Social Hygiene: Mary Chapin Carpenter

When I was thinking about the seven songs post, I was looking for some Mary Chapin Carpenter lyrics and happened on a This I Believe segment she recorded on NPR last year. It's called The Learning Curve of Gratitude, and she shares how experiencing a pulmonary embolism affected her life. It's worth a listen. An unabridged text version may be found at Mary Chapin Carpenter's web site.

In the blogging world, Doc Searls suffered an identical illness just about a year after Mary Chapin Carpenter's.

Cheese Sandwich: The Boss 8/15/08

I'm about to go into stupid consumer mode, as I struggle to obtain tickets to the newly added tour date here in Jacksonville. Tickets go on sale in 10 minutes, whereupon the Ticketmaster website will go into meltdown, and the phone line will go busy.

But I will get tickets. Oh yes, I will...

Update: I have tickets! Four on the floor! Woo-hoo!

Competing Messages: Stupid Google Redux

AKMA, with whom I am more often in agreement than a recent post might suggest, has offered a contrary view on whether or not Google, that is to say, ubiquitous information technology, is making us "stupid." Having just suggested that I seldom disagree with him, I'm now going to do just that.

While AKMA does not embrace the uninhibited, fully-intoxicated, irrational though ebullient, point of view of the most deeply committed, and his measured, nuanced optimism is refreshing, I think he nevertheless dismisses the potential for unintended consequences too easily.

In his balanced rebuttal, he offers:

Automobiles are terrific technology for small-group transportation, but their over-use may be contributing to catastrophic climate change.

Catastrophic climate change is due to probably more than the automobile, but even the health issues attendant to smog ought to be something to give one pause when considering the automobile and its effects on the environment. The automobile is a great example, though AKMA does not go far enough in exploring how it has changed, or distorted, life. Not only has the exhaust of the internal combustion engine changed the quality and composition of the air we breathe, the automobile itself has changed the scale of our architecture and our cities. Our urban areas are designed for the convenience of our machines, not ourselves. Though, presumably, our machines serve us, so making things more convenient for them is really making them more convenient for us, though I would dispute that. The costs attendant to those changes were, and are, enormous, and not just in the dollars and cents that go into building and maintaining infrastructure (nobody likes bridges collapsing), but also the costs to our mental health, or, if you will, our spiritual health, as we cope with the daily stresses of commuting in heavy traffic.

Also consider this: I haven't checked recently, but in my lifetime it was once common for 50,000 people or more to die each year in traffic accidents. Because of technological improvements in automobile design, many mandated by government, I believe now it's only around 40,000 people who die each year. (We won't mention how anti-lock brakes seem to have actually made people drive more recklessly.) Consider that in the five years since we went to war, because less than a tenth of that annual number were murdered, something approaching 200,000 people have died in automobile accidents.

Yet we haven't invaded Detroit! It's just something we accept. The cost of doing business. The price of progress.

We could debate whether or not our advanced, commercial, technology-intensive food supply has made us fat. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe current rates of obesity and diabetes are unprecedented. But it's almost an inevitable consequence of the way we're encouraged to live by our marketing messages, our tools, and what we've been told is the desirable lifestyle. Nevertheless, despite epidemic rates of obesity and diabetes, intensive, expensive, technological interventions allow us to achieve ever longer life spans. What kind of life might be a matter of some debate.

But the problem with this whole debate is the way the question is framed. It's a clever quip to market a deeper question, whether information technology is leading to cognitive changes that may be adaptive for living a life in service of machines, but are not in the best interests of experiencing the full potential of what it means to be a human being. "Meaning," perhaps being a loaded term, and one constructed, or certainly mediated, largely through technological means; but it remains a serious question. Are we going to achieve the mental and spiritual equivalents obesity and diabetes? Are we going to alter our mental landscape the way the automobile altered our physical one? Is that desirable?

The question is not whether Google is making us stupid. We already are stupid, that is: ignorant. We don't know what the effects of this technology will be. We have many examples of unintended, undesirable, extremely problematic consequences to the fielding of technologies that were once believed to be unreserved boons for humanity. Nevertheless, we cannot seem to muster the intellectual rigor to critically examine the way forward. We are impelled, even compelled, by the promise of opportunities for greater wealth, to develop and field technologies and systems that offer immediate, perhaps only superficial advantages, many of them sold as competitive advantages. We simply can't pause and reflect, because some other competitor would seize that as a competitive advantage, and market the technology and reap the immediate rewards anyway, leaving the matter of consequences as something for society and government to adapt to or cope with as best they can.

We're hurtling headlong into a future we can't predict, beyond the rosy projections of someone trying to sell us something.

So, this will be one of the few areas where AKMA and I will agree to disagree.

Competing Messages: One For the Good Guys

I haven't seen it yet, but the NY Times review of Wall-E suggests it advances a notion that is important to me:

Consumer capitalism, anticipating every possible need and swaddling its subjects in convenience, is an infantilizing force. But as they cruise around on reclining chairs, eyes fixed on video screens, taking in calories from straws sticking out of giant cups, these overgrown space babies also look like moviegoers at a multiplex.

They’re us, in other words. And like us, they’re not all bad.

It remains to be seen if we can change the central organizing principle of the dominant narrative of our civilization from that of competition in the creation of wealth, to... something else. While creation always seems to involve destruction, perhaps we can be more creative about that destruction, and not simply creative about our destruction. Perhaps we can destroy competition in the creation of something else.

Why is competition bad? Like anything, it's not that simple. It's not that competition is "bad," per se, but when it is the central organizing principle of our civilization, that all progress is a competition between between the way things are and the way they might be, then there is no natural check on the competitors. Even we, the so-called "rational actors," who act in what is supposed to be our "self-interest," are co-opted into embracing and supporting that organizing principle in the larger narrative. Or, if it pleases you, call it a "meme."

The act of creation is also an act of consumption, not merely destruction. As new creators compete with other creators, they must consume not only material and energy resources in the act of creation, they must consume immaterial resources in the act of competition: our time and attention. Which translates into the "destruction" of our lives. Our existence ultimately has meaning only in its service to the principle of competition. ("Markets are conversations." - Our social lives serve commerce, not society. Or Society itself is commercial.)

Irony being the fifth fundamental force of the universe, this post is itself a competitive act. A fact which brings me no joy, and which is why I'm inclined to write less and simply enjoy what moments I have with my family, my friends and my dog, and those few moments when I can simply appreciate the miracle and gift of existence in a beautiful sunrise, or a starry night, or a quiet moment when my own inner narrator gives me a break.

An idea from another movie about technology and the tragic flaw of humanity: The only way to win is not to play the game.

Mac: iPod Video Issue

I was going to let someone hear the funny sound my iPod made, but I'd forgotten to pack my earbuds, they being still attached to the Nano. So I plugged it into a set of powered computer speakers through the headphone jack. Lo and behold, music comes out. So I dropped by the Exchange on another errand, and picked up another set of earbuds, plugged them in and the problem returned. Tried the speakers again - worked fine. Some static, but if I rotated the plug, it would clear up.

So I looked around in the settings and played with the volume limiter. I was able to get some music from the earbuds from time to time while playing with the volume limiter, but nothing that would last and what I was able to get was still noisy. But it was music instead of just a rhythmic clicking.

On the way home, I connected it to my Griffin iTrip, and it worked fine there too. So I don't really know how long I've had the issue, since I normally listen to this iPod in the Hi-Fi, the mm50 speakers, or through the iTrip. I'm guessing it's an issue with the output power through the headphone jack. Powered speakers can play audio, but unpowered earbuds cannot. I think the docking connector provides a line level signal, which, I believe, is less than what is present at the headphone jack. So maybe we've got a blown amplifier, though I don't know why the powered speakers would play audio and not the noise I'm hearing in the earbuds.

Not really my problem, anyway. It's still under warranty, though it will necessitate a trip to the Apple Store.

The beat goes on...

Cheese Sandwich: Home Again (again)

Made it in last night. Flight was uncomfortable. The air conditioning was broken on the plane. Not much of a problem at 34,000 feet, but when you're on the ground, it gets very hot, very fast. Screaming kid, who was all smiles and giggles on the ground.

The kiosk check-in offered, well, actually it kind of demanded, that I choose a seat assignment. My reservation said I already had one assigned, but it was a window in row 6, and I figured I'd be better off in an aisle. Wrong. I managed to get an aisle in row 14 on a 737 with 3-3 seating. That translated to Zone 5, which meant that all the overhead compartments were taken up by people with their ginormous, we-never-check-anything-because-they-always-lose-our-luggage, carry-on bags, and their only slightly less than ginormous small "personal" bag. So my laptop bag, which probably would have fit in the available volume above my seat, had someone not stuck a large, rigid briefcase that could not be made to stand vertically into it, had to go under the seat in front of me. So I was rather uncomfortable in my seat. Forget about sleeping, because everybody who walked by had to bump into me on their way past. I've seen less traffic in the aisles on transcontinental flights! Nobody goes to the bathroom before the plane takes off. Must be because the in-flight bathroom experience is part of the thrill of flying or something.

USAir can't go out of business fast enough for me. Did I mention I got hit with a $50.00 surcharge because my bag weighed 53.5 pounds? I think it was all the pennies I couldn't figure out what to do with and so I stuffed them in a sock. Well, that and the Hillary Clinton bobble-head doll I bought because it was marked down 75%. That was probably the difference, since I didn't get hit on the way up.

Well, once we were on the ground in Jax, I was happy. That is, until I discovered that the Florida Department of Transportation had decided to offer one of their pop intelligence tests. I'm convinced there's some sociologist or anthropologist doing a research project with the cooperation of the sadists at the DOT. I was about to take another one of their rats-in-the-maze tests.

There's been a lot of construction going on at the juncture of 9A and J. Turner Butler Boulevard, for what seems like about decade. May only have been a few years. JTB is one of three main (there's a fourth now, Wonderwood Expressway, but it's pretty far to the north for me) corridors to the beach, Atlantic, Beach and JTB. They do a lot of work at night, to avoid affecting rush-hour traffic. So I'm bombing down 9A South to JTB, and I'm wise enough, I think, to go west on JTB at Gate Parkway then loop back around onto JTB eastbound, because they've had that interchange all fouled up for, like, ever. So I'm on JTB eastbound, and a lighted sign tells me JTB is closed from 9:00 PM to 5:00 AM from 20 June to 15 July! Like, "Hello!" It would have been nice to mention that on 9A before Beach Blvd, which I happily would have taken had I known you were going to close the main route home! Morons! So they dump you back out onto 9A and I'm pretty much out of the "don't drive angry," zone.

I follow the traffic, fortunately there was traffic, and we circuitously get back on Gate, I think, (I'm totally confused by now) then somehow onto another on-ramp for JTB again, no detour signs, mind you - I think these are folks who've just had to do this before -not sure if we actually made it onto JTB proper, then taking the Kernan Road exit from JTB, crossing Kernan, and getting back onto the the on-ramp for JTB from Kernan. Clear sailing from there. Fortunately, all before I had an aneurysm. This is the second time I've gone away for a while and returned to find they've changed the traffic pattern significantly just as I'm trying to get home at night after a long day.

Anyway, I'm home and happy to be here, and ever so grateful I don't have to fly any more than I already do, and that I don't work on the other side of the ditch, where I'd have to deal with the morons running the Florida DOT every day. All my stuff made it back with me, so I'm grateful for that, and that I didn't worry about it too much. The broken iPod kind of took my mind off it, I think!

I was making some progress on the whole "grumpy old man" thing until the second week where I kept slipping because of all the middle-schoolers their adult minders, and then failed utterly on the last day of the trip.

I'm sure I'll get many more opportunities to practice. Okay, that's enough bitching for this month. We'll try to focus on more positive things for the remainder of the month. My buddy Bodhi helps me do that. What a great dog. And my wonderful friends who look after him when I'm away.

It's great to be back.

Cheese Sandwich: Bummer

The iPod Video remains screwed up. Sigh. Still under warranty though. So we'll see what happens next.

Of course, I have a back-up! I'm syncing selected playlists to my iPod Nano, which I brought along for my workout music.

We rock on.

Cheese Sandwich: Marking Time

I'm here at Reagan Airport (formerly Washington National) waiting for my flight, which isn't for several more hours. T-Mobile continues to provide coverage for me, so I'm able to check e-mail and do time cards and the like.

I thought I'd settle down in a seat somewhere and just listen to my iPod for a while, but something is wrong with it. I brought the 80GB iPod Video with me, and it had been working just fine in the hotel room. Something has gone awry though, as it now produces just a rhythmic clicking sound when a song is being played. I reset the iPod, but that didn't solve the problem. So I found a power outlet they have conveniently provided at a standup table, and I'm restoring the iPod from iTunes. Hopefully that will resolve the problem.

I've also got my Nintendo DS with me, and I've been playing Advance Wars Days of Ruin for a couple of months now. I'm going through the individual T-scenarios (I don't know if they're intended as tutorials or training, but they're stand-alone encounters unrelated to the overall campaign game.) now and I've been stuck on Tatter River for weeks now. It's you against three computer opponents, and while I'm able to make large gains in properties, I've been unable to knock out any of the individual opponents, which makes for a long, rather boring, seemingly endless war of attrition. So I expect to take another stab at that here shortly.

So far 1800 of 5700 tracks have been sync'ed to the iPod, so I'm going to be standing here for a while.

Arriving so early at the airport kind of worries me. I don't like the idea of my bag just sort of hanging around somewhere, waiting to get on the right plane. I'm worried they'll either send it along somewhere on the wrong flight, or some bored baggage employee will decide to rifle through it and see if there isn't something worth taking. While losing my camera or the Logitech speakers would be an inconvenience, I'd really be disappointed to lose the pictures on the memory card in the camera. I'm wishing I'd remembered to upload them before I checked out of the hotel. One of the guests at the hotel had told me that someone had liberated a bottle of perfume from her bag. Oh well, not much I can do about it, and worrying is just a waste of time.

I learned that I'll be traveling again in July and October. July will be a short hop up to Virginia Beach for three days for some training. October has me in San Diego for five days at another conference. It's my job, so I guess I don't mind. I just hate to impose on my friends to look after Bodhi. But I think it'll be okay.

Well, let's see if this posts...

Cheese Sandwich: Going Home

My time in D.C. is almost over, and I'm happy about that. It hasn't been an unpleasant visit, but I'm anxious to get home and see my kids, my friends, and my dog. I've spent about a third of the month of June up here.

I had dinner with Pascale of Pascale's Wager on Sunday evening at an Indian restaurant. It was very nice catching up with an old "virtual" friend.

Of course, I had to do the tourist thing, so I walked around the Mall on Saturday. I could have planned that better, I suppose. There were several thousand other people with exactly the same idea, and most of them seemed to want to see the dinosaurs in the Museum of Natural History as much as I did. Oh well... I'd been there before.

I hadn't been to the National Museum of the American Indian before, and that was very cool. It's a marvelous building, with a beautiful waterfall feature. The exhibits were excellent, covering the complicated history of this nation's indigenous people. Portions of it were a disquieting experience, as I think they should be.

I missed an opportunity to see Lizz Wright perform at Birchmere. We were supposed to go to a baseball game in a kind of group fun experience, but the weather didn't look promising so we changed our minds at the last minute. We made dinner plans instead, and since I hadn't already obtained tickets, I figured it was probably a safer bet to go with dinner. Well, that turned out to be a bust, as the Metro stop I was told to take turned out to be wrong. So I had dinner alone last night. Woudn't have happened if I'd had an iPhone!

The Hyatt Regency was a bit of a disappointment. Over $200.00 a night, and internet access isn't included. They want $10.00 a day! (I suppose they figure if you can afford $200.00 a night, you won't mind $10.00 a day for internet access.) I managed, with some difficulty, to secure a month of T-Mobile access for a prorated portion of their $39.95 rate, which was much more affordable, albeit technically fraught. I spent over an hour over three days working out glitches in the log-in. Once those were resolved, everything went well.

Also disappointing were the numbers of tour groups with large numbers of children staying at the hotel, and a couple of conferences. Getting back to the hotel required taking a shuttle bus from the Metro station. I'm not averse to walking, but carrying a computer bag in the rain or the humid afternoon air wasn't very appealing. Unfortunately, on a number of occasions, the shuttle was filled with children and their adult minders. I managed to stand in the doorway for the ride back each time, but it was kind of aggravating. And of course they all headed for the elevators at the same time. Ordinarily, I might go to the bar for a beer until they cleared out, but the bar was clobbered with conference-goers. Sigh. The little girl who kept pushing the door-open button, holding the elevator for her father who was evidently otherwise engaged, was getting to be a bit much. Anyway, that's about over. I tried to regard it all as a challenge in not being a "grumpy old man." Can't say I acquitted myself famously, but I do believe I was better than I ordinarily might have been.

The room comes with a nice Samsung LCD widescreen TV. But none of the programming is high-definition. You can rent movies from the hotel, and they have a nice selection, but they're a bit expensive. The TV had an open HDMI port on the back, so I made a trip to the Apple Store at the Pentagon City Mall and bought the mini-DVI to DVI adapter for my MacBook and then to Radio Shack for a DVI-to-HDMI cable. The TV used a non-standard remote, and the control buttons on the side of the cabinet were disabled. But I found that if you hit the channel-up button, at the top of the range it cycled through the various video inputs. So I was able to watch my own movies and DVDs on a nice screen. I'd brought along my Logitech mm50 speakers, so audio wasn't a problem.

Other than that, the accomodations were very nice. I rather expect I'll miss this nice mattress.

I've eaten way too much, though I did manage to use the fitness center several times. Still, I'm sure I've gained a few pounds as a result of all the "conference food" and lunches and dinners.

Hopefully all will go smoothly tomorrow, and by this time tomorrow evening, I shall be home among my kids, my friends and my wonderful dog. I'm looking forward to it.

Cheese Sandwich: Eight

This could go on all day, but I just had to note this one: Mindy Smith's Fighting for It All, from One Moment More.

Cheese Sandwich: Seven Songs

This is a delinquent answer to Dave Golding's invitation to share seven songs that shaped my spring.

It's much harder than it might seem a first glance. Music has become a much larger part of my life of late, and it has always been a large part. So, I'm going to kind of cheat a bit, and offer an album here and there in place of a song.

The order may or may not be significant. Can't help you there.

1. Between Here and Gone, Mary Chapin Carpenter

Believe it or not, this was my first introduction to Mary Chapin Carpenter, although I did eventually recall Passionate Kisses at some point. This is the one album I've really obsessed over this year. First, Mary's voice is like an old, worn blanket, that you can just wrap around your heart and lose yourself in its warm comfort. There seem to be certain things that can really hit some resonant note in me, things that just thrill me or make me melt. Mary Chapin Carpenter's voice is one of those. Mary McDonnell's beautiful face is another one. Anyway, the album, the lyrics are the other resonant notes. Some reduce me to tears each and every time. It's bittersweet, and I've put the album aside now, because it demands as much as it offers and that's more than I can do sometimes.

2. American Myth, Jackie Greene.

This is what I've enjoyed listening to by the pool. Good stuff. Lighter without being lightweight. Uptempo, energetic without being overpowering.

3. Spirit, Jewel.

Again, I'd never really heard of Jewel before, and I'm so grateful I have wonderful friends who introduce me to good music. Life Uncommon is the track that does it for me. No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from.

4. Girls In Their Summer Clothes, Bruce Springsteen.

It was kind of a tough call, whether to list the album or just this track. I love the album, but I really love this track.

5. You Don't Know Me, Chuck Brown and Eva Cassidy.

The real story here is Eva Cassidy, who is no longer with us. We only have moments to live. Sunday morning music.

6. The Little Willies, The Little Willies.

More good pool music. Yeah, they do sound like the Dead. So what?

7. Worrisome Heart, Melody Gardot.

A little bit Norah Jones, maybe a bit Janis Ian, but a huge talent in her own right. Love the title track. Love the album.

Okay, Dave, that's it. I'm supposed to "tag" seven others to do the same thing. If you're so inclined, consider yourself tagged!

Cheese Sandwich: Direct Current

I'm in the District of Columbia, home of our nation's capitol, for the next nine days or so. I'm working on not being a grumpy old man, with some success I might add.

Not that it hasn't been challenging. I'm sharing the hotel with about 1000 high school kids who won some essay contest and a trip to D.C. Even using an elevator gets to be a little challenging here.

Competing Messages: Soul of a New Machine

Or: Things you think about when your dog pukes at 3:00 a.m.

Nick Carr asks, Is Google Making Us Stupid?. Nick Carr is a serious fellow, not like that Keen guy, so perhaps the digerati will take him seriously.

Shelley Powers believes there's something to Nick's point of view. I happen to think so too. Seth Finkelstein doesn't see it exactly the same way, but regards it as a sort of C.P. Snow, Two Cultures thing.

I'm going to agree with Nick; and have this brief post perhaps serve as an example, though likely a bad one, for it will be brief mostly because I intend to go back to bed. But for now, I scratch where it itches, however briefly. I'm also going to agree with Shelley, and also with Seth, though not exactly the way Seth would see it.

How we interact with our environment does shape our neural circuitry to one degree or another. How significant that turns out to be, and whether for good or ill, remains to be seen. Since we're bent on making machines our evolutionary replacements, I'm inclined to think it's ill. But maybe the machines will be better people than people are, so I could be wrong.

But Seth writes:

When I read articles such as the above, I'm very aware that there is indeed a science/humanities "Two Cultures" divide. And I'm on one side of it (science) while many pundits are on the other (humanities). One basic way to tell the difference is essentially when science types can extend "themselves" through technology, they think "This is cool! Wonderful! Great! More!", while humanities types angst about "How has the basic nature of our essential souls been corrupted?". Note this angst-ing effect generally applies only to technology they haven't grown up with - for example, you don't see a lot of articles bemoaning how the telephone disembodies us into ghostly vocal presences. Of course, the more intelligent humanities types, like Nick, know this history, and it's clear especially towards the end of his piece. But they write the angst-filled articles all the same.

Let me speak for myself and say that I'm inclined to view all such technological "advancements" as "angst-inducing." I think Jared Diamond is pretty much in the same camp. Let's just say, I think we have a more "balanced" (Not to say "scientific," Seth.) view of the costs of technological "advancement."

But what is ironic (Irony being the fifth fundamental force of the universe.), is that the divide isn't one between "science" and "humanities," but more along the lines of religious faith. Faith in God as mediated by religion has been deprecated in World 2.0™, in favor of faith in science as mediated by technology. People of religious faith are routinely mocked and ridiculed by their more courageous, hard-nosed, "realist," intellectual superiors, yet the religious impulse to worship and ecstasy remains. What to do?

Why, sublimate the religious impulse into science and technology, of course! In place of a beneficent God, who nevertheless arbitrarily works in mysterious ways visiting all manner of misfortune upon his benighted subjects, we have the all-powerful and beneficent Science, which also occasionally visits the odd disaster upon its poor benighted subjects, yet which is posited to be the source of all salvation and elimination of suffering.

I would offer Dave Weinberger's oft-quoted ecstatic claim that "we're writing ourselves into existence," as a good example of the ludicrous sorts of constructions that "religious" thought about "technology" evokes in those who are otherwise regarded as intelligent people. More recently, we have Doc Searls' ecstatic claims regarding the salvific powers of technology, in its highest representation to date. To wit: The Net. (Cue heavenly choirs of angels, or at least DRM-free MP3s.)

Parenthetically, the religious impulse has also been sublimated into commerce. "Markets are conversations," being another ludicrous ecstatic claim. Science and business being the two things worth worshiping these days by enlightened people. Never question anyone's faith in science or commerce. You'll be visited by the Spanish Inquisition.

Anyway, I'm tired and I'm going back to bed. Wake me when everybody stops being stupid.

Happy Birthday: Susan Kitchens

Prompted by the indefatigable Hal Rager, I wish to also extend birthday greetings to Susan Kitchens of 2020 Hindsight. If my memory is correct, I believe the first e-mail I ever received from a blogger was from Susan, shortly after I started Time's Shadow on editthispage.com. Susan was also the first blogger that I encountered who did "serious" writing, and I use that term guardedly. I recall being moved by Susan's accounts of her grandfather (great-grandfather?), and thinking how marvelous this whole writing on the web thing could be.

Then along came 9/11, and Technorati and markets being conversations, and all the talking heads explaining to us what we were doing, and nothing's been the same ever since.

Sigh.

(It occurs to me that a wiser man than I could create a note in Tinderbox that has an action to place itself (or a copy of itself) in the current month on the appropriate date as a birthday greeting. So, in theory, all one would have to do is have a topic for Birthdays, with individual notes for all the people one might wish to extend a greeting to. Alas, it's all I can do to keep this current structure running. If I start mucking about in it, it's likely to implode.)

Riding Like the Wind (Not)

Being an account of my first attempt at biking to, and from, work.

Well, the ride into work was a great success. Beautiful morning, lovely beach, lots of good sand. I felt great, not too hot. Even tried to do some "interval training" by going as fast as I could for short distances. It took me less than an hour to make it to the jetties. The only real hard spot was getting across the dune line. I used the service road entrance, which runs right along the jetties at the mouth of the St. Johns river. It's not a lot of road, and it's mostly sand in some places, so I had to get off and push the rig through the sand. That was hard.

I was looking forward to getting onto pavement and enjoying the relative ease of riding on a hard surface. But I was somewhat taken aback that it wasn't as easy as I expected. I hadn't quite clued into what was going on. It took me another eighteen minutes to go the final two miles from the jetties to the office. All in all, though, the ride in was pretty successful. I felt great, got some exercise and didn't burn any gas.

The ride home turned out to be a much different story. Basically retracing my route to the office, I got to the beach a little more quickly than it took me in the morning. But once I was on the beach, the reason why the pavement wasn't any easier in the morning became clear: the wind.

Looking at the weather data from Craig Municipal airport, the wind was out of the south in the morning at about six miles per hour. That assisted me in my ride to work. In the evening, the airport reported the wind was out of the east/southeast at about twelve to thirteen miles per hour. I'm not sure how much variation there is in wind velocity between the beach and Craig airfield, but at one point on my ride I looked at the very large flag of one rather patriotic citizen flying fully, and extending straight northward. So I was heading right into the wind, and thirteen miles per hour is probably about right, maybe a bit on the conservative side.

My GPS watch was telling me I was only managing about six miles an hour. It was another eleven miles home! Gah! I did get off the beach when I found an access that didn't involve a walk-over with stairs. Riding into the wind on paved roads was easier than on the beach, though not by a lot.

To make a long story short, it took me two hours and eight minutes to get home, at an average speed of 6.22 mph. The ride into work took me only one hour and nineteen minutes, at an average speed of 10.22 mph. Plus, when I got home, my legs ached terribly at the knees, and let's just say I was very tired of sitting on my bicycle seat.

A "beach cruiser" bicycle is fun to ride most of the time. The one I have even has a six-gear rear Shimano deraileur, which makes it easier to deal with some soft sand, and is probably the only thing that allowed me to ride all the way home yesterday. But one's upright posture on such a bike just about maximizes wind resistance, and I'm quite sure the rectangular trailer added a fairly significant quantity of its own. The experience was like one of those "bad dreams," where you feel as though you're running in quicksand.

I'm going to re-think the method by which I bike to work. I'm not interested in spending any more money on equipment, other than to get the bike tuned up. But I think someone at work had a good suggestion when they offered that I might leave my laptop at work the night before, along with a change of clothes, and skip the trailer entirely. That would be an option on those days when I might bike on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. And not every day is going to have that kind of wind. Had I not had that much wind to deal with, the ride home probably would have been fine.

If anyone reading this is considering biking to work and using a trailer, I think, in hindsight, one of those single-wheel designs might be better from the standpoint of effort. Less drag and maybe less rolling resistance. Two wheels might be better than one in most sand, but I don't know. In any event, last night's little adventure has certainly put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm for biking to work. But the good news is that it's clear that it can be done, and now it's just a matter of refining the techniques to overcome the various challenges.

Then again, if you'd asked me last night, I would have told you how huge a fan I was of the internal combustion engine just about then...

Cheese Sandwich: Area 51

Many thanks to my online (and offline) friends for the birthday greetings today. (Elaine, Hal, Steve, Kurt, Aly, Inga, Kristen, Mark, Mom & Dad, Mel, Chris, and Caitie!) And many thanks also to those who would have offered them, had they remembered, because I am just like you!

It would appear that another year has past, and I'm no longer 50. Fortunately, 51 doesn't seem quite as existentially loaded as 50 was. Basically, I guess I realize now that I just need to relax and enjoy the ride.

We have but moments to live. Make the most of them.

Livin' the Dream

I'm not sayin' the bike gets me the hot chicks, but every picture tells a story, don't it?

Bad Housekeeping - Good Light

The view from my laptop this morning:

Universe to Implode in Super-Massive Black Hole

Scientists blame Scoble, newly-discovered center of the universe. Analysis of recent Hubble telescope data indicates the universe wasn't designed to scale with Scoble.

We're all gonna die.

Movies: Redbelt

Redbelt is a David Mamet film, which may or may not still be showing at a theater near you. More and more, it seems lately that one doesn't go to a David Mamet film to see a movie. One goes to see a David Mamet film. Sometimes this is a good thing. Sometimes it's just weird. Redbelt is just weird.

The plot is contrived, and as a contrivance it serves only to allow Mamet to expound on his views about martial arts, honor, integrity, masculinity and commerce. All of which are worthy topics, but this movie approaches, even becomes, self-parody.

(Spoiler follows.)

There are a lot of things that bug me about this movie, and we need not go into all of them here. But what was especially dissonant was the suicide of police officer Joe Ryan, played by Max Martini, who was recently awarded his black belt by the hero, Mike Terry, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

I suppose one might reasonably infer that officer Ryan was performing something akin to seppuku, seeking to prevent bringing dishonor on his school by having the issue of the hocked stolen watch die with him. Mamet kind of hints at that motivation in officer Ryan's dialog. I really have no idea what Mamet had in mind, other than he may have felt he needed even more heightened drama around the chain of absurdly unlikely events that were ensnaring his hero. Perhaps it was merely depression; but even that wouldn't be consistent with the performance of someone who had just earned the recognition of a black belt. Someone with the motivation to show up and train hard every day isn't really depressed, let alone someone likely to commit suicide. Someone that brittle isn't going to be able to earn a black belt.

It was especially dissonant to me, because someone who is supposedly as well trained and indoctrinated into a martial art as Mamet implies officer Ryan was, would not kill himself for the "honor" of his school, nor dishonor his widow and family in doing so. I believe the proper or relevant idea is one of "indomitable spirit," and Joe Ryan, as a black belt, would have been familiar with that. He would also have known that neither he, nor his teacher, knowingly committed a dishonorable act, and that the dishonor resided with the individual who originally stole the watch. He would have known that the honorable act would have been to endure the scrutiny and investigation, and deal with the outcome as best he could. "There is always an escape," does not, normally, include suicide.

Mamet has supposedly been studying jujitsu for six years or so. Some of the things I read about the film indicated he has a great love for the art. But this movie seems more like the result of an adolescent infatuation than a deep love and understanding.

As a movie, it's so contrived and bizarre that it's almost incomprehensible. As a David Mamet film, it's self-parody.