I learned two things today:
- Yes, I can ride 30 miles without a stop.
- It is not a good idea to embark on a 30-mile ride having eaten only a banana all morning.
An Educational Ride
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Category Archives: Idle Chit-Chat
Physics is Sexy?
I’m not sure, but I think I just saw Stephen Hawking in a car commercial. I’m not sure what to make of that, considering he can’t drive. It’s kind of like draping a supermodel over the hood. Nothing much to do with the actual car at all. But… I’m a little proud to live in a world where great intellects can make a few bucks with commercial endorsements.
Knives Episode 23 Released!
About a week ago I decided it was best to release episodes on weekdays, so I decided to wait until Monday to unleash Episode 23. Whups. The good news is you won’t have to wait so long for the next one. This episode is more about intrigue than overt action, but Martin does do something he’s likely to regret.
On the writing front, Episode 24 is rolling down the release ramp. The events in that episode were not part of the original plan, but they really help the next few episodes make more sense. It also pushes off for yet another episode that will allow me to release the rest of Bags’ backstory. But it will come, I promise. In other news, I have set aside a chunk of time to whip out the next backstory; I will be reaching out to the Mighty Benefactors to see if they want Kat (as I originally promised) or whether they would prefer someone else.
Please enjoy 23: The Well
Here’s a picture of the first paragraph, to slow Facebook scrollers. This picture is certainly not worth 1000 words.
Facebook 101: When they Say “Like and Share” Probably you Shouldn’t
If you haven’t already figured this out by the thousands of radio stations firing off memes on Facebook, let me spell it out for you. “Likes” are worth money. Here’s the part maybe you didn’t know: Likes can be sold.
My Facebook news feed is clogged with shit like, “LIKE AND SHARE IF YOU DON’T THINK CHILDREN SHOULD BE BEHEADED AND LEFT FOR THE VULTURES.” Or maybe “LITTLE CINDY-LOU IS DYING OF CANCER, LIKE AND SHARE SO SHE CAN SEE SHE IS LOVED ALL OVER THE WORLD. ONLY 2% WILL LIKE AND SHARE. ARE YOU ONE OF THEM?”
It’s always 2%.
Perhaps you say to yourself, “gee, I’m actually kind of against beheading children.” You like and share. Otherwise, you’re implicitly in favor of juvenile decapitation, right?
A few weeks later you get an item in your feed about vacations in Mexico. Not a sponsored item, mind, but a notification from a page you liked. “The heck?” you think to yourself. “I don’t remember liking anything about travel in Mexico.”
And in fact you didn’t. The Travel site bought your like from the child-beheadding page.
Well, to be more exact, they bought the page itself, likes and all, then just switched in their own content. People are making a sound business out of creating pages, getting likes any way possible, then selling the page.
These days, I block almost every item in my Facebook feed thingie that says “like and share”. When you look at the name of the source page, it’s amazing how often page name and content don’t match. Even when they do, I block. Don’t tell me what to like, Chumley, and I share only the good stuff. Which is maybe one thing a month.
The F-35 ‘Flying Turd’
I promised a few months ago a more detailed discussion of one of the cornerstones of the American Military arsenal, and with all the candidates saying quite correctly that their opponents are making promises without explaining just how we’re gong to pay for these new programs, I’d like to make a modest proposal.
Let’s start this little talk about the airplane with a parable. Imagine a father taking his kids to the gun store. Katie is a duck hunter, and she’s starting to excel in trap shooting as well. She needs a new shotgun to get to the next level. Young Roger loves deer hunting (he eats what he kills, of course), and needs a new rifle. Little Joey needs a semi-automatic, while Sally needs the rugged dependability of a revolver.
Naturally, they all have to have the best of each weapon.
At the gun store, the clerk helps them make wise choices and then lays the items out on the counter and totals up the price. “Holy moly,” Dad says. “I can’t spend that much. Mom would be pissed.”
“Well,” says the clerk, “If you buy five of the same type of gun, I can give you a discount.” With a smile the shopkeeper pulls out an odd-looking firearm. Shortish, largish barrel, pistol grip. “Here’s the shot-rifle-pistol guaranteed to work for all your kids!”
Dad looks at each of the kids. They’re all glum. None of them want the thing, but each believes that if they say no, they won’t get anything. Dad takes a deep breath and says, “Ok, I’ll take five.”
The shopkeeper then presents him with a bill that’s more than the five specialized guns were! “What the heck?” says Dad.
The shopkeeper heaves a weary sigh and says, “Look, a gun that does all those things is pretty impressive. But if we need to cut costs more, we can special-order ones with plastic barrels. Plastic’s really strong these days. Probably even strong enough for a rifled shotgun barrel*.”
The kids are a little bit stunned when dad says “OK”, and plunks down the credit card, without even looking at the “shipping and handling” charges on the special order, that make it even more expensive.
By now you’ve probably already figured out my little allegory. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the swiss army knife that costs as much as a set of fine cutlery, but does no task well (except cost money). The branches of the military all need planes that can fly and blow stuff up, but the Air Force doesn’t land on aircraft carriers and the Marines don’t mess around with air-to-air combat. They leave that for the guys with the right tools for the job, while they pummel bad guys dug in 1000 yards from where the good guys are. It’s more than just even the planes, it’s the training of the guys flying them.
The plastic barrel? To meet budget targets, the plane was built around a single engine. No plane has ever asked for more thrust from a single engine, and parts keep breaking. Much like the first jets ever built by the Germans, our materials just can’t handle the stress from trying to squeeze so much thrust from a single engine.
And even pushing that engine to the limits of our current abilities, the plane is still woefully underpowered. In part this is because the thing is loaded down with all the gizmos and attachments the different branches need. You could make an extremely capable airplane around that engine if you decided ahead of time what its mission was.
Back to the gun store allegory: The first of the special-order guns arrives, dad pays the bill, and turns around to his kids. “Who wants to be the first?” he asks. He is met with sullen indecision. The gun has no range, no spread, no stopping power, and is cumbersome. “Maybe Joey should try it first,” ventures Katie. “It’s gonna take all my allowance just keeping the thing working.”
Now up to this point, Mom and Dad have been pretty together on this. Save money, get the kids what they need. Mom leaves most of these decisions to Dad, however. But Dad knows he has a lemon, so he goes back to the gun shop to cancel the rest of his order.
The gun shop owner is contrite. “Yeah, we’ll fix those things,” he said. “for a very reasonable price.”
“No more!” says Dad. “This deal is off!”
“Is it?” The gun guy says. “Tell you what. I’ve got a thousand dollars in chips at the nearby strip-joint/casino. Go on over there, cool off a bit, have a beer, get your head together, and come back and we’ll talk. Mom doesn’t need to know.”
Eventually Dad comes home and says “Good news, kids! You each get two rifle-shot-pistols! I know you’ll learn to love them when I take your old stuff away.”
And that’s why we have the F-35 Flying Turd.
Full disclosure: I can’t prove that politicians are taking bribes or Citizens United-style payouts to keep the program alive. But I do know that the plane is terrible. And expensive.
Here’s the modest proposal I mentioned way up at the top of this ramble: Let’s right now cut every weapons program that doesn’t work. We can start with the F-35 “Flying Turd”.
Boom! Free college for everyone!
I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to put the best possible weapons at the disposal of our military. Quite the opposite! I’m saying only put the best possible weapons at their disposal. Maybe Katie gets her new shotgun first (Katie is the Marines). Her new weapon won’t be equalled for a long time; it’ll be a tough airframe, nimble at low speed, that can bring the hurt.
The others will have to wait their turn, but each will get a tool that’s right for their job, and one that will not be obsolete next week.
What will be the legacy of the turd? Will it be a dead-end project that yielded great tangential value by forcing us to find near-impossible engineering solutions? Or will it be the plane that kills pilots and marks the end our our air dominance?
If Dad can’t decide, maybe it’s time for Mom to put her foot down. (We’re Mom.)
___
* for those without firearms experience, a rifled shotgun barrel is stupid.
Knives Episode 22 is Out!
And it’s a big’n! For those who started reading when this story was still known as The Fantasy Novel I’ll Likely Never Publish, this passage into the unknown carries extra symbolism.
While rain falls only to be turned to steam, Martin is the first witness to the slaughter at Brewer’s Ford. Nothing remains above ground; any answers that may still exist lie below. Down he goes. When he reaches the bottom, Martin makes a promise. The sort of promise that Martin generally scoffs at.
I delayed publishing this episode a little extra to make sure that commitments I make now will work going forward. Episode 24 is kind of a tipping point, plot-wise, and I need to be careful running up to that. Or maybe I’m just thinking too hard.
Anyway, please enjoy Episode 22: Into the Darkness. In order to suck up to Facebook scanners, I’m including a brief passage, rendered as an image. Because words that aren’t images are, apparently, boring. If this doesn’t work, maybe I’ll superimpose the text over Captain Picard.
Compensation
On Tuesday I left work early. “I’m too happy to work,” I told my boss.
From a strict cash-for-what-you-do basis, Apple has a reputation for being rather cheap. The unofficial, cultural response is, “if money is your driver, then Google’s right down the highway; you’ll get along nicely there. And there’s always Facebook *snerk*.” There will always be somewhere else I can work that would pay more than I will ever make at Apple. But when other companies ask, I just give an over-the-phone shrug and tell them I’m not interested.
Compensation is about more than cash, and all the other monetary incentives. I work with exceptional people. I have a life outside work. I am challenged every day. I just plain love my job.
But until Tuesday I was underpaid even by Apple standards. My boss for the last year and a half has been steadily pushing that line, however, and Tuesday was a big day. Thanks, boss, I’ll he heading out early!
A little perspective: from a strict cash-for-how-hard-your-job-is standpoint, I’m already at Maximum Plaid. You could offer me twice what I’m making now to dig ditches and I’d scoff at your offer. Scoff! Ditch-digging is hard work! And of course I’d instantly be pushed out of the market by more competent ditch-diggers anyway. But miraculously (for me) what comes easily for me is also highly compensated. Sure I live in a trailer park, but it’s a very nice trailer park. A teacher wouldn’t be able to do nearly as well. Or a cop, or a nurse. Or the EMT who one day will save my life.
When I catch myself thinking about what I “deserve”, I do my best to remember that I already get way more than I deserve, unless I compare myself only to other geeks. But I have to say it’s nice to finally be measuring up on that scale.
Cue George…
Knives Episode 21 is Real
Martin at last gets a little time alone, although cooking to death might be the cost. His first look at what once was the fortress at Brewer’s Ford is sobering. But maybe he has friends he didn’t know about before. And Elena says something that you should pay attention to.
What is moving Martin now?
It’s an odd double life, writing Episode 23 while trying to move Episode 21 to “ready”. Knowing that as soon as I send this installment into the world I’ll find a fatal flaw. But I’ve gone over Episode 21 enough times to know it’s pretty damn tight. As tight as I’m going to make it anyway.
Meanwhile, for the patrons, the rest of Bags’ backstory is coming real soon, I promise. We just have to cross a certain spoiler line in the main narrative first.
The Whodunnit Contract
A few years ago I was at my first ever writing workshop, and one of the stories I was asked to critique was a mystery in a Science Fiction setting. It was a pretty good story, but as I was forming my opinions about the story I realized the Mystery genre of fiction has a very special relationship with its readers. It’s a pretty formal contract, and if you violate it, you will irk your readers mightily.
The contract comes down to this: The reader must be given access to all the relevant facts before the big reveal. Those facts can be obfuscated, passed off as trivia, or otherwise hidden, but in retrospect, the facts must have been presented. The reader must be given a fair chance to solve the mystery before the famed detective.
We can see that contract develop over time. Doyle allowed Sherlock Holmes to bring up some shit like the mud on a suspect’s shoes out of the blue in the big reveal. You have to cut the writer some slack; he thought he was writing adventure stories. Doyle wrote a rough draft of the contract, and it was in part his readers’ reactions that formalized the compact. By the time we get to Agatha Christie, the rules are in place.
Mystery novels are literature, absolutely, but they are also puzzle games. This dual identity makes them very hard to write well. Character, setting, tiny details, and plenty of red herrings that in the end have to fit into their places in the jigsaw.
I think perhaps Doyle’s greatest invention was not Holmes, but Watson. The mystery writer must present all the facts, but must closely guard the analysis. You simply cannot write from the detective’s point of view. There must be a Watson or a Japp to record the discoveries and to provide their own by-definition-unreliable analysis. We can never be inside Poirot’s head, or the drama will break.
I got back onto this train of thought recently while working on my serial novel. There are some mystery elements developing in Knives, with people doing things for reasons unclear, but it will never be a mystery story. It can’t be. We are in the head of the problem solver, and tempting as it is to be coy and hold things back, that would not serve anyone. So we will know what Martin figures out, as he figures it out. This is not a whodunnit.
But there may be times Martin is wrong. Just sayin’. That’s what I get in return.
Changes in the ‘Hood
Apple, Machine Learning, and Privacy
There’s a lot of noise about machine learning theses days, and the obviously-better deep-learning machines. You know, because it’s deep. Apple is generally considered to be disadvantaged in this tech derby. Why? Because deep learning requires masses of data from the users of the system, and Apple’s privacy policies prevent the company from harvesting that data.
I work for Apple, just so you know. But the narrative on the street comes down to this: Apple can’t compete with its rivals in the field of machine learning because it respects its users too much. For people who say Apple will shed its stand on privacy when it threatens profit for the company, here’s where I say, “Nuh-uh.” Apple proved its priority on privacy.
A second nuh-uh: ApplePay actively makes it impossible for Apple to know your purchase history. There’s good money in that information; Apple doesn’t want it. You think Google Wallet would ever do that? Don’t make me laugh. That’s why Google made it — so they could collect information about your purchasing habits and sell it. But in the world of artificial intelligence, respect for your customers is considered by pundits to be a negative.
But hold on there, Sparky! Getting back to the actual subject of this episode, my employer recently announced a massive implementation of wacky math shit that I think started at Stanford, that allows both aggregation of user data and protection of user privacy.
Apple recently lifted their kimono just a little bit to let the world know that they are players in this realm. Have been a long time. They want to you to know that while respecting user privacy is inconvenient, it’s an obstacle you can work around with enough intelligence and effort.
This is a message that is very tricky for Apple to sell. In their advertising, they sell, more than anything else, good feelings. They’re never going to say, “buy Apple because everyone else is out to exploit you,” — that makes technology scary and not the betterment of the human condition that Apple sells.
But to the tech press, and to organizations fighting for your privacy, Apple is becoming steadily more vocal. It feels a wee bit disingenuous; Apple wants those other mouths to spread the fear. But it’s a valid fear, and one that more people should be talking about.
From where I sit in my cubicle, completely removed from any strategic discussion, if you were to address Apple’s stand on privacy from a marketing standpoint, it would seem our favorite fruit-flavored gadget company is banking on one of two things: Than people will begin to put a dollar value on their privacy, or that the government will mandate stronger privacy protection and Apple will be ahead of the pack.
Ah, hahaha! The second of those is clearly ridiculous. The government long ago established itself as the enemy of privacy. But what about the first of those ideas? Will people pay an extra hundred bucks on a phone to not have their data harvested? Or will they shrug and say “If my phone doesn’t harvest that information, something else will.”
Honestly, I don’t think it’s likely that Apple will ever make a lot of money by standing up for privacy. It may even be a losing proposition, as HomeKit and ApplePay are slowed in their adaptation because they are encumbered by onerous privacy protection requirements. Maybe I’m wrong; maybe Apple is already making piles of cash as the Guardians of Privacy. But I suspect not.
So why does Apple do it? I don’t know. I’m not part of those conversations. But I do know this: If you were to ask CEO Tim Cook that question, he’d look at you like you’d grown a second head and say, “Because it’s the right thing to do.” Maybe I’m being a homer here, but I really believe Tim when he says stuff like that. Tim has told the shareholders to back off more than once, in defense of doing the right thing.
And as long as Tim is in charge of this company, “Because it’s the right thing to do” will float for me. So as long as Tim’s in charge, I know Apple will continue to respect the privacy of its customers. Maybe to you that’s not such a big deal, but it is to me. I won’t work for anyone I don’t respect.
Holy Crap, It’s September
And September is almost October is almost November and November is NaNoWriMo. Some years I dread it, other years I look forward to it. This year I’m starting to work up a pretty good stoke about the month. I’ve been pondering the setting I described in my description of a plausible-future Miami. I’ve had tons of ideas for characters, and lots of thought on how to enrich the world. Along with the algae harvesters and whalers who work outside the towers, there are divers. People who take a deep swim into the drowned suburbs looking for things that still have value in this world. Swimming through a structure that was not meant to be underwater, and spent years being pounded by waves as the water line rose, is not terribly safe. Most of the houses have collapsed.
There are business parks, too, and some of them are still standing, but there’s not much in them that’s of interest anymore. The big stuff was moved out in advance of the rising waters.
Some of the divers don’t have citizenship in any of the towers. They are rafters, pulling the islands they call home from place to place, scouring the world beneath the waves. When the storms come the towers allow the rafters to tie up in the lee of the buildings, and let them sleep inside. How much raft is left when the storm has passed is a crapshoot.
Plot? Hm… kinda stuck there. Diver meets tower-dweller and the violins swell? Maybe as a side thing. Diver finds something game-changing? Promising… but what? I’ve done a NaNoWriMo with a flagrant ain’t-gonna-tell-you macguffin, but that isn’t the right thing here.
Ooo! Another enriching detail I just thought of that doesn’t help me at all in discovering a plot but I want to put it here so I don’t forget: the city-towers follow a strict set of codes above the water, but below the surface, where none can see, there is a quiet, bubble-free war going on. The best skin divers are valuable assets, but no one talks about it. That would explain why the towers let the rafters tie up during storms.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, this episode is mostly just me thinking out loud. But if you’d like to chime in with ideas, I’d love to hear them.
Let’s think about the whales for a minute here. I’ll have to do research and whatnot, but it’s quite possible that before the Lucy and her locking knee that cetaceans were the most intelligent creatures on the planet. (Hominids’ brains started biggerizing at an appalling rate once their hands were free to do mischief.) Whales, meanwhile, couldn’t use tools or light fires. What if there were an equalizer? Something new to give tech to whales… But I don’t want to write some “whale messiah” or even “whale whisperer” story. My whole background idea with the whales was that some algae-eating species of whale would know prosperity in a way they never had before, and this would give them an opportunity to organize. I don’t want to mutate them.
Meanwhile, carnivorous marine mammals are pretty much screwed, along with anything with gills. So long, we’ve run out of fish. Warmer water and massive nitrogen boost from fertilizer runoff has restored algae as the king of the sea and, at least in temperate climes, the oceans are anaerobic once again.
So anyway, what I’m looking for is something that lies beneath the surface of Miami, (Ooo! Maybe something in the sewers? Beneath the ground beneath the water? Cool idea and dangerous for divers but alas pretty farfetched.) Probably simplest to just make it something worth an enormous amount of money — enough wealth to change the balance of power between tower-cities — but something with a larger significance would be awesome. I just don’t know what it might be.
Talking to Women with Headphones
There’s one of those artificial controversies going on over in Facebook-world that has people so lathered up that even I know about it. There seems to be a competition going on over there now for who can say more stridently than everyone else, “If she’s wearing headphones, consider that she might not be looking for conversation.”
But you know what? I talk to strangers with headphones fairly regularly. I invariably say the same thing, and I often say it loudly: “ON YOUR LEFT!”
I use this little opening line on headphone-wearers (not just women, but mostly women) who are walking down the center of the path, or are not walking in a straight line, drifting over as I approach from behind. Non-headphone wearers get a gentle “ping!” from my bell while I am still well behind them, then a louder “PING!” as I approach if there is no indication they understood the first bell. I love having a bell that I can ping at different volumes.
I get that headphones are fun and provide a signal to those around you that you would prefer not to be disturbed, but for crying out loud, you still need to be aware of your environment. Personally, I never wear headphones while on my bike, because I never know when someone in a car is going to try to kill me, and my ears may provide the only warning I get. On the trails, I am the fast-moving death machine, and while I do my best to be conscientious, a little awareness from those on foot is really welcome.
For the record, now that I consider it, I actually say “good morning” to almost everyone I encounter on the off-street paths, unless they are having a conversation. I say it softly, and headphoners probably are unaware I said anything at all. The earlier in the morning I ride, the more people respond with a friendly “hello” of their own. There are some people who I see regularly, and a few of them return a smile and a wave. Others forge ahead on their health regimens with grim determination.
I generally have more enthusiastic greetings for dogs, like the small Corgi-mixed-with-something-or-other that was hauling a tree branch substantially longer than he was this morning. “Nice stick, buddy!” I said as I rode by. I wonder what the headphoned woman holding the leash thinks I said. Probably nothing good. But as long as the dog’s not wearing headphones, I think it’s ok to talk to it.
Knives Episode 20 Released!
This is a significant milestone in the story and in the history of the Soul Thieves. We don’t know anybody who sits at the big table where decisions are made, but something has gotten the wizards worked up enough to make a big move. If this were chess, the Soul Thieves just moved their queen. That’s a bad strategy early in the game, but who knows how long this contest has been going on?
Behind the scenes things are proceeding apace, but I did realize while working on episode 21 that I had messed up an important detail back in episode 17 or so. I went back and made some changes to those episodes, but nothing Earth-shattering. Ah, the joys and pitfalls of serial fiction. Good thing I don’t have very many readers yet.
Thanks, as always, to my patrons. Some of the beer I drink writing each episode is funded by you, and it makes me proud and grateful to have your support.