Archive for the 'Craziness' category

Fuel Efficiency and Mileage Based Taxes

Feb 23 2009 Published by under Craziness, Government, Taxes, Technology

An interesting artice in the WaPo caught my eye this morning. The headline “LaHood talks of Mileage-Based Tax” made me wonder if they were actually suggesting a tax per mile you drive. As it turns out, they were. But oddly, that’s not the interesting part of the story.

In the interview, he also ruled out raising the gas tax, the primary source of transportation funding…

Revenue from gas taxes is becoming problematic as cash-strapped Americans drive less and buy more fuel-efficient cars, leaving the government with a growing hole in funds to pay for the nation’s aging highway system.

Until recently, the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax had been a steady and growing pot of revenue. Over the past half-century, it has paid for the interstate highway system, which has crisscrossed the nation with asphalt, and since 1982, it has been kicking in for transit needs…

The current system also assumes that Americans will drive more every year. And for many years that was true, with miles traveled increasing about 3 percent a year, Basso said. But when gasoline prices hit $4 a gallon last year, people began driving less. According to AAA, Americans drove 107.9 billion fewer miles in 2008 than in 2007.

Apparently, that combined with advances in fuel efficiency have led to declining revenue for transportation projects – an unintended consequence of greening our automobiles.

In what may be the shortest flight ever of a trial balloon, the government immediately shot down the idea of the mileage tax. However, there have already been pilot projects to test the idea.

As an Oregon DOT spokesman said, “[G]as-powered vehicles are going away. When that point comes, how do you collect money for your transportation system if your revenues are based on gasoline?”

Only in the final two paragraphs do they even raise the privacy concerns about this – namely the government tracking the movement of its citizens.

I suspect that the police – now aware of the lengthy record of your travels – would demand access to the data to track the movement of suspects (or “people of interest” or… well, you get it.

It is frightening to think of the implications. But it is interesting to see that while the previous administration wanted to violate our freedom for the purpose of homeland security, this one may do it just for the tax revenue.

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Lost And The Infinite Improbability Drive

Feb 18 2009 Published by under Craziness, Programming, Television

Anyone who knows me will eventually get the question, “Do you watch Lost?” Sadly it has become my barometer for coolness. If you are still watching, you clearly have a penchant for the strange. That is, you are cool.

I, like others still tuned in week after week, are searching disparately for something to make sense of the show, and I have finally found a theory (or possibly a pair of complementary theories) that make sense of the show.

Oddly, the theory starts with my former barometer of cool – whether you have read Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (which despite the term trilogy now runs to five novels now with a sixth reportedly due later this year.)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide featured a spaceship called the Heart of Gold. The Heart of Gold operated on the Infinite Improbability Drive. The second book in the series, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, describes it this way:

The Heart of Gold’s Improbability Drive made it the most powerful and unpredictable ship in existence. There was nothing it couldn’t do, provided you knew exactly how improbable it was that the thing you wanted it to do would ever happen.

When the improbability drive is operating, the spaceship passes through space based on the odds against something happening. As two of the books characters are drifting unprotected through open space, at the last moment before they die, the spaceship Heart of Gold picks them up. The odds against them being saved and the improbability field around the ship pass the same point of improbability and the two are rescued.

So what does this have to do with Lost? Well, the idea of the island as some sort of improbability field occurred to me as I was reading Doc Jensen’s theory of Lost and zero point energy.

There’s a whole bunch of Men of Faith ‚Äî fringe thinkers, mostly ‚Äî who believe that zero point energy is like magic. It can be mentally directed to make stuff happen (a.k.a. mind over matter), or even grant a kind of omniscience that could allow a person to experience past, present, and future all at once…

Remember the scene in this season’s second episode in which Neil (a.k.a. Frogurt) died? Now, I am convinced that this scene is actually a coded message pointing toward zero point theory. The scene begins with Miles Straume hauling in a dead boar. Then, Neil starts yelling at Sawyer for calling him Frogurt, emphatically reminding us that his name is Neil. Now, earlier in the episode, Neil carried on about the utter pointlessness of their survival struggle. Why work so hard to build a new camp or start a fire if the time flashes will basically take it all away? His cynical consternation reaches a crescendo in his death scene, when Neil rants about their inability to produce simple, conventional energy (”We have no fire!”) before getting killed by a flaming arrow of irony.

I actually saw that differently. I don’t see that as a flaming arrow of irony, I see it as a flaming arrow of improbability. As Neil is ranting about the absence of fire, the combination of zero point energy and improbability come together to provide fire, but not in the way Neil would like.

For other examples, you don’t need to look very far. In last week’s episode, Locke and the crew arrive at the Orchid station. Juliette says, ‘What are the odds this thing would be here at this time?’ A time shift immediately erases the station.

In season one, Walt is reading a comic book featuring attacking polar bears, and the crew walking to the radio tower the next day is attacked by a rampaging polar bear.

How about the odds the heroine addicted Charlie would stumble upon a heroine laden plane?

And don’t even get me started on the long odds against winning the lottery and Hurley’s connection to the numbers.

Could zero point energy and improbability create a field where whatever you thought, no matter how improbable, could blink into existence?

The theory isn’t without precedence in science fiction.

In his 1936 story Evolution, John Campbell described the Probability Time Wave:

“Their PTW tube caught and displayed every possibility that was ever to exist. And somewhere in that vast sweep of probability, every possible thing existed. Somewhere, the wildest dream of the wildest optimist was, and became fact.”

So what if the island is essentially a focal point for energy and improbability? It would certainly explain a lot of the oddities surrounding the island.

Jack’s unresolved feelings for dad? Bing! Christian Shepherd starts walking around the island. Michael wants to get his boy off the island? Done! He just needs to screw his friends first. The island is providing everything people want, but doing it with strings. You want fire? Ok! But it’s going to kill you.

Now this theory may cover the “funtional” aspects of the island, but it does not even begin to address questions about the storyline of Lost. However, I expect improbability to play an important part in the answer.

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Just To Be Clear, I’m Not The “Right Wing Nut” In Question

Jan 26 2009 Published by under Craziness, Dating, Miscellany, Sex, Society, The Law

I received a Google alert today because my name popped up in a blog post. When I first read the alert, I thought it was probably me. It was a blog dedicated to “Fighting the Right Wing Nuts”. When I saw my name, I thought for sure it was about me.

When I clicked through, though, I was disappointed. The article, in fact, has nothing to do with me – not even casually. Instead, it focuses on right wing nuts that donated to the Pro-8 movement in California.

I have long known that there is at least one Michael Turk in CA. He’s a physical therapist with a shitty website. I’m not sure if he’s the one that appears on this site. There are apparently four listings for Michael Turk in Cali, and only one of them seems to be the nut in question.

For those who might stumble upon that list, and think it’s me, let me again state for the record that I think my party is completely backwards on the gay marriage question. We’ve staked out territory in a really bad place, and need to pack up and move the tent.

I have not now, nor will I ever, contribute to a cause that wants to allow the government to decide who can marry. As a matter of fact, I would be more than happy to have the government get out of all marriages – gay straight or otherwise.

So as the title says, “Just to be clear, I’m not the right wing nut in question.” Thanks for listening.

On another note, if you’re the physical therapist version of Michael Turk that is mentioned above: Dude, I’ll redo your shitty website for free just so people who accidentally confuse us don’t think I did that. Contact me through the link to the right to discuss.

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Feeling Chaotic Neutral: Character Alignment Paradoxes

Jan 12 2009 Published by under Craziness, Gaming, Miscellany, Pop Culture, Society, The Law

For the last hour or so, I have been discussing character alignment paradoxes with Aaron Brazell (@technosailor on Twitter) on Facebook. It all started with a simple status update.

Aaron is in a Chaotic Neutral mood.

For those who don’t get the reference, chaotic neutral refers to one of nine character “alignments” in Dungeons & Dragons. Think of them like a matrix. Lawfulness versus Chaos is essentially your adherence to the laws of society, whereas Good and Evil are your moral/ethical disposition.

Now here’s the problem, and the jumping off point for the discussion with Aaron. I contend that chaotic good and chaotic evil are false choices. Good and evil, just like law and lawlessness, lie on a continuum. That is, there is an order to them. There are degrees between them.

Chaos, on the other hand, is completely random. There is no order at all. Therefore, a chaotic character would be just as likely to be good as evil. As Aaron said, everything becomes situational. A chaotic good character would always tend toward the good. If they are chaotic evil, they would always tend toward evil. By that logic, they have applied order to their own lives. They have chosen a path, and a path, by nature, is not chaotic.

It’s like Johnny Depp’s line from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Me? I’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest.

A truly chaotic person can always be counted on to be chaotic, and that means they’re just as lokely as not to swing toward good or evil. As Paul Rodriguez (@pjrodriguez) said, “[A] Chaotic Neutral person might hit you in the face one day and gave you a $100 bill the next and then borrow your car, use all the gas, but [leave] a TV in the back seat.”

That’s pretty much exactly it. In a fight against long odds, a chaotic person would be just as likely to stay with you and fight as they would be to stab you in the leg so they could outrun you in retreat. They’re chaotic, and chaos defies patterns. If they always tend toward good (or evil for that matter) you could always know what they would do within a certain range.

So do chaotic good and chaotic evil exist? I don’t believe they can, and therefore the whole D&D continuum is off. I think the continuum should look more like this:

Anything below neutrality in regard to morals (good and evil) and lawfulness would fall into a base category of Chaotic. You would have no idea what they would do or what their moral leanings would be. I think it would be a much better framework. Frankly, with people stabbing each other in the leg, I think it would make the game more interesting.

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The Wily Deer

Dec 17 2008 Published by under Craziness, Hunting, Miscellany, Stuck On Stupid

I got the following e-mail from my dad today. I have absolutely no faith in whether it is true or not, but I thought it was hysterically funny anyway. It claims to be the story of a guy named Chuck O’Hearn and his efforts to hunt deer with a rope.

Enjoy!

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it.

The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it.

After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up — 3 of them. One stepped out from the end of the feeder, and I threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it…it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and then received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.

That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity.

A deer? No chance.

That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined.

The only up side is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals. A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.

Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer’s momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to
recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn’t want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder – a little trap I had set before hand…kind of like a squeeze chute.

I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when…

I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head –almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds.

I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it.

While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.

Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that, when an animal –like a horse –strikes at you with their hooves and you can’t get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy.

I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.

The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.

So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope to sort of even the odds.

All these events are true so help me God…

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