65 Million Year Eraser

I must not be the only idiot wondering whether humans really were the first species on the planet for whom culture and civilization became a natural outgrowth of evolution, though unfortunately I'm probably the most sober.

Background to my question:
We carry on with a certain arrogance and vanity, secure in our knowledge that we are the pinnacle of biological evolution; that nothing on this planet has ever approached our sophistication, and after we're gone nothing will again.

But consider:

• Endothermic terrestrial vertebrates rocked up at the end of the Triassic, and then partied for 135MY before the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event
• 135MY could contain 27 independent monkey-to-moon cycles given the rate of Hominini progress these last 5MY
• If a Chicxulub-sized event stuck April 24th, 1616 CE (the day after Shakespeare died), what traces of humankind would be available to our cockroach overlord archeologists 65MY hence?
• How advanced must any civilization become before imprinting itself permanently on the planet?

Now, clearly dinosaurs were never driving around in Teslas, and we won't find their footprints on the moon. BUT, 400 years ago you wouldn't have seen us doing that either. We did, however, have Calculus, Romeo & Juliet, and ice cream.

The question:
Is the fossil record granular enough to describe an "intelligent species", or could some small population with the following characteristics come and go, many times over, and be lost permanently over the intervening 65MY?

• Are self aware
• Possess conceptual thinking
• Practice agriculture / hedge against scarcity 
• Create expressions analogous to poetry / philosophy / allegory

If culture is fundamentally more advantageous than non-culture, why would it arise only now, after 200MY?

Adventures in Car Buying - Lexus CT200h

The first car I brought home for an overnight test drive was a 2012 Lexus CT200h. A compact hatchback based on the Toyota Prius, the CT200h does a couple things outrageously well, and one thing quite poorly.

But before I get into any of that, I feel compelled to discuss two topics that I myself have spent years trying to digest:

On badge engineering

In short, badge engineering is the ubiquitous practice of borrowing a model from another manufacturer and then slapping your name on the outside, often with little or no additional customization.

Examples of badge engineering

• Acura ILX = Honda Civic
• Lexus ES350 = Toyota Avalon
• Lincoln MKS = Ford Taurus
• ad nauseam

I approve of the concept on principal; if your blue-collar model is refined enough for your white-collar consumer, well done you. Everybody wins. But the smaller the difference between these two models, the more closely must the buyer examine his motivation behind choosing the more premium brand. Especially when a non-trivial cost difference is involved.

There are myriad ways to justify that cost difference without ever addressing egoism, but I think this is disingenuous at heart, so I won't list them here.

Which leads neatly into the next topic:

On premium brands

Premium brands exist entirely along the segment of the diminishing return curve where total return on investment as a proportion of the total investment decreases. Put another way, when you buy premium you're getting less for more, relative to a non-premium counterpart.

In reality the core value proposition of premium brands is that they are out of reach of a given percentage of the population, and so by extension are those who buy them.

So ultimately, would I buy one?
Yesssssssss.

Why?
Because we can afford to right now, and all the ugliness that implies.

On the intersection of premium brands and badge engineering

The CT200h, henceforth referred to as the Lexus Prius, really is a lovely little thing; but it is defined by the contradictions it holds within the whisper quiet cabin.

The Lexus Prius is chic but not sexy. Isolating but not numb. Exclusive but not unattainable. The Lexus Prius is Helen Hunt in As Good as it Gets.

Drive the Lexus Prius and ambient noise fades away, like the moment before a pressure induced yawn on an airplane. Front seats are perfectly sculpted with excellent mid-back lumbar support. You'll have to fight to get fewer than 40 highway MPGs because the car will always default to Eco mode.

This is the perfect car for two people on a cross-country adventure. This is not the perfect car for three people on a cross-county adventure. Back seat room is a bit confined, as per usual in this class.

So why didn't this one work? At the end of the day, this is still a Prius, and that means reigning in fun to boost fuel economy. And Nura wanted something a little bit hotter.

Adventures in Car Buying - Backstory

I am addicted to cars. And trucks. And motorcycles. And occasionally bicycles, modern and vintage wrist watches, tablet computers, cell phone cameras, running shoes, dog breeds, airline tickets, jackets (rain, winter, and leather), hi-fi stereos, or anything else I happen to desperately need in that moment.

My addiction is fed, but indeed never sated, through endless searching; stating and restating requirements describing vague and fleeting moods with the goal of either identifying the perfect thing, or determining at what cost that thing should be bought.

Stimulation and pleasure are found in the hunt, and then in the kill, rather than from hanging a trophy on my wrist or parking it in the garage.

But I now find myself in the position, and oddly uncomfortably so, of needing to finally commit and transact on a car for Nura.

I say uncomfortable because for me the perfect car changes not on a yearly or monthly basis, but on a daily and occasionally hourly cadence. On Monday morning at 9:00, the most perfect car in the world; the quick and quiet, capable and reliable, sexy and understated machine that will literally bring about world peace is a clear and unconscionable error in judgement well before noon.

Normally I would simply defer to Nura to pick out the car. It will be her daily driver after all. But few things in this world register as less appealing for Nura than car shopping.

List of things Nura would rather do than shop for cars:

• Hang out at Wal-Mart
• Volunteer customer service
• Putting down pound puppies
• Talk to vegans

And so the task falls to me: Identify a car befitting of her current and potential future needs, is exciting for her, and fits the budget.

I'll try to talk about the process and the findings here until we finally buy.


List of potential cars for Nura:

Pontiac Aztek

Trix Donk

Nissan Juke

Toyota Prius

Sayulita, Mexico

Recently I've been pretty garbage at celebrating the things that ought to be celebrated in this marriage. You know what I did for Nura's 30th? Flowers and a late Italian dinner. And for our second wedding anniversary? Sushi. No flowers.

My head just hasn't been in the game. I blame work, and I hope that's really what it is. Too much work, not enough thinking about other things.

So to take a break, and celebrate ourselves, and to get a little sunshine, Nura and I decided to follow friends' advice and bang it down to Mexico for a week.

A few hours of travel later we stepped into the kind of sunshine that leans on your back and shoulders. A heady mix of street food and diesel fuel pushed past us in hot blasts, and everybody was selling tequila or timeshares.

The following conversation is heard when speaking to a Seattleite on any subject:

Seattleite: "We try not to talk about how perfect our summer and fall is because we don't want anyone else to move in. Seriously, we never mention the sunshine to outsiders. It's our best kept secret that we don't talk about. Ever."

Outsider: "Dude. I asked you about legalized pot."

Sayulita was an easy choice once we heard about it: Sleepy little surfing village on the Pacific coast, quick and easy to get to, stocked with hammocks. 

Ah, but there's a contradiction here that should have been obvious to us; By the time we hear about it, it's no longer sleepy little. So there were probably a few misaligned expectations on our part.

But little Sayulita (AKA the University of Miami's south campus) still sated, if not quite in the flavor I was hoping for. My itinerary for the week was conspicuously empty: I wasn't looking for a history lesson, I had no intention to hike my feet off. I just wanted to sit and sweat and think and read. And I wanted to do it out of the country.

And I did that. A lot of it in fact. I made some excellent itinerary headway:

• I decided to start going for a few triathlons per year
• I finished an Iain M Banks novel and started a Robert M Pirsig novel
• It would be good to cut back on sweets even more
• I need a hammock - Oh shit! I have a hammock! 
• I need a place to put my hammock.

"Misaligned expectations" is a corporate born euphemism. It means "the fucked up thoughts you got rattling around the old coconut".  

Here it is used in a business setting:

 "Oh I see, your impression was this would be ready by Wednesday. Sounds like the issue is misaligned expectations."

Nura was most(ly) accommodating of my leisurely cadence though she was often bored to tears. But something happened to me that was unexpected and at odds with everything Nura stands for. You see, my appetite evaporated almost the moment we arrived.

Cobblestone streets were outlined by awnings, and giant umbrellas protected sun bleached tables and chairs in front of dozens of crowded restaurants. Fresh tortillas sizzled in cast iron pans, skewers of carne asada sat marinating on every corner. But I wasn't hungry. In fact, I might not get hungry until 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

Nura, bless, would wait for me to want food before she ate. And by the time I did, more often than not she was well past hangry and deep into murder country. So as the day's heat would begin to ease we would set out to find breakfast.

There's only one kind of food served in Sayulita, but it comes in two different varieties. First the type, then the flavors:

The restaurants serve exactly what Americans think Mexican food is. That is to say, they serve American food wrapped in big flower tortillas, covered in melted cheese and salsa. 

Each joint's menu being identical to the next - differing only in cover art and occasionally variety of deserts. However, restaurants would offer a unique twist to their margarita. So you wouldn't go someplace in particular to eat so much as to drink.

You could decide how much you wanted to pay though: If you wanted to pay a lot, you could go to a restaurant owned by an American expat and sit in big, beautifully sculpted gardens with a canopy of zigzagging stringed lights. If you wanted to pay less, you could go to a restaurant owned by a local who converted the front of their house to a restaurant, and kept the back for themselves.

Either way, it seems as though they're all buying the same meats and cheese, fruits and veggies, and grains. So the flavors were mostly indistinguishable (and none were truly outstanding if I'm being honest). 

The best meals were from street carts and back alleys, as they typically used the fewest ingredients. If we're eating BBQ chicken, let's celebrate it. Not drown it.

Oh and speaking of drowning, Nura nearly died on the first day. I literally took Nura by the hand and fed her directly to an undertow. She was rescued by vigilant paddle boarders, no thanks to me, and spent the rest of the day draining half the Pacific Ocean through her sinuses. My bad, Nura. My bad.

Below are a few additional points from the week we were gone. This was by no means an exhaustive list of the strange or memorable things that happened, but were probably easiest to write down.

Of the nearing drug war: 

Something that should be mentioned now, mostly because nobody told me about it earlier, is the escalating drug cartel violence that has traditionally steered clear of tourist havens. Well, I say nobody. I guess the "US Consulate General" had advised "US Citizens" against traveling to exactly where we went, exactly when we went there. But nobody wrote it in a letter with my name on it.

EVIDENTLY, the New Generation Jalisco Cartel, an upstart paramilitary outfit currently battling at least three other gangs, shot down a Mexican military helicopter on a dare. Alright, I guess I don't know for sure it was a dare. Anyhow, six soldiers died and the Jalisco governor pretty openly declared war on the NGJC.

The NGJC is currently fighting for control of about 80,000 square miles containing nearly 20 million people. The area "in dispute" - that is to say, the area that not even the Mexican government or military has complete control over - is almost the size of Minnesota, and has more people than the combined populations the following US cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Phoenix.

It should also be mentioned that this is by no means the largest or bloodiest turf war currently raging in Mexico.

Lucky for us, all we saw of the "war" were half a dozen Ford Raptors with 50 cal machine gun turrets bolted into the beds, roaring around by the airport while we waited for the bus. We also passed through a checkpoint where 20 soldiers in balaclavas pointed said machine guns at the cars and busses as we passed.
Did we think anything of it, beyond a healthy show of force to keep the cartels out and the tourists feeling safe? Nope. Bliss.

Of the jingoists in the next hotel:

If there was a lowlight to this trip, it probably was the group of fratbros staying in the next hotel over from us. Ugly Americans. Loud motherfuckers. Luckily they had a pretty packed itinerary so were gone most of the day, and too exhausted to be bothersome at night. Unfortunately they still found time in the early morning (always awake before 8:00) to get themselves revved up in the most uncomfortable way.

This was clearly the first time any of them had left the country, and for some reason they were confused about what their role as Americans abroad was. I've compiled a few possibilities explaining their "misaligned expectations".

• They were worried sick that anyone within earshot might not know where they're from
• They thought there was a fair chance they might forget where they're from
• Someone told them that where they're from was license to be nauseatingly unpleasant

Anyhow, this is how their jingoism manifested itself; On Monday morning, the alfabro, very aptly named Brody, woke up his crew by loudly fucking up "You're a Grand Old Flag", but it's OK because he quickly recovered by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The rest of the boys joined in.

I can't remember what song he played on his little travel speakers the second morning (Jesus those things have gotten loud), but I do remember it dissolving into the good old fashioned "USA! USA! USA!" chant that lasted way too long.

At some point between the second and third day, someone complained to their hotel management (wasn't us). I know this because Brody didn't reveille his troops on Wednesday morning, but one of the betabros did by turning Springsteen's Born in the USA to 11. 

He only got through the first chorus before we could hear Brody hush "shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up!!" Poor confused little betabro.

But it was too late. Wednesday was our travel day, so I had Bruce's four words echoing endlessly through my head all the way from Sayulita to Seattle.

100 Day Challenge

I’m not sure why I’m starting this challenge. I have a plausible excuse floating around in my head, but I know that’s not it. Not really.

Plausible excuse:

About 3 months ago I sprained my ankle pretty badly playing soccer. I folded over the outside of my left foot and very distinctly heard a “pop-pop”. It was somewhere between a Grade II and III sprain, which means the ligaments were at least partially torn, if not completely. I was off my feet for a week, on crutches for another week, in a brace for 2 more weeks, and unable to walk for more than half an hour for several more weeks. Balls. For the 3 months after the injury I participated in exactly zero exercises that could have been considered truly challenging cardiovascularly or muscularly.

12 weeks after the pops, last Thursday, I gingerly ventured back onto the field to mixed results. I was able to play the full 90 without pain and with minimal swelling (hooray!); but in my time away I lost acceleration, top speed, endurance, and most of all, touch (aww). More importantly, I was at the top of my game when I went down, and I’m afraid I’ll never get it back. I am getting old, after all.

OK, maybe I’m moving towards the real reason for this challenge after all.

The Challenge:

Starting today, and for the next 100 days, I will do 100 pushups and 100 sit-ups per day. At the end of the 100 days, on September 23, 2014, I will have completed 10,000 pushups and 10,000 sit-ups.

Rules: 

• The 100 are due on a daily basis; I cannot roll incomplete sets over to the next day
• Extra sets not paid forward; if I complete 120 pushups today, I still owe 100 tomorrow, not 80
• Sets do not need to be paid in full in one sitting; Each 100 may be completed throughout the day

Metrics:

• 100% success is defined as 100 consecutive days with a minimum of 100 pushups and 100 sit-ups performed each day.
• However, taking reality into account, successfully completing this challenge will be defined as missing no more than 5% of the challenge days, and completing all 10,000 pushups and sit-ups.

Accountability:

Check-ins with pictures will be made in 10 day increments, starting with day one (today), for a total of 11 entries.

Baseline:

I’m starting from pretty close to zero. Today I did 20 pushups, and then 10 sit-ups in my first set. I did more pushups than I expected, but far fewer sit-ups. I always considered my core to be pretty strong, but clearly it isn’t.  I guess it’s better to know how pathetically weak I’ve become, rather than remain blissfully unaware.

I ended with 60 pushups and 45 sit-ups before showering and leaving to jot this down. Tonight I owe another 40 pushups and 55 sit-ups.

Goal:

The goal as of today is pretty clear; in addition to completing the challenge as defined by the success metrics, I want to be able to complete 100 consecutive pushups and sit-ups with no breaks. I imagine I will be able to do this before the challenge is over, so the goal may be modified to include a time limit. But first things first, for sure.

Unintentional Assault, Intimidation, and Attempted Puppy-Napping

Leaving the apartment this morning on my way to get coffee, I walked past a girl and her brand new puppy. They were training; practicing commands like “sit”, “stay”, and “heel”. The puppy saw me and got distracted. I asked if I could pet the little thing, and she happily obliged.

He waggled his whole body while I scrunched and unscrunched his face and thwaped on his side. Becoming more and more excited, he ran between my legs, pulling his leash and moving his owner's hand quickly towards my "mid-section". I swung my leg over the leash to get unstuck and kicked her oncoming hand, hard enough to crack knuckles in her fingers.

I tried to acknowledge and apologize for what I did, but in a little panic I said something absurd, like “oops, popped your snappers there, didn’t I".

In my own mortification I turned away from her, groaning deeply and wearing an “I’m-so-embarrassed” look. And came face to face with her boyfriend and his own “what-the-hell-did-I-just-witness” face, which quickly changed into a good old fashioned “is-he-about-to-hit-me” face.

Confident in having inflicted sufficient damage to their morning, I skedaddled.

In a just world, the story would end here. This is not the case. When I kicked her hand, she dropped the leash, and the puppy trotted off in the direction I was about to start walking. Any reasonable person would try to grab the leash, but I'm still a little gimpy and I can't move quickly yet. So from their perspective, in 5 seconds I kicked the girl, growled at the guy, and helped the puppy abandon his owners. 

Class.


These are my neighbors. They live in my building. And while I may not see them again today or tomorrow, I will see them again eventually. All I can think to do is be ready with my low growl and the same face I gave that poor fellow.

Hawaii

There are countless lovely, wonderful, crushingly beautiful things about the islands and the people who live here that won’t be repeated at this time. Instead, I’m trying to work out what has been bugging me about this place. Trying to bring into focus what keeps slipping away from me out of the corner of my eye.

There is no quicker way to set unreasonable expectations than by calling someplace paradise. It makes you vigilant; ready to find and tear at the seams to see what’s behind the manufactured curtain. Maybe it’s better that way though, nobody admires the oblivious.

The marginalization, fetishization, and then commercialization of natives and native culture is nowhere more apparent than in Hawaii. Observe the gentrified hula ʻauana, available for your viewing pleasure at malls and boardwalks, distilled to coconut bras and grass skirts for easy printing on postcards and beer bottles.

Consider the beachfront high-rise; built to enable the literal stratification of wealth, top level units are bought at a premium by those who fail to recognize that proximity to sand and surf is desirable, and not the inverse found in their city high-rises counterparts. Moreover, they foster an ironic immobility and incomplete isolation, their façade of exclusivity shattered every time you set foot on the street with the rest of us human detritus.

The dichotic standard of beauty of skin tone for whites and others; the general shallowing that a universal focus on physique has (though I may be projecting here); ABC Stores. 

You know what more than makes up for all that though? Poke. Holy fuck that shit is delicious.

Inflatable Dorsum Prosthesis

I wrote this seven years ago on Greg's blog when his back was going nuts. Due to certain key words throughout the piece, it was targeted by bots and linked to with ads for penis enlargement, porn vids, and knockoff watches.

The piece isn't very good, but I think the trackbacks are hilarious. So I'm reposting it here for posterity's sake. 

We have recently learned that one of our own will soon be undergoing surgery. I had the opportunity to sit down with him and his wife recently to discus the procedure, possible risks and side effects, and the end result if all goes well. Below is a transcript of the conversation; names, places, and dialogue has been changed to protect me.

Interviewer: Let me start by thanking you both for coming here today. I really appreciate you taking time to walk us through what will be happening.

The couple sits across from me in an oversized red leather loveseat at a local coffee shop. They don’t stop holding hands the entire time I am there. I sit across from them in a high backed chair. The tape recorder sits on the low table in between us.

Gregg: No problem, thank you for inviting us out.

Interviewer: So, what can you tell me about this procedure and why are you undergoing it? I hear its elective, is that true?

Gregg: It is elective, yeah. I kept throwing my back out during…ah…every day activities, and it was beginning to be a real problem. The frequency with which I could…participate… in normal activities was lessening.

Interviewer: So sorry to hear that. No one likes a stiff back.

Gregg: On the contrary, this type of injury eliminates almost all mobility of my back by restricting blood flow to the muscles, thereby rendering them almost completely flacid because of a lack of oxygen. Its so bad now that I can’t even get myself up, from bed or out of my chair, with out help from my wife.

Wife: HOO-YAA!

Interviewer: That sounds awful. I’m surprised you couldn’t take some medication for it. Ibuprofen, for example, is a blood thinner. Shouldn’t that help with the blood flow?

Gregg: Unfortunately the pills only work for about 70% of men with this condition. The next step was local injections, which I also tried, again to no avail.

Interviewer: So then on to surgery. What is the procedure like? How will they correct the condition?

Gregg: Well, its fairly involved. Ultimately the condition is corrected with the implantation of a device that will strengthen and support my back. Its called an Inflatable Dorsal Prosthesis, and it is basically two empty bladders that run the length of my back. They can be inflated when I need that extra stiffness and strength by activating a small pump that will be implanted into my scrotum.

Wife: HOO-YAA!

Interviewer: Scrotum?

Wife: HOO-YAA!

Interviewer: Why would it be implanted…(glance to the wife)…there?

Gregg: Dunno. Seemed like a good place to put it, I guess. Plus I’ve got plenty of room, if you know what I mean.

Wife: HOO-YAA!

Interviewer: Indeed. So, if all goes well, and I’m sure it will, when will you be able to resume normal activities? Will there be a noticeable drop in performance compared to your pre-injury days?

Gregg: Well, doctors say my back will never have the stiffness that I had before I got hurt, but hey, we’re not 16 anymore, are we?

Interviewer: Certainly not.

Gregg: Rhetorical question. Any how, there shouldn’t be much of a drop in performance. I should be as good as new around two weeks after the surgery, and should have the green light for all normal activities within a week after that.

Interviewer: Wonderful news. I’m so glad to hear it. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you hurt your back in the first place?

Wife: AAAAA HOOOOO-YAAAAAA!

Consider the Supra

Things I like:

• Salted caramel almost anything
• Espousing uninformed, misguided, authoritative sounding dribble
• Cappuccinos – not salted caramel though

I already had a cappuccino today, and I think I’m getting fat from sugar, so I guess that leaves me with adding confusion to a topic I know nothing about.

The Toyota Supra

I mean, I know a little about it: I can spot one in a crowd, and I can read about it on Wikipedia. But I don’t know most things – like development costs, profit margins, or target market demographics. The exact things needed to make the following statements even remotely plausible.

1. Everybody and their mother killed the Supra in a great big team effort
2. There are non-car people working at Toyota and they should quit
3. Nissan is doing one hell of a job keeping the dead Supra dead

Lemmesplain

In 1997 everybody had lots of money and they were all ready and willing to spend. It was the middle of the longest continuous economic expansion in US history, oil was back to cheap after the gulf war, and the Yen was dive-bombing suffering during the Asian financial crisis.

Americans could finally afford a little something extra in the automobile department, and we figured the bigger your SUV, the thicker your pen is to write checks. Anyhow, that was the beginning of the large SUV and the end of the berserker Japanese sports car. For a while.

Ten years later, in 2007, the number of sports car models Toyota sold was exactly zero. For the first time since 1969, Toyota offered no sports or sporty cars. The last of the breed, the Celica, was axed only the year before. And no, the Scion TC doesn’t count. From a styling and performance perspective, it never quite fit the bill.

Toyota Models

But the story isn’t over there. Or at least I hope it isn’t. We still have an appetite for the sports car, so why won’t Toyota satisfy us?

Well, they’re starting to. Kind of. The GT-86 is a serious step in the right direction, but it wasn’t all Toyota, was it? The cost-sharing program with Subaru demonstrates that someone at Toyota still isn’t willing to take on that risk alone – someone at Toyota believes the spreadsheet should dictate which cars to R&D, and which cars should take up space on dealer lots. Someone at Toyota still doesn’t believe in the sports car, and they need to go.

But at the end of the day, the GT-86 was green lighted, so Toyota is willing to at least test the waters once again. Good on them. However, something else happened in 2007 that, I suspect, is now the only reason for keeping our filthy little hands away from the new Supra.

Nissan’s GT-R

It’s long known that Nissan and Toyota ignored their own gentleman’s agreement to limit horsepower in the Skyline and Supra, meaning at one point Toyota cared enough about their own car, as well as the other guy’s, to lie to various governments and to the population at large. And god bless them for it. Seriously.

It’s probably a safe bet then that, when it comes to resurrecting the Supra name, Toyota won’t do it until they have something that’s competitive, once again, with the old rivals. And good lord have you seen what that GT-R can do? You have to step into something truly exotic to fell Godzilla, and whatever that thing is always makes the Nissan look as tall as a minivan.

The Supra will almost inevitably be a loss leader, which to bean counters is impossible to imagine, so let me explain how this will work through the magic of metaphor.

The Supra is a man. A big man, with big arms and a big chest and a big beard. And he’s angry and he throws a chair through a window.

Now, you would think that a big man with a temper should be terrifying, right? That people would run away in fear? Well, if the man is handsome enough, and the Supra absolutely was, an odd thing happens: That big, scary, hairy man has lots of sex with lots of women. Additionally, there will be many more women who want to have sex with the scary man, but are already married. So they go home and have fantasy sex with their noodly armed husbands.

In this case, we the car-enthusiast buying public are the horny women, and the noodly armed husbands we want to have sex with are other Toyota models that we end up buying, and it’s at this point that the metaphor breaks down. But you get the point.

Just do it, Toyota!

Autonomous Mobility

Give it 12 years. 2025 is a nice, round number.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the inevitable automation of cars. I think that full automation – not touching the wheel, gas, or brakes – is closer than most people think. There will be a number of factors keeping broad adoption low to begin with, but from a commercial availability perspective, it’s right around the corner. Though when I say available, I’m somehow not saying on sale to the consumer. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

There are plenty of moving parts that march us ever towards this new relationship with vehicles; I’ll try to name as many as I can before I feel the need to admit I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.

Cars are getting smarter

The tech needed to support fully automated cars exists right now, and already has hundreds of thousands of proof-of-concept miles in the bag tank trunk. Companies like Google, VW, and Toyota have had driverless cars quietly moving around cities and highways for a few years, to wildly safe success.

Much of that same tech is routinely baked into current consumer vehicles, but packaged as individual safety or luxury features. Brake assist, lane departure warnings, anti-fatigue measures, and pedestrian avoidance systems are commonplace. Steer by wire, super cruise, and intricate arrays of advanced sensors and cameras are coming on line more and more. Each of these features use the same technological underpinnings that are needed for fully autonomous cars.

All this boils down to one quiet yet important fact: You can buy a Mercedes, today, that can drive itself in stop and go traffic; speeding up, slowing down, and going around corners, without your input. Tomorrow you can buy an Audi that finds a parking spot in a garage after you’ve gotten out and gone inside somewhere. And to a computer, the difference between 5 mph and 75 mph isn’t nearly as big as it is to us.

We’re not getting any better at driving

We suck at driving. All of us. Even you. Compared to machines your situational comprehension, reaction time, decision making ability, spatial reasoning, and object permanence is embarrassing. Unfortunately, all of these are extraordinarily important components in being able to drive well. On top of that, modern cars and the roads they drive on are get better, which means average speeds are increasing, shrinking our precious margins of error.

How long will it take the insurance industry to recognize, in miles driven before a wreck, the difference between an autonomous Prius and a 16 year old with a hashtag addiction? Or an octogenarian with undiagnosed Alzheimer’s? Or any male under the age of 35? Seven weeks is my bet – a month to generate the numbers, a week for analysis, a week to double check that analysis, and a week to draft new policies for automated cars.

There are other nickels and dimes to be saved

Besides the insurance savings, less will also be spent on gas. Initially, smarter routing based on real-time traffic updates, and smoother mechanical operation (acceleration and breaking), will boost individual MPG returns. Rerouting around accidents will become a trusted component and barely even noticed by the driver, so time spent in traffic will decrease. But when you scale up adoption city wide, and then to a national level, the 5% lift in efficiency you found individually will be dwarfed by what comes next.

Take the morning commute for any major city: When a certain percentage of cars automatically execute on the fastest route to anywhere, the burden of traffic will ease exponentially. This will raise the average speed on any given street or highway, adding efficiency to every car on the road. This is to say nothing of the fact that accidents will become fewer and farther between, further pushing down traffic load. Taking all the gains found at the city level, from a national perspective a measureable ease in fuel demand will occur, and the market price will drop.

Nice.

There are a number of other reasons to adopt this tech, but as it turns out I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about (made it 700 odd words). I’m also itching to get to the big one.

Commercial Industry Incentives

Insensitivity warning: Insensitivity ahead.

There are lots of professional drivers out there. Millions of ‘em, in fact, making their living and supporting their families as long-haul truckers and delivery drivers. Each year they move goods nearly a quarter of a trillion (trillion (with a fucking T)) miles in the US alone. And those muhfuggas are expensive.

Do you have any idea what $.40/.25Trillion is? I do. It’s the annual number of dollars that trucking companies pay their drivers. Or taken another way, it’s the number of dollars tacked on to goods purchased by consumers. It’s also a hundred billion. And it’s only a matter of time before one of those two paying entities want some of their dollars back.

And again with the exponential return thing: As go the truck drivers, so goes the weekly mileage limitations imposed for safety reasons. So goes the time “wasted” while the drivers “sleep”, or “eat”. So goes the unreliable dependence on sight for safety at night, or in inclement weather. No more rookie driver mistakes costing time and money, fewer touch-points for shrink (“Musta fell off the truck”), and so much less paid out in liability for accidents with other motorists. Most people already know the truckers are the careful ones, but if you’ve got 6 cameras on each side of your trucks, you’ll have some beautiful footage of the idiots who crash into your stuff.

So we’ve got the tech, we’ve got the incentive. Why hasn’t this happened already?

Lots of reasons.

1.      The tech probably isn’t quite ready just yet. Nervous manufactures don’t want to get sued because their self-driving car wrecked, so they’ll keep at R&D and then release consumer grade products when they feel like they’re covered.

2.      And speaking of coverage, there will need to be lots more laws written around driverless vehicles. Who pays when one of these things really does crash with fault? The driver who bought it? The manufacturer who made it? The part supplier whose camera stopped working? The software company who programed it?

3.      And speaking of laws, we all know how quick our lawmakers are to understand and embrace technology. Luckily the silver-tongued $100B the trucking industry alone stands to make per year by not paying their drivers is a sweet talking little honey bunny.

4.      And speaking of embracing technology, would you buy a first gen automated car? Consumers will have to be eased into the technology, even as it has existed safely for several years. But waves of releases – a car that drives in traffic, a car that parks itself, a car that can swerve to avoid an accident and then give you back control – will boost consumer confidence. It won’t be long then before fully automated cars are in demand and commonplace.

But, the time scale mentioned above is certainly not on par with my prediction of consumer available driverless cars within 12 years. So how do we bridge that gap? If one wanted to speed up the adoption process, facilitating our transition to driverless cars, there is one more consumer touch-point that I think will be instrumental in the broad familiarization of the new technology.

Car sharing

Call it a taxi, call it ZipCar or Car2Go, call it Lyft. Whatever you call it, it’s not your car but it just drove you somewhere and you paid someone something. The experiences can be great, but more often than not they’re horrible: Sometimes you know for a fact your driver is either lost or taking the long way. Sometimes you pay $50 to go 12 miles. Sometimes you’re drunk and you kill a cabbie (amirite?). Whatever your experience, you know it could be better than it is now.

This is where our first consumer experience with driverless cars will come in. The new automated car service will pilot in a big, tech friendly city. You’ll give it a shot on your own terms, ordering the car and taking a little trip – like a carnival ride. You’ll appreciate the quick, quiet, clean experience. You’ll see your destination on a screen with traffic flow and an ETA. You’ll fare will be automatically deducted from your bank account – no need to even pull out your wallet or phone (this is 12 years from now after all). And then you’ll be hooked. You’ll begin to wonder if you could get rid of your car, and just use this service.

The company that supplies this service will be a giant. Who else will have the pockets to roll it out first? They will have the experience and knowhow from millions of miles quietly piloting prototypes, and this gives them reason to create a market that helps recoup their extensive R&D costs. They’ll have limitless access to bleeding edge technology, world class navigation algorithms, comprehensive street level mapping of every major city, proven influence with legal policy creation, and always looking for deeper product integration. If only such a company existed now.

Adventures (?) in Unemployment: Day 185

Hi, my name is Eric, and I’m a stay-at-home-husband.

So this is what it feels like to be unemployed for six consecutive months: It’s a nagging, frustrating feeling that no matter what I’m doing, I could be making better use of my time. It’s avoiding former coworkers, not because I’m embarrassed, but because I’m afraid they might have survivor’s guilt. It’s an aversion to malls.

Actually, that was there before.

But on the whole, it hasn’t been so bad, and here’s why:

• I keep myself moving. When I’m not actively looking for a job, I try to remain productive in other areas – lots of reading, writing, and exercise, and not too much Netflix or idle internet browsing. I actively try to add structure and variety to a day that would open and close just fine without it. That’s not to say I don’t have off days, because I do. Days I slink out of bed at 4 p.m. so sick of Reddit, FaceBook, and YouTube that I can’t breathe.

• It's been a busy, beautiful summer: Getting married, honeymooning, vacations, family and friends visiting – each of these milestones separate what could have been indistinguishable months of beautiful monotony. And the weather, oh my god. Perfect. That’s helped keep the spirits way up.

• I’m not entirely unfulfilled. In its absence, I’ve learned that “to work” is so much more than to simply draw pay. It’s a place to add value, to perform on a team, to grow and create. But when all that is suddenly gone, the hole in my day isn't simply plugged by finding things to do for eight hours. And yet the reinforced sense of self-worth I got by doing good work at work has been somewhat replaced by doing good work at home and, when I can, volunteering now and again. I am bored though, absolutely, but I don’t hate myself. So that’s good.

What the job search has been like:

I’ve created profiles on a number of jobs boards (Monster, Indeed, Careerbuilder, Seattlejobs, ad nauseam), and I keep them on recruiters’ radar by updating information or uploading resumes on a weekly basis. From these boards I have received hundreds of canned emails telling me about the wildly exciting and lucrative career in insurance sales. C’mon, Farmers! I’ll probably respond to the next one! I also have a profile in the career section of most major Seattle area companies. 

But from these avenues, aside from insurance spam, I mostly get notes or calls from area 3^rd party recruiters who, as far as I can tell, are tasked with providing maybe a dozen options for a particular opening that hiring managers can then chose from. Usually the process is a quick call to determine I’m alive and not currently drunk, an email confirming my interest in the job description and compensation, and another call to talk through examples of situations I may encounter; lovely, lively conversations that typically end right there. These interactions account for around 90% of the attention I get from passive searching. Occasionally an in person, follow-up interview will be scheduled, but this is typically the exception that proves the rule.

A strategy with a much higher take-rate has been trolling through craigslist posts. The downside to this approach is the amount of inapplicable gigs to filter through before the ones that fit show themselves. The upside is directly (in many cases) contacting the hiring organization, an exposure to a wide variety openings, and oddly, a total sense of treasure hunting. In a really lame, anti-climactic kind of way.

So there is movement. That is to say, I am getting interviews. So I guess the job search is going exactly as well as it could without actually landing a job. But here’s an unanticipated consequence to all these interviews – after each one I have to report back to my wife, friends, and family how it went. These conversations are below in chronological order;

1. “It was great! I’m excited for this one” 
2. “No, I haven’t heard back yet, but I’m still waiting” 
3. “Guess I didn’t get it. But I have another one coming up!”

I said that to say this: In some recent cases, I no longer announce when an interview comes up. The idea is that if they don’t know it happened, I won’t have to say I didn’t bring it home. That sounds more negative on paper than it did in the old coconut, but there you are. The other idea is that hopefully soon I get to say “hi, honey. I know you didn’t know about this one, but since Ballmer was stepping down they put me in at CEO”. Or something to that effect.

New thoughts have been stirring of late. I have been clinging to the mantra of “recent, relevant work experience is more valuable to perspective employers than a newly minted English grad, so prioritize work over school”. However, as moments turn to months and I’m still not working, the possibility that I will neither have a degree nor my precious “recent, relevant” marches steadily into the forefront of my mind. Since one of those pieces is within my control, I’ve decided to press on with school, full time, regardless of what is happening on the work front. If I get another gig, I’ll be in school at night. If I don’t, I’ll be in school during the day. More on that later. 

Pinckneyville

My father is from a small town in southern Illinois. So was his father, and his father before him. In fact seven generations of Smiths and their married offspring, stretching back to the mid-1800s, have lived and died in a town with one tenth the population of my neighborhood. My grandfather sleeps in the same room he was born 90 years ago, and I believe he intends to die in that room when his time comes. My dad and his twin brother found their way out after college, but my aunt stayed. So have my cousins, and since their kids are too young to take off just yet, they’re still around too.

Growing up, it seems we made our way down to Pinckneyville once every other year or so. At each arrival we would rediscover the selfsame scene that came to define my impression of what that place was: An L shaped world about 2 blocks long; beginning on one end with a railroad crossing, turning a corner around a flat green lawn, and ending three houses down at Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill’s. The midway point was my grandparent’s handsome house with a light colored roof and strong corners on the front porch. The detached garage out back; an oversized thermometer facing the kitchen door; the corrugated tin roof covering an open shed; each became as familiar to me as a favorite recurring dream – immediately recognized and judged as unchanging with every encounter.

As I grew older, the intervals between visits grew longer, until sometime around high school I stopped going. Neither through resentment nor disinterest did my attention wane, but like the recurring dream, its absence weighed very little on me. Being out of the country, I even missed my grandma’s funeral in late 2005. That was the last time my family went down together.

Half a lifetime hence, now armed with a wife, a drivers license, and a receding hairline rental car, I came back to celebrate my grandpa’s 90^th birthday. Though I hadn’t visited since I was a teenager, the only thing that changed was me. My L shaped world was exactly as I left it; still warm under the heavy setting summer sun, its stillness pierced by the cicada drone from unidentified treetops. Perhaps some details shifted slightly – a missing hedge here, a new car there, but by and large everything was just how I remembered. And so began the schism – the separation of the two Pinckneyvilles: One that I unquestioningly absorbed as a child; and one that I now keenly observed behind eyes that have finally seen some sheeit.  

Firstly, Pinckneyville is not simply the 100 yards between the family houses. It’s much larger than that. Like, 20 times larger. In two directions. Secondly, there’s more to do than just sneak around the attic and garage roof while we think grandpa isn’t looking. There are restaurants but no movie theater. There’s a tire shop but no dry cleaners. You can buy a gun in town but not a bicycle. And for better or worse, everybody knows you. Even if you have never lived there. The last time I visited, as a teenager, I walked past a flower shop and the owner (who was well in to her 150s) popped outside and declared that I was a Smith though she didn’t know which brother had sired me. She was already halfway back in when I caught my breath and wheezed “Al, ma’am”.

This visit was no different. In my email to the B&B where we were staying, I mentioned how long it had been since I last visited. Our greeting was something to the effect of “Are you Eric? Shame on you for taking so long to get here! Your room is upstairs”. She wasn’t kidding, but it didn’t hurt any. I’ll just go back sooner so I don’t get scolded again. Neither this establishment nor any of its rooms had functioning door locks.

But that “small town” coin has two sides, and nighttime in a small town is wildly different. We spent an evening with my cousin’s family eating at Dixie’s Cup, the only diner open after 11:00.

 <Tangent> I opened the menu and dropped into a sticker shock, of sorts: Burger and fries for $4; “Steak” “dinner” for $8. I couldn’t not sound like a dick as I tried to explain what an all-night dive in Seattle looks like. Bottom line is our burgers have suggested wine pairings. </Tangent>

Since my high school boasted a larger population than the free residents of Pinckneyville, and I didn’t know half of my own graduating class, I wondered if my cousin knew everybody in town, or at least everyone who happened to be in the diner. She looked around to see if anybody was listening, and then proceeded, in a matter of moments, to dissolve the illusion of quiet, private small town life.

             “See the fry cook? That’s (her daughter’s) former best friend until a few weeks ago. They got in a fight. The woman next to her is her mom. Our server lives with her husband, and boy friend. And ten year old son. The guy on the grill just got out of prison for meth. The cashier is a pedophile. If you look outside, there is a car parked across the street. That’s the hostess’s paranoid and jealous husband who watches her work”.

She could have continued with every single patron in the restaurant had she been facing them. As it happened, she was seated the wrong way. But that’s the essence of it; when residents on opposite sides of a small town aren't separated by more than 2 miles – walls, doors, and windows become more metaphorical than physical (since they never lock anyway). And equally ineffective.

Though the world of Pinckneyville both expanded and collapsed during this visit, I am by no means fulfilled, and I can’t imagine letting another 12 years slip past before returning. I believe there was wisdom in the bi-annual visit cadence, and Wells Fargo willing, I’ll keep going back to enjoy watching the next seven generations unfold in all their small town glory.