Jason Clarke

Want a chance to win a free DVD of this past summer’s critically-acclaimed Cinderella Man? Then head over to Network Landscape, the TV/DVD blog I publish, and read Henry’s instructions for entering the contest!

Shameless shilling: Network Landscape covers TV, DVD, digital video, and other interesections of content. Thanks to the site’s head writer, Henry, we’ve got frequent giveaways of great DVDs like Cinderella Man. Other recent giveaways have been LOST Season 1, Home Movies, Second City Vol 4, and more.

In which I link to Rex Hammock twice in one day: Rex reports that colleges and universities are seeing a drop in male students. As Rex quotes, from the WaPo:

“Colleges and universities across the country are grappling with the case of the mysteriously vanishing male. Where men once dominated, they now make up no more than 43 percent of students at American institutions of higher learning, according to 2003 statistics, and this downward trend shows every sign of continuing unabated.”

So to recap: Secondary education was long dominated by men. Now it’s 60-40 in favor of women, and as the article says, the trend shows “every sign of continuing.”

The question that fascinates me is, what mix of sociological and other factors got us here? Was it an activism-based shift in trends, a simple shift of societal tides, or a mixture of both? And now that we are here, what do those who campaign(ed) against male-dominated universities say about the opposite? And how do they feel in general about this news?

Commenters, share your thoughts, or link to places where others do.

This may anger or distress some people, but I have to make a quick mention of the fact. You can call yours whatever you like, but in my home we’re going to keep calling it the Christmas Tree, not the “Holiday tree” that unfortunately appears to be sweeping the nation.

At the right is a shot of our Christmas Tree from 2003, when we lived in an apartment so tiny the tree was in our bedroom (and right next to a giant clunkly old dangerous heater, besides).

The picture conjures some fun memories: The TV was given to me by a friend and former roomate from my days in Boston; it lived a long and productive life for several people before finally dying out on my wife and I one day after the Superbowl in 2004.

The dresser it’s on is one I had from age 8, and finally gave up just a few months ago (it wasn’t built for two, to say the least). The ripped part of wood at the base of the dresser arrived there just a few months before this picture was taken- it stems from a gigantic hole in the ceiling of our bedroom. One day, ceiling bits and much water came in, unnannounced, and the room became so damp the wood literally peeled off the dresser. Come to think of it, that may be why the TV failed only two months after!

The couch, a corner of it visible, was one of the most comfortable I ever owned, despite (or perhaps in part?) to it being ragged and faded. Though it was too short to lie down and sleep on, it fit two comfortably. It sat lower to the ground than most, but not low enough to feel seemly. I inherited it from my first roomate in college, who got it himself when he and I took a trip around our college town scanning for couches and found that one on the lawn of a bed and breakfast, being offered for free. We snapped it up and immediately installed it our room, innocculating ourselves from tempting common-area couch raids.

The couch, the dresser, and the TV are all long gone, but even though they evoke fond memories, they’re all just things, so it’s okay.

The Christmas tree is just a thing, but it might be a bit more. Either way, in our home it’s sticking around for a while longer.

UPDATE: Yesterday, we went to cut down our tree from an ecologically-responsible Christmas tree farm near us. The photoset is here. We’re planning to decorate it today- pictures in a new post later on.

Xmas lights at night, originally uploaded by jgclarke.

A shot of our house on Thanksgiving eve, also the first snow of the year. We’ll have more lights to come this weekend. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, wherever you are.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

The most important and awesome site in the history of the internet.

(Via Kottke)

UPDATE: More!

Hey, prepare for a bleg: I’m looking for an SQL pro to give me a hand with a bit of a tricky sql statement. An Amazon.com gift certificate for $10 (I know, big bucks!) goes to whoever can successfully help me with this issue.

Here’s the deal: I’ve got 3 tables in my database- users, directors, and movies. When my user logs in, I want to display their favorite movies, organized by director. An example of what a user would see when they log in:

Steven Speilberg

* AI
* Minority Report
* ET

Woody Allen

* Annie Hall
* Crimes and Misdemeanors
* Bullets Over Broadway

Now, the problem I’m having is that my attempts to pull both the directors, as well as their films, out of the database, are failing miserably. Instead of pulling one instance of each director along with a list of their movies beneath their name, right now I’m getting:

* One instance of the director’s name displayed for every movie in the movies table

Worse, I also get:

* A complete list of all movies from the movies table displayed under each director’s name (whether or not the movie is by that particular director).

So what I’m asking for (and what’ll score you that sweet Amazon gift card) is this:

* ONE QUERY to pull in the list of directors for a particular user, only outputting one instance of each director.

And:

* ONE QUERY to pull in the particular director’s movies (again, these have to be sorted to make movie.users_userID = current logged in user, because users can have different lists of “favorite movies by fav directors”).

If you can give me a hand writing a quick (but somewhat tricky) sql statement, I’ll be forever grateful. I’ll demonstrate my gratefulness with an Amazon gift card. Send your assistance to jgc-at-jasonclarke.org. Thanks in advance!

UPDATE: Contest over.

Okay, so some folks are suggesting that summer box office was down because the movies were bad. Bereft of proof until recently, they’re now claiming vindication because box office receipts are now up, in a time when “better” movies are traditionally released (the fall).

So…how to find out what’s really happening? There’s no absolute way to know without either polling every single American or perhaps qualifiying intangible factors such as theater quality, pricing, and etc. (again that may involve signifigantly complicated polling.)

But what about this if you’re looking for a way to see if movie quality really matters: Go to Rotten Tomatoes (or Metacritic) and tally up, then average the reviews of all movies released from May-August 2005. Then do the same for the same time period in 2004 (and perhaps even 2003). Then, compare the resulting years’ aggregate reviews with their box office numbers, and then you might have some fact to go with your conjecture.

My hypothesis? That movie quality and box office receipts are NOT corrollary. But hey, I could be wrong.

The other day I noticed this article on Coudal Partners. The article concerns a classic brain teaser that may or may not have been created by Albert Einstein. Here’s the gist:

There are five houses in a row in different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The five owners drink a different drink, smoke a different brand of cigar and keep a different pet, one of which is a Walleye Pike.

The question is– who owns the fish?

So I decided to whip up this quick little grid to help me work through the questions’ hints. It seemed to be an easier way than trying to keep track of things on paper or in a text file. It doesn’t have any cool actions to it (it won’t tell you if you’re right; fields won’t highlight or anything), but it’s 100% free to use/remix so if anybody out there can improve on it, go ahead.

Update: Thanks to Coudal for linking to it!

‘Who Owns the Fish?’ Helper

My friend Marion is participating in the MDA (Muscular Distrophy Association) “Lock-Up” fundraiser, where a volunteer is taken to a local jail and then “bailed out” via donations from friends and family members.

If you’d like to “bail out” Marion and support a worthy cause at the same time, you can donate online right here.

From my local paper:

Brian Mitchell of Mitchell’s Sheet Metal estimated that about 300 gallons of gasoline had been stolen from his company’s trucks in the last few weeks, so he decided to do something about it.

On Monday, Mitchell set up an alert system in his parking lot and waited, gun by his side, in case something happened.

It didn’t take long. At 12:43 a.m. Tuesday, Mitchell surprised James Alan Waterman, 25, of Knox, and Tasha M. Vigneault, 19, of Freedom as they allegedly attempted to siphon gas from one of his trucks. They were held at gunpoint until sheriff’s deputies arrived to take the pair to jail.