"Like Water"

The other day I watched a documentary about MMA fighter Anderson "The Spider" Silva that was entitled Like Water. For a split second I thought, "Naaah, he couldn't have taken the title from the Bruce Lee quote I hold so dear." But I only thought that because I had forgotten what an icon Bruce Lee is in the martial arts world. The documentary opened with the Bruce Lee interview that I posted in my third blog:

The documentary was pretty good. I feel like it was made just to save some face after Silva's perplexing and disappointing performance in Abu Dhabi. Sidenote: Silva was dominant in that victory. But my main take away from the documentary was a fable that Diogenes Assihida, Silva's Muay Thai coach, told. It went something like this:

There once was a bird who was flying off to discover new land. When he found the new land it was freezing cold. The bird fell from the sky and froze into an ice cube. One day a cow came along and pooped on the bird. The heat melted the birds icy confines and the bird awoke. A distant cat heard the bird struggling and came over. The cat pulled the bird out of the poo and ate him.

The moral of the story: Not everyone who poops on you is your enemy and not everyone who pulls you out of the poop is your friend.

When you finish laughing, think about it.

Just Joe

No More New Music??

A couple of years ago I was having a conversation with my cousin, Chris, who happens to know a thing or two about music and I asked him, "Doesn't it seem like we'll run out of music eventually?" He wasn't sure at first so I asked him how many notes there are. I think he said eight but then added something about half notes or something that this music ignorant didn't quite get. So I don't remember the number he told me but let's just say it was 16. That means if you started songs with a different first note, by the time you got to the 17th song, you will have repeated a first note. Your second note would then be another (or the same) of the 16 notes, leaving 16 possibilities after EACH of the first 16 possibilities. So just in the first two notes you would have 16 X 16 possibilities. That is 256 possibilities with just the first two notes. So we realized right away that we would get quite a huge number of possibilities but that given a song of whatever length, there would indeed be a finite number of possibilities.

Then recently I came across a video on YouTube that explained our hypothesis in a slightly different and well expounded upon way (with the same conclusion).

In that video he mentions "Everything is a Remix." Here is Kirby Ferguson's TED Talk version of his remix series. Be warned Bob Dylan fans, Bob gets called out here:

And lastly, here is a fun website that was also mentioned in the first video: Soundsjustlike.com. Who knew that Nirvana sounds like Killing Joke or that Green Day sounds like... Petula Clark?!?!

ENJOY!

Just Joe

Florida Gators 2012 -- Week #13

What a wonderful way to end the regular season! Truth be told, I was a little nervous at the end of the first half when it seemed like Florida had been dominating yet only led 13-3. Then the third quarter came and my concerns were realized when Florida State scored 17 straight points. And, again, like last year, Florida State's touchdown drives came after Florida lapses. A poor punt and coverage led to a 25 yard touchdown drive followed by a Florida fumble that led to a 17 yard touchdown drive. And a field goal came when FSU started at the Florida 48 yard line. That's some third quarter!

Thankfully the good guys settled down and remembered that they were the better team and scored the next 24 points in the game. After having 39 plays (to FSU's 11) in the first half, Florida coaches had to be itching to get back on offense in the second half to continue wearing down the Seminoles defense. Without much time of possession in the third, when the fourth quarter rolled around, the offensive line took full advantage and did its domination thing. Even though FSU had the number one-ranked defense in all of college football, Coach Muschamp said it best going into halftime, "We feel like we've played against better defenses."

After a solid 37-20 win, my attention turned to the Notre Dame/USC game where a USC upset would have put the Gators into the national championship game. That didn't happen so I'm figuring that the Sugar Bowl will be the likely destination.

To begin the year I said UF's offense would be inconsistent due to the new offensive coordinator and a true sophomore starting quarterback. Unfortunately the part about being inconsistent was true. Jeff Driskel will have to take a lot fewer negative plays next year. I also said UF would only need to average 24-27 points per game to finish up with more than nine wins because the defense would be so good. Well, the offense ranked 76th  in the country averaging 26.8 points per game and the defense was ranked third in allowing just 12.9 points per game. It's difficult to be disappointed with how close the team came to playing for a national championship. I think the team over achieved slightly this year as I figured them for 9-10 wins and they earned 11 wins. Next year we'll have to see fewer field goals and more touchdowns to achieve championship status. I hope the team and the coaches are ready for those expectations next year because it is their success this year that has raised the bar.

GO GATORS!


Just Joe

Zipf's Law

A while back I was watching a sci-fi documentary that was discussing various scenarios for alien contact. I was struck by a rather obvious point that had never even crossed my mind.

So let's say the folks over at S.E.T.I. receive some sort of signal originating from deep space. The likelihood that the message will be received in one of the 6,900 or so languages that are currently spoken on earth seems highly unlikely. So what are the chances that we would be able to decode a message of a truly alien language? This documentary then considered the fact -- and here's the part I hadn't considered previously -- that scientists have been studying whale sounds for decades and still have no idea what is being communicated. (On a side note, have you seen where a beluga whale was making some "humanlike sounds?") Suddenly it didn't seem very likely that we would ever be able to decipher an alien language.

Then the documentary went on a bit of a tangent and asked the question "how do we know that whale sounds are language?" Maybe they are simply meaningless sounds that do not convey any information. Enter Zipf's Law. The law is actually a mathematical equation but here's the most simple explanation I could find:

"Zipf's law states that given some corpus of natural language utterances, the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table. Thus the most frequent word will occur approximately twice as often as the second most frequent word, three times as often as the third most frequent word, etc. For example, in the Brown Corpus [of English], the word "the" is the most frequently occurring word, and by itself accounts for nearly 7% of all word occurrences (69,971 out of slightly over 1 million). True to Zipf's Law, the second-place word "of" accounts for slightly over 3.5% of words (36,411 occurrences), followed by "and" (28,852). Only 135 vocabulary items are needed to account for half the Brown Corpus."

The interesting part here is that every known human language follows this pattern. Scientists applied the equation to whale sounds to try and determine if whales do indeed have a language. As it turns out, the sound frequency frequencies do indeed follow the pattern that Zipf set forth! That seems to indicate that these are not simply random sounds, rather there is actual information being exchanged! Figuring out the information is a whole other matter but at least the tiniest of the first steps seems to be taken.

Here is a way cooler article that describes the theory of the experiment but with dolphins.

Just Joe

Florida Gators 2012 -- Week #12

Well, another uninspired, unimpressive, underwhelming victory for the good guys. At first glance 23-0 looks pretty good. But against a mediocre-at-best FCS Jacksonville State team... not so good. It seems like a minor miracle that Florida has achieved a 10-1 record while playing up -- and down -- to its level of competition.

Having said that, it astounds me that the Gators have any chance at all to be in the national title game. Sounds crazy, right? Well, the Gators currently sit at #4 in the BCS standings. Coming up this week, #1 Notre Dame goes to USC. Notre Dame SHOULD win this game as USC will be playing with their backup quarterback. There is the chance that Notre Dame will be caught looking ahead to the championship game so I don't think an upset here is totally out of the question. Should that upset take place Florida will move up to #3. #2 Alabama will be playing #3 Georgia in two weeks at the SEC Championship game, so one of them will lose and be gone. That puts Florida at #2. Being #2 is good enough at that point as it gets you into the title game. The best part about that will be all of the pissed off sportswriters and college football fans complaining about Florida, who didn't win their conference or even their division of the conference, getting a title shot. And in this scenario I presented, the title shot would come against either Alabama or as a rematch against Georgia. Either way the SEC would be guaranteed its 7th straight national title which will stick in my craw of those same sportswriters and fans. I giggle at the thought.

The one part of the scenario I have yet to mention is, of course, Florida's upcoming game against #10 Florida State. The game is in Tallahassee and Jeff Driskel is questionable at best. Brissett gives the Gators a better passing attack, but if the offensive line doesn't give him time it will be a long day. Last year I was certain the Seminoles would blow out the Gators. Although the score was 21-7, all 21 of FSU's points came off of turnovers: 1 interception return for touchdown, 1 interception returned to the Florida 20 yard line and 1 interception returned to the Florida 4 yard line. 95 yards of total offense is all that the Gator defense allowed. With a few successful trick plays I think Florida can score 16-17 points and I know that defense will be stout. How stout? Let's say 10-13 points stout. Gators win!

GO GATORS!


Just Joe

Florida Gators 2012 -- Weeks #10 & #11

I was away on vacation last week and didn't get a chance to write about my impressions of the Missouri game. Luckily I can sum up the last two games with just one word, YUCK!

I was hoping to be able to chalk up the lackluster Missouri game to a letdown after the big loss the week before. But then that was followed up with an equally lackluster performance. Of course, in both games that defense was stellar. So I suppose my main criticism is of the offense. Special teams wise, the blocked punt return for a touchdown to win against Louisiana-Lafayette is probably the most unlikely ending to a football game I've ever seen. Unfortunately that was necessary to offset the punt block that the Gators allowed to be returned for a touchdown. I feel like that team was really beginning to pick it up and gain some momentum when that block was allowed.

Since I'm short on time I'll simply say that I'm looking for a much more cohesive offensive unit against Jacksonville State, even with Brissett likely getting the start. I've been pretty disappointed in the play calling and would love to see Florida get back to the power running game instead of the run and shoot style. With all of the injuries on the offensive line, I think it will simplify things and allow the Gators to establish their size dominance. I'm hoping for a score in the vicinity of 31-6.

GO GATORS!


Just Joe

Florida Gators 2012 -- Week # 9

I quote the great Charles Brown when I say, "AAUGH!" I, too, feel like the football was pulled out from under me. But I'll try to keep a positive spin on this.

Let's start with how amazingly the defense played. To be put in a situation where your back is against the wall time after time after time after time after time after time -- was that 6? -- and allow only 17 points is truly amazing. After Florida turnovers, Georgia had starting positions of UF 20, UF 44, UF 25, UF 26 and UGA 20.  The turnover missing from that list was the interception at the end of the half. The turnovers that didn't lead to points ended up in awful field position for Florida which made it all the tougher to get into a rhythm.

As for the offense, I would simply repeat that Charlie Brown quote. The Gators seemingly made more mistakes in this game than in the previous seven games combined. In fact, coming into this game Florida had turned the ball over only four times total, so six turnovers in this game really does amount to more mistakes than in the previous games combined. The interception at the end of the half cost the team points as did the final fumble into the end zone with just minutes left. Don't get me wrong, Georgia played a fine game on defense but Jeff Driskel's holding onto the ball too long in the pocket led to one interception while the other came while throwing the ball late, across his body, while rolling out; that's 3 no-nos on one play. On top of that, there were two fumbles on handoffs! Not even forced fumbles, just poor execution.

Special teams were solid. 3/3 on FGs. No spectacular returns but no mistakes really either.

Looking ahead, I don't know much about Missouri except they earned their first SEC win last week at home against Kentucky. I wouldn't expect Missouri to score many points at the Swamp but I WOULD expect the Gators to come out looking much sharper on offense. How about something like 27-10? If the coaches are still angry from this past week, expect a few of the special plays to find their way into the game plan. If not, they may be saved for Florida State. Also, we are huge Ole Miss fans this week and/or Auburn fans the week after. If Florida beats Missouri and showed Georgia lose to one of those two teams, the Gators will be headed to Atlanta for the championship game!

GO GATORS!


Just Joe