Ed’s corner of the web

A tennis buddy of mine gets season tickets to BC basketball.  He’s kind enough to share the games with a few friends.  This last season I had the opportunity to watch, among other games, BC vs. Harvard.  It wasn’t a hyped-up match for obvious reasons, but boy was I ever glad I went.  I had the privilege of watching Harvard’s senior guard, Jeremy Lin, light up BC for 25 points in a 74-67 win for the Crimson (the second straight).  This was just a couple days after Lin shot for 30 points against UConn (UConn!) in a close loss that wasn’t supposed to be close at all.

BC basketball fans are tepid when winning, but this night they were downright listless and grumpy.  They had to watch a less-talented, barely noticed, underdog Harvard team put on a clinic of teamwork and scrappiness that put the Eagles to shame.  Despite my MIT roots, Lin’s personal display of excellence had me cheering and hooting loudly for Harvard from the stands.  I damn near rushed the court (and would’ve been all by myself had I done so) when the final buzzer rang. 

A few days later, I looked up some info on the kid.  No less than ESPN.com had a really nice piece on him.  Son of a 5’6″ Taiwanese immigrant who came to the States for a PhD in computer engineering.  Hours of practice in the local YMCA.  Lauded high school player who led his Palo Alto High team to a Division II state championship, followed by multiple player of the year honors.  Somehow overlooked by collegiate Div I teams offering scholarships.  Whispered questions about the role his race played in this snubbing.  Enters Harvard, which doesn’t offer athletic scholarships, for the opportunity to play Div I ball. 

It’s hard not to root for a story line like that.  You can imagine my pleasure, then, when I found out via Carisa that the Golden State Warriors declared that they would sign Lin.  Apparently he’d kicked a fair bit of butt during summer league games, even showing John Wall a thing or three.  Congrats, Jeremy – I’ll be rooting for you.

Clayton caught by the paparazzi

Two Sundays ago our MIT photography class took a trip to NYC to do some street shooting, see a couple museum exhibits, and meet Clayton Patterson.  (I know I haven’t written anything about the photography class yet – more on that later.)  For the uninitiated – of which I was a member not more than two weeks ago – Clayton Patterson is a little hard to encapsulate into a couple sentences.  He’s a prodigious street photographer/videographer, documentarian/historian, defender of the arts and artists’ rights, social activist, longtime resident of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and a bit of a countercultural icon.  I still have trouble wrapping my head around him, which I usually take as a good sign of the depth of a person’s character.  (Learn more about him here, here, and here.)

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This is the last part I’m posting.  As in other parts, there is some particularly incisive sociopolitical analysis.  I also get the impression that the Facebook crowd has a particularly skewed view of this situation.   

On Monday I vacated my premises and moved in with a family friend on the outskirts of Bangkok. Wednesday, Bangkok burned. Last minute negotiations failed and gov’t troops started their crackdown at dawn. The protestors didn’t really have a chance against the armored vehicles and by noon security forces were just 100 meters away from the main protest stage. The remaining red leaders decided to save the lives of the protestors and turned themselves in, asking the crowd to go home. Many of them were in tears. And then all hell broke loose. Hardcore elements vowed to fight on and they initiated a well organized arson attack on Bangkok. Major shopping malls in downtown Bangkok were set ablaze; firefighters and medics were shot at to keep them from helping. Protestors took refuge in the nearby temple and rumors spread they would be shot if they left. Anti government protestors from around the country than came out of the woodworks, far from the center of Bangkok, vandalism and arson spread to beyond the red zone. Things have finally quieted down and I just have too many thoughts to share.
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I noticed a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road sitting in the small book exchange in the adult hospitalists’ office a couple Thursdays ago.  I grabbed it on a whim, the book being fresh on my mind from an article in Outside magazine.  I picked at it over the next day, and then in a 200-page, late-night reading binge until 1:30 am on Saturday night/Sunday morning, I finished it. I blame it on the lack of chapters – too hard to find a good stopping point. It wasn’t the cheeriest book in the world, but clearly that didn’t stop me from enjoying it. I’ve been picking away at an H.P. Lovecraft anthology on my Kindle over the last few weeks, and I have to say that I found The Road much more terror-inducing than Cthulu, Nyarlathotep, and friends.  Perhaps this is because the speculative setting of The Road is too possible for comfort, and that the evil forces in McCormack’s work come not from a supernatural source, but from people who could be our neighbors.

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The peak of the action in Bangkok is old news now, but the perspective that my friend provided on the whole situation is – I think – still very interesting.  Read and ponder:

I got out this afternoon, details of my exit below for those not on my Facebook. To answer [redacted]‘s questions. The streets are empty at night as the Army and unknown snipers shoot indiscriminately. But thats mostly south of where my condo is. The street I am on is actually fairly quiet, it parallels the main red camp, but there’s minimal action on the road, its sort of, the eye of the storm. As for the US Embassy, they are notoriously useless for any such matter, much complaint for their cold, bureaucratic handling of the Boxer Day Tsunami, plus they bill you massively for anything they do. On the utilities front, the Thai gov’t has ordered the telecom agencies to shut service to the central protest zones, but only 2 of the 4 operators have complied. This is a major source of irony as the two who shut down service are the companies bought by foreigners a few years ago, while the two still in service are Thai private and gov’t owned. One of the services that shut down was AIS, which was Thaksin’s telecom conglomerate that he sold to the Singaporeans (a deal I am not proud to be apart of) which sparked the coup that ousted him. The yellow shirts caused a public outcry that Thaksin was selling a strategic national asset to a foreigner and has threatened national security (ignoring the fact that 6 months prior, DTAC, owned by a Bangkok elite family was sold to the Norwegians). The gov’t also tried to shut down water and power, but due complaints of local residents, that order was rescinded. And that pretty much sums up the Thai gov’t, they announced measures that are poorly thought out, only having to retract them hours later.
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Since 1932, Thailand has had something like 17 different constitutions.  As one can imagine, if you take your eye off of Thai politics for a second, you fall behind.  The last few years have been especially tumultuous, with coups, dissolutions of government, accusations of corruption, airport sit-in’s, and what-have-you.

Many of you closely followed the latest goings-on in Bangkok a couple weeks ago.  I watched with particular interest since I have a good friend living there currently.  As it turns out, he was very close to all the action – a little too close, if you ask me.

Try as I might, on my own I wasn’t able to really dig deeper beyond the superficial facts of the protests.  CNN, BBC, and other news organizations were annoyingly undetailed about the political and cultural underpinnings of the protests.  I felt unsatisfied.  The comment sections of the various news sites hinted at the emotions seething underneath the distanced, objective facade of the news, but that taste was all I had.  At least, that was all I had until my friend wrote a sizeable missive that went out via email to a circle of his friends.  With his permission, I’ve pasted his message below, minus elements that could identify him or localize him.  Granted, it’s only one view, but it’s the best I’ve had so far into this whole conflict.  I hope you find it interesting.

Some of you may have noticed Bangkok in the news, and since i’m barricaded in my room, I thought I would send out an update… Continue Reading »

I’ve heard of taking timed exposures as long as several hours, and even I myself have done exposures as long as several minutes, but this guy takes the cake with his six month exposure tracking the sun’s path from June to December.  He didn’t need no stinkin’ fancy SLR, either.  This was done using a tin can and a sheet of photographic paper.  Super cool.  (Help My Physics via Gizmodo)

Today was my first ever session at Bikram Yoga.  For the uninitiated, Bikram Yoga distinguishes itself from other forms of yoga by being higher in intensity (just as ashtanga is higher intensity than hatha) and taking place in a room heated to 105 degrees.  Yeah – wow.  I went at the behest of a good friend, who is an enthusiastic participant and big believer in Bikram Yoga.

I’ll ignore, for the moment, some of the more ridiculous claims that came up during the course of the session – detoxifying through sweating, “massaging your pancreas” with certain poses, and savasana “corpse” pose being more restful than eight hours of sleep.  These are laughably woo-tastic (I’m sure those yoga instructors still sleep in their beds at night), and I don’ t think any reasonable person – my yoga friend included – lends them any significant degree of credence.  I would’ve given at least a dubious huff when these ridiculous claims were aired, but I was too busy lying on my back trying to get my heart rate to come down while keeping the sweat out of my eyes.

This brings me to a more interesting claim of Bikram Yoga proponents.  Apparently the heat and the accompanying elevated heart rate allow one to burn an incredible number of calories during a typical 90 minute session.  One Bikram website calculates my personal expenditure to be 1100-1200 calories for 90 minutes.  A brief look around the web revealed similar claims – anywhere from 600-1000 calories per session.  This was simply too good to be true, but lacking the means to immediately falsify this claim, I had to do some digging.

Lacking access to a physiology lab and experimental volunteers, I had to turn to Google.  I expected the usual minefield of misinformed, baseless claims, and the web did not disappoint.  A large number of pages (usually devoted to quick weight loss secrets) tried to address the question of whether merely being in a hot environment causes you to burn more calories.  On the surface, this is not an unreasonable idea.  When you get hot, your body has to expend energy trying to cool itself.  Your sweat glands excrete sweat, and your heart rate elevates as it pumps more blood to your skin and periphery where it can be cooled.  The effect, however, is not anything to write home about.  The  L.A. Times reports that sitting on your butt in front of the TV for 20 minutes burns 23 calories.  Plop that butt into a jacuzzi, though, and the number rises to – wait for it – 34 calories.

“But wait!” some say, “I’ve worn my heart rate monitor during my Bikram Yoga class, and it says I burn a gazillion calories!”  Unfortunately, what these people don’t know is that heart rate monitors calculate calorie expenditure using formulas based on weight and heart rate (some better ones use height, gender, and age).  They assume that if your heart rate is up, it’s up because of exercise.  If your ticker is pounding away just because of that triple espresso, it’ll think you’re running on a treadmill and give you credit for calories you didn’t really burn.  So a heart rate monitor worn during Bikram yoga is giving you unearned credit just for being in a hot room with your heart having to work harder to keep you cool.

Carisa believes that the propagation of misinformation on Bikram Yoga can be partially attributed to the failure of science education, and I’m inclined to agree.  Perusing a Bikram Yoga thread on a fitness message board only serves to reinforce this notion, as misinformed, woo-filled posts drown out the attempts at reasoned, fact-based argument.  And this is one of the better threads out there.  Don’t get me wrong; I think there are a lot of benefits to be had from yoga – flexibility and improved balance to name a couple.  I personally hope to do more yoga in the future.  But I think that bogus claims like these don’t help anyone (save for those who profit from the falsehood) and ultimately only discredit any of the real benefits yoga might have.

Wow.  What a game.  What a magnificent, tight, hard-fought game.  It was a fitting end to one of the best, if not the best, NCAA tournaments I can remember.

I can’t count how many times I thought Duke was about to break the game open, put it out of reach.  Scheyer, Smith, and Singler all had chances late in the second half.  But that breakaway never happened, because the swarming, physical defense of Butler wouldn’t allow it.

At the same time, Duke didn’t exactly go away, either.  They continued to grind out a trickle of points, scrambling around to find that hint of an opening.  The monolith that is Brian Zoubek continued to pound the boards and alter shots.

And so it came down, fittingly, to one final possession.  Duke gambled by purposely missing Zoubek’s second free-throw.  The real-life Jimmy Chitwood, Gordon Hayward (Oh crap!  Not Hayward!), pulled down the rebound and brought the ball upcourt.  After a crushing pick by Matt Howard, Singler was on the floor and Hayward had an open look.  The ball went up, hit the glass, and caromed off the front of the rim, just a shade too strong.  Game over.

I hate to bring up the cliche’ that it’s sad that there has to be a loser, but I can’t think of a more fitting time than this.  This Butler team was awesome.  Tough doesn’t even begin to describe them.  I think the handful of people worldwide who rooted for Duke last night would all have said that they would’ve rooted for Butler had the opposing team been different.  They have a great school, great coach, and great players all tied up in a made-for-movie story.  They proved without a doubt that they belonged on that court last night.  (And as added props, they went to class yesterday!)  Consider for a moment, now, that four of its five starters could return next year.  Oh yeah – they’ll be back.

I hope people are better able now to recognize the value of certain things, like building a team of devoted – although perhaps less talented – players instead of a squad of one-and-dones (ie. Kentucky).  A personal thank-you goes to Brian Zoubek, who toughed out years of nagging injuries and questions of why he wouldn’t transfer and found true excellence and redemption in his senior year.

I hope people can realize that budget and facilities aren’t everything, or even anything close.  Butler’s budget is something like one eighth the size of Duke’s.

I hope this puts to rest the tired, petty notion that Duke gets favored status from the refs.  I don’t think any reasonable observer of the West Virginia game and the Butler game could say the the officiating favored one side over the other.  But then again, this favored status myth goes beyond reason.

I hope CBS pulls its head out of its ass and stops using that stupid high moving camera angle.  This is not The Matrix, and this is not an amusement park ride designed to make you nauseous.  The traditional, stationary side-view is the only camera angle you need 98% of the time.  And this year’s “One Shining Moment” – WTF?  Try including some actual footage of the two finalists next time instead of focusing on the singer.

Lastly, I hope college basketball fans everywhere feel a sense of honor returning to the game.  This is how it should be, with widespread parity between teams, thrilling tournament games, and things like teamwork, leadership, toughness, and heart trumping flash and money.  Butler’s run to the final has righted this small corner of the universe.  I’m happy for Duke and their fourth national championship, and I’m also happy for college basketball.

First of all, a little context.  There’s this friendly outdoor cat that lives on a road close to us where we often walk on or way to and from the T stop.  He’s all black, and his collar has a tag with the Batman symbol.  Naturally, I’ve taken to calling him Batcat.  Then I come across the photo below, and I realize that there’s more than one Batcat…