have really wanted to do is to complete a marathon. So last year, after finishing the Dexter-Ann Arbor half-marathon I started preparing for the Chicago marathon. My enthusiasm did get better of me. A running style might not matter much for short runs but when you run for more than hour, couple of days a week an improper technique can really hurt you. Mine wasn't right and I had hang up my running shoes and bury marathon hopes late in August. This older and wiser I shall try again.

Among other items, I thought that going through the AFI's Top 100 Movies of All Time would be easy. I checked this morning and I still have 25 movies left and I see how the Pareto principle applies - the last few i.e. older and more obscure movies are going to be difficult to track down. While seeing a movie is an investment of only 2-3 hours, a book takes lot more time but then books are more rewarding. I look at the Guardian reading list and I know that it will probably take a couple of years to complete.

While John Lennon might be right and life is short, having a list has made my life more interesting and I know it will be without any regret.

The Great Liberator

Want to run in the winter? There aren't many options. You can run outside but unless you really enjoy soaking in sweat underneath wollens you have to get special(read:expensive) winter gear. Even then there is always the risk of slipping on the ice. So the sensible and the cheap have no choice but to remain confined to the gym. In the gym the only choices you have are:
1) Run lap after lap around the track till it drives you crazy, or
2) pound the treadmill in a small room till you get soaked with sweat and die of boredom (You can contemplate on the backside of the person on the machine in front of you, but I have yet to come across one that can sustain my attention for > .25 of an hour).

So, I generally prefer the former. In any case, it is settled that running inside is rather boring. But come spring and there are the great outdoors. Just to be outside can be so liberating. The fresh air, the constantly changing scenery, the path along the river, the sound of the twigs on the trail getting crushed. What would I not give to be able to do this all year long?

For me, running outside can also be problematic. I am not sure if I have a serious running addiction, but I do know that I have a measurement fixation. Sometimes I wonder, if I run simply to collect more stats - mileage, average pace, pace for each mile, last lap time, etc. The treadmill might be boring but it's wonderful for anyone who loves exercise stats. Some stats don't make much sense but when they show up on the screen you can't help thinking - Was I burning more calories last mile? What's the elevation?

You can't have everything - scenery and stats if you are not rich enough to buy a Garmin device . In comparison, the simplistic digital watch can only tell you the total time but not how fast or how much. There is an option to run on a marked trial if you really want stats for pace per mile, distance etc., but running on the same trail day after day is like repeating the gym story once again.

That problem has been recently solved. To run, all you now need is a good pair of shoes and the - Google Pedometer. Liberation at last! I can now run wherever I want and still be able to compute most of the stats quite reliably. Of course, this webpage is extremely useful for bikers and walkers too. You might also want to use it to settle long-standing debates with people that your choice of route IS the shortest distance from Point A to Point B. The interface is a bit clunky but freedom always comes at a price.

Spring

It's spring and suddenly it feels that Ann Arbor has got a lot more people. It's the first time you get to see some of your neighbours. There is an outdoor BBQ party somewhere on my street on any given day of the week. Though it still gets a little cold in the evenings, people here want to will it away by pretending it's summer. While there is a tendency to guzzle a little more beer and have more junk food in the form of hot-dogs and burgers, there is also a tendency to bike, run and generally be outside more. Why not? Ann Arbor is at its prettiest during these few weeks. Flowers are in blossom, the tulips and other perennials are in bloom. But it rained quite a bit these past few weeks and the rain has taken the blossoms with it. Sad!

Pitt Stop - I

You can't be a grad student and claim to have never spent a wonderful spring evening in lab hunched in front of a computer eating ramen noodles. With conference deadlines looming that's how it goes. The dirty secret is that you do research not to advance science but merely go to new places. In many ways, you don't get much vacation (that you spend entire days in lab surfing the net is besides the point) - conferences ARE your vacations. If you have not got much sleep in the preceeding weeks don't count on getting any during the conference week. The day is for the talks and poster sessions and the nights till the wee hours of the morning are simply for hanging out and schmoozing. Of course, staying awake till 4 am working on a poster feels rather unfair but staying awake till 4 am in the local watering-hole feels great!

This time we ensured we were well-prepared (as well prepared as two Boy Scouts could be) to make sure that this 'vacation' would be a great one. Tim and I hired a station-wagon and packed it with two bikes, a guitar (with a Johnny Cash song-book), a digital camera, a 24-pack of beer, maps, an I-pod, two laptops and books to read in case the speakers were boring. We really felt that we were all set for the weekend workshop/conference in Pittsburgh. Yeah, we almost forgot the poster-tube. It's happened before!
We turned on the radio and On the Road Again was playing. Cool! This was going to be some trip. Thanks to the crazy rain - we were still in Ann Arbor stuck on US 23 S a few minutes into the song. It's a real dampener to embark on a road trip and find yourself 'just a little' south of town 45 minutes later. I look forward to road trips for another reason. It has become a personal rule to eat fast-food on the highway. Why? I don't eat it otherwise and I think that eating it a couple of times a year is good for the soul. Tim advised against ordering the triple-whopper with cheese since it has 2000 calories. Jeez!

Garbage In Garbage Out: How can somebody not enter the destination address correctly? Somehow, I always manage to do it. Of course, we followed the directions meticulously and we found ourselves in Pittsburgh, but downtown Pittsburgh staring into the main office of the Mellon corporation. It was raining and late at night. We had no clue where the hotel was. Tim took a random right and then went straight on led by me saying, "This seems like a good general direction". A few minutes later, we found ourselves miraculously on the very road that the hotel is located - Forbes Avenue. I told Tim, "Dude, what you worried about?" in case he had doubts about the natural GPS that I purport to have in my head.

The first thing I do in a hotel room the moment I check in is look for the remote. I don't have cable so the hotel is where I indulge in one of the top 5 favorite activities of males around the world - channel surfing. It is so empowering to have absolute control. It's great to live a posh lifestyle for a few days. All your meals are cooked for you, the pillows are super-soft and someone ELSE makes your bed! A few bowls of ramen now and then go a long way.

Save Our Blogs Redux

Many moons ago, I posted about this. I repeat myself.

At some point you might want to save the pearls that you cast before swine. The last thing you want is to wake up one morning and find that the blogging service has hijacked your blog and now demands a huge ransom. I am not that paranoid about www.blogger.com doing that now that it is owned by Google.Inc but still it is nice to have your blogs. To avoid the pain of doing CTRL+C and CTRL+V over and over again, I wrote a little Perl script to achieve this objective. Hopefully, it will help you and fulfill my long-harbored-but-never-expressed, deep altruistic feelings.

Update: What was I thinking?

I wrote the script more than a year ago and it recently occurred to me that I had replaced one pain with another. Since installing PERL and run it can be a pain for most people, I created a stand-alone executable (for Windows only) of the script. Now you have to simply run the sob.exe program.

Modifications and added functionality to the original script are more than welcome, since right now it has rather limited support.
Save your blog script and .exe