Coyote Blog

If it's almost December, it must be time for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra tour.  My son describes them as the "rock electronic Christmas band," and that is as fair a label as any.  Many tend to compare TSO to Mannheim Steamroller, the other band that has created a niche for themselves with modern takes on Christmas music, but TSO tends to skew more towards heavy rock than Mannheim Steamroller.  I think TSO is similar in many ways to Emerson Lake and Palmer, both with their tendency to cover classical songs as well as their flirtations with pretentiousness in some of their productions.  For those unfamiliar with TSO, probably their most famous work of late was "Wizards in Winter," parts of whose music video I think was included in a beer commercial last year.

My son and I got tickets to the concert because we had a couple of TSO albums (we tend to like the instrumentals and think less of the vocals).  What we had not realized is that TSO has quite a cult following.  Most of the folks around us in the audience had been to 3,4,5 or more of their shows.  Many go every year, in a ritual similar to how other folks might go to the Nutcracker every year.

There is no doubt that TSO delivers value to its fans.  We saw their second show of the day (!) and they played for a full three hours.  Members of the band at different points went all through the audience, down aisles and up stairs while playing some of the final tunes -- far more intimate contact than you will get in most other bands.  The key band members all were present after the show in the lobby for a meet and greet with their fans. 

OK, so what about the show?  Well, I was a little disappointed.  To be fair, their leader had a knee injury which forced him to play sitting down, and this tended to reduce some of the band's energy.  The music was generally good to very good.   The keyboard solos and the high-energy songs at the end were terrific. 

The problems were twofold.  First, the opening half of the show was stitched together with a narration that was just painful.  The poetry was Touched by an Angel meets Dr. Seuss.  It was a Night Before Christmas crossed with LA noir.  It just did not work for me, and I know it was weak because my 14-year-old son was laughing at it.  We both thought we were watching Spinal Tap 2.

The other problem is one that TSO fans will call me out for, but the light show through all the songs was just too much.  Don't get me wrong, I have never, ever seen anything to rival the floor show here - 6 trillion lights on the fastest-changing programming I have ever seen, zillions of lasers, flames, more flames, a ten-minute snow storm, band members descending from the sky, band members ascending to the sky, etc. etc.  You can get an idea of about 1% of it with this video  but any digital camera image of the show is worthless because the ccd can't possibly keep up.  Seriously, this video grossly understates the full effect.

The problem was that my eyes could not keep up either.  I have walked away from concerts thinking I had a perforated ear drum, but never before thinking I had a burned-out optic nerve.  My son said he needed to wear eye-plugs.  90% of the effects would have been OK had it not been for the direct audience facing lights at about 6 trillion candle power they kept insisting on flashing in my face.  Anyway, we both are quite experienced with loud, heavy metal concerts and we both walked away with a headache from this one.

Anyway, it was interesting and I am glad I went.  And I may even go back next year, but I will be prepared - I am bringing my RayBans next time.

I am on my way to a few days of skiing in Utah, but I thought I would leave you with this travel story.  A few weeks ago I was traveling and was at the airport really early.  I had forgotten to remove the toothpaste from my stuff, and I was flagged for extra screening because they saw it on X-ray (I remember the good old days when they were X-raying for guns and stuff rather than toothpaste, but I digress). 

The screener pulled it out and said - sorry, this is more than three ounces.  So, as an engineer with no sense of self-preservation, I asked, "Weight or volume?"  The screener asked what I meant.  I said that an "ounce" is a unit of both weight and volume, which did he mean?  (The TSA site is no help, it just says ounces).  He said "volume."  Still being stupid, I said "but the 3.5oz on that toothpaste is weight -- you can tell by the 'net Wt.' in front of it and the number in grams behind it.  He looked at it for a minute, and then gives me an answer right out of Spinal Tap:  "But its over 3 ounces"  [but this one goes to 11].  Anyway, I gave up and surrendered my Crest to government authorities, and the world was that much safer.

I am told by an airline exec that the policy was originally volume, but after many complaints, the government realized that an ounce was also a unit of weight and they have informally changed the policy to "3 ounces weight or volume" but they never really communicated this change fully because it's too, you know, embarrassing that they operated so long not knowing the difference.

Have a good week -- I will probably post a bit but it will be light.

My wife watches Dancing with the Stars, and has a bunch of old episodes she was plowing through this weekend on TIVO.  Contestant Mark Cuban, Internet billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, seems to want to cultivate a geek image.  Each dancer is given a score of 1-10 from each of three judges.  Upon getting his score of 7+7+7=21, Cuban made a comment that one would classify as fairly unusual for such a show: "I was kind of hoping for a higher prime number."

I am sure most of the viewers ooohed and aaahhhed.  What an intellectual Mark Cuban is!  Except there is a problem.  21 is not a prime number.  Yes, it's sort of seductively odd, like 51 or 87, but like those numbers it is divisible by 3.  Which makes sense since his score was computed as 3x7.  OK, so maybe he was talking about the "7" he received from each judge.  Well, the number 7 is indeed prime.  But there are no other prime numbers less than or equal to 10.  It would be impossible to get a higher prime number score than 7 unless the judges went up to a Spinal-Tap-esque 11.

I really wasn't going to publish this little insight until I saw TJIC publish this.

Update:  Fixed link.  I guess it is a bad sign of my own geek-dom if I can't get an html link right.

John Scalzi has a great clip of Spinal Tap playing "Big Bottom" at Live Earth with a stage full of every bassist they could find.  Awesome.  Scalzi asks whether the band that first turned it up to eleven should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Damn you Scalzi, I have to get some work done today.

Let me try something out on readers.  It strikes me that we are in the midst of what we may look back on as one of the great global economic booms of all time.  Here's my logic:  In the US, let's say that on average our labor is operating with a management and technology factor of "10." As management practices advance, and manufacturing and support technologies are developed, we might move this up to "11" [insert Spinal Tap joke].  We then enjoy the productivity upgrade of going from 10 to 11.  However, as the world invests in places like China and India, we see labor that has plugged along at "1" get brought up quickly towards "10."  What a huge change!  Two billion people with exponentially rising labor productivity -- what an enormous increase in wealth!

I think too many people look at the growth of China through the lens of low labor costs, and assume that as the wages in China begin to rise, the boom will be over.  But the source of wealth creation in China is not taking advantage of low wages, it is raising productivity.  The boom will continue as long as productivity increases by leaps and bounds; rising wages are just a sign that Chinese workers are getting a share of this productivity increase.