Lift Up Your Hearts!

I can rarely resist passing on good news like this.  Most reports of the benefits of chocolate, especially dark chocolate, come with all sorts of caveats that the harm done by the fat and sugar might negate the benefits of the polyphenols.  This German study, however, showed that a mere 6.3 gram daily dose of dark chocolate (another article said it was 50% cacao) had no negative effects yet resulted in a clinically significant drop in blood pressure among patients with blood pressures in the range of 130/85 to 160/100.

It's good to know my daughter is looking after my health, having given me for my birthday a 100 gram bar of 72% cacao "extra dunkle Schokolade" Swiss chocolate.  Let's see, at that dosage it should last me about 15 days....   Right!

First a confession:  We have recently gone over to the Dark Side.  That is, we joined Netflix.

Despite our firm convictions that television and movies on the whole are an assault on the mind and spirit, as well as a waste of time, we are not total Luddites and appreciate that the video medium has its good purposes.  One of which might occasionally be simply relaxing with one's family.  :)

That last purpose was getting harder and harder to accomplish, since our local video stores have moved to concentrating on the latest movies, "kiddie shows," and video games.  It's next to impossible to find good mysteries, old movies, or anything educational.  Enter Netflix.  I'm all for supporting local businesses (or even mega-businesses with a local presence), but if they won't stock anything worth renting, I'll seek out a business that does.

Which brings me to the subject of this post.  At one point—it must be a few years ago now—we discovered the TV show, Numb3rs.  I was immediately entranced and could have become {gasp} hooked on a weekly TV show, except that its 10 p.m. slot meant not getting to sleep until after 11, and no show is worth that on a regular basis.

But then we joined Netflix.  Now we have seen the entire first season of Numb3rs, and a third of the second, spread out over about three months.  I probably should wait till I've caught up with today before writing, but I won't, because right now my review is positive, and I'm always afraid the show will degenerate as so many have done.  For the same reason, I've so far avoided websites that discuss the show.  I hope I'm wrong—but the few episodes we've seen of the current season don't make me too optimistic.  Nonetheless—

(First, a very quick synopsis for those who aren't familiar with the show.  Charlie and Don Eppes are brothers.  Don is an FBI agent; Charlie is a math genius, former child prodigy, now math professor at the fictional Cal Sci—clearly modeled after Cal Tech, whose consultants help out with the show's mathematics.  Each episode of Numb3rs features Charlie and some of his Cal Sci buddies using mathematics to help the FBI solve crimes.)

I love this show! For a number of reasons, the first of which is that, unlike almost every television show I've happened upon in the last oh-so-many years, it is relatively inoffensive.  Amazingly so.  I can't turn on network television for  10 minutes without being utterly repulsed, it seems.  Considering the show is about Los Angeles, criminals, and the FBI, one could call the language unrealistic.  This is a good thing.  If I wanted to hear that kind of language, I could return to vounteering at the local high school.  As it is, I wasn't bothered, though there are still some phrases I'd rather not hear my grandchildren repeating.  It's not a show suitable for them for other reasons, anyway.

Although their are occasional sexual crimes on the show, they are dealt with reasonably.  As far as the main characters go, sexual references are there, but few and far between.  One character is revealed as having lived with someone (outside of marriage) in the past, and another briefly mentions a sexual experience, but other than that we are spared those details (so far).  In the last episode (of the first season), the FBI catches a criminal in bed with his girlfriend, but even that wasn't too bad.  This may not sound restrained, but let me assure those of you who haven't peeped in on the recent TV/movie scene, this is a major step in the right direction for Hollywood!

If a show is about crime, there will be violence, but this, too, is understated.  (The pilot is the worst of what we've seen so far, and it's still better than most crime shows.)

That's what the show is not, and I go into all that detail first because there are those reading here who would really enjoy Numb3rs who don't like unpleasant surprises.

But what makes Numb3rs such a good show?  After all, if all you want to do is avoid bad language, sexual references, and violence, you don't have to watch any show at all.

Well, for one thing, it's not just about crime; it's about family.  Charlie, Don, and their dad live together in a pleasant home.  (Don and Charlie's mother died of cancer before the first episode, which provides some poignant moments. )  Actually, Don has his own apartment, but spends a lot of time back home.  They eat together, talk together, and play games together.  (Are you beginning to see a little resemblance here to my own family?)  The father is kindly, intelligent, and wise—characteristics not often associated with fathers by today's writers.  The brothers have their issues and occasional squabbles, but they clearly love, respect, and care for one another.

But most of all, I love Numb3rs because I can relate to it.  I watch the interactions amongst the various Cal Sci professors and students and want to shout, "I know these people!"  One of the reasons I find television shows and movies boring for the most part is that they are so totally unreal, and don't intersect my world in any way.  Numb3rs is different.

When Charlie tries to explain to Don that he can't just make his brain work on anything he wants to, that he must work on the problem that his brain is pursuing at the moment, I know exactly what he means.  I'm no math genius, and I know that discipline can be bridle and bit to the mind, but I also know how much more effective and efficient I am when I can give my brain its head, so to speak, and let it run with whatever is inspiring it at the moment of inspiration and for however long the course lasts.

When he groans at interruptions I know the frustration of having to start a whole line of thinking again because it has been broken, and of losing the tenuous idea altogether.  I don't identify with his doing math while listening to blaring rock music on his headphones—but he's younger than me.  :)

I love to hear the conversations between Charlie and his friend Larry, the physicist, because they sound like people I know, and sometimes even conversations I have had.  I even get some of the jokes.  They talk about things that matter in my world.

In other words, for all its obviously fictional qualities, I find Numb3rs believable—real people, real families, real work.  That's more than I can say about the rest of Hollywood's output, even (or especially) so-called realistic drama and "reality" shows.

Not that television shows matter, really.  There are better things to do with the time.  But the human nature is such that one cannot help delighting in the feeling that someone, somewhere, understands.  Even if only a little, and even if it is a made-up TV show.

Not that it's without some common Hollywood faults.  The female main characters are all drop-dead gorgeous as well as supremely competent, and the men aren't so bad, either.  Not much reality there.  Worse, the writers, producers, directors, and actors can't seem to shake basic Hollywood assumptions any more than a fish can shake his aquatic environment.  It's easy to catch the standard liberal digs thrown in, such as the U. S. government training terrorists in Colombia, and the stupidty of the Department of Homeland Security.  Worse, although as I said the sexual subplots are (or have been so far) mimimal, there is a basic assumption that any romantic relationship naturally leads to sex and moving in together, sans marriage, of course.  It seems Hollywood finds esoteric mathematicians easier to understand than those they refer to as "red state people."

You learn a lot from the extra features on the DVD about the attitudes of the actors and directors, not all of it good.  I was pleased to learn one thing about David Krumholtz, who portrays Charlie, however:  As a young student he had to take Algebra I three times, having failed twice.  But he became interested in the math his character was doing, and attended lectures and classes to try to understand it better.  At first they needed a "hand double"—someone else to write the equations on the board—but after a while he could do his own writing.

This review has sat around for over a month waiting to be better organized, so I'm calling blogger's privilege and just publishing it as it is.  Bottom line:  Numb3rs is a crime show, with themes that I would not want to have to explain to a young person.  But with that caveat, I highly recommend it.  Especially on DVD, with commercials removed.  it's amazing how much better a story flows when it's not constantly interrupted.

UPDATE April 3, 2008  We've just finished Season Two.  I still enjoy the shows, although the season ender was weird as well as offensive and if Season 3 is consistently like that we may not make it through them all.  The show is definitely formulaic, but I like the formula, so that's not the problem.  I actually prefered it when they stuck to the math and didn't delve so much into the characters' private lives.  Well, some of that was okay—I particularly like the warm-and-fuzzy family scenes—but Hollywood's basic assumptions regarding sexual behavior ruins the romantic-interest angle for me.  Numb3rs has definitly upped the ante on the sex-violence-bad language, though it is still better than most.  Sad that they can't leave one show that's adult without being offensive!

As I mentioned earlier, it's the basic Hollywood worldview that provides most of the offense.  The last show of the second season found nothing unreasonable about dream-visitation of the living by the dead, but the presence of a Bible in someone's home noteworthy and suspicious, and a character's statement that he and his girlfriend did not believe in having sex without marriage to be so peculiar as to make him into the chief suspect.

Larry the physicist is still my favorite character, though, and it's almost worth watching just for him.  On to Season Three! 

UPDATE May 27, 2008  Season Three is done, and I'm more than a little frustrated that Season 4 is not yet available.  The last episode of Season Three had some interesting twists but even more holes and logical inconsistencies that would be fun to discuss—if I could find the one other person in the world who has watched up to the end of Season Three but none of Season Four.  I won't talk about them here for fear of doing to someone else what Netflix did to me:  Whoever wrote the synopsis for the Season Four DVDs included a serious spoiler for the previous season.  Not cool.

All that aside, what I wrote in the April 3 update still holds.  The Hollywood worldview continues to intrude.  The sex-language-violence is to the point where I can tolerate it for the sake of the whole story, but can no longer recommend the series without serious caveats.  I'd say it's about to the level of the early James Bond movies.  But the basic premise of the show is still delightful, most of the stories are interesting, and there's a decent amount of character development that makes the whole team—not just Larry anymore—likeable.

On the whole Season Three was better than the last episode of Season Two.  It's a shame the writers think they have to do something bizarre in the season-ender.

A new study indicates that a combination of high fat, high sugar, and high stress is what piles on dangerous abdominal fat.  A high-stress life with a good diet is not a problem, as far as belly fat goes, and a a bad diet is not as much of a problem if stress levels are low.  At least if you're a mouse.

This should be good news, since both diet and our response to stress can be controlled.  However, the tone of the article bothers me, as it focuses on the medical and pharmaceutical possibilities the study raises.  Not that these are necessarily wrong, but it misses the big picture.

I've also noticed a fad among dentists lately:  selling mouth guards to protect the teeth of those whose stress response includes grinding their teeth at night.  Again, there's nothing wrong with that.  Sometimes you have to treat the symptoms.

However, treating symptoms while ignoring the disease itself can be irresponsible.  It's true there's been a lot of hot air spilled on the subject of our bad diets, but a high level of stress still seems to be considered inevitable, even a badge of courage and a mark of success.  Why aren't we paying more attention to preventing unnecessary stress in the first place, and to ways of controlling and moderating our response to unavoidable stress?

I don't have enough data yet from my comics survey to make any permanent changes, but I've added a couple of new ones on a trial basis to my comics page.  Sherman's Lagoon was recommended by DSTB, and Stone Soup I just discovered.  I'm reserving judgement on both, but Stone Soup makes it because the currently-pregnant heroine is planning a home birth.  I can't read the archives far enough back to know the beginning, but I need to read the strip at least long enough to see how the idea is handled.

I've also moved Baby Blues to the bottom of the list, which will inconvenience some of you.  The order is not permanant, but for some reason I haven't figured out, going to the Baby Blues site now causes all subsequent comics to open annoyingly in a new tab or window instead of in the frame.

Here are a couple of Stone Soups I especially liked:

I hope this Weather Underground data is inaccurate!  Are there any readers from the Downingtown, Pennsylvania area who can confirm or deny this reading?

We ventured further last weekend, driving to Clermont and the General James. A. Van Fleet State Trail.  Porter was all for doing the whole 30 miles from one end to the other, but I voted for going in stages.  This time we biked about a third of the way, 19+ miles, from the Mabel Trailhead to the Bay Lake Trailhead and back.

The Van Fleet Trail is straight and flat, and apparently popular with those who want to race and time their biking, so it is well marked in miles and tenths, much more reliably than any other trail we've been on.  Thus I was able to check the calibration of my odometer, and was pleased that it appears to be off by less than half a percent.

This is one of Florida's most rural trails, and thus a pleasant ride.  We were not there at the best time of day to see wildlife, but the sights did get better after the dead rat in the parking lot.  A rabbit bounded across the trail in front of us, we saw a few tortoises, and heard innumerable birds.

That's the subtitle of a Wired article by Edward Tufte.  My brother sent me the link.  I prefer to believe he didn't know I was in the middle of working on a PowerPoint presentation of pictures from our recent trip to Europe.

Tufte is not speaking primarily about education, but he makes this perceptive observation: 

Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something.

PowerPoint isn't really the villain here, however.

When our children were in high school, long before classroom computer use became pervasive, they were sometimes asked to "report on" books by making posters about them.  This was in honors, "gifted," or Advanced Placement classes, mind you!  Being artistically-minded, the girls enjoyed these projects, but they took up a lot of time and their educational value—except possibly in graphic arts—was essentially nil.

Speaking from experience, it's much easier and more fun to find clipart, arrange graphics, tweak colors, choose backgrounds, and play with shapes and shading than it is to craft text—and I happen to love writing.  How much more so to a student who is still struggling with the art of putting his thoughts down on paper! The making of an attractive presentation of written and visual information is not a bad skill to learn, but any teacher who frequently allows students to get away with Internet research instead of library visits, and low-content, high-graphic PowerPoint presentations instead of well-written, detailed, highly verbal reports, is wasting their time and taxpayers' money.

That said, I'll get back to my own PowerPoint work.  :)  To me, it's computer-based scrapbooking, and I want to get our trip pictures into a form that's easy to appreciate.  Some people prefer to read an illustrated story—the blog version is for them.  A few (very few) people will want to see every picture we took—all 900+ of them—minus the really awful ones.  Most, however, will appreciate the PowerPoint version, condensed, edited, and spruced up with some music and a few graphic effects.  At least I hope so—that's why I'm creating it.

I doubt any English teacher will ever see it.

One of our nephews is a Boy Scout.

My father was for many years a Boy Scout leader, so when I joined the Girl Scouts I was mightily disappointed that we did so little of the camping, hiking, mountain climbing, knot-tying, fire-building, and survival skills work he did with his boys.  Thanks to some amazing (and somewhat rebellious) leaders and dedicated parents, we still had a good time, but the national program left me less than impressed.

From what little I know of it, I'm even less impressed with today's program.  It's politically correct, oriented towards modern society, relevant to today's girls—and therefore boring as all get out.  At least to me.  (They still make great cookies, though, and Boy Scout popcorn doesn't even come close.)

For all I know, the Boy Scout program has changed, too.  But my heart is encouraged by knowing one troop that is still in the business of helping boys grow into men.  And even more so to see the video-game, text-message, iPod, virtual reality generation rising to physical, organizational, and social challenges.  I applaud the leaders who provide necessary support and guidance while giving the Scouts much of the responsibility for running the troop.

They leave this week for Philmont, the apex of Boy Scout adventuring.  What they are doing "on the way" exhausts me just thinking of it, including hiking up and down the Grand Canyon's Bright Angel Trail.  During their two weeks at Philmont the boys themselves chose the most rigorous program available to them, which includes over 80 miles of hiking and lots of camping and other intensive activities.

Sounds like the best conditioning short of joining the Marines—and without getting shot at.

We were exhausted after our return from Switzerland, and our trip was a lot shorter and easier than Janet's will be, so I'm sure she'll appreciate your prayers.  She has four flights, ground transportation between two airports in New York, long wait times, and about 24 hours of travel—if all goes well—to look forward to.  Good thing she's younger than we are.  :)

It sure will be good to see her!

Last year's small garden yielded only half a dozen tomatoes, some chives, and a good supply of basil, largely because it got no water during a critical dry spell when we were attending to a much more important affair:  Noah's birth.

This year we were late in planting, but have already eaten better with promise of more to come.

Basil, chives, hot pepper, and cilantro 

Tomatos and marigolds 

Peppers—obviously not the sweet green peppers the label said they were!  Any ideas?  They're not hot, but do have a noticeable bite.

Bougainvilla

The May 21, 2007 issue of Computerworld has an interview with Amory B. Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.  Talk about RETHINKING—who would have thought industry had a good use for slush?

You advocate using, of all things, slush to cool data centers. Can you explain that? We recently did a design for a high-tech facility in a temperate climate that was originally going to have over 20,000 tons of chillers, and by the time we got through, the number was zero.

We found we could meet about 70% of the load with the coolness or dryness of the outside air using either air-side or water-side economizers, depending on the time of year. The rest [came from] a mountain of slush sprayed out of snow-making machines into a hole in the ground on a few cold nights and used to provide 32-degree Fahrenheit meltwater all year.

Twenty thousand tons of chillers originally planned; zero used.  They use snow-making machines to generate the slush; perhaps the next step should be finding a way to use the mountains of snow urban areas are always struggling to dispose of in the winter.

The July issue of Reader's Digest has an advice column called "Ask Laskas."  Here is the first question:

Q,  It was my idea to have a family reunion, and I called my younger sister.  She loved the idea and then, without consulting me, ran with it.  The next thing I knew, the party was planned down to the napkins.  I asked why she didn't include me.   She said if I don't like it, I don't have to come.  I'm fuming.  Should I stay away or go?

A. Oh, go and have a good time, secure in the knowledge that you had a great idea.  Getting credit is nice, but a united family is worth a little swallowed pride.  The next time you have a brainstorm, however, think twice before you share it with Sis, who seems to be suffering from younger sibling syndrome.

Huh?  My younger sister knows that if a family get-together is going to happen, she's probably going to have to organize it—and the rest of us are exceedingly grateful when she does.  This lady has a good idea and then is upset when someone else does all the work?  Whatever "younger sibling syndrome" is, I'm glad my sister has it!

Each family has its own Thanksgiving traditions.  Friendly swordfighting is part of ours.  Here Noah and Jonathan demonstrate their eagerness to carry on the custom.

       

Every once in a while the Orlando Sentinel publishes a comics survey, in which they ask readers to rate the comics they read and suggest new ones for the paper to run.  Not a bad idea.  I've been considering revamping the Morning Coffee section of my Sursum Corda home page.  Since I know that several of you visit it regularly, it seems only fair to get your input.  In fact, one person already suggested a new comic—which was the inspiration for this post.

So...what do you like?  Not like?  Do you use any of the other links on the page besides the comics?  What else would you like to see?

Thanks, all!

Round Ireland with a Fridge, by Tony Hawks (St. Martin's Press, New York, 2000)

This is Janet's book, given to her by a friend when she graduated from college.  I try to treat other people's books with greater respect than I do my own—and that's saying a lot.  Nevertheless, I must confess the damage done to Round Ireland with a Fridge when I spewed a fresh mouthful of iced tea all over one of its pages.  It's the kind of book where one loses control of the laugh reflex.

In 247 pages, Tony Hawks amply demonstrates both the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption and the truth of Don Aslett's assertion that those who make their paths and projects public are likely to find an abundance of help coming their way.  Awakening one morning after a night of partying, he found a note by the side of his bed:  "I hereby bet Tony Hawks the sum of One Hundred Pounds that he cannot hitch-hike around the circumference of Ireland, with a fridge, within one calendar month."  Although his friend graciously offered to release him from the bet, Tony took it on as a challenge.

Tony won the bet, though it didn't even cover the cost of the fridge he bought to take with him.  In the process he saw Ireland as no tourist ever has, and discovered that it is actually easier to hitch-hike with a kitchen appliance than without one.

It's not a profound book, and certainly not a perfect one.  There are few sexual references and some language I don't care to hear, as well as a whole lot of drinking—but it's far too funny to be offensive.

I believe Janet lent me this book before she went to Japan, which means the reading process took me me more than 20 times as long as it took Tony to make his circuit of Ireland.  Once begun, however, Round Ireland with a Fridge is actually a fast read and a fun one.

Porter laughed through it too, so you can have your book back now, Janet.  Complete with tea stains.