Between this article and this one, there’s got to be a head-up-his-ass joke. But damned if I can think it up.

Check out the preview for today’s Cards/Giants game on ESPN.com, which includes this lovely paragraph (italics added):

Cardinals starter Chris Carpenter is 7-2 on the road, despite having an ERA more than one run higher than his mark at home. The 6-6 righthander gave up two runs in eight innings in his

last start, a 5-3 loss to San Francisco on Saturday.

If Carpenter is 7-2 on the road, how can he be 6-6 overall? At least that’s a reasonable interpretation of the italicized portion. If you know a whole lot about the Cardinals staff, then you might be able to divine what the writer really meant to say there, that Chris Carpenter is six and a half feet tall. Conventionally, that would be written 6’6″ for those who are interested. One of the classes I took last semester was text normalization, in which we built a module that takes a text and “normalizes” it, by expanding abbreviations and rewriting numbers as they are pronounced. This would be a key module in a text-to-speech system, like a screenreader for blind people. And this example shows how difficult the task is. Basically, the text normalizer should convert a regular text document like an ESPN.com game preview into a textual representation of how it would be read, so a perfect text normalizer would process the above paragraph and output to the speech synthesizer:

Cardinals starter Carpenter is seven and two on the road, despite having an E R A more than one run higher than his mark at home. The six foot six righthander gave up two runs in eight innings in his last start, a five to three loss to San Francisco on Saturday.

Notice that ERA changes to “E R A,” since it is read as a letter sequence, as opposed to a stat like “WHIP” (walks and hits per innings pitched, would be read as a word whip) or “IP” which would be expanded by a typical reader familiar with baseball to “innings pitched.” This is a difficult task, just figuring out how abbreviations should be treated, but our system did a very good job. That being said, our number expansion module would never have been able to correctly change “6-6″ to “six foot six” in this context. That’s not really a bad thing, since I don’t think most readers would have done so either. Which is why this sportswriter infuriates me. I’m also peeved by how hockey writers always call a win, a “triumph.” Sometimes four or five times in the same article.

I’m thinking about taking the follow-up to that class: Speech Synthesis in which we’ll build all of the modules. The programming would probably be pretty advanced for me, and I’ll have to drop Anatomical Speech Mechanisms, the course I affectionately call “Corpse Linguistics.” But I had a great time last semester and it’s a useful class and will give me lots of opportunity to add to my bag o’ tricks.

1. WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR BEDROOM WALLS? White, high gloss. I’ve been meaning to paint them since I moved in two years ago, but am too lazy. I wanted to paint them a light gray, but my girlfriend talked me out of it.

2. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? Have Spacesuit, Will Travel by Heinlein. It’s pretty good.

3. WHAT’S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? I don’t use ‘em. My last one was my Truman State Alumni mousepad. Four years of spilled beer and ashtrays made it unusable.

4. FAVORITE BOARD GAME? We used to play drinking operation in College from time to time. My woman reads me questions from trivia pursuit on road trips.

5. FAVORITE MAGAZINE? Don’t subscribe to any. Scientific American is pretty good. I read Computational Linguistics at the library, but that’s a quarterly journal.

6. FAVORITE SMELL? The dirt in my garden smells good. Cinnamon rolls. The beach.

7. FAVORITE COLOR? Charcoal.

8. LEAST FAVORITE COLOR? Neon pink.

9. HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOUR ANSWERING MACHINE PICKS UP? I think six, and then four when I have messages.

10. MOST IMPORTANT MATERIAL THING IN MY LIFE? My house.

11. FAVORITE FLAVOR OF ICE CREAM? I stock Breyer’s natural vanilla.

12. DO YOU BREAK THE SPEED LIMIT DAILY? I don’t drive daily.

13. DO YOU HAVE A STUFFED ANIMAL IN YOUR ROOM SOMEWHERE? Yes. I was given a stuffed dog for my baptism. I still have it.

14. STORMS – COOL OR SCARY? Very cool.

15. FAVORITE DRINK? Beer. Belvedere and tonic. Sangiovese. Water. Grapefruit juice in the morning.

16. WHEN IS YOUR BIRTHDAY? November 27th.

17. FAVORITE VEGETABLES? Yellow and zuccinni squash.

18. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Analysis for the NSA. Preferably something technical, with a whole lot of data that needs to be processed.

19. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY COLOR HAIR, WHAT WOULD IT BE? I like my hair color. Sorta dirty, reddish blonde.

20. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN LOVE? Yes.

21. TOP THREE FAVORITE MOVIES (IN ORDER)? 1: Once Upon a Time in the West; 2: Dirty Harry; 3: High Plains Drifter

22. DO YOU TYPE WITH YOUR FINGERS ON THE RIGHT KEYS? Pf cpirse O dp!

23. WHAT’S UNDER YOUR BED? The battery charger for my cordless drill and the tags I ripped off my mattress.

24. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NUMBER? 2

25. FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH ON TV & IN PERSON? Baseball. Cardinals baseball.

26. WHAT IS YOUR SINGLE BIGGEST FEAR? Failure.

27. FAVORITE CD OF ALL TIME & RIGHT NOW? Some George Gershwin best-of record.

28. FAVORITE TV SHOW OF ALL TIME & RIGHT NOW? King of the Hill, probably. I don’t watch too much TV, aside from sports.

29. HAMBURGERS OR HOT DOGS? Hot dogs.

30. THE COOLEST PLACES YOU’VE EVER BEEN? Burg Prunn in Bavaria was nifty.

31. WHAT WALLPAPER AND/OR SCREENSAVER IS ON YOUR COMPUTER RIGHT NOW? At home, a picture of some clouds I took. At work, the video machine has the default windows xp background, some green hills; the audio machine has the default g5 background; the officework machine has a picture of Gollum holding that Pixar fish. The only one with a screensaver is the audio mac, it’s a bunch of tropical island scenes. The rest turn off the video after fifteen minutes.

32. DOES MCDONALD’S SKIMP ON YOUR FRIES & DO YOU CARE? I haven’t eaten at McDonald’s in a long time.

33. FAVORITE CHAIN RESTAURANT(s)? Olive Garden is pretty good.

34. IF YOU HAVE A BOY (OR HAVE ANOTHER BOY) WHAT WOULD YOU NAME HIM? John, and call him Jackie.

35. IF YOU COULD LEARN TO PLAY ONE INSTRUMENT OVERNIGHT, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Drums. I plan to buy a set someday when funds aren’t so tight.

This free content inspired by Jen.

It’s now become apparent to everyone that Yassir Arafat is the biggest obstacle to bringing stability to the Palestinian regions of the Levant. Would it be so had Al Gore won the 2000 election?

Saw two movies recently: Mission to Mars was god-awful. That’s about all I can say. It was horribly boring, made more so by the corny soundtrack. Truly, I fell asleep many times watching it, only to be woken by inappropriate music. I’d rewind to figure out why they would start playing music that indicates something dramatic is happening, only to find that nothing was. Bizarre. Since I fell asleep, I can’t say what the movie was really about, but in the end Gary Sinise flies to another galaxy to follow these gold aliens who planted human life on Earth. Or something. I don’t think he remembered to bring any food though. What a dumbass.

The other one was Ed Gein. It’s a fantastic movie about this simpleton who robs graves for body parts and eventually starts killing people to take their skins and make clothes and food from. True story; this movie is exactly how a true story should be told on film. Everything that is explicitly shown is firmly rooted in fact, and things that probably went on but aren’t known to have been are left for the viewer to piece together. For example, it’s known that he “butchered like a deer” his second victim and he probably ate her (and fed her to some unsuspecting neighbors) but they never show him doing it explicitly. You also get the suspicion that his very unhealthy relationship with his mother was also incestual, but it’s never said outright. The movie isn’t jump-out-of-your-seats scary, but far more frightening in the rather clinical detachment of the film unsympathetically showing a guy doing horrific stuff right under everyone’s noses. In the movie, there’s one scene where Ed wakes up from a dream in which he’s looking at pictures from his book of Nazi War Crimes while a naked nazigirl (you can tell by the hat) is sitting nearby on a chair with a riding whip. Instantly made me think of this. What’s the attraction of Nazi girls? The woman they hired to play her is exceptionally good-looking, although she’s only in the movie for about a second. It’s the only movie she’s listed in at tvguide.com, so I felt bad for her. Such a lovely girl should have more going for her than just playing nazi cheesecake in a small budget movie about psychotic cannibals. Here’s her webpage, and once again, I note that she’s smokin’. I think of her list of skills, only maybe three of them can be considered a legitimate skill. The rest are just modes of transit. Here’s hoping she gets some better acting roles. I’d like to see her more on the big screen. Even if she thinks shopping and club dancing are skills.

I recommend Ed Gein highly. Don’t bother watching Mission to Mars. Just get a few star wars action figures or space ship models and hold them still over a poster of Mars. Then throw some pots and pans down some stairs and you’ve pretty much had the whole experience.

I’m having a hard time finding a copy of “Endless Summer.” Never seen it, and it looks like a nice movie with lots of great scenery. Alas, they don’t have it stocked at either of the video stores I frequent. And it’s checked out at the library today. Drat!

Rick Ankiel starts his rehab assignment in or class A minor affilliate in the next few days, with a best-case callup to the majors in September. I’ll be keeping an eye on him. A third lefthander in the BP would be nice for the stretch. And if he gets back to anything near 2000 form, we’ll have a super longman in middle relief. Or maybe even our first lefty starter.

An al-Qaeda operative was captured within the past two weeks, the significance of which “could be comparable to the arrest of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.” Very good work. This is also the first confirmed case I’ve heard of where terrorists used our porous border with Mexico to enter the US, something that we’ve been warned is in the works for a long time now.

Update: Nabbed another.

Added a new blog to the roll today, One Soldier’s Experience at Peace Building, written by Staff Sergeant Jarvis deployed in Iraq with the 1ID. (Wonder if he’s met Mike?) I recommend starting at the beginning and navigating chronologically using the links above the post titles.

From this article:

One Yankee whom Arizona is thought to have interest in is pitcher Jose Contreras, but Contreras has about $17 million left on his contract. And if the Yankees attempted to include even half that amount in a deal to help pay Contreras’ salary, there is no assurance that commissioner Bud Selig would approve it.

If that sounds familiar, it’s becuase I said that’s the only way the deal could go here (in the comments). I’d be very surprised if Johnson goes anywhere, and if he goes to the Yankees, it won’t do them much good, since the Cards are going to the Series and we hit Randy well.

Check out this clearinghouse of online flash games. There’re some pretty fun games in there. I’ll update with my favorites. So far, “knife throwing” doesn’t make much sense. Try out “Arcadia,” it’s pretty fun.

Anybody remember a series of emails that Pete sent a while back showing pictures of a dude who helped capture Saddam Hussein.

Well check this out.

(I’m updating this post… check back later.)

I mentioned a while back a pessimistic, to the brink of absurdity, roundtable discussion on Iraq that was printed in Rolling Stone. Today I find that one of the folks who contributed to the discussion has a blog. And a darned good ‘un too. In it, he describes his interview for Rolling Stone and his reaction to it. Check out the weblog, and read through it a bit. The guy’s thinking seriously about serious things. Some particularly interesting posts here and here and here.

Sure, I missed it by a few hours, but who the fruck reads this shit on the weekends anyways?

1) What moment from what movie still makes you laugh out loud – no matter how many times you see it?

There’s a scene in Top Secret! where Deja Vous tries to console Val Kilmer after losing his anti-capitalist East-German/French Underground love interest to her former fellow castaway by telling him that he must “learn to deal with adversity in a mature and adult fashion.” He then sneezes in his hand, flips out, and dives out the window. Chocolate Mousse continues cleaning his Tommy Gun and laughs.

I will always laugh at that scene, and rewind it and watch it again.

2) What moment from what movie still makes you cry like a baby – no matter how many times you see it?

The closest I’ve come to crying from watching a movie was the scene in Father of the Bride II when Steve Martin is selling his house and reminisces about his daughter growing up and playing basketball with him in his driveway. I think those are underrated movies.

3) What moment from what movie made you actually turn your head from the screen – either in fear, revulsion, or contempt for the fact that you actually paid money to see the film?

I’m a big fan of lousy movies, so I tend to relish the truly stupidly done flicks. I almost walked out of Pulp Fiction during the rape scene. I thought that whole movie was gimmicky and lame, and that scene was only in there for shock value, the movie itself was probably intended to do no more than shock. But I can endure the rape scene in High Plains Drifter, because it contributes to the point of the story. Rape disturbs me something considerable.

BONUS) What is one single moment from a film that is indelibly etched in your brain? Not a scene or a sequence exactly, but three or four seconds from a movie that contain an image or phrase or concept that transcends normal movies?

Bill Paxton’s line in Terminator was good: “All clothes in the wash?” Just about every scene in “Once Upon a Time in the West” is standout. “Rio Bravo” has a bunch of good scenes, most of them involving Dean Martin. There are many scenes in Kurosawa’s Ran that stick with me, but mostly because I recognize them in other movies. Most notably is the shots of grass blowing in the wind, ripped off most unabashedly in the 1998 movie The Thin Red Line.

The best movie I’ve seen recently is the Band of Brothers mini-series. It is flawless except in their choice of theme music: too friggin’ soviet. The casting, the attention to detail, everything is brilliant. Truly the only complaint I have is the theme song, and you only hear it when the intro credits roll. Impressive.

Five Movies I Not Only Own, But Watch Regularly, Which I Shouldn’t Admit To But I’m Braver Than You So I Will

Princess Bride and the Disney Beauty and the Beast cartoon. The first is nothing I’m ashamed of, the second somewhat… on account of all that singing.

Lifted these questions from Bill McCabe.

This is the funniest thing I’ve read all day.

Link thanks to Emily.

Chris gets a real kick out of the ads in the bottom of the haloscan comments. You read a post I wrote about, oh say, smashing someone on the side of the head with a coffee pot after scalding them with its boiling contents, go to make a comment about how stabbing someone in the eyes with a pen is just as good as crushing the orbital bones with a fire extinguisher, and find an advertisement for Lesbian BDSM Massage Therapists for Peace and Against Fur (LBDSMMTFPAAF) or something similarly poorly market-targeted. I’ve been checking them out since he mentioned it and got a real kick out of this one: Muslims for Nader. The first post is called “Tear Down This Wall,” evoking Ronald Reagan’s challenge to Gorbie that was essentially saying: Your system of government is bunk, everyone knows it, and if this wall wasn’t here the people suffering under communism on the other side wouldn’t have to endure it anymore. It was courageous and principled. The writer in this case is referring to the wall Israel is constructing to keep terrorists from blowing up schoolbuses and pizzerias full of Israeli citizens. Tear it down? This is cowardice, hiding behind make-pretend “International Law,” and only principled to a mindset where killing Jewish human beings is a great moral feat. Reagan was not on the side of Naderites or Jew-killers. And besides, a land grab? Which side of the wall would you rather be on when Arafat dies and the Palestinian civil war begins in earnest? He or she also links to this webpage which has a terrifying name. Dontcha just love the condescension and bureaucratic evil with which these folks operate:

Citizen 486-75-3091 believes in flat taxes and a strong military. Requires re-education. Send him to the avocado camps.

I like their motto: An avocado is Green on the outside and Green on the inside. Did they not even think about that? All too easy, as my Dark Lord Vader remarked.

Behold: An avocado is Green on the outside and a big fucking nut on the inside.

Sinecure. Really the word of the day is treacly, one I’ve never used. Ever.

I only mention it because I did so much work yesterday that I’ve only got one major job to get done today. And I feel lazy. But there’s always crap to do. My freaking office is a mess.

If you haven’t heard of the genocide occuring in the Sudan, don’t be ashamed–I haven’t seen a prominent story in a newspaper about it either. This man don’t watch TV news, so wouldn’t know if they’re talking about it there. But it’s horrible.

Maps make a lot of sense to me, I can figure scales well enough to figure in general how big a hill would be or how far down a river I could see. I like maps for these reasons, because there’s a whole lot of information in them. One of the absolute best websites I have linked to the left is the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, listed as “Maps” in the section “Things to Know.” It’s especially a good resource because the people who maintain the website take a great deal of care in making it useful, updating it frequently and adding maps of areas that would be of interest to the general public. At the time of this writing, their most prominently positioned map is this one, of Sudan, labeled to show where villages have been destroyed. Imagine yourself having fled to those hills near 22.5E/13.25N just West of Sisi and seeing the smoke rise around the countryside for weeks. You could risk a peek of the carnage from the foothills, but what for?

One more post tonight: the pitchers the Cards are projected to face over the next two days when San Francisco visits Busch stadium are both former Cardinals. Historically to my memory, we haven’t hit well against former Cards. But in the case of Dustin Hermanson, I fear not. Brett Tomko is another story, especially if the air is wet n’ heavy. Saturday might be a real tough game.

On another note, I hope AB contracts for naming rights to the beautiful new Birdnest. I think it’s understood for most St. Louisans that the Busch’s will chip in. Edward Jones went in for the dome. Auggie #85 would turn over in his grave if his company turned its back on the team. Given the current (and potential longtime viability of the) Atkins craze, I suspect the AB management might shoot for Michelob field or Michelob park, on account of the Michelob Ultra brand’s success. I think a wiser plan would be to call it Anheuser-Busch Park, and use different aspects of it to highlight different branches of the AB family. They play under the Michelob Lights for night games. Busch Plaza has Stan Musial’s statue reset. The Budweiser promenade along the tops of the walls. Maybe even the Red Elephant columns. Point being, keep their options open to adapt to future beer markets.

Now to read some Heinlein and sleep.

Check out what a smart guy in Bahrain has to say. It’s worth your time.