Liberate the blazer

Did you know that the NFL wanted to prohibit San Francisco 49ers coach Mike Nolan from wearing a suit or blazer on the sidelies when he coaches, and that only under duress did they submit to letting him wear a Reebok-approved suit during two games last year? They’ve restricted him to two games in a suit this year as well, because Reebok gives the NFL millions of dollars in exchange for players and coaches wearing the company’s clothes. One of my favorite sports-related memories is seeing Tom Landry patrol the sidelines in a suit during Dallas Cowboys games, but that tradition has been killed on the altar of corporate sponsorship. ...

June 13, 2007

Misuse of scientific laws

Andrew Brown notes that he has misunderstood and misused Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. He explains: I have thought for many years that the point of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle was that you could not measure a system without disturbing it. Hence the idea that your measurement of one aspect (say, momentum) must disturb another, like position, since all measurement involves interaction. I was wrong. It turns out, at least according to John Barrow, that this is a vulgar misunderstanding of the Heisenberg principle, perpetrated as a way around the mathematical difficulties. ...

June 13, 2007

The scale of America's economy

Here’s a map of the United States with the names of the states replaced with the names of countries with a similar GDP. Pretty interesting reference when reading about other countries. I was surprised that Saudi Arabia and Tennessee have roughly the same GDP.

June 13, 2007

More Sopranos commentary

The Newark Star-Ledger has a posted a brief interview with David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos and writer and director of the finale. The New York Times went out and gathered reactions from other television writers to the finale.

June 12, 2007

On Safari

Why would Apple port their Safari browser to Windows? I know Steve Jobs said that he wants to see if they can gain market share yesterday, but realistically speaking, that’s not going to happen. Safari isn’t even the best browser for OS X, and Windows users who are up for downloading an alternate browser will probably use Firefox. I don’t think that’s really the point, though. The point is to give Web developers fewer excuses to ignore Safari. Being that Safari is not only the default browser for OS X but the only browser for the iPhone, Apple needs to make sure that more applications are Safari-tested. Plus, this seems like the first step toward offering some kind of Safari-based iPhone software development kit that runs on both Windows and OS X. ...

June 12, 2007

Ron Moore on The Sopranos

Ron Moore, the creator of Battlestar Galactica, comments on The Sopranos finale: For weeks, the speculation has centered around a simplistic black and white question for a show that revelled in never providing monochromatic answers: would Tony live or die? The prosaic nature of the question and its anticipated answer was itself was the most disappointing thing about the lead-up to the finale. Either Tony was going to get whacked, or he wouldn’t. “The Sopranos” would end with either the bitter little pill of the “bad” guy finally getting what he’s got coming or with the vaguely false relief of family affirmed and life goes on. ...

June 12, 2007

The Sopranos Easter Egg

This will mean nothing to those of you who were not obsessed Sopranos fans, but for me it was mind blowing. All those guys in the diner during the final scene last night? Not just random extras. From the comments on Jonathan Storm’s review of the series finale: Tony DID get whacked. The only question is by who. Remember first Tony’s comments earlier this season about getting whacked (which were also replayed either last week or the week before). Tony said something to the effect of “you don’t see it coming, you don’t feel nothing, everything just fades to black”. That was your ending. ...

June 11, 2007

Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote agenda leaked?

A German web site has posted what is claimed to be the leaked agenda for today’s WWDC keynote. I can’t wait to see whether they’re right about the “one more thing” portion of the demo.

June 11, 2007

Hillary Clinton in two paragraphs

Here’s why I hope Hillary Clinton isn’t the Democratic nominee for President in 2008: Clinton’s biggest blunder, as Bernstein tells it, was to offend the very legislators whose support she needed most. At a retreat for Democratic senators in the spring of 1993, Clinton was asked whether it was realistic to pursue such an ambitious health-care program, given her husband’s many other legislative initiatives. She responded that the Administration was prepared to “demonize” those who opposed the task force’s recommendations. ...

June 10, 2007

Job hunting advice from both sides

Marc Andreessen explains how he evaluates candidates and conducts interviews. Derik Whittaker has some suggestions for questions you might want to ask a potential employer during your interview. Derik’s question also brought the Joel Test to mind. Sometime I’ll write up my interview style here. I’ve interviewed lots of people over the years and tried a bunch of different approaches, and I’ve finally settled on an interview style I’m happy with.

June 9, 2007