08
Feb 10

The Comedy of Errors


I’ve often said in conversation, “It was a real comedy of errors.”  That was before I knew it was the name of one of Willy’s plays.  This play is about a set of astranged twins with the same name, who have servants who are twins who also share the same name.  You can imagine where it goes after that.

This play kind of reminded me of the 90s TV show Sister Sister.   Basically it was the same thing, the two sisters were always getting into trouble, then they had their identities confused.

Both the TV show, and the play were equally funny.

One funny part was when the servant’s twin’s wife confused him for his brother.  His ‘new’ wife is not hot to say the least.  He describes her as a globe, and her buttocks as Ireland.

The play also reminded me of the TV show Sliders, where each character has a confusable twin in each parallel world they travel to.

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08
Feb 10

Week Round Up

  • Shona and I went and saw Avatar the Movie.  It was neat, and it really sucks you in.  It is obvious that it took a long time to make, and is a great piece of art.  It had some nice social overtones, about cultural assimilation.   I still liked Dances with Wolves better (hehehe).
  • We volunteered at the Dream Home this weekend.  It is an amazing house, if you haven’t seen it yet, you can check out the virtual tour http://www.kinsmenclubofkingston.com
  • We had an awesome dinner at Dad’s house to celebrate Karlee & Paul’s Birthdays.
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04
Feb 10

The Greatest Book on Earth?

Dawkins Newest Book

Dawkins' Newest Book

According to recent public polls, most people don’t believe in evolution.  Dawkins undertakes the task of educating the public about evolution.   He assumes that the reader knows nothing.  He then goes into painstaking detail explaining exactly why evolution occurred.  He then piles on example after example of real world proof.  From the fossil record, to radioactive dating to DNA.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think that this book hit a home run.  Perhaps my expectations were too high.    I’ve read the God Delusion.  I’ve read the Selfish Gene.  I’ve seen all of his BBC documentaries.  I’ve already heard most of the arguments in this book.  There isn’t much new.  Secondly, the book is too long winded.  The information isn’t organized in a concise manner.

You can’t just give this book to a creationist and state QED, because there is no way they are going to make it to page 400, to read about RNA replication.  They’ll have fallen asleep far before then.

This book is basically for people who already understand evolution, or want to understand evolution. Which is fine, except if that is the case, there should have been more new content.  For example the chapter about E. Coli, I’ve already read about them extensively in Carl Zimmer’s Microcosm E. Coli and the New Science of Life. He seems to quote Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True an excess number of  times.  I got that one for Christmas too. Dawkins’ constant reference gave me the impulse to put down his book and pickup Coyne’s.

Overall, it is a nice book, very accessible, nice pictures.  It is a good summary of random evidence for evolution, but not the definitive source I was hoping it would be.

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02
Feb 10

Kingston Sectional

This weekend was the Kingston Sectional bridge tournament held at the Ambassador Hotel.

On Friday, I played with Shona.  We had two 60% games.  Since they were both single session games, we ended up coming like 6th and 3rd.  Saturday, we played in the knock-out.  We won the first match by a fair margin.  The second match was a real nail biter against the Kersey Team.  The highlight had to have been when I was defending 1NT redoubled, and I let them make it (Ops).  We got lucky and won the second match, only to play the Smith team in the finals.  We were out gunned and luckily suffered only a modest lost.

Sunday I played with Bev McKellar, and I am happy to say that she played superbly all day.  In our last match we faced off against the Smith team.  We were both about equal in score, so whoever won the last match would win the event.

We started out strong.  I bid a ridiculous 4H, and was doubled. Fortunately it couldn’t be set.  The opponents then bid a stupid 3NT, which went down 2 vulnerable.  Then they missed a cold 4S!  But then, they rallied back, they set me in a pedestrian 4S, and bid an aggressive non-vulnerable 6NT.

We scraped by, barely winning the match,  ultimately the event, and the tournament!

Thanks to Ed for running such a great tournament.

   1  24.68 Shona Donovan, Kingston ON
   2  24.68 Mark Donovan, Kingston ON
   3  23.16 Jeffrey Smith, Ottawa ON
   4  23.16 Isabelle Smith, Ottawa ON
   5  21.51 David Crausen, Kingston ON
   6  17.62 Richard Darling, Morrisburg ON
   7  17.62 Judy Darling, Morrisburg ON
   8  17.18 Beverley McKellar, Kingston ON
   9  13.61 Sylvia Moreau, Glenburnie ON
  10  13.61 Robert Fowkes, Kingston ON
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25
Jan 10

Titus Andronicus

When I think Shakespeare, I think about a guy wearing tights, fluffy pants, a ruff, a hat with a feather, and a hand reached into the air and spouting poetry which no one is expected to understand.

Shakespeare was the Martin Scorsese of 1590.  This play is on par with The Silence of the Lambs and The Departed.  I was in complete shock the whole time while reading this.

I highly recommend this play to everyone.  Its so good, I don’t want to spoil it for you.

In the back of the book, they suggest that the play is suppose to be an exaggeration.  Basically, WS wrote it trying to go over the top like something you would see from Quentin Tarantino.  Tarantino movies are over the top, but they are still awesome.  If this play is over the top, who cares, it is still awesome.

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22
Jan 10

Into the Wild Timon of Athens

Tim throws Gatsby style parties he can’t afford.  When he finds out he is broke, he asks his friends if they can spot him.  They are all strapped.  He realizes that no one is truly his friend and becomes a misanthrope.  Tim moves into a cave, finds some gold.  He gives it all away.  Hangs himself.

It kinds of reminds me of Into the Wild, when the main character gives away his savings and goes to live up north, only to freeze to death, simply because he can’t stand people.

There is another character named Apemantus, who is really funny.  He is really cynical of everything, and goes around insulting everyone.  It really becomes funny when Tim goes crazy and the two of them try to out sulk each other.

Tim story is unfortunate, because nowadays they would just give him some meds to fix his depression.

For that reason, I would label this ‘problem play’ as a tragedy.

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20
Jan 10

Edward III

Eddie 3

Eddie 3

This play starts off on a good note.  A married King Edward III tries to woo a married lady.  She’s interested, but doesn’t want to break her vow of marriage.   Ed tricks her father into a promise he will try to persuade her.  The father tries to convince the daughter to marry Ed, but shes not convinced.  She then tells Ed that if he kills his wife, she’ll kill her husband.

At this point I predicted that Ed was going to try to kill his wife, but in Shakespearean fashion, he was going to accidentally kill his lover.

The problem is, this play was only ~40% written by Shakespeare  (Suggested by computer analysis).  The story ends there. They decide not to hook-up after all.

The rest is a Braveheart account of a battle.  Although not as graphic, between England and France.  I don’t quite understand how the English were able to get enough troops across the channel to match the reported tens of thousands of the french.

Anyways, the English win.

Ed doesn’t go to help his son when he is just about die.  The son returns with the captured french.

The story explores Ed’s rightfulness to the throne (considering his grandma had only girls) .  The glory of death.  A son having to prove his worth.  Honouring your word.  I would also add respecting your enemy.

It is funny how they meet face to face to talk about the state of the battle.  In modern warfare, you would just kill the other guy right there.  There isn’t much of a story here, I guess that is why they call this a history play.

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20
Jan 10

Cleveland Tournament

Cleveland in Winter

Cleveland in Winter

Shona, Dave, Marc and I went to Cleveland this past weekend for an exciting weekend of bridge.  The weekend started off well, we got a cheap room in Niagara Falls on Friday night after work.  This ended up cutting down on our driving quite a bit.

A guy suggested Dave and I go to Jack’s around the corner.  We found ‘Yank’s’.  I’m still trying to figure out if you could confuse the two with an accent.  Then we played some big buck hunter at BPs, on Clifton Hill.  (As a side note, BBH rebooted and it is running Linux, with a Dell Optiplex 740, the same computers we use at work).

Saturday Morning, we hit up the big Flying Saucer on Lundy’s Lane.  Their $1.29 breakfast special is simply out of this world.

Food out of this world, prices down to earth

Food out of this world, prices down to earth

We were stopped at the border, because the guy simply wasn’t buying the fact that we were going to a bridge tournament.  Driving down I-90, I saw a cop at the side of the road, I looked down and I was doing about 110.  Thankful that I wasn’t speeding, I kept the same pace.  After being pulled over, I was informed that it was a 55mph zone.  The cop said “I had you doing 72 and then you sped up to 74. Great.  Thankfully he knocked it down to a 61 in a 55.  Hopefully that won’t be too expensive.  Marc says that those guys hit you with tons of administration fees on top of the most basic of tickets.  I’ve mailed in my guilty plea, and am awaiting my sentence.

We arrived at Cleveland with time to spare.  The tournament was held at a hotel at the junction of two highways.  For some reason I decided to take multiple tours of all the on and off ramps before arriving.

Friday, we played in a team-of-four Knock Out event.  Which is 4 sessions spreading out over 2 days.  Knock outs normally start with 16 teams then go down to 8 – 4 – 2 then 1.

We won both of our first two matches.  For dinner we went to this semi-fancy Italian restaurant that Marc knew.  They had an early bird special before 6:00pm with bread, soup, salad & entree for $12.

After the match we went to the Blinking Lizard.  This was quite the bar.  They had an extensive list of over 100 types of beers.  And a cheap food menu too.  We liked the place so much, we went back there on Saturday too.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Saturday Morning, I went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  It was a nice drive to see some of the city, downtown and see the waterfront.   The RRHOF has some neat things, like pictures, instruments and vintage electronics.  But then there were the weird things.  It is odd that people would pay money to idolize inanimate objects, which have some vague connection to a singer.  For example, Elvis’s 5th grade report card.  Or a pair of shoes that John Lennon wore, or  a dress that Elton John wore.  I’m glad I went.  I have to admit that Uncle Tom’s Beatles collection is far more extensive then theirs.  Perhaps they keep the ‘good’ stuff in the vault.

Saturday we played a really tough team in the afternoon.  Their team consisted of 4 good players and a client.  This lady pays them to play on their team, so she can win.  Their team were all Chinese, so one could speculate that they have more experience then their masterpoint total suggests.  (I.e, they played in China for 20 years, then came here and have 0 experience).  Regardless of any speculation, we ended up beating them by 1.  Oh wait!  We miscalulated and we ended up tied after 24 hands!  We had to play them in a 4 board play off.

On one hand, the aggressive opponents bid:

1C – 1NT – 2NT – 3NT

The hand that opened 1C had only 14 points, and the hand that responded 1NT only had 7 hcps.

The contract went down 4 for +400 for us.

We ended up winning the play-off, and on the finals.

In the finals, we won handily.  On Sunday we came 3rd in the B swiss.  The winners were the Chinese team we played on Saturday.  So they got their revenge.

I played with Marc the whole weekend.  He is a great partner.  Shona and Dave are great teammates.

We were stopped at the border on the way back.  They did a quick scan of the car.  This time the border officer was really nice.  We were all joking around, so I imagine he knew we had nothing to hide.  Dave says it was because we didn’t stop at the duty free, that is why they pulled us over.

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20
Jan 10

King Lear

King Lear

King Lear

Move over Reservoir Dogs. There is a new bloodiest story in town.  This story is about a King, who has 3 daughters.  He divides his Kingdom to his daughters based on who proclaims their love to him the most.  He gives two daughters everything, and the humble daughter nothing.

Then he goes crazy.  He keeps an entourage of 100 knights.  Both of his receiving daughters don’t want him to live with them.

On the other end of town, this Edmund bastard, tricks his dad into thinking his brother is going to kill him, in order to become the sole inheritor of his dad’s will.  The brother goes crazy, the dad goes blind.  Edmund then tricks both of Lear’s daughters into falling in love with him.

A couple of people die.

Then as taken from the Wikipedia entry:

“Offstage, Goneril stabs herself, and confesses to poisoning Regan. Edmund, dying, reveals his order to kill Lear and Cordelia. But it is too late: Cordelia is dead, though Lear slew the killer. Lear recognizes Kent. Albany urges Lear to resume his throne, but Lear is too far gone in grief and hardship. He collapses and dies.”

So basically, everyone dies at the end.  Which makes for a pretty good story in my books.

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20
Jan 10

The forgoten Joy of Laziness

I just went to check what day my library books are due.  Thankfully I still have a few days.  While logged in, I clicked on Loan History.  It shows me that I have taken out 185 books over the years.  Then I clicked on late fees and saw:

Notice the Title is the Joy of Laziness

Notice the Title is the Joy of Laziness

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