Checksum Arcanius

As much as the media falls into the trap of over-hyping baseless fears and reporting stupid news, I believe investigative journalism must be one of the centerpieces of a robust free society. And recently, the Seattle Times has been producing some excellent investigative journalism.

A recent Seattle Times article details how many UW football players — especially Jerramy Stevens — got free passes from King County prosecutors, school officials, and coaches despite numerous run-ins with the law in non-trivial cases ranging from assault to rape to DWI.

I found myself feeling sick after learning about how damning evidence was ignored and every punishment was put off with flimsy excuses. This is the world we live in.

Last night I went to my first Seattle Thunderbirds game at the Key Arena. It was not quite my first hockey game ever — I went to a Carleton College women’s hockey game many years ago — but it was definitely the most intense and fun sporting event I have been to in a while.

After the opening faceoff, the first thing I noticed was how fast everyone was going. The players are really incredible on their skates. Where I normally would have thought about how cool that would be, this time I mostly thought about how much it would hurt for me to try that right now. Kinda lame, I know.

Anyway, the game started out poorly — The Everett Silvertips scored two goals, both on power plays, the the Thunderbirds seemed to have trouble controlling the puck for long periods of time. The second period went much better, with the Thunderbirds battling back to score a shorthanded goal, then a powerplay goal, then a third goal. In the waning seconds of the second, however, Everett ended up scoring a third goal to tie the game at three going into the final period.

During the first intermission, I ended up buying a few huck-a-pucks. During the second intermission, a car with a sunroof came out and thousands of $1.33 pucks flew at the car. Getting the puck into the car meant entering a drawing for $10,000. My first puck careened off the back left of the car; my second puck was short, and the third one maintained good aim but sailed too far. Oh well!

The third period saw the Thunderbirds lock down the game. They scored one more and held the Silvertips to a shutout, taking the game 4-3. The last 90 seconds of the third saw the Silvertips pull their goalie to get an additional offensive presence. Although all the action took place on Seattle’s side, the defense held fast for just long enough, and the Thunderbirds secured the victory.

The occasion for all of this was Scott’s 23rd birthday; afterwards we made our way to the Old Spaghetti Factory and enjoyed some food and conversation. A good time was had by all.

I think that pretty much everyone is addicted to something. Alcohol, sex, gambling, porn, their own world view. People forget how to live without it.

I’m not saying that I am any better.

I went with the roommate Darren to see No Country For Old Men tonight. It was a well done thriller about a drug deal gone wrong, a protagonist who finds the drug money, and an antagonist killing machine who comes after the protagonist and everything good in the world.  Although very dark and a bit depressing, that was to be expected given the title and the nature of the film.

The Yahoo! Movies ranking showed normal people rating it lower than experts — usually a very big warning sign to me. The only reason I agreed to go see it, in fact, was that Sunshine, a movie that I did enjoy, met a similar Users vs. Experts fate. As in Sunshine, the differential for No Country was only one grade point (ie, B- to B), so I guessed that meant the movie wouldn’t be too bad. The guess turned out to be correct. I am no better off for having seen the movie, but it didn’t leave me worse off either. (In cases where audiences and critics disagree by two or more grade points, such as in the case for Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, you are almost always guaranteed a terrible movie.) I give it a 3.0/5.

Currently, I am petitioning to have two of my CSE classes this quarter, Neurobotics and Computational Biology, count towards Bioengineering Senior Elective credit. If successful, and assuming that I finish my capstone this quarter, I will be done with my Bioengineering degree and I will not have to take any additional Bioengineering courses. That sounds like a mighty fine goal to me, so I put a little bit of heart and soul into the petition I prepared:

While I don’t know if this will actually work, I did get this response from the academic advisor:

This is very good! I think you just set a new bar for petitions with the color-keyed flow chart! Thanks. –KJN

We’ll see how it goes.

UPDATE: Success! See comment below.

I just finished watching a thrilling straight-set match where Serbian Novak Djokovic took down world number one and reigning Austrailian Open champion Roger Federer. The Swiss started strong, but by the halfway mark of the first set, it was clear the Roger was not on top of his game. Novak won four straight games to come back from 3-5 to win the first set 7-5. The second set saw Roger looking flat-footed, at times even sick as Novak came moment away from winning the set 6-1. Roger bagan to fight back, but still fell 6-3 in the second set. Federer player much better in the third set, matching his early first set form, but it was too little too late; Djokovic was in a groove and never lost his serve, forcing the tie break. On the first opportunity, what often seems impossible became very much a reality: Roger Federer lost. Earlier in the other bracket, comeback kid Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France stunned world number two, the always exciting Rafael Nadal of Spain, beating him emphatically in straight sets. This all sets up a showdown between two exciting players at the top of their games, who have never met and never won a Major. For one, that will change on Sunday.

Meanwhile, in the women’s bracket world number 4 Ana Ivanovic from Serbia (where else) has put herself in position to win her first major. All that stands in her way is the world number 5, Russian Maria Sharapova, already a winner of several Major tournaments. No matter what happens in this one, we all win.

I rest my case.