Spelling Bee

I was bored one night, and I stumbled onto the broadcast of the annual National Spelling Bee that's been going on since 1925. Of course, it was broadcast on ESPN, the sports channel. Held at the Grand Hyatt, Washington DC this year, I watched a procession of young children, aged from 9 to maybe 15, all sitting in the chairs behind a stage wearing a huge garish yellow sign stating school and district. Each child, in turn, was called up to the front of the stage where a Matt Damon look-a-like would utter a very obscure and useless word. The child will then, depending on temperament and recognition, look shell-shocked or gloating, and proceed to ask one of a number questions.

"Can I get alternative pronounciation"

"What is the definition of the word?"

"Is there an alternative definition?"

"What's the pronounciation agaiun?"

"Can you give me th origin of the word?"

"Use the word in a sentencel"

The Matt-Damon clone will then drone on and on in response to these questions. Meanwhile four other judges sitting adjacent to the stage will check that Matt-Damon and/or the children have indeed pronounced the word quickly.

For the child that has no clue, the child will stall by asking the question again. It is a weird atmosphere where the whole hall is silent, allowing the child complete focus on his performance. Then the child will attempt to the spell the word. After completing the spelling, the child will wait anxiously for the absence of the bell. A clear ring sounds failure.

Choose your cheque

So here I was, in the bank, ready to open a bog-standard bank account - a relatively easy thing to do. the nice friendly banker had gone through the details and when he got to the point where he explained how checks work as I had never had a checking account before. "Oh americans love checks." I nodded as we went through the details, and then he said, "while i'm doing the paperwork, why don't you choose the design you like". With that he handed me this large folder and proceeded to do his paperwork.

Now, I normally find making decisions over things that have no consequence really quite difficult. I freeze up. I had hundereds of cheque designs to choose from. At the front were the children (?) orientated designs. Have your favourite disney character. There were coca-cola cheques, nascar cheques. Have your favourite nascar driver smiling at you everytime you sign away from money. trees, nature, god, crosses. There were so many that I was so overwhelmed that I chose the most non-descript cheque possible. It was non-descript that when I later signed a cheque to my room-mate, she thought it must have been a temporary cheque. The reassuring "personal" character of your personal cheques must be masking some kind of sub-terranean river of anxiety of money.

Apple is taking over San Francisco

It's scary. Everywhere I look around me, there is a mac. Yes, they are attractive, with their sleek aluminium frame and their slim elegant design and their overt emphasis on eye-candy. Of course, the san-francisco state of mind is hi-tech and artisitic and the mac caters to that.

What is surprising is that here, at UCSF, one of the bastions of higher education, the macintosh is slowly tightening its vice-like grip. I see around me, postdocs who are toying with the idea of updating the laptops, being continually bombarded with lots of sly suggestions. "oh the mac is so much cooler". there is only so much resistance to coolness peer pressure that an average science nerd can take. the secret is the adoption of unix for the apple os x. With unix under the hood, it is quite simple, even elementary to run academic software. Plus, you can connect your iPod up.

Speaking of the iPod, the mini-iPod got released recently and news is that the first run got completely sold out. Not coincindentally, Apple finally opened an Apple store in downtown San Francisco. It is perhaps a little surprising that there hasn't been one in San Francisco since it is after all, the home of Apple but we should keep in mind that the real home is down south in Palo Alto, not the seedy shopping thrall of downtown.