Megan bought me a Defender machine. I was so happy to see it, I just stood there playing a long time. She did what she always does.
Just now while posting this, I noticed that Megan’s friend Hal (the formerly obese celebration of “body type diversity,” now as ripped as all the rest) is playing Defender at the house already. That guy doesn’t even let the joystick get cold.
Hey, does anybody know where there’s a working Defender in Seattle these days? Since Shorty’s in Belltown got rid of theirs, I don’t know where to go play.
To celebrate our anniversary, we took a drive to the Fauntleroy ferry terminal, then caught the ferry to Vashon Island. We drove down across the narrow land bridge from Vashon to Maury Island, where we took a walk on the beach near the Point Robinson lighthouse. (That’s the lighthouse you can see from the Normandy Park Cove where we got married one year ago — the cove is across Puget Sound in the background of this picture.) From there we drove around Vashon a bit and then took the small Tahlequah ferry that connects to Point Defiance in Tacoma.
We could live on Vashon. Seriously, it’s on the list. The commute is pretty long, but there’s that peaceful ferry ride every time. And we saw many encouraging signs that we’d fit right in to the Berkeley-esque hippie culture over there.
It was fun to have a leisurely day, and now I need to get in a long day’s work to prepare for another busy week. The work blog needs some overdue attention, so the next post here on the personal blog will probably be from Brazil later in the week …
April 28th, 2007
11:22 am
ideology: a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture
One of the many ways Americans are different from other people is the way we drive, and the expectations we have about how others should drive.
In other countries, it seems that people drive to get somewhere, and they measure how “well” they’re driving by how quickly and reliably they arrive at their destination. But here in the US, it’s not nearly that simple. You see, around here, how you drive says a lot about what kind of person you are. Are you smart or dumb? Generous or selfish? Aware or naive? Good or evil? Your driving provides clues to all of these things, and other American drivers know how to read the signs.
The reading of these signs is the most important thing going on when you’re driving in America. Destinations come and go, and many people don’t even know or care where they’re going anyway, but American drivers are always paying close attention to whether somebody else is driving in a way that deserves comment or criticism.
One of the earliest driving lessons I ever learned was from watching the Mr. Magoo show. That blind, lovable little guy drives his car right through a barn, smashing it to pieces, and when the chickens all cluck and scramble for their lives, he honks his horn and angrily yells “ROAD HOG!” I love doing that, and feel very patriotic every time I do. That kind of behavior is what driving in America is all about.
Seattle vs. Chicago
I first realized the extent to which culture and driving are intertwined when I moved from Seattle to Chicago at the tender age of 24.
In Seattle, the pedestrian is a saint who can do no wrong, and drivers feel a responsibility to coddle any decision a pedestrian may make. Want to cross in the middle of the block during rush hour? Step off the curb, and it’s like Moses wading through the Red Sea: the drivers all slam on the brakes and smile meekly or wave, embarrassed to be wasting precious fossil fuels while you’re being so healthy and virtuous by walking.
In Chicago, the pedestrian is a chump. Step off the curb and you better be paying attention, because the drivers are busy and distracted, in a hurry and not overly concerned with whether you’re too dumb to survive the day. To a Seattle boy, and one who showed up in Chicago without a car no less, this was a rude awakening.
After I had lived in Chicago for a while, and had fully assimilated into a new driving culture, I found Seattle’s driving habits foreign whenever I returned for a visit. One time I was driving on Capitol Hill and took a free right turn while a woman was walking in the crosswalk at the far side of the intersection. I couldn’t have hit her if I wanted to, or even come close, but she sprinted to my vehicle and kicked at my back bumper so vigorously she nearly fell down. While I laughed and waved in the rear-view mirror, she stood in the cross walk, flipping me off and yelling.
I know what she wanted. She wanted me to bow down and acknowledge the supremacy of the pedestrian, of course. But I just can’t do it. And I can’t receive it, either: it’s just as annoying to me when I’m the pedestrian in that sort of situation.
For example, I often walk across the street between buildings 18 and 20 at work. And I hate the way the cars stop if you even appear to be thinking of crossing the street. So I usually stand there casually, as if I’m just hanging out for a while, and then when I see there’s a gap in traffic I slip across the street without giving away my intentions ahead of time. That feels so efficient: the cars keep moving, without any energy wasted stopping and starting, and life is good.
But even with those sorts of precautions, I’ve found that sometimes a person who has an especially urgent need to demonstrate their compassion and generosity (these people tend to be sadistic perverts in real life of course, that’s why they need to do this stuff while they drive) will stop and hold out an upturned palm as if offering me a free drink: “hey, would you like this generous thing I’m offering you?” And at those times, as a matter of principle, I always shake my head NO. And then I walk across right behind them as soon as they start moving again, although I’ve had people get pissed off about that, fer chrissakes!
So for a while, I thought Chicago and Seattle represented far extremes of driving culture, with everything else in between. Then I visited India for the first time.
United States vs. The World
I’ve blogged about Indian driving before. As I said a year ago, not long after a trip to Bangalore:
One of the things I love about India is the way the traffic flows.
Here in the US, our approach to traffic is very rigid and simplistic: it’s all about rules and standardization and predictability, with a hierarchical “command and control” mentality in place. The traffic lights tell you what to do, and you do it, and people carefully stay within the lines of their lanes. Any variation from the predefined procedures is considered an act of aggression or stupidity, and often elicits an angry reaction from drivers nearby. (I’m quite familiar with that reaction!)
But in India, people just drive. Or walk, or ride a rikshaw, or whatever. The focus isn’t on rules and regulations, it’s on getting to your destination. And this goal-oriented approach works great: in spite of the wide variety of vehicles involved (and variety of species too, but I won’t offend my Indian friends by mentioning any of them :-)), Indian traffic flows very efficiently. It’s like a self-correcting network protocol that automatically re-routes around congestion and keeps the data flowing in conditions that would shut more rigid systems down.
In that post, I linked to a YouTube video of driving in India that’s worth watching if you’re an American who hasn’t seen how other people drive.
And it’s not just India, or just Asia. With the sole exception of Canada, I’ve found the drivers in every country I’ve been to outside the US to be much more attuned to their fellow drivers than we are, and much less concerned with formal rules. North American drivers are very focused on things that aren’t moving — dotted lines, signs, traffic lights — and everyone else in the world seems to be more attuned to the moving objects on the road.
So in America, when the car next to you veers into your lane a bit, the unspoken rule is that you should honk your horn, make angry faces and gestures, and thereby assert your moral superiority for all to see, even if the other person’s actions had absolutely no impact on how fast you get to your destination. If that driver crossed the little line painted on the pavement, you have a right — no, a responsibility! — to draw public attention to this terrible crime.
The way we use the horn is different, too. In America, your horn is a quick and easy way to say “fuck you” to other drivers. That’s what it’s for, and that’s the message whenever you honk it. But in other countries, your horn is a way to say “I’m here” and nothing more.
So the sound of busy traffic in other countries tends to be beep-beep-beep, horns honking constantly. American tourists hear that, and their ears don’t hear “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” but rather they hear “fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” and the American thinks “gee, these people are so uncivilized, they don’t follow basic traffic rules at all, and they’re all pissed off about it — don’t they know there’s a better way?” Uh, yeah, right.
I mentioned Seattle’s “the pedestrian is king” mentality, and it seems to me that other countries have more of a “might is right” approach. Pedestrians make sure they don’t get in front of moving vehicles, motorbikes avoid cars, cars avoid trucks, and the larger vehicle always has the right-of-way. It’s a simple system, and there’s never any doubt about who’s responsible for avoiding a collision.
Now, maybe that might-is-right concept is offensive to the Puritanical culture we live in, where we calls toilets “restrooms” and parents don’t smoke in front of their kids, but I have news for my fellow Americans: that approach works better than our system. Everyone gets where they’re going faster, and they also don’t kill each other with their vehicles (or guns for that matter) nearly as often as we pure and free Americans do.
Drive in the carpool lane. Always.
There was an email discussion this week at work about how we can all do more to “live green” and avoid wasting energy or polluting the environment any more than necessary. And one person voiced a common complaint here in Seattle: the observation that some people drive in the HOV/carpool lane, even though they’re driving alone. Ooh, doesn’t that just piss you off!
But another person pointed out that if the other lanes aren’t moving, and the carpool lane is moving, then the best thing to do for the environment is to get in the carpool lane and get moving, rather than sitting there idling and burning fuel without going anywhere.
I love it! This is non-US thinking in action, exactly the kind of results-oriented perspective we need if we’re going to remain competitive in the rapidly changing world.
The other side of the coin: in my last trip to India, I saw an angry exchange in traffic. Two drivers were yelling at each other, and they hadn’t even crashed into each other! It was like a little glimpse of American road rage, and it worried me. If this is the price of progress, it may be too high.
Anyway, enough of this rant. It’s a nice sunny day, our first anniversary, and I’m taking the wife for a drive. I will not use my turn signal, horn, or middle finger the entire time, I promise.
April 27th, 2007
12:44 pm
Today I listened to KTTH “The Truth” on the way to work, 770 on the AM dial. Megan doesn’t care for right-wing radio, but I love it. Great entertainment.
Today, Rush made many brilliant points. Did you know that …
In 100 years, people will remember George Bush as one of the “top 5 foreign-policy Presidents.” His commitment to staying the course in Iraq will be seen as forward-thinking leadership, but right now the Democrats are confusing the American public and preventing the truth from coming out!
Democrats are very inconsistent. They’re opposed to preemptive war in general, but when it comes to “wacko theories like climate change,” suddenly they’re all for declaring preemptive war on the environment itself. And that’s declaring war on the American people, who all live in that environment!
The reason Republicans often do worse than Democrats in political debates is simple: political debates are contests for who can fake sincerity the best. Democrats like Obama are often quite good at faking sincerity. It’s what they do!
I’ve often noticed that the ads on right-wing radio are ones I’ve never heard anywhere else. This morning, there was an ad for “controlling your kids,” with the announcer talking about how there are sure-fire techniques for getting unruly kids to listen, and they have the secret. “Your child will be listening closely to what you have to say in just one minute!” If that kind of thing turns you on, I think the toll-free number — repeated many times throughout the commercial — was 800-494-0326. If you really love your child, you should call now. Operators are standing by.
April 26th, 2007
12:07 pm
I’ll be in Bogota in a couple of weeks, and it promises to be interesting.
We get travel advisory emails whenever we book international flights, and they’re usually quite boring: warning you that Paris has pickpockets, don’t display large quantities of cash on the street, stuff like that. But when I booked the Colombia flights, I got an advisory warning me of things like “Colombia has long been considered one of the most violent countries in the world … foreign and expatriate travelers are considerable targets throughout Colombia for acts of terrorism, crime and kidnapping … Bogota has one of the highest crime and murder rates in the world.”
Gee, no wonder our local contact there has arranged for a driver to whisk us from the airport to the hotel. Don’t expect any photos of Colombian street life on the blog. And room-service dinner sounds delicious, whatever it is.
And then, today, there’s this news story: Power returning to Colombia after nationwide blackout. Hmm. Room service by candlelight?
April 26th, 2007
11:24 am
When something seems too good to be true, it probably is. For example, I was writing a response to some nasty rumor-mongering by one of evil Microsoft’s holy and benevolent competitors, and I came across this great quote on an internal mailing list:
Jude O’Reilly: Why Sophistry is Great for Civilization
“People learn from mistakes, therefore we are advised to make as many as possible. How does one learn the truth without becoming resistant to lies and sophistry? How does one develop antibodies without first having the disease? Therefore, those who publish books promoting slightly-plausible but inane theories are societies greatest benefactors. Far from poisoning the wells, these authors strengthen and inoculate society.”
This thought would fit what I was writing so well … I just had to use it. So I asked the person who made the quote what the source was, since I couldn’t find that book or that author anywhere online. His response: “I made it up. :-)”
Damn. It would have been perfect.
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I had worked with translators for the presentations I gave in the Ukraine. I didn’t take any photos at those events myself, but last week I received a few photos from a co-worker who was there, and thought I’d share them to show the details of what I was talking about.
Here’s a photo with all the pieces labeled. The translator sits in the back of the room in a small booth, and he listens to what I’m saying through the PA system, then translates it into a microphone, where the translated version is broadcast to everyone’s earpieces.
Here’s another photo of the same event. I learned after a couple days of this routine to slow way down, and to occasionally pause until the translator had clearly caught up. When you’re chattering away and then you stop and the translator continues talking for a full minute, that’s a clear sign you’ve been going too fast!
My next trip includes a bunch of Spanish-speaking countries, but I’m bringing my own translator/bodyguard with me this time. He happens to be my manager, too.
April 22nd, 2007
11:44 am
In SL, as in RL, everyone has certain things they tend to do. You can choose your body type and wardrobe easily in SL, but — despite what many people seem to think — it’s just as hard to change your personality in SL as it is in RL.
For example, I tend to take lots of pictures. And Megan tends to hop on a swing whenever she gets a chance.
For the first time in a long time, Megan and I were in town together on a Friday night, with no plans. So we went out dancing …
After she had worn me out, she went out dancing with Orcmid …
And then, after outlasting all her friends, she went out dancing by herself …
That’s my error message, by the way. Megan’s running XP. 
