Car Alarm, Anyone?

Essay

When I'm not nose-to-the-screen typing my brain's thought ooze into semi-coherence, I work. For money. That's right, I have a real job, just like every other blogger... because almost nobody seems to be able to make any real money at this effort just yet. But that's another post entirely. This post is about irritation.

So I'm working at my job here in sunny California, as a self-employed contractor. It's a nice business, because there's a lot of outdoor time and I'm always visiting someplace new. The boss is great, too. But today there's a problem. A big one. For not 50 feet away in the next building, some guy's car alarm is going off. Boy, I hate that! And it's not one of the fancy, twenty-style ring tones that cycle twice and then stop. Nah, this is the basic, comes-with-a-midsize, mid-model American car type... the lights flash, the horn beeps. Dull. But it's worse than that.

Because it didn't stop! I worked for three hours at that address and it didn't stop once. Well okay, it did stop, but in a more irritating fashion than hearing the blasting horn, if you can imagine that. This particular car would usher regularly spaced toots, then stop. But not the same number of toots... no, that would be too normal. This car beeped six times, then fell silent. A minute later, twelve blasts would sound. Silence. Then three. Five. Sixty-two. One. I was starting to write a song to match the honks, ending sentences whenever the horn did:

"This real-ly sucks don-key---"

"I want to kill the own-er by run-ning o-ver his--"

"Shit."

"I have a gun and I'm gon-na use it. Sure it on-ly shoots nails but I don't think it mat--"

Dozens of tuneless, rhymeless song snippets like ribbons floating through my head, and I'm forgetting what it is I was there to do! Now it's so distracting it's affecting my performance!

In the past when no owner would show up, I might have taken it upon myself to get the car open and unhook the battery, solving the problem. I'm sure when they eventually returned they would momentarily freak, until they read the patient but anonymous note on the windshield I might leave explaining the actions which came from the powerful frustration building up during hours of unwanted horn sonnet. Perhaps they would understand, perhaps not-- but who cares? I would be gone.

But as a grown and mature man, now I have other options more likely not to get me arrested, because what would it look like to a cop who shows up investigating a car alarm to see some guy trying to wire hanger the car door open? "No, officer! I was trying to unhook the battery to shut the damn thing off!" Sure. They'll believe that.

I could call the cops myself. That's a good start. Or I could try looking in (not touching!) the car to find identifying information from which to call the owner. I could also try to ascertain the owner's location based on the parking spot, if it's an assigned one for example. There are plenty of other options. I could leave, making it not my problem anymore! Or I could call a tow truck if it's on my property. Or I could even pull out a bazooka and RPG it.

Okay, forget the last one... that's a little hostile. But what I DID do, what I always start with, was recon. I checked it out. And that's when it all became crystal clear to me. I walked over to from where the sound was emanating and became enlightened. 

For there was no absentee owner... he was right there! And he wasn't alone, either-- he was sitting alongside a copper skinned, bearded and coveralled man splitting his time between the engine compartment, the trunk and sitting awkwardly upside down in the driver's seat, head pressed between the brake and accelerator pedals, which is where he was at the moment I arrived. 

"What'cha doin'?" I asked innocently, between horn honks which now seemed to be under the control of said coverall dude.

The owner was a little startled and responded sheepishly, "Getting alarm fixed. Hope noise not bothering you."

"Not at all, not at all," I lied. "It's like opera to me. When will you be done?"

"Etrusco trying to trace short. He not having lot of luck."

Ignoring the bizarre name for the moment, I suggested, "Maybe you could cut the faulty wire completely out of the circuit and run a new one...?" I'd had a lot of experience back in my teens in New York City in the early 70's... all of my friends had terrible beaters held together with rope and duck tape and old rubber book straps that nobody used anymore, and we had learned from experience how to cobble a car into rough working order. Most had dozens of yards of lamp wire like spaghetti draped through the vehicle, terminating in some kind of switch block mounted between the front seats to operate some otherwise doomed device like the directional signals, the dome light or the distributor. It was ugly as our junior high principal Mr 'Scar' Scarofalo but it worked, and we didn't care.

Etrusco fell upside down out of the car seat and slammed down onto his soles. He stared at me, and then at the owner, a pale kid with greasy, slick black hair in his twenties, and then back at me. He grumbled, "..."

I have no idea what he said. It wasn't in any language I understood, nor one I had ever heard uttered. It could have been Klingon, or maybe he threw up in his mouth a little, I don't know. But the owner seemed to comprehend because he murmured, eyes wide, "Etrusco say you have intimacy of spindle," and nodded, as if the repairman's comment was some divine prophesy.

"O... kay," I placated, and backed away slowly. I didn't turn to walk forward until they were well out of sight. The last thing I saw was Etrusco tearing the guts out of a VCR. I didn't want to know.

That brings me to my pet peeve of the day. This post is about the outdated and yet firmly entrenched concept of car alarms. I doubt any one of us city dwellers can go an entire day without hearing a car alarm triggered at some point. When it happens, I'm sure you ask yourself if it's a real car theft in progress or if some fat lady just leaned on a shiny car to readjust the straining straps of her tiny Totes. I don't know the answer, but I've only ever seen a car pass by expressing full alarm regalia a few times in my whole life, and I bet those were the only real crimes in a day with thousands of errant alarms.

Oh, how I hate 'em!

And what use are they, really? Unless the owner is within earshot, unlikely if they're in a mall, at a sporting event or getting a massage, they will be of no assistance to their car as it is being driven away to meet its new owner... or owners. The car alarm is nothing more than an ego-stroke at best and I'll tell you how I know. The owners prove it each time they approach their alarmed fortress on wheels, entering and setting it off without a care, allowing the sirens to sound for a number of seconds before they turn the alarm to 'passive', annoying a city block's worth of neighbors time and time again. They are in essence saying, "I have a nice car and you can't touch it." I don't know about you, but that very thought makes me want to touch it, repeatedly, with a wrecking ball.

And what of the guy who first invented the annoying device? Did he give a thought about the endless annoyance he would be initiating, the pastoral silence he would forever be breaking in the futile search for a theftproof car? Nyet. Like most inventions, I'm willing to bet the driving motivation was profit-- big, straining bags fulla cash delivered to his doorstep by grateful Porsche and Beemer owners everywhere. Or maybe it was the idea of hordes of horny ladies descending upon his residence, each wanting to be the first to thank him for protecting her pink convertible baby. No, I'm pretty certain the guy never saw past the end of his manhood, and the pretty painted mouth attached to it, to imagine the downside of creating cities choked with millions of sensitive ear-jarring devices ready to drive the population into acts of blood-curdling lunacy. And here we are.

It's been a number of decades since the introduction of an automatic car alarm but the old design still rules supreme. Oh, there have been modifications and even complete redesigns introduced, some even exhibiting a fair degree of success, but the endless screaming siren is still the cheapest and therefore the most popular by far. It doesn't matter that psychological studies have been created ad nauseum to explain their sociological futility, proving time and again that nobody, NOBODY rushes to the aid of a loud, screeching machine. It's more likely the disturbance won't even garner a quick peek through the window to discover the source, let alone an angry horde bent on capturing the attempted criminal in progress.

Newer designs have proven far more effective. The LoJack Corporation and others like it have eliminated the noise completely. A silent signal is beamed to law enforcement agencies and a GPS directs them to the car's current location, lulling a thief into confidence right up to the point that cops surround the vehicle, guns drawn. I almost feel sorry for the depraved entrepreneur, imagining the bewilderment on his face as he's being loaded head-first into the paddy wagon, retracing his scheme but unable to determine exactly where he went so terribly wrong. Now that's an effective crime deterrent!

Effective but expensive. It costs money to have operators standing by, to maintain a country-wide sensory net and to keep the cops interested in the relatively dull task of reuniting an obsessive person with their beloved asshole-mobile. Shame-- if it were a more reasonable method it could silence the alarm forever and beautify the sound of cities, a rosy scenario which is marred only by the placing of hundreds of businesses with their thousands of employees onto the unemployment rosters. What other choices are out there?

The 'Smart' alarm is another choice. A single, gentle bump against the car activates the system, which plays prerecorded voice messages any would-be car thief will hear, warning them away from the vehicle with the promise of dire consequences if ignored. Further movement triggers any number of anti-theft methods including shutdown of the car's electrical system, rendering it effectively dead; placing an automated call to authorities reporting the crime in progress; high-voltage countermeasures designed to shock the criminal into submission or high-volume blasts of shrieking sirens within the cabin to thwart the crime through temporary ear damage. While each method is on their own a possible deterrent, clever criminals have quickly learned how to maneuver around them, even as designers try to catch up with software which would thwart the bad guys' methods. It's a merry technological dance where everyone comes out a winner, except for the car owner.

Not yet the correct way to end car theft... but I have an idea about that, and I'm damn proud of it!

My solution is elegant, and proactive. It's also cheap. And best of all it's quiet. I say we let the technology of the smart phone come to our rescue at the same time as we allow the car's owner to do the bulk of the heavy lifting. 

Simply install a module in the car which allows the vehicle to be operated remotely using an iPhone. That's it. Here's a scenario:

A car owner goes to the local mall to buy, say, underwear. At some point during the shopping process his phone rings. He can tell immediately the call is being placed by his new antitheft software-- the onboard camera allows him to watch the crime occurring in real time, as well as recording it for court evidence down the road. The criminal is unaware of any prying eyes and is probably congratulating himself for picking an 'unprotected' car... boy, is he in for a surprise!

Now he gets the car started and drives away. It's best to make that process as easy as possible, to avoid damage to the car. All the while GPS is recording his current location as well as his route. At this point the owner can hold off on contacting the authorities until he determines if this particular car thief is just a kid on a joyride or a professional car stripper with chop-shop on his mind. If it's the latter, then waiting until the vehicle has reached its destination solves more than one crime-- then the phone call results in an entire ring of criminals being taken off the streets, and probably finds several other stolen cars as well!

If it's a first timer, the owner can give the kid an experience he'll never forget, quite possibly swearing him off car theft altogether! At some point the owner takes over control of his vehicle, locking all the doors and closing the windows. He directs the car directly to a police station as the kid beats on the door trying to get out. Or, with one push he releases a canister of knockout gas, sending the wayward juvie into a deep sleep, only to awaken in a jail cell. Or the owner could even take the car on a high speed drive, observing the road via remote camera, freaking out the crook into praying for his very survival, right up to the point where the car performs a risky infraction in front of a policeman, inspiring chase. Imagine the story he'd come up with, and stick to... all the way to prison!

Yeah, I'd love to see this idea implemented. Which I'm sure, given enough time, it will. If you can use a smart phone to take pictures and movies, to use as a mirror or flashlight, or to find out if a floor is level... this isn't going to be far behind. And the best reason to implement my idea, of course, is so we can utter the phrase:

Car theft? There's an app for that!

Copyright 2011 Bruce Ian Friedman

Infiltration

Perfect World Story (The NOW)

Water bubbled through the apartment building's dilapidated pipes, picking up rust and sediment along the way, ultimately bursting from the shower head of one Lawrence T Keller, HVAC subcontractor, depositing fine silt into his thinning salt-and-pepper curls. Warm water choked through, largely rinsing the reddish silt away as it burbled and spat a semblance of spray to rinse the effort of another night's work off his burly frame. Twisting the hot water valve to its fullest, he pressed his forehead against the cool and faded pink tile of the shower enclosure, allowing the heat to penetrate his tight and aching shoulders, twin rivers tracing down his muscular back, bringing with it momentary relief from complaining middle-aged muscles.

This job was a good one, but as with all good things there were tangible tradeoffs. It was night work, beginning at 5 pm sharp; elevators were loading with tradesmen as rumpled business suits were streaming out on their way to rush hour traffic, and ultimately home. The work was hard until 2 am, with only a 30 minute break for 'lunch', but the benefit was triple his normal rate, and for the foreseeable future to boot.

But oh, the strain to his body! Rerouting air ducts, crawling between beams and ceilings and walls, twisting into odd pretzel shapes to snap sections together, adding diverters and mounting thermostatic baffles made his entire body scream by quitting time. Baths were good but his apartment didn't have one; the separation had been tough on him. Not because of his wife; he was glad to be rid of that shrieking harpy... but because of his treasured thirty-six jet spa tub, installed lovingly with his own hands into their master bathroom. In three months since the 'egress' his only relief had been the weekly trips downtown to Mae's House of Hands, a straight-up massage parlor that worked his aching back so thoroughly it put him into a near blackout state, but at least left him feeling somewhat alive for a couple of days afterwards. If he could afford nightly massages in his home he'd do it, but that would eat up most of the profits from working these godawful hours.

Keller dried off and hung a robe over his shoulders, belt dangling... there was nobody to be modest for in this cramped efficiency. He threw a Swanson dinner into the nuke and switched on the television, ice cold brew in one hand and a fattie in the other. He took a pull from the bottle and ignored a thin stream of beer and lip drool that lay down across the once-white terrycloth; he lit the joint and took a long draw, placing it into his auto-out ashtray. He coughed. Toke in, hack out.

The channel was showing an old Gilligan's Island; he watched for a moment, pondering if the smoky Ginger's tits would really be that nose-coney without the scary bullet bra. Then it was just the Skipper and his 'lil buddy' and Keller was immediately bored. He flicked around a bit; at two in late night the airwaves were a little thin, and all his reserved programming was on a DVR at the house, probably already erased by the bitch, his black thought.

The microwave dang.

He brought the steaming black plastic tray over in his calloused but heat-sensitive hands and dropped it onto a TV stand next to the only chair in the room... the only chair in the apartment, actually. He had grabbed it from the house as a 'fuck you' to Arlene -- it was one half of a set she had picked out and their family room was seriously unbalanced without it, feng-shui-wise, anyway -- and it was always his favorite place to sleep when she kicked him out of the bedroom so it was a double whammy to her.

Gobbling down the last few strands of his spaghetti and meatballs, he glanced at the TV. It was an infomercial-- it said as much at the bottom next to the 800 number-- but the words 'daily massage' flashed several times, grabbing his eye. He aimed the remote and the volume kicked up.

The dashing Southern salesman was intoxicated with his product, it was obvious -- his bolo tie whipped about as he hopped from side to side, all smiles and gestures. "...and never has to be installed by professionals! That's right, we deliver it to you -- free, of course -- set it up wherever you want, and it's good to go! The MultiSpa is your number one solution for sore, tired, aching muscles! It's like a masseuse in a closet-shaped box!..."

Keller's eyes widened and he stopped chewing, his last bits of dinner mashed and waiting to be swallowed, stippled around his mouth like a murder scene. The MultiSpa came into view. It was a large white fiberglass box with rounded corners; sleek, like the skin of a jet plane. The salesman put light pressure on the logo which released the door latch, and the camera floated inside.

It was a large shower stall, peppered with intricate inserts embedded in the moulded walls. There were no visible knobs to be seen, but a smooth section at eye level soon glowed, revealing a control screen the size of an iPad. Keller watched as a bikini-clad model entered the unit and shut the watertight door. Through television trickery he could see as if there were no wall. The monologue continued:

"Once inside, you can program any environment of your choosing; thousands can be downloaded at our website. From a tranquil glen--"

Suddenly the walls inside were replaced with a realistic projection and the attractive model was beside a gentle brook in the sunny woods. Sounds of life filled the unit-- a woodpecker, rustling trees, a merry songbird. Crickets.

"--to an alien landscape, whatever mood you wish, can be fulfilled. And that's only the beginning! The MultiSpa is also a fully functioning cleansing unit. And 'shower stream' is only one of two hundred different settings. Would you prefer a fine mist? A torrential rainstorm? Perhaps a hurricane? However you want your water to fall, it will do so!"

At each example the model endured those conditions. Water came from all directions during the hurricane, pitching the willowy woman about noticeably. The wall scenes changed as well, placing her in the desert, by the beach and in a windswept savannah. But more surprises held Keller's attention.

"But you want a Jacuzzi, you say? Look no further! One touch on the infoPad and you get your wish!"

A seat formed from the enclosure's smooth wall; as she sat, the spa filled with water to her shoulders in 10 seconds flat and jets whipped the water into a violent froth. Camera angles showed them changing direction to concentrate on specific muscle groups; her skin depressed noticeably under the water pressure and Keller smiled, imagining the pleasure.
The phone jangled.
He twitched. It was late -- what son of a bitch could be calling at this hour? He checked the ID -- it was Donald James, his co-worker and, at this point in his life, his only friend. "It's goddamn late, Don! What the hell--"
"Turn on your TV! You gotta see this!"
"I'm already watching TV."
"Channel 352!"
Keller went to change and stopped -- he was on 352 already. "The spa?"
"Yeah! I saw this last night but forgot to mention it... I want one!"
Keller did also, but being a contractor made him wary and questions were emerging, rising to the surface like the bubbles onscreen. "Man, that sucker must use a lot of water... and the power requirements for pumps and heaters must be serious!"
"Just wait!" Donald sounded giddy.

The sharply suited, silver-tongued salesman smiled a toothy grin. "About this time I bet you're wondering how much this baby costs to operate... but you better sit down, because you're gonna be floored by the answer! Not only does the Multispa not cost anything to operate... it earns you thousands of dollars a year!" His tan and toothy face looked right into the camera and smiled, blinding viewers. "I know... it sounds like total bull hockey, right? Let me show you how we do it!"

The MultiSpa returned as the outside skin peeled back in a neat graphic, and the unit rotated to show its back side. An astonishing assortment of tech greeted his eyes, much of it completely unfamiliar to him even though he had assembled hundreds of spas by hand. "Will you look at all of that... kilterscrabble!"
"Impressive, right?"
Keller had to grudgingly admit that it was.

"This here's the guts of our unit. Notice this big tank. That's the water reservoir... 150 gallons worth. The heat gang runs around the whole spa, as does the pressurized zephyr accumulator and the five-intensity misting unit. Down here's the filtration plant, and over here the recycling pump platform." He appeared in a bubble in one corner of the screen. "I can see the realization on your faces... you're beginning to understand what makes the MultiSpa special... but I'll say it nonetheless."
Keller's mouth had been dropping, slowly, as the unit's complexity became clear; he hinged it shut and gasped, "It... doesn't... use up water?"
Donald chuckled over the phone. "Check this out!"
"That's right... we've perfected clean water 'Aguacycle' technology -- this unit runs completely on recycled water!  After the MultiSpa is filled -- with an ordinary garden hose -- the water is cleaned and reused thousands of times!"

By way of demonstration he brought out a pitcher of gray bathtub water and poured it into the filtration unit; as it trickled through it became sparkling clear again... and then he drank it! Keller's stomach lurched.
The salesman smiled. "Ahh... refreshing! Tastes like Evian! But I know you won't believe me until you try it for yourself... which you can, at any point-of-purchase display nationwide. And bring your own water!"

"Can that technology be real?" Keller asked, rubbing his eyes.
"I saw a TED talk on it a few months ago, so I'm gonna say yes."
"All right. I see it doesn't waste water. But the power... come on! Heating all that water and moving it at such a high volume burns up the juice!"
"You're asking the right questions at the right time," Donald chuckled.
Keller noticed the salesman's name on the screen for the first time and nodded appreciatively -- this technological miracle was beginning to make sense. The man was Jacob Reston, who wasn't a salesman at all. He was the CEO of FutureTech, the corporation that had been taking the nation by storm for the last few years. Whenever a new product promised to be low-maintenance, economical and ecologically sound, it was a good bet that it had been manufactured by FutureTech. Their track record was impeccable -- they had just introduced a daring new building material with properties that were lighter, stronger, more durable and flexible than steel... and was manufacturing it exclusively in the United States, creating a huge new industry and thousands of stateside jobs as well. Keller was on board with him for that patriotic choice alone.
Reston continued. "Let's move on to power consumption." He walked over to a window and stuck his head through-- the camera did the same through another window. Between them was a flat rectangular unit hanging on the brick wall, the thickness and size of a bath mat. "This unit comes with the MultiSpa. It's a high-transduction solar panel, able to convert 89% of the sunlight hitting it into pure electricity. It does this all day long. If you didn't use the MultiSpa this panel would, by itself, provide all the power needed for a one bedroom apartment."

The scene changed and now Reston was outside of Las Vegas at sunset. Not a light was flashing anywhere in the city -- it was being engulfed by the gloom of night. Standing amid a carpet of solar panels laid onto the desert sand, he had one hand on the throw switch of a large circuit breaker box. "I asked the good people of Sin City to let me power the Strip for one day and they happily agreed -- daily electrical costs average $30 million dollars for all of those casinos. We've connected 100,000 panels and let them suck up a day's worth of sun -- let's see what they can do!"
With that he strained at the throw switch and snapped it on. As he did, Vegas jumped to life. Every strip of neon shone, every twinkling bulb began its cycle, and the city was itself again. Reston smiled. "All of Las Vegas... powered with a blanket of solar panels twice the size of a city block!"
Keller had to close his mouth again. Doing some mental calculations he figured to save almost $2000 a year in electrical costs with one of those panels. This MultiSpa was looking more and more like a 'must have'! "Don, I'm about to call the number on the screen and I don't even know how much it costs yet!"
"You might want to wait... and sit down. Here it comes." Donald sounded dejected.
Reston concluded, "I've made you wait all infomercial for this. What's this wonderful new piece of luxurious necessity going to set you back? What would we charge for a machine which cleans you squeaky, and massages every muscle with surprising accuracy, and also serves as a professional therapeutic physical therapy station?"
Without pause he said, "Thirty thousand dollars."
Keller exhaled heavily. Thirty K? How in the hell was he going to swing that? That was more than 6 months of salary at his current rate, and more money than he had in the bank by a factor of... 30,000. He felt like crying.
"Hit you hard, huh?" Donald said in his ear, surprising him. He had forgotten about the phone.
"Crushed me. Now I want to hock my work truck for it."

"Hold off on destroying your career for a minute. There's more."
Reston had run a comical graphic of the audience keeling over following the price reveal, and was chuckling onscreen. With a wink he said, "A lot of money, I know. But this would be, far and away the most complex piece of technology in your home. And considering what it can do for your aching muscles, sore backs and misaligned joints, I'm sure you know it would be money well spent. Now I know for many of you this would be more necessity than luxury, so I'll tell you what. If there's no way you could ever afford the MultiSpa, there's a good chance you could win one... for free! Go to the website you see on the screen and apply... if you're one of the 100 lucky winners, you'll get to take one of these babies home!"
Donald yelled, "Did you hear that? There's a raffle!"
"Shut up! I'm trying to write the URL!"



The infomercial faded to black. Slowly the lights came up in the large hall, exposing the 852 members of Aden's Infiltration League. On the central stage a man began speaking. It was Jake Reston.
"Well, that's it. Now the whole country has seen it. The website should be lit up like a Christmas Tree before long."

"What's a 'Christmas Tree'?" one of the audience members called out, and polite laughter spread throughout the room. Jake laughed as well.
"I know, I know. I'm a fossil. That doesn't change the fact that we may have millions of potential new inhabitants before this is all over."
"We're going to have to triple the size of the city, in that case."
"I have a better plan." Reston stopped, gazed out at the sea of bright Perfect Worlders listening with rapt attention. He was gratified the World Family had gotten this far, but feared having the best and brightest concentrated into one small area of the country. He'd been up late with the Founder and the Brain Trust for the last few weeks, detailing the plan they called 'Operation: Infiltration' and he was about to give a hall full of people an awful lot to do. "You all are about to find out what you volunteered for."
"We're all going into Outer cities to test everyone for Perfect World potential," one person said.
"We'll be making podschool testing centers for them to visit," said another.
"We'll sell MultiSpas to anyone who can afford them but aren't right for Aden," yelled a third from the back.
"We'll be creating a dual citizenship in each city, complete with our own infrastructure, bringing fully functioning Perfect World ideals into the Outer cities for the first time," said a young woman in front.
Jake fell into his chair, bowled over. "I guess we made you too smart!" he chuckled. "Correct, on every count. Pair up, people. There are 426 city and town centers with Aden-owned buildings in dire need of remodeling. Construction crews from Aden, along with extensive building materials, are on their way right now. Each team will be heading up one podschool test center. Remember, only one person in 10,000 will be exactly right for Perfect World, but there will be another thousand that are almost right. Your jobs are to urge those the rest of the way, set them up in housing and specialized work to broaden the Perfect World program into every city and major town in America."
"Isn't that dangerous?"
"I won't lie... it's going to become increasingly dangerous as our detractors find out about our plans. But I'm less worried about the rich and the religious learning about it, than I am about another group."
"The Solarmen." Nearly everyone in the room murmured the same name.
"Yes. They know enough about our plans to be dangerous. In a worst case scenario, they could bring about our destruction." The room gasped. "But I have an ace or two up my sleeve, so don't worry your heads about it. Just..." Reston looked at each of them somberly. "Just keep your eyes peeled, and listen."
Each member of the Infiltration League stood up and filed out of the room, their brows knitted with concern. Jake had spoken, and they heard him.

As did a tiny electronic microphone buried against the wall between two sound panels, and it broadcasted as far as its minuscule power supply could reach... about fifteen feet. It was far enough, however, to reach through the wall to another infinitesimal broadcasting mike. That one in turn sent its message directly to a third, the third a fourth and so on, every fifteen feet for dozens of miles, to a microwave transmitter disguised in a rock outside Aden Security perimeter. That device sent a blast of information up to a satellite, which redirected the signal back to Earth, and was picked up by the Covert Service Division of the Solarmen, outside of Washington, DC.
A runner stopped at the impressive supercomputer, somewhat out of breath. "We have information from the Nanostream, sir."
The man looked up from his monitor, absently running hands through a wiry copse of wild white hair. Wordlessly he read the communiqué. A smile spread across his face, slithering from ear to ear like a snake seeking a meal. Bulbous gray teeth peered out between pale chalk lips and he began to giggle; quietly, ending with a snort. It gave the younger man chills.
He spoke. "We can finally begin. Tell Renfrew to download the Worm."
"Renfrew? We have a Renfrew?"
"Uhh, Smith. Private joke."
"Very good, sir." The runner disappeared.
The white-haired man returned to his monitor, pressing keys with a deliberate 'chock'. Staring over his glasses at the result, he huffed in approval, mumbling to himself. "Always a savior, huh, Reston? The Worm should mix things up a bit for you. Let's see how the world likes your little shower... once it's programmed to drown."

Copyright 2011 Bruce Ian Friedman

A Corpulent Blob in the Perfect World

essay

Did you think I was talking about people? My. Oh, my.

Okay, I was. But not all people. Just one.

Me.

Am I huge? No. Definitely not. But I am a cyclical gainer... which by definition also means a cyclical dieter as well.

I have a range: A low of 140 -- pounds, not kilos. And certainly not stone! -- and a high of 200. I've never gone over 200. Unless you count 202, but for that I'm blaming the scale. When I reach that upper limit, I'm suddenly wearing entirely different clothes; my thighs rub together when I walk and certain parts of my body become invisible to me without a hand mirror and a stepladder. I'm tired a lot and will walk further to find an escalator rather than use the stairs. I can trap a number two pencil under my man-boob. And I become invisible to the opposite sex.

Strike that: I become even more invisible to the opposite sex.

Which is why I take the effort every decade or so to drop down to my high school weight. I'm a determined and unflappable guy when I have to be, and I read vociferously... enough to know the word vociferously. I know which diets work and why, and I know which ones are designed only to sell books, heart attacks be damned.

I know that only one diet works. It's called 'calories in, PLUS calories out, EQUALS results'. Translated it means: All the food you swallow in a day (calories in) minus all the effort you expend in a day (calories out) equals a net result.

The 60 pounds melt off me when I follow my own particular regimen-- X calories a day for 3 days; then one day of 2X calories; then back to three days of X. Of course the big question is: What does the 'X' stand for?

That's different for each of us. Each of us is a different height and width and depth; each of us carries different excess and are different ages; and each of us has a different goal in mind. For me, the X was 1200. I'd consume no more than 1200 calories a day (or try not to), for three days. Right about then my body gets the idea that food might be scarce, so throws itself into starvation or 'brownout mode' (or so I've been told. It really seems to work this way for me, anyway), which is why I then eat a day of double rations. My body then says 'Oh-- not starving!" and cancels the call for every organ to work in brownout mode, and you go back to utilizing lipids as normal.

Part of the diet is to burn more calories. I walk more. I take the stairs. I engage in light sports and build things in my off time, lugging tools and materials and sweating merrily as I do.

Once a week only, I measure. For me it's in the morning, before eating and after, err, excreting. That's when I'm at my lowest weight of the day. I also measure my waist, hips and thighs, which is where all my excess avoirdupois lands.

I take the time to put it on a chart. You may not have to... it's just that the visual changes become more apparent when they're listed, and watching the change is inspiring. It was for me, anyway.

I don't worry when the numbers stall. That's natural. Weight rises and falls in fits and starts. Just keep it up and ignore the short term results, just continue to be true to your numbers and soon enough the losses will pick back up again.

From where did I obtain that very specific 1200 calorie count? A website designed for weight loss. I plugged all my personal data in and it spat out a calorie suggestion. They asked my age, height and weight. They wanted to know my goal weight and when I wanted to reach it. I had to adjust the figures a few times... I said I wanted to lose all 60 pounds in a week and it suggested removing my legs. Okay it didn't, but the amount of calories I needed to take in (negative 35,000 a day) would leave me a little famished -- and a little dead -- so I chose a more realistic goal. Two pounds a week, over 30 weeks. 1200 calories just like that. The website didn't mention the brownout mode. Oh, well.

There's no better way to count calories than by eating prepackaged foods, so that I did. Every calorie was counted. Packaged breakfasts, lunches and dinners guaranteed I could only eat a maximum of the calories printed on the carton. Packaged snacks filled out the diet.

When I was halfway through the diet I switched things up because I was bored of the same old thing. I looked up the calorie counts for natural foods like fruits, and added up all the weighed ingredients in sandwiches. I got the calorie data from fast food restaurants (holey moley! 'Nuff said) and sushi bars. I started eating salads loaded with proteins and exotic veggies.

And for me, the cool part was that it didn't matter what kind of food you ate. Calories are calories. I could have used an all ice-cream diet and would have lost the same amount. But because ice cream has a lot of fat (at 9 calories a gram) it doesn't deliver the fullness factor of carbs and proteins (at just 4 calories per gram). You decide. I ate a lot of pasta and sandwiches.

I kept a logbook of all the food I'd eaten. Everything. I didn't cheat, even when I went way over. Looking at that page in the future gave me glorious guilt and the resolve to not slip so easily.

I don't mean to be a smug son of a building contractor, but I was at my goal weight in the 30th week.

And now I'm 200 pounds again. Well, 194 if you believe the scale. And I do.

Why did I gain it all back? Well first let me assure you I kept the weight largely off for 5 years, and took another 5 to creep back up. So I felt the time spent in dieting was worth it -- 8 months for 8 years of relative leanness -- but there's one effect I haven't mentioned yet.

The allure of food.

I am not impressed with people who give up drinking. Good for you. Or smoking. Hey, hey you'll live longer. Or even hard drugs. Now you can restart your life.

Why am I not impressed?

Because you never need to see any of it again! That's right. When you quit, you stop. Done. No more trips to the liquor chateau, no more visits to Stogie T-Pop on 4th Avenue. As long as you don't seek out your dark master, you're free of it. Not so with food. I wish.

When you lose weight... you must still eat! When you're skinny... you have to keep eating! You must buy your food at the same market where you got your ice cream. When you go out to restaurants, they serve mahunga portions. At work there's junk food. At Costco there's free finger food. It's freakin' everywhere!

Moderation is so-o-o-o much harder than elimination. At the start of my gain cycle, I decide I can have one extra restaurant meal a month. Soon it becomes two, then three a week, and then suddenly it's every meal of every day. The restaurants I frequent are often all-you-can-eat places like salad bars, oriental buffets and homestyle smorgasbords; more bang for the buck, and more calories per visit.

Then I fall asleep with my head in a tureen of pudding, and just like that... I'm fat again.

I bring all this up because I am once again at the top of my cycle, looking at a long road down, and I'm steeling myself for the despair, the sorrow of waving adios to my closest companions. Goodbye, chocolate. See ya, donuts. Aloha, ice cream.

Hello, portion control!

I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me. It's my process, painful as it seems, and I'm prepared to go the hard route. I only bring up my own foibles as a comparison, to stack them up against one of the persons living in the World Family of my imagination, specifically one living in the mythical city of Aden.

You've read about Perfect World in previous posts. It's a good place. People tend to be healthy, the food tends not to be overly processed. Activities are encouraged and there's a lot of time for them. There isn't a lot of television programming because people enjoy each other's company more than vegging out.

So will there be overweight people in Aden?

Before I answer, ask yourself some incisive questions. Why are there overweight people here now? Is it all due to compulsive behavior? Is it because of ever-mounting stress? Lethargy? Interactions with medications? Illnesses? And what contribution does genetic predisposition represent?

Aden is a city of promise, the first place ever designed around the complexities of people. Utopias have been designed using political, religious, economic, scientific and even ecological models, but Aden is humanity-based, intentionally placing the individual's needs and emotional well-being as paramount. By that reason alone, stress and compulsion are all but gone as factors for overeating. Illnesses will still exist in Aden, but ailments which come about due to inactivity or overwork tend to disappear in societies without those issues. Medications like steroids and antidepressants can cause weight gain... but most of the reasons for taking those drugs don't exist in the World Family.

To answer the question... yes, excess fat will still exist. However, thanks to a lifestyle which is more conducive to physical and emotional health, the rate of 'fat to fit' will be much much lower. Genetics may still play a part in overall weight distribution, but if it is determined that double-helical 'upholstering' is a biological bungle, researchers will attend to it with the full backing of Aden's population.

But there is a natural curve to the distribution of features across a species. Some will be taller, others shorter. Some will have lighter hair, wider-set eyes or freckles. And of course fat ratios will run the full course as well, even though all other external stimuli remains the same. Look at today's sports figures. These people are the best athletes in the world -- and some of them could certainly be described as stout, even though the same weight-control methods are available to them as the other teammates. Or how about the advent of luscious new 'full-sized' fashion models? Carrying double the weight of their scrawny counterparts, these women are unmistakably beautiful and make the clothing they represent look attractive. To me this hollers 'size is relative!' and exemplifies how differences are part of the genetic makeup of a species.

In closed societies over history we see genetic problems arising due to the deleterious effects of inbreeding, demonstrating clearly that wide differences between individuals is healthy for the species. This basic knowledge guarantees that Aden will never become a colony of clonelike people, all having the same general size and shape and look. For that reason as well, people of girth will be welcome in Aden because a larger size does not necessarily indicate an unhealthy lifestyle.

So take a deep breath of relief, America. Remember the Perfect World credo: It's a world perfectly designed for imperfect people! The World Family is looking for people with intelligent and reasonable minds, first and foremost. Aden will never reject you out of hand for that jelly belly you try to hide behind blousy Hawaiian shirts and partially unzipped track suits.

Although those outfits will have to go.

Copyright 2011 Bruce Ian Friedman

Waiting For ALV In America

essay

No, not Alvin America. I have no idea who that is and I'm certainly not waiting for him.

Long before automatic braking, self-parking or even night-sensing headlights I longed for the day when I could crawl into my vehicle, exhausted or distracted or even (heaven forbid!) inebriated, and have it drive safely home with no help from me other than giving it a destination. Oh sure, I could get home using public transportation... buses and trains and such, but they held all the cards; it was necessary to adhere to their pick-up locations and schedules and I had to remember not to drink my fare money. Taxis were an option, but usually only for the more well-to-do -- since daily use of taxis, multiple times a day, can be prohibitively expensive for a middle-class commuter.

No, an Autonomous Land Vehicle (ALV) promises so much more than public transportation ever could, and in a country which loves its private vehicles an auto-drive feature is immensely appealing. Parents can program it to bring their kids to school, violin practice or scout meetings safely and with no distractions. People with diminished capacities like those taking strong medicine, the handicapped or the aged can go anywhere they desire with little restriction. The vehicle can become a family taxi, dropping off and picking up each member according to their schedules, reducing overall vehicle load on the roadways. Computerized sensing systems don't ever get tired, have a complete view of the road and completely eliminates accidents (that it might cause)... as well as reacting thousands or millions of times faster in emergencies than humans can.

Of course, it's not all borscht and sardines. There's an enormous down side-- just ask bus, train and cab companies and they'll bend your ear on the subject for hours. Apparently, ALVs represent the single most destructive force to the public transportation game since the horseless carriage. They lament the inevitable loss of revenue coming from a true private livery service: Each person with an ALV need never call a cab again; punch a quick code into your smartphone and the ALV is on its driverless way to come get you.

Large blocks of downtown city land now taken up by pricy parking lots, some charging in excess of $25 a day per space, will be threatened with bankruptcy as ALVs take their passengers to work and then park back at home or on the street in a quiet neighborhood; or continue on to serve other family members, eliminating the need for nearby parking.

What about the larger picture? Each of those threatened industries connect to a dozen other businesses, each of which would also be hurt by the change. Bus and taxi drivers would become superfluous, as would the mechanics who service the vehicles. The vehicles themselves would cease to be ordered as a huge industry dried up, also affecting automakers. The infrastructure of each would become largely redundant and useless. In short, they would go the route of the milkman or a diaper service

And I can assure you, they will not go quietly into that dark night.

Not while they still have the money for litigation and bribery. Not while their PACs in Washington can insure certain bills never make it to vote. And not as long as they can spread around a thick blanket of lies and fear and innuendo (and money) for the purpose of discrediting a fledgeling though inevitable modernization of society. Progress may march on... but not here, not as long as they can resist the change.

Still, it seems that there are still a few corporate entities on the planet which are both good and rich. Google, for one. They have spent the last few years tirelessly developing the software for a truly safe ALV and have been driving -- I mean, allowing the car to drive itself -- all over the California highway system. With at least two people in the vehicle at all times, one to monitor the software and the other to take over in case of emergencies, Google has wisely not attracted any more attention about the program than the vehicle itself did, an otherwise nondescript sedan sporting a rooftop of bulky and awkward sensing equipment. It seems the bugs have been worked out, too... after over 140,000 miles each of unaided road sharing the only incident to speak of was a mild fender-bender... caused by the vehicle behind the ALV, at a red light.

That doesn't stop detractors from protesting wildly, spreading unsubstantiated fears of 'robot cars gone wild', painting blood-red pictures of ALVs rising up on their rear wheels, sprouting AK-47's from hidden recesses, peppering the highway with bullets in a gasoline-fueled rage over the dehumanizing treatment they receive by 'fleshies'.

Not gonna happen.

Terminator and Transformer movies aside, these vehicles are about as aware of you as an Epilady is of the leg it riddles with a thousand points of pain. It does a job like a toaster, nothing more. And the single-minded focus with which ALVs perform their assigned duty would be admirable... if there were a way for the machine to do anything else but their programming... it's all they can do, as immutable to change as gravity. If ALV injuries were to happen at some point, you can be damned certain it would be due to careless software design by a human developer, or abysmal treatment of the vehicle itself, allowing its sensors to become obstructed or otherwise damaged... which would again be caused by careless humans, not machinery.

In other words, fear and paranoia of ALVs are wasted emotions, like being scared of a windowpane because you once got cut by glass. Hear what logical-minded science investigators have to say about them:

Google's Self-Driving Cars

3/7/2011

'The Week' online magazine

Google showed off its cutting-edge, self-driving cars to a select group of attendees and journalists at this weekend's Technology Entertainment Design conference, which unites many of the world's leading innovators. On a closed course in Long Beach, Calif., the driverless vehicles, which Google has been developing for years, speedily maneuvered around traffic cones, occasionally screeching as they made tight turns. Google hopes the cars' reliability — each one has traveled 140,000 miles without an accident — will eventually help to reduce the 37,000 road deaths in the United States each year.

The reaction: "We need them, and people want them," says Sebastien Thrun, the project's chief engineer, as quoted by CBS News. Many "people who can't drive today, like blind people or aging people, should be able to drive," and with these cars, they could. But don't hold your breath, says Aaron Saenz at Singularity Hub. Yes, there is "awesome engineering" on display here, but "I still haven't seen anything that lets me believe that the social and legal barriers opposing robot automobiles are falling."

Have they been a success so far?

In tests with a human behind the steering wheel (ready to take over at any time) the seven Google cars — six Priuses and an Audi TT — have driven "more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control." According to Google, the cars have maneuvered "down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe." In all that time, the only accident that occurred came "when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light."

Who's behind the project?

Google recruited engineers from "a series of autonomous vehicle races organized by the U.S. Government" and known as the DARPA challenge. Sebastian Thrun, the main "brainpower" behind the robot cars, is a Stanford professor and Google engineer who helped win the second iteration of DARPA — a "$2 million Pentagon prize for driving autonomously over 132 miles in the desert."

What benefits might robot cars bring?

Google engineers are evangelists when it comes to road safety, claiming that robot cars could greatly reduce the 37,000 road deaths in the United States each year. Robots, according to the engineers, "react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do not get distracted, sleepy or intoxicated." Beyond that, "the technology could double the capacity of roads by allowing cars to drive more safely while closer together."

When will they hit the mainstream?

Human-free cars are a long way from becoming a regular sight — "even the most optimistic predictions put the deployment of the technology more than eight years away."

"Sensors that read the road more intricately and keep you safely in your lane aren’t far off, and there’s been talk of installing a computer sensor underneath especially congested highways to better regulate traffic flow during rush hours. In other words, the experience of driving your car is slowly but surely beginning to mimic the experience of being a passenger on a train."

Witness the latest technology from Volvo: Automatic braking to prevent collisions. New Volvos will be outfitted with computerized sensors that detect when pedestrian or other obstacles draw near, and automatically hit the brakes for you. Volvo’s new Vision Statement is that “By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo.”

Damned impressive stuff... well, except for the detractors. Whom, as you might have guessed, are made up of mass transit authorities and mouthpieces, their representatives in congress, and a scattering of paranoids and Luddites. Each with their own reason for killing these cars, as a group they have no problem squelching the forward progression of humanity as a whole. I'll ignore their protests, as my father did when they put the hate on cell phones and as my grandfather did when they sounded out against microwave ovens... and as my great-grandfather did when these same types of people rallied to kill the horseless carriage. They can squeal like a rusty wheel begging for oil, but they have trouble understanding that they will not get the oil... in the long run they will only get replaced.

And that's what needs to happen to every car on the road today-- get replaced. Or at least modified, because having a human driver among a freeway full of ALVs would be like having a mule in a race of stallions, and would surely muck up the works. On the city streets however, ALVs would be meek creatures, designed to behave within the constraints of all local road regulations, Caution and Care (its two digital angels) watching at all times, earning electronic kudos for being the most defensive of drivers. A frisbee rolling out from between two cars would be enough to warrant a slowdown, as the software reacts to the directive 'where toys go, children are never far behind'.

Let's take it one dimension further. If I live in a mountainous area and pass by a lot of cliffs, I would love a car which sees the falling rock overhead that I might miss and calculates a safe driving trajectory to avoid contact. The same would go for avalanches hurling tons of snow, hurricanes and tornadoes filling the air with debris, the frozen chunk of washroom ice dropping out of that 747... or facing down 'snowball alley' near the grade school. Well, maybe not the last one. Though these dangers are rare, how wonderful it would be to have an electronic bodyguard tirelessly protecting us from peril in any direction!

For the time being, there are a lot of people to convince. If ALV's are to find their way smoothly into today's traffic, the doubters must believe beyond all suspicion in the superiority of the system, and to that end I have a suggestion.

The world's sexiest car event.

I'm not kidding! Program 20 or more ALVs to follow a rough and twisted course at high speed to its own unique destination within an arena, making sure that the courses intersect hundreds of times. This would be an impossible task for even highly experienced race car drivers and dozens of accidents would occur. ALVs, however, would race towards their inevitable doom fearlessly... but thanks to their collision-avoidance abilities, no car would touch another (although they would be breathtakingly close!), even at double the speed of the human drivers! A little nudge here, a touch of gas there, tap twice on the brakes and every ALV makes its goal, at the same time, not a ding in the process! Then do it again, using audience input to create new courses, to see if it would be possible to make the vehicles crash. It wouldn't be.

Take this event to racetracks around the country and afterwards, make sure there are plenty of applications at all the exits for ownership of an ALV. My guess? 20 million sales nationwide, easy. And with all its advantages, there won't be a pre-ALV car on the road in 10 years.

Then all we need to do is find work for all the cab and bus drivers.

Copyright 2011 Bruce Ian Friedman

A Year in the Life of My iPod

Essay

It all began with those little black 45's. It was 1968, the summer of love. I had just received my first weekly allowance-- a buck-- and I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. I raced down to my local Sam Goody and bought the single 'Fire' by Arthur Brown (along with his Crazy World). I even convinced the clerk not to charge me tax, because all I had was the dollar. I think he saw the 'Fire' in my eyes because he let me go with the stern warning to "bring the 2 cents by tomorrow morning." I did not... screw the government.

I rushed home and waited impatiently for our phonograph to be free-- my father was an opera aficionado with a vast collection of scratchy vinyl 78's and spent hours at a stretch hunched over the stereophonic console-- and when it finally came free I played my record, donning the bulbous can headphones in order to hide the primal music and shrieky warblings from my opinionated dad. After the first minute I adjusted the speed from 78 to 45 and tried again, far more satisfied with the non-cartoonish results.

And I was hooked.

And so it has continued for some forty-odd years, my rather significant investment of cash dropping into the event horizon of an endless array of new music. The medium has changed and changed again some half dozen times in my life, but the notes and rhythms have remained consistent, providing the background beat of my life from which to link experience and emotion. Moving through analog records and tapes to digital CDs and tapes and finally, to a medium of electronic Morse code, I have pursued the 'pleasure of the ear' with the fervor of obsession. My collection, even while expanding to impressive proportions, has grown smaller and far more mobile... and just in time, as my back grows weary from time and overuse. If I still owned a vinyl record for each song in my current inventory there wouldn't be a wall in my home free of sturdy shelving, not a hallway made uncomfortably narrow from the task of storage.

Thanks to modern science, I can now move through my home or in fact anywhere, carrying the whole of my entire musical archive... in my front jeans pocket! It could be argued that the radio station emanating from a transistor radio gave us that gift way back in the 50's, but at that time there was an army of people at work, each performing one aspect of the great organism allowing me to hear all that music. And I had no say in what melody would be played next, unless you believe that changing stations gave me better options, or that a careful placement of request line phone calls could allow me to hear the playlist I wanted at the time. It's not the same thing at all.

And that enormous advantage is only the first of many that technology has given me. As an example, the strain of organization is gone from my life. Alphabetization was an essential part of the music collector's life... once enough albums were in your possession it would be nearly impossible to hear the song you wanted without knowing exactly where the disc storing it was situated. Misfiling often meant the same thing as death to a song-- put an album in the wrong place in a vast collection and you might never hear it again, rendering it 'dead' to you. New methods at our disposal not only store items in correct order, but can be retrieved with no more effort than it takes to spell the name. And should you wish to reorganize your collection, say by song name or by genre, well, that is no longer a cold winter's project... it can be now accomplished in under a second.

And the excruciating care that a vinyl record needed in order to remain pristine was an exhaustive and expensive process involving protective barriers and soft cleaning tools... and sometimes temperature regulated, dust-minimized play equipment. Any less rigorous effort often ended with the LP sounding as if were being accompanied by a rain stick, or with 2 second jerks due to a forward skip or worse, re-hearing the same section repeatedly thanks to a backwards skip.

Tapes were easier to maintain but had several inherent disadvantages: The tape could stretch and distort the sound; it could unroll into the tape deck and need rescuing (with greasy fingers and the rewinding potential of a number 2 pencil); or it could just break and need to be 'fixed' with scotch tape that forevermore caused a moment of silence in playback (a moment of silence for another dead soldier, folks). And we can't ignore the initial disadvantage of tape to begin with-- the ever-present bottom end rumble heard as the tape necessarily slid over the reading head to be processed into sound.

CDs were thought to be a big step up in sound quality, and were-- many listeners were shocked to find the CD had already begun without any audible cue until the music started-- but they had the same potential for scratching as the LP, with an even weirder resulting chatter as the electronic technology attempted to find its place among the billions of shiny or flattened dots that represented the ones and zeros of modern sound. Plus, in the race to find a cool storage medium for this cool modern tech, the horribly frail 'jewel box' was chosen (initially), and millions of obsessive listeners were forced to buy shares of stock in corporations that manufactured replacement boxes. And they still took up a lot of room in the real world.

Finally, fully digitized music found its way into the computer, and the software to organize and play it was perfected. We had our homes back again! Kind of... we still kept our old music, but after we transferred them onto our hard drives they became full-time residents of Boxville, the Attic. But... we couldn't take it along with us since it was anchored to a bulky hard drive under your desk. Not easily, anyway. We were forced to reach backwards to older tech, creating playlists and burning them onto blank CDs, then carrying them in padded bags next to our CD Walkmen. Not so bad... right?

Right... until MP3 players hit the scene, revolutionizing music play forever. Now we had a portable hard drive merged with playing/organizing software, connecting to us with tiny earbud headphones and a small screen of information to keep our place in the massive file. And it fits in our pocket!

At first the total storage capacity was minimal-- about a hundred songs-- but we reasoned that we didn't need more than that for the average jog, and we could return home afterwards and dump them all, loading all new songs from our main file on the computer for the next time. But storage capacity necessarily exploded and before long our entire collection went with us, wherever we went.

Which leads me to my point. For whatever odd reason, I envisioned becoming stranded on an island, alone, and feared a lifetime of silence until I got my handy MP3 player with a solar charging station. How many songs, I wondered, would I need to own so that I wouldn't find myself dreading whatever played next, after a decade (or four) of solitary living? I'll return to this.

iTunes has a nifty piece of data prominently displayed under every playlist: The total number of playing minutes contained in the list. It's a handy number when burning CDs, to fill all the empty space on the disc. It's efficient. It has another function, though. Regardless of your musical taste, it quantifies your collection into a single data point: How long you can listen to your own collection of unique melodies before the same song passes by your ears again.

This might not be important to some, but it's crucial to me. In high school while listening to my preferred FM radio stations I found they replayed popular songs frequently, with such regularity that at times I actually changed stations when an overplayed song would begin. The business model for 'Album-Oriented' radio was actually killing my favorite songs! Burnout had a second definition for me in high school.

I differ from many of my peers, who determined their musical taste (like most of us) in high school. So did I, with one important difference: My musical tastes evolved over the years, and even though I still enjoyed the genres of my youth I found new music to be even more rewarding. But many of my friends have not followed that same musical path. Decades later, I find that they are not only still listening to the same genre... they are still listening to the same songs. I find that flabbergasting.

Thanks to iTunes and their randomizer function, I get to hear it all. All of the music from high school is there... but so are all of the choices I loved from every decade since then! This guarantees I will hear my old favorites, but at such a reduced repetition rate as to not become ponderous.

Getting back to my question... I find that every time I import a new selection, I now glance at the bottom number and mental math springs into action. In the beginning, after importing my first album, it showed minutes and seconds, approximately 40 minutes and 10 seconds if I'm not mistaken. After the second album finished importing it displayed hours, minutes and seconds (1:19:48). Now, four years later, it stopped at days and I can understand why. Weeks is rarely used to denote any passage of time longer than a month (except for that oddest description of time periods-- the 39 week pregnancy)... and months are pretty different from each other. When I reach it (and I've still got a long way to go), I'm willing to bet (a buck) the next division will be 'year'. Even though there's an extra day every four years, by and large the 'year' is a static unit of time.

And at that point, when my display reads 1:oo:oo:oo:oo (or so), only then will I feel comfortable with my banishment to the aforementioned island. Because at that time I know that it will take a full 365.25 days before I will hear a song repeated.

Unless you're counting my vast number of uncorrected duplicates.

Copyright 2011 Bruce Ian Friedman

Now I'm REALLY Pissed About Not Having a Jetpack

essay

In case you were wondering, this is a QR Code. It's like a Bar Code but better. It holds more data for one thing (over 4000 alphanumeric characters versus a coupla dozen), but this particular QR code only contains one item. Be patient, you'll find out...

Let's have some fun. Take out your smart phone and download a QR Code Reader app. I think they're free. Done? Okay, now open it and point the phone at this code.

Isn't that cool? I bet you didn't know you could do that!

Okay, I won't be cruel. I know a bunch of you don't have smart phones and don't have any idea what I'm talking about. What I've done is reproduce the URL to this blog (Finding The Perfect World in case you're lost) into a QR Code, and by entering it into a smart phone, you will be immediately directed to the PW blog, and can take it with you anywhere you have cell service!

That's amazing. But not nearly as amazing as this: there's a far more detailed and unobtrusive data tag out there. It's a little dot about 3mm (1/8") across called a Bokode.

These are pretty complicated things, not just printed images. Made up of an LED and a lens, they are normally part of something permanent like a sign or billboard. They can be read by a smart phone at a distance of nearly 15 feet and holds thousands of data matrix codes, vastly more information than ordinary bar codes!

These devices are of course primarily used to convey data which will ultimately lead to a sale. I wonder what else could have been invented by now, had profit been the driving force?

Could I have been sleeping to and from work in my self-driving car for the last decade, if not for the fear of creating a job-killer for the mass transportation and livery and auto industries?

Egad. Is it any wonder I want to change our social system? Imagine how we'd be getting around without the effects of money to cripple our efforts!

Copyright 2011 Bruce Ian Friedman