t a l l a p e

(If you can’t see the Youtube video embedded above, go watch it here.)

I’m not one of the fancy people who has a smoker (someday…oh yes…someday), but last weekend I stopped by the local butcher and they happened to have a rack of beef ribs for very cheap. So, I bought them, to play with them.

I made a very simple dry rub, with salt, pepper, cayenne powder, cumin, and a little bit of brown sugar, and after removing the membrane from the ribs coated them in the spices and left them in the fridge overnight.

Cooking turned out to be the easy part. No fire management, no trying to decide what kind of wood to use for the proper smoke flavor…just a 225-degree oven for 5 or 6 hours (ie, “until done”), and then eat.

Very tasty, in the end.

On a related note, I happened to stumble on a great “basics of beef ribs” page, which made my mouth water. I bet doing things the way that guy did would be even tastier (especially the wet sauce that he added at the end…mmm…). His recipe, but baking in very low heat instead of smoking, would work fine…

Mike Zarren is a Boston boy, who lived in my house at UChicago back in the day. He was my tie to home in many ways.

He now works for the Celtics, in their front office. Here’s what was posted about him on the TrueHoop blog over at ESPN:

You know Mike Zarren? Stat wizard, lifelong Celtics fan, and Danny Ainge’s right-hand man? I can see him down on the floor, in the corner. He can’t stop jumping up and down. I talked to him earlier, and he has had umpteen 20-hour days lately. Big night for him.

Mike, congratulations. I’m incredibly happy for you, and thrilled that you ended up doing exactly what you wanted to do, and thankful that you did it will.

Vincent House love, my man.

(Also, for the record, Zarren never slept in college, either, and “jumping up and down” is his natural state. Just saying.)

11:46 - They pre-filmed a “please don’t riot” commercial! And, we have our first sighting of Brian Scalabrine on the bench…now we just need Scot Pollard to show up to make the experience complete.

11:44 - Oh, one more thing. Bill Simmons, I hope your dad doesn’t actually have that heart attack you’ve been predicting for years.

11:41 - 3:10 left, 34 point lead, I’m officially going to stop writing now. It’s time to watch.

11:33 - Slaughter rule.

No, seriously, someone break out the slaughter rule.

There are deficits that can be made up, and there are deficits that cannot.

36 points, 5:07, is a “cannot”.

Something that’s exciting to me: the Celtics actually matter again! I was 6 the last time the Celtics won a world championship, and for almost the entire interim they’ve been terrible. Awful. I played basketball as a kid, but I never got into watching pro basketball at all, because it just wasn’t fun to cheer for a team that was bad year after year after year.

But this…this is fun. This is a whole city that’s psyched, absolutely pumped up, because of this team, and that’s fabulous. And they’re fun to watch!

Note to the rest of the world: yes, we’re spoiled. Over the last couple of years. But in my lifetime, these past few years are pretty unique.

11:29 - Note to the Lakers: DO NOT LEAVE RAY ALLEN STANDING BEHIND THE THREE POINT LINE ALL BY HIMSELF. It will not work.

36 point lead.

11:28 - RONDO! 21 points. Damn, yo. Maybe he can stay, huh?

The commercial for “Hancock” has been updated with shots from this game. Slick.

11:23 - Kobe isn’t on the court? What the hell? Did he get 5 more fouls when I wasn’t looking?

I believe the technical term for this is “giving up”.

(Mind you, Kobe was playing like crap. He forgot how to pass. Every possession was either the other 4 guys passing and trying to get 3’s, or Kobe dribbling around for a while until he drove to the basket or took a ridiculous falling jumper with hands in his face.)

Ray Allen hits two open three point shots, and the Celtics lead is 31. With 9:07 left, Boston has hit three digits.

11:20 - Bad pass by Vujacec, followed by a huge outlet from Brown. Someone needs to teach Farmar to grab the guy instead of pushing him in the back. Or, now that I think about it, actually, maybe not…it’s somehow fitting for this series.

11:19 - 30 points, 11:11 left in the 4th. Rondo is being very aggressive.

11:11 - If you were wondering, John Havlicek is the definition of regal. Thank you, Mark Jackson.

11:08 - Rondo with his 6th steal. The announcers said earlier that the NBA record for steals in a playoff game was 7. Woah. He’s certainly stepping it up tonight. (But he still can’t shoot.)

And Kobe comes back with the best possible example of a “I will not pass to you fools” drive.

11:05 - A few times over the past few years, I’ve been watching Pats-Colts games, usually towards the end of the 3rd quarter or the beginning of the 4th, when the Patriots have tended to look a little slow. I’ve taken to yelling at the TV at times, specifically yelling “KILL MANNING! KILL MANNING!” when the Patriots are on D.

It’s not that I actually want them to kill Peyton Manning. He’s a bit silly, but generally inoffensive. It’s more that I’m attempting from afar to convey that point that it’s time to GO. Time to play hard. Time to step it up a notch, do everything right, etc.

Right now, I want to yell some equivalent of KILL MANNING at the Celtics. They’re still up big (30 points at the timeout), but they’re not playing as hard as they were, and they’re not making choices that are as good as they were earlier.

10:56 - Garnett is stronger than Gasol, if you were wondering. That held ball was huge, if only for his confidence. Next time down the floor he goes hard to the basket.

Rondo has more offensive rebounds than the Lakers (!!!!!!!!!!)

Let me add another exclamation point to that.

!

Dude’s, like, 5′10″. He went OVER GARNETT to tip in Garnett’s miss on the last possession.

10:56 - I’m having a good time right now imagining the guys that I grew up with down in Neponset (or, more to the point, the guys that I played little league with back in Cedar Grove).

31 point game, 5:56 to go in the third quarter.

Bryant forces up a fall-away jumper from 18 feet. Poor choice.

10:48 - RONDO! I like the up-tempo game that the Celtics are playing. They’re not trying to milk the clock, they’re playing hard on both ends and trying to extend the lead instead of just sitting back and trying to play keep away.

Rondo with his fifth steal, it’s a 29-point game.

10:45 - Am I the only one who is more scared of Fisher than Kobe right now?

10:43 - Pierce starts the second half with a scoop shot. Like I said about cute.

Next time down the floor, though, good movement gets Ray Allen a totally open 3-point look.

10:36 - Stuart Scott brings back the Red Auerbach story line.

And I think that Dwayne Wade is wearing the same suit on the halftime show that he’s wearing in the T-Mobile press conference commercial. Awwwwkward.

SECOND QUARTER - Okay, here’s what I was trying to say before the end of the second quarter got ridiculous (and my heart rate is way, way up right now. Seriously. Out of control.). The Celtics look dominant at the moment. They’re running harder, they’ve gotten fantastic play from their bench (Big Baby with some good D down low, Posey being Posey). But, towards the end of the second quarter, they got a little cute. They started making one more pass than was needed. For better or worse (better now, worse later?) they got away with it. But that’s the kind of thing that worked against them — in spades — back in game 2. And that game ended up being far more exciting than it should have been when it got to the end.

The crowd has been ridiculous. The noise is crazy. I wish the announcers would let themselves be a little more into it: Gus Johnson would have had an aneurysm at the end of the second quarter, when Garnett put that floater down over Odom for the plus-one.

10:18 - Here’s what I was saying a second ago, before Kevin Garnett…never mind…Perkins with the block, down to the other end, work some time off the clock, and PERKINS TO FINISH!

10:17 - Another turnover for Kobe! And Garnett finishes huge! Holy crap!

10:16 - The Celtics are getting really, really cute.

10:13 - Right now the Lakers have 9 turnovers, with 16 Celtics points off of them. The Celts have 3 turnovers, with 4 Lakers points off of them. Along with the offensive rebounds, that’s the story right now.

And RONDO!!!!! With his 4th steal of the game…make that 10 turnovers for the Lakers…but the Celtics give it right back after a posession that featured 42 stupid passes, the first 41 of them somehow successful.

10:08 - At one point, the Celtics had 11 personal fouls, the Lakers 4. That disparity is coming together, at least.

Rondo can’t shoot. At all. I shoot better than he does. And I’m not a good shooter. But, at least they’re having to guard Rondo, and can’t just leave him to go run around like a 9 year old girl playing with a high school basketball team while his man double teams people…

10:06 - Garnett almost comes away with the steal in the backcourt. He’s tearing it up right now.

A buddy of mine from college just called. I haven’t talked to him in, oh, 2 years. I asked if I could call him back tomorrow, and then he basically hung up on me because I was way too distracted to actually have a conversation.

10:04 - It’s a 14 point game, Celts on an 11-0 run, Jackson takes another timeout. Kobe has just gone from “I’m going to win this game” mode to “I’m going to win this game all by myself or make people worship me while I go down in flames because I try to do everything all by myself” mode.

10:01 - Fisher picks up his third foul. That hurts for the Lakers. You know what hurts for the NBA? Every time they show the play where Allen took a hand to the eye, opening a cut over his nose, and no foul was called.

9:59 - Posey is a stud. Allen is still in the locker room, getting his eye looked at, though he’s apparently still alive if Michelle Tafoya’s shout is any indication. Celts fans screaming and yelling, going nuts when they see Allen coming out.

9:55 - The offensive rebound disparity is ridiculous at this point. Energy. It’s all energy. James Posey is not a big guy, but he just grabbed one in traffic. Big Baby got one immediately prior in the middle of three Lakers. Run harder than the other guys, good things happen.

9:53 - Garnett’s back; can he keep it going?

9:48 - Gorgeous fast-break basket by Leon Powe, after a terrible outlet pass. Celts are running like crazy, the Lakers are trying to make it easy, it seems. They’re getting a lot of calls, but they’re going to have to get a lot more than this if it’s going to work.

9:44 - Kobe Bryant almost comes up with a steal, I’ll give him this, he’s going to try to win this on his own if he has to.

Doc gets called for a Tech, a typical Joey Crawford call, and then Pierce drops a three. The Celtics are shooting badly, but they’re playing with a lot more energy than the Lakers (except Bryant).

9:41 - Big Baby is in the game, interesting choice considering that he hasn’t played at all in the finals. But Eddie House has things going, it seems, and if he gets his toes in the right place he could be big again.

FIRST QUARTER: things of note: Garnett is tearing it up inside; there will be no game 5. If he can keep this going for a whole game, there is no question how this one is going to end.

Bryant has gotten off to a strong start, but I’m not sure that he can keep counting on 25-foot three pointers.

Pierce has had a tough start shooting, but he’s taking it inside without fear, and the Lakers are collapsing onto him which is giving other people open looks. Though it would help if more of those people were not Rajon Rondo.

9:34 - Pierce on the board, Mark Jackson is talking shit about the crowd in LA.

9:32 - Simmons, if you ever read this, your live-blog of Game 4 was not up to snuff. This isn’t either, but really, you couldn’t do better than this?

9:31 - PJ Brown alley-oop to Garnett, and the announcers have to yell to be heard over the crowd.

9:30 - Eat more PB&J, kids. Then you’ll be as hyperactive as Kevin Garnett, as dead-eye as Ray Allen, and as hard-core as Pierce.

9:25 - Doc Rivers deep in conversation with one of the refs. Perhaps about the fact that his guys are getting drilled every time down the floor, and getting called for terrible fouls on the defensive end. Hmm.

I’m not totally credulous of the idea that the NBA fixes games. In fact, I don’t think they do. But really? This is a fairly called game? So far, I don’t think so.

But, Boston up two.

The Red Bull ad that was just on had the tagline “Red Bull gives you wiings”. I’m not sure the misspelling was intentional.

9:18 - RONDO!

9:16 - Rondo has 3 steals in 5 minutes of game time.

9:15 - “How do you break a window on a plane?” I’m glad that the commentators are on their game tonight.

9:14 - Rondo is a monster on the offensive boards. What?

9:12 - One of those kinds of games, I guess. Three phantom fouls on the Celtics early, Pierce called for a blocking foul when it should have been a charge, Garnett called for a foul when Fisher dribbles into his chest. Ridiculous. I guess maybe Simmons was right about the refs.

No, seriously. It’s really quite fantastic, and I’m looking for someone(s) to live there. 6 or 7 bedrooms, lots and lots of porch space, 3 full bathrooms, off-street parking and laundry and all kinds of good things…

http://tallape.org/rent.html

…I get mocked.

The Something Store has a simple premise: you give them $10, they send you something. Thing is, you don’t get to choose what. They just randomly select something from all of the somethings that they happen to have on hand, and send it to you.

Woah.

For most of the time that I worked for StudentUniverse, the company’s offices were in Watertown, MA, in the Arsenal on the Charles complex. Prior to my working there, the space was shared with a (now-defunct) company called ThingWorld, which employed ThingMakers to make Things. (Apparently these Things were multimedia things for the internet, I guess). I consider ThingWorld notable both as a shining example of how easy it was to get funding for an internet business in the late 90’s, and for having set a new standard in vagueness in corporate branding. That said, The Something Store may well have topped them.

For some reason, my life has been full of bacon lately.

Last weekend I played on an ultimate team that named itself “The Kevin Bacons” (it’s a pickup team, why not?).

One of the folks playing on that team brought bacon breakfast cookies to the field. (Note: bacon cookies are not a good idea.)

And then today, XKCD discussed the dangers of stove ownership.

And I found a link to a flowchart of bacon-related decision-making.

This is all very random.

And by “it’s 40″, I mean that it’s about 40 degrees outside. It’s also dark, and raining. No better time to grill up some steaks…

I have a confession to make: I sometimes watch television shows that have no particular purpose other than extolling the (apparently great) virtue and wonder of being really, really rich. It’s not intentional — the building where I work (for the next two weeks) has a number of financial firms in it, and when the markets close some of the folks who work in those firms hit the gym, and they like to watch financial news. If I get there after them, I have to go with what they’ve chosen to watch…

Because of this, though, I’ve been introduced to one of the funniest things ever: Jim Cramer.

You may remember Jim Cramer because of his well-circulated flip-out last summer.

But he really does his best work on his own show, Mad Money.

Really. Imagine, for a second, a steroid-crazed baseball player. Imagine someone giving said baseball player a very large shot of adrenaline, or some speed, or something like that. Then putting lots of flashy lights all over the place, and a bunch of buttons that make strange noises. And then asking them to talk about the economy.

There you have it. Classic comedy (or, more properly, classic Unintentional Comedy).

[Edit]: I wouldn’t have guessed that Cramer was once a reporter…but if he was going to be, it makes sense somehow that he once ran the The Harvard Crimson…

I’m playing with the tags feature (over there, on the left, in the sidebar). Just as an experiment. It means going back through my past posts and adding content-related tags to them, which is an interesting exercise…

Anyway, I’m curious what people think. Add a comment and let me know…

I’m going to be leaving my employer for the last four years, StudentUniverse, and joining going.com. I’ll be a Senior Systems Engineer for them.

It’s exciting! StudentUniverse has been good to me, but I’m looking forward to being at a smaller company, one that’s in a very different phase of its existence, and taking on some new challenges.

My last day at SU is April 16th, and I start this new thing on April 21…

(Woah…)

It’s been nearly two months since I’ve written anything here. But I’m not done. Oh, no. I’m not done.

I’ve been busy. I own one of them “automobile” things that people always talk about, and have used it to get myself out of town more than usual. Between that and time spent at work in the burbs, and time spent with Kate it’s been quite nice.

But things are brewing. Most of what’s interesting to me right now is stuff that I don’t feel like I should post right now, which is a bit of shame but will probably change soon. I hope. Because I don’t like not posting.

In other news, my sister asked me before Super Tuesday to post my thoughts on the Dem race, and I didn’t do so then. And I won’t post extended analysis now, except to say this: I really like Obama, I think he’d be a good president, and I would like to see him elected. And I dislike Hillary enough that I might actually think about voting for McCain, which is something that would have been sacrilege mere months ago. Why would I think about McCain? After losing 11 straight primaries I see one, and only one, reason that someone stays in the race: a sense of entitlement. You’ve been beaten, and you decide not to give, you do so only because you think that you somehow deserve victory. And that, to me, is the worst of the worst. I can deal with a president who has a pessimistic (and yet oddly realistic) view of Iraq, and who has skewed moral compass. But someone who feels entitled to the job? That’s the biggest knock against Bush, in my mind, looking back on it.

And with that, no more, until there’s more.

My mother e-mailed this morning, pointing me to an article by Stanley Fish titled Will the Humanities Save Us?, and a follow-up piece titled The Uses of the Humanities, Part Two. Both were published on his blog at the New York Times. My mom was curious what I thought, but the articles are very interesting, and so I thought that I would share them and my reaction to them.

Before I get into the articles themselves, I should mention that I’ve never been a particular fan of Fish and his academic work — and in fact, I’ve been openly hostile to the developments that he’s lead in literary theory. (NB: This is _NOT_ the subject of the articles. I just want to give a little background instead of throwing that out there and moving on.) He’s been an influential figure in the development and popularization of Reader-Response Criticism as a school of literary interpretation and analysis, through the concept of Interpretive Communities. This particular approach to literary theory emphasizes the role of the reader in creating the meaning of a text, which makes sense to a point. Basically, the meaning of text changes depending on the cultural lens through which it is read. It’s not a bad idea when well applied and bounded, but it’s been taken (by others, for the most part) to logical extremes that limit speech and thought. In some views, the fact that some speech could be taken badly in some other frame of reference makes that speech prima facie impermissible. (You may recognize this as being, basically, what political correctness is all about — attempting to limit language on the basis of all possible cultural contexts, in the event that any one of them may possibly be interpreted in a negative way.)

But, anyway, on to the articles.

Will the Humanities Save Us? takes on the question of justification for the humanities; why should it be pursued, why it should be funded, and why its pursuit should be looked upon favorably. Fish cites Anthony Kronman arguing that the value of the humanities is that they allow one who studies them to live a richer, fuller life — a life with meaning. Fish goes on to argue that having been in academic departments in the humanities, he can say from a position of some authority that those who spend all of their time around great books and humanistic arguments do not, in fact, lead lives that are fundamentally more meaningful than others.

Fish concludes by saying, “To the question “of what use are the humanities?”, the only honest answer is none whatsoever. And it is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said – even when it takes the form of Kronman’s inspiring cadences – diminishes the object of its supposed praise.”

In the follow-up piece, The Uses of the Humanities, Part Two, Fish extends the conclusion quoted above at some length, and responds to two further proposed justifications (provided by readers in the comments on the original, which is pretty cool when you think about it). The first of these is the argument that the humanities teach critical thinking; the second, that study of the humanities makes people more complete and more interesting. The first argument Fish counters by saying that critical thinking, while plainly a good thing, can be taught in any number of arenas (he cites watching the news, or sports talk radio, as examples). As it’s not the exclusive domain of the humanities, it can’t be a justification for the existence of the humanities. To the second argument, Fish offers a rebuttal that is essentially political (and very amusingly stated): “it won’t do as a defense society will take seriously to say, Let’s support the humanities so that Stanley Fish and his friends have more people to talk to.”

So, what do I think?

Well, I basically agree with Fish that the study of the humanities doesn’t create external value in any sense conventionally measurable. Goodness knows that I think that funding folks like Jacques Derrida is a ridiculous waste of time and energy, given the crap that he produced. (I was tempted to add Gaytari Skivak as another example, since she has managed to take apparently rather excellent thought and mangle the hell out of in everything of hers that I’ve ever read. But I imagine that there’s something out there, somewhere, that’s comprehensible, since some people seem to have figured out what she’s talking about (and I love what she’s talking about, if they’ve got it right!). Unlike Derrida, from whom I am quite confident there is not anything of any value.)

But, I think that Fish too easily dismisses the arguments raised in the comments on his first piece, and addressed in the second.

On the question of critical thinking, he is correct that something similar comes of watching and thinking about the evening news, or even listening to sports talk radio. But, the type of critical thinking being discussed is different, one that involves a different level of rigor from deep involvement with a text. It’s the critical thinking of a participant, not a recipient. It’s active, not passive. And it’s different in the humanities than in other areas of inquiry.

Once that particular skill — active, deep engagement with an idea — has been learned, it can be applied in other situations, with benefits that extend to the greater world.

I’m thinking here of my own experience, being as I’m a computer guy with a degree in Philosophy. I don’t spend my days reading essays, but I do spend my days trying to dig out the obscured meaning of coded data. Phrased another way, my job is to analyze text, even if it is formatted a little bit differently from the work of Kant or Plato (or Fish, for that matter). Because I’m coming from the humanities instead of the sciences, I’m not limited in the type of text to which I can apply this experience, in the way that many of my colleagues seem to be. These things, put together, make me a more productive and more valuable employee. I don’t know how one would measure that value, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that the value exists.

(One could argue the inverse, I suppose, that studying the humanities has resulted in my writing this blog post instead of finishing the presentation I’m giving tomorrow on Python. But I think the overall sum is positive.)

Having once taught middle school, I would say that the same is true of younger students as well. The skills, though amorphous and hard (impossible?) to quantify, once learned, do transfer.

On the question of study of the humanities making people more interesting, I’d again agree that non-stultifying dinner parties are not enough. But I wonder whether there is one additional audience that needs to be considered here: the individual himself. It seems to me that the ability to engage one’s self about the subjects of humanistic inquiry might provide some kind value to the world at large. I’m not thinking here of the “professional Professor”, if you will, but of Joe Average (and his lovely wife, Jane). I think that approaching humanistic subjects might, at some level, make Joe and Jane happy, or happier, or more productive, or more relaxed, or…

In this second case, I’m not sure how to quantify the benefit. I just have a sense that it exists.

In the end, I do agree with Fish that the primary benefit of study in the humanities is internal — the process is the reward. But I don’t think that’s the only benefit.

My mom has established her presence on the web, in a couple of different places and ways.

She has a personal blog at http://adafocer.typepad.com.

And Boston Mortgage Meltdown harkens back to her many pre-grad-school years as a real estate analyst, giving her analysis of the current credit crunch, mortgage scandals, and real estate market generally. (It turns out, by the way, that my mom knows more than almost anyone else in the whole entire world about how real estate markets work. Which is pretty cool.)

Christmas, in my family, has toned down quite a bit from the excesses of childhood. It does lead to some rather fascinating and wonderful gifts. Like Armenian brandy.

Look, ma, I’m growing up!

What happens when you take a bunch of ultimate players, and put them in New England in the winter?

Sushi. Lots and lots of sushi.

24.77 pounds of sushi eaten by 10 people, to be precise. Slightly more than a kilogram each of rice and fish.

In retrospect, it was both a very fun, and thoroughly painful experience. Fun because FNG is crazy (sort of the way that Hooch on “Scrubs” is crazy). Painful because, well…you eat 53 pieces of sushi (1.4 kg, or 3.08 lbs) and then tell me how you feel…

The photos are pretty good (and before you ask, we didn’t make baby Axel participate in the eating), but this one of Mitch probably best exemplifies the way everyone felt at the endgame…

Anyone have an experience with a checking account with no local branch?

I’m wondering because there are a couple of different companies — Schwab and ING are the two that I can think off of the top of my head — that have checking accounts available with interest rates around 4% or 4.5%. But, they both have only a single physical location (in, oh, Nevada, because of the banking laws there), and the idea is that most interactions happen over the internet or via direct deposit. In order to deposit a check, you have to mail it to them, and that strikes me as being a little weird. (They refund any ATM fees that you run up, so not having local ATMs doesn’t really influence the whole thing.)

So, I’m wondering if anyone out there has done this in the past, and if it works.