Sonic cynic

It was shaping up to be a disaster.

It had started well enough: a fun driving adventure on a gorgeous Indian-summer afternoon through the southern reaches of golden, hilly wine country. The object of our quest: Sonic Drive-In, a new burger place that my sister Suzanne had suggested we check out. It sounded good — they serve cherry limeade! — and with a clear blue sky and a full tank of gas we needed little excuse to hit the road. The thirty-odd miles to the nearest Sonic presented no obstacle; quite the opposite.

Things changed as soon as we took the turnoff for state route 29, the main road through Napa. At lunchtime on a beautiful Saturday afternoon it was a parking lot. It took ten minutes to go those last two miles. Archer wouldn’t stop kicking the back of my driver’s seat, and after asking him several times, then giving a couple of warnings, I told him he’d lost a dollar of his week’s allowance — so he began sulking. Next to him, Jonah acted extra-sweet in a craven effort to contrast himself with Archer. As we inched along the road at one-tenth the posted speed limit, the fact that it was 90 minutes past our usual lunchtime started to make itself felt. Tempers flared. Patience wore thin. There was whining. My own vocabulary shrunk to monosyllables.

Finally we arrived at Sonic Drive-In which, despite its name, we were surprised to discover actually was a drive-in. We pulled into one of the order stalls in the parking lot. The prospect of eating in the same car where we’d been entombed in traffic did not exactly appeal, so I opened my door to discover whether there was any indoor seating. I say I opened my door, but note that I didn’t say I stepped out of the car, since the stall’s menu and ordering station only allowed me to open it a few inches. Nevertheless I extruded myself through the narrow gap and scoped out the restaurant. There were some nice outdoor tables, but Andrea nixed those, insisting it would be fun to eat in the car, vintage-drive-in-style. “Fine,” I monosyllabled through gritted teeth.

Then the kids had to decide what they wanted to order, then vocally change their minds several times, while I had to comprehend the visually taxing menu myself through the red haze that filled my field of vision. Even now that I’ve long since recovered I don’t care to recall those few minutes, for me the low point of our outing. Finally we placed our order and I walked outside around the car, trying to breathe deeply from my center.

(Luckily for all of us, Andrea was a beacon of sanity throughout, maintaining a level of composure that ultimately was the only thing that allowed us to get as far as placing an order — or to take pictures.)

Things started to look up a very few minutes later when to our delight, our food arrived on a tray carried by a friendly woman on roller skates. (To be honest, the actual first gap in the storm clouds was when I spotted tater tots on the menu. Tater tots!) She hooked it onto an open window and we distributed our food items to one another and tucked in. At the first bite, Samuel L. Jackson sprang to mind — This is a tasty burger! — and the tension melted away on a wave of beefy goodness. I popped a few tater tots into my mouth and an actual smile spread across my face. When I asked the kids (who’d clearly been affected by my mood and by hunger) how it was, I got two thumbs-ups.

With the edge taken off, we were able properly to enjoy the rest of our meal. We ordered ice cream cones for dessert. I apologized for my grouchiness. When it was time to leave, we were sorry to go.

When Suzanne suggested we visit Sonic she requested a full report of our experience, in fulfillment of which I can faithfully declare: Thank you Sonic, you saved my Saturday.

If you’re bullish and you know it

How can we get back to a good economy if doing so requires confidence that the bad economy is preventing us from having? You may not be surprised to hear that I have a modest suggestion: lie.

The economy has been so bad for so long that public confidence in a recovery is low — half of what it was in (the economically unremarkable benchmark year) 1985. Without confidence in the economy, households have pared expenditures to the essentials, companies are delaying hiring and putting off investment in new lines of business, and banks are doing the bank equivalent of hiding their money under the mattress — all of which makes the economy bad, which produces low confidence, which makes the economy bad, etc., etc.

It’s one of the trickiest chicken-and-egg problems in the world. A good economy relies on confidence, and confidence relies on a good economy. In a very real way, confidence is the economy. How can we get back to a good economy if doing so requires confidence that the bad economy is preventing us from having?

You may not be surprised to hear that I have a modest suggestion: lie. I wrote once before that pretend confidence can lead to real confidence, and I don’t see why this situation is any different.

Starting immediately, work some offhand comments into your everyday conversation, to the effect that the economy is finally picking up steam. Mention, for instance, that you noticed a couple of long-empty office buildings have been leased, or that some unemployed Facebook friends finally found jobs just recently, or that you read somewhere that now’s the time to get that fancy new TV because sales are finally ramping up again and those big manufacturer discounts will be coming to an end. It won’t take much, because people are starving for good economic news and will devour morsels like these. And don’t worry that they’re not true. If enough of us start implementing this idea, pretty soon they will be.

Update, 8 October 2010: A week after I posted this, Planet Money ran a story about four economists who saved Brazil by — wait for it — getting everyone to lie.

Up in the air

It wasn’t until I happened to take my kids to the Two Niner Diner at Petaluma Airport for lunch this weekend that I realized an anniversary had almost passed by unnoticed — fifteen years, this month, since I earned my private pilot license.

Five years earlier, Andrea bought me an introductory flight lesson as a Christmas gift, knowing that I’d long dreamed of flying. As a kid growing up in Queens, I would take the bus to LaGuardia Airport to watch takeoffs and landings (in the days before the “land of the free and the home of the brave” decided it was too terrifying to allow anyone to do this and roped off all observation areas, sucking the last bits of glamor and romance out of aviation). I checked out FAA training manuals from the library and learned them. I became an expert in Microsoft Flight Simulator (which I started using in the days when it was still the subLOGIC Flight Simulator for the TRS-80).

In spite of all that, it had somehow never occurred to me to actually go and do something about learning to fly. It took Andrea giving me that certificate to get me in the air. So one cold day in January 1991 I drove to Phoenix Aviation (issuer of the gift certificate) at Allegheny County airport, and a flight instructor named Jay Domenico took me aloft in N6575Q, a bright yellow Cessna 152, and handed me the controls.

I was hooked, and I continued flight training at Phoenix with Jay. But between my meager finances, my job workload, and the unreliable weather around Pittsburgh, I didn’t train often enough to earn my license during the next two years, following which I moved to California to join a tiny software startup. The weather there was a lot more conducive to flying, but as often happens to those who commit themselves to tiny software startups, my available time and money dwindled to almost nothing.

By 1994 that situation had improved. I celebrated a successful major software release with a resumption of my flight training, and by September of the following year I’d passed my checkride and earned my license — just as enormously satisfying an accomplishment as you can imagine.


Circa 1998, ferrying friends Rob and Holly
to a so-called $100 hamburger
in Columbia, California.

I used my license on only a handful of occasions over the next few years, renting a plane from my local flying club for a day trip, sometimes solo, sometimes with one or two friends or family members. No trip was longer than a couple of hours; each was memorable in a different way. A few highlights:

  • My dad’s nonstop astonishment — and white knuckles — on our trip to Monterey;
  • Leaving Petaluma on a perfectly clear morning with Andrea and returning late in the day to a giant dome of forest-fire smoke;
  • Overflying Skywalker Ranch with my friend Steve, neither of us entirely certain that George Lucas couldn’t launch a squadron of TIE fighters after us;
  • Strolling around the airport in sleepy Lakeport on my birthday, befriending some hangar-dwelling artists and helping ourselves to fresh-fallen walnuts from an orchard across the road;
  • Landing in Fresno, discovering the airport restaurant had closed (for good), but being in luck anyway because a big public barbecue was under way in one of the hangars; later, flying home with a brand-new, honest-to-goodness cowboy hat from a nearby western-wear store;
  • Best of all, sharing the controls on a trip to Harris Ranch with my childhood friend Chuck, who used to come with me to watch those planes at LaGuardia and who also earned a pilot license after moving abroad for college.

Private pilots must undergo so-called biennial flight reviews (at two-year intervals, hence “biennial”) to maintain the validity of their licenses; it’s sort of like having to take your driving test again and again if you want to keep driving (which wouldn’t be a terrible idea, if you ask me). Having earned my license in September of 1995, and having renewed my BFR promptly every other September after that, I had a BFR due in September of 2001. A few days before my appointment, some murderous idiots hijacked some jetliners and flew them into some landmarks, and all aircraft nationwide were grounded for a period of days. My BFR was canceled. When the opportunity arose to reschedule it, I didn’t — because by this point, Andrea and I were expecting our first child. I never thought of flying as an especially dangerous hobby, but it’s certainly more dangerous than not flying, and the prospect of new-parenthood was enough to ground me, at least temporarily.

That spring, Jonah was born, and two years later so was his brother Archer. It had been three years since I’d flown and I was missing it terribly. Worse, I knew that my flying knowledge and skills were decaying, and that it would take several hours of refresher instruction before I felt comfortable flying again by myself. With two young kids, a new job, and a new house, that simply wasn’t in the time or money budget, but I consoled myself with this plan: I would keep my flying ability secret from my kids, and then one day, when they were old enough to be properly impressed — around 8 and 6, I figured — I’d spring it on them, taking them to the airport and surprising them with a flight over the local area, their dad at the controls. By then I would surely have worked some refresher training into the budget.

Well, the kids are now 8 and 6 and there is still no flying in the foreseeable future. But they still don’t know their dad’s a pilot, and they still don’t read this blog, so the possibility still exists — though maybe not for long — that I can blow their minds someday.

WTF

When I was a programming intern at the very start of my career, circa 1987, our tech writer had this sign above her workstation:

Before asking me a question
RTFM
Read the manual

No one had ever heard “RTFM” before, and this formulation was funny because (at the risk of stating the obvious) it omitted the F from the expansion of the acronym. Here’s what’s funny about that: you effortlessly fill in that blank yourself, and you recognize that everyone else can too, which highlights the frivolity of that bit of prudery; and at the same time you recognize the hostility of someone who’s been asked too many dumb questions, ill concealed in a sign made ostensibly polite by the omission of what the F stands for.

“RTFM” became widespread not long after that, but every single subsequent time I saw it — on t-shirts and coffee mugs, on demotivational office posters and in e-mail signatures — and every time someone wittily quoted it to me, it was always “Read the fucking manual,” which completely misses the point. There’s no frivolous prudery on display, no conspicuously bad attempt to conceal the hostility of the sentiment. RTFM had become just an abbreviation for a crude message and a tiny bit of something important was lost from the world.

Here’s another thing: a few years after that first RTFM sign, in 1990, the movie Goodfellas came out, and there was a brief flurry of discussion on Usenet surrounding the effort made by one dedicated moviegoer to count the number of times the word “fuck” is used in the film: 296, raising Goodfellas head and shoulders above former champ Scarface (from 1983, with 207 occurrences of that word).

“Fuck” still had the ability to shock and surprise, as evidenced by the astonished reactions on Usenet to its profligate use in Goodfellas, but thanks to that film and Casino (1995: 422 “fucks”) and their ilk, that power was waning. Soon a torrent of “fucks” would be used for comic effect in The Big Lebowski (1998: 260) and then we had The Sopranos (1999), every episode of which was 20% “fuck” by weight.

The power of “fuck” is almost all gone, and that’s a shame, because what can take its place as the all-purpose strong taboo epithet? By overuse it’s been demoted to a very mild intensifier, as in “You cannot fucking believe the fucking paella at this fucking place, it’s fucking amazing.” Texters use LMFAO and OMFG without a second thought (and without pretending they stand for “laugh my ass off” and “oh my god”), and a little more of something important is lost from the world.

How I use my 10%

From a chat today with my sister Suzanne:

Me: quick, without referring to anything, name the three stars of 1984’s Irreconcilable Differences
Suzanne: shelley long, drew barrymore, ryan o’neal
Me: right! i knew them too, when the movie title popped into my mind a few minutes ago
Me: WHAT IS WRONG WITH US?
Suzanne: we’re awesome
Suzanne: bonus question
Suzanne: what later to become huge actress had a small role?
Me: no idea. i never saw it, i only know the marketing. which makes it all the more baffling that i still know it 26 years later
Suzanne: ah
Suzanne: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

SIEVE

In a recent e-mail exchange with my friend Kurt, we were discussing the problem of orbital space junk and the difficulty of cleaning it up. It’s a subject we’ve batted around on and off for many years, wondering about a workable and economical solution but never managing to find one. It’s been in the news more lately, as the crisis has grown more acute and inventors have trotted out different proposals, each more outlandish than the last.

In the middle of this exchange, after years of coming up with nothing, I suddenly invented my own solution, an idea I now offer publicly as the second in my occasional save-the-world series. It’s called SIEVE: Scanning, Illuminating, Even Vaporizing Engines.

It involves deploying into low earth orbit thousands of semi-autonomous robots. Each SIEVE unit is small and light and costs no more than a few hundred dollars of off-the-shelf components. Specifically, these components:

  • A solar panel for power;
  • Gyros for orientation;
  • A radio for coordination with other SIEVE units;
  • A camera;
  • A simple computer;
  • A Mylar mirror; and
  • A small rocket engine.

Each unit, when in sunlight, is in one of three modes: Scanning, Illuminating, and Vaporizing.

In Illuminating mode, the unit orients itself so that the mirror reflects sunlight through a given volume of space.

In Scanning mode, the unit trains its camera on a region of space that other nearby units are Illuminating and searches for debris.

In Vaporizing mode, numerous units all aim their mirrors to shine sunlight on a piece of debris, one previously identified by Scanning and Illuminating units and whose orbital trajectory has been plotted. Focusing enough sunlight on the debris for a long enough time should heat it to the point of vaporizing. If the debris can be fully vaporized, great; it should be harmless in that form. If it can’t, it might still expel enough vapor to slow its orbit (a la the laser broom idea) to the point where it falls back into the atmosphere.

The rocket engine is only needed twice: once to insert the unit into a distinct orbit when initially deployed, and once to deorbit the unit at the end of its service life.

Care will have to be taken that the SIEVE robots do not themselves become hazards to space navigation. And that they don’t go into Michael Crichton mode, become sentient, and decide the Earth is a gigantic ball of debris.

Greatest hits: Ground Zero mosque

A relative circulated to my extended family an e-mail chain letter linking to an anti-Ground-Zero-mosque YouTube video, so I wrote this reply:

A mosque at Ground Zero is a great idea, whether you’re an anti-Muslim bigot or not.

If you’re not a bigot, then nothing could be a more powerful affirmation of America’s acceptance of all races and creeds than to turn the other cheek and honor the peaceful adherents of that noble religion, millions of whom were victims of 9/11 in more profound, longer-lasting ways than almost anyone else.

If you are a bigot, what could be better than a great big juicy target, right at the scene of the crime, for all the Judeo-Christian zealots bent on Biblical-style justice?

Personally, I’m offended that they keep letting Catholic churches get built. That was the religion of Timothy McVeigh!

Greatest hits: Shame

The publisher Tim O’Reilly wrote in a Buzz post recently,

I’ve always loved the ancient Greek idea of shame – aidos – as that quality that restrains people from doing wrong

which inspired me to add the following comment:

In a biography I once read of George Washington, the author (whose name, alas, I can’t remember at the moment) pointed out that his virtues, and those of many of his contemporaries, seem almost superhuman by today’s standards. By way of explanation he pointed out that life expectancy was much shorter then, so the pressure to achieve renown that would outlive you was consequently greater (not to mention that in a less populous world, such renown was within easier reach). You were gonna die soon, that was almost certain — but shame could kill your legacy, a more thorough and fearsome kind of death.

I think this has something to do too with the decline of shame (in addition to other obvious causes such as the rise of privacy, isolation, and anonymity). By and large we now live long enough to get over anything shameful that may happen. We see it happen again and again on the evening news, as disgraced public figures make unlikely comebacks. VH-1’s “Behind the Music” has turned the familiar arc of shame and redemption into a cottage industry. Shame is no longer something to be avoided at all costs. More’s the pity.

“His own quotes are his greatest pleasure.”

I’m going to take this as a compliment: John Perich has written a critique of the Internet Movie Database’s “memorable quotes” section, noting how quality control seems to have declined and wondering when and how it happened.

I can tell him exactly when and how: October 2001. That’s when my association with the IMDb, and my six-year stewardship of its Quotes section, came to an abrupt end, and not an amicable one. The less said about that, the better.

While Quotes Editor, I enforced a style that Perich recalls fondly, one in which quotes were by and large pithy, could stand on their own with minimal context (e.g. stage directions), and stated something truly memorable: something about the human condition, for instance, or something that could whisk the reader right back into the emotional heart of a scene.

During my tenure we had no quotes from movie trailers, no quotes that could not be understood out of context, and few overlong scenes. The ones of those that I did include came from prolific and reliable quote submitters whom I did not wish to alienate by disregarding the work they’d put into transcribing them; and even then, I usually managed to carve them up into separate bite-sized quote morsels.

Problem was (as Perich rightly points out) that ensuring the accuracy and suitability of quotes that IMDb users submitted — in ever-increasing numbers, with an ever-decreasing signal-to-noise ratio — was nearly a full-time job all by itself; and when I agreed to take on the Trivia and Goofs sections too as a favor to one of my colleagues, and then software development on top of that, I was often at the point of despair. I was disappointed but not entirely unhappy when it came time to separate from the IMDb.

I don’t know who has held the Quotes Editor post since my departure, and whoever has, I do not wish to cast aspersions on the job they’ve done. It’s not an easy one, especially if their efforts are split between Quotes and any other part of the site. But as I’ve noted myself over the past few years (with the occasional sigh and sorry head-shake), it’s clear that they’ve abandoned the aesthetic that John Perich and I prefer.