I was struggling with topics for this month, not because I had too few, but because they all ended up being Get-Off-My-Lawns. They weren't outright condemnations of stuff since I know a Get-Off-My-Lawn for what it is: just a reaction to a change that I'm either uncomfortable with or don't understand. Still it's worrisome that everything I am coming up with topic-wise is of the same flavor.
The problem is that what dominates my attention is often stuff nobody could conceivably care about. I never talk about work, my day job. That is asking for trouble. I don't discuss my writing in progress because I have both practical and superstitious reasons for keeping quiet about it until I have something worth talking about. I devote a lot of time to exercise, and I agree with Haruki Murakami that a gentleman shouldn't go on about what he does to stay fit." So unless I troll the web for material, I can feel somewhat limited in what I can come up with to write about.
Still, even when I get tempted to retire this site I realize that writing it is good discipline, which I need. I was a far more disciplined writer when I had my old football column and was forced to come up with 3000-5000 entertaining words every week. Not better, just more disciplined. I also on occasion feel the need to refer to some older stuff here -- My Back Pages, if you will. It's kind of like reminiscing over an old photo album.
So I conclude pressing on with blogging is what I should do, even with only a vague sense of its value. It's good to re-evaluate things when you get the feeling a change would make the grass greener. Not just the large features of your life but also the day-to-day activities. Increasingly, I find that what I'm already doing is just fine and that my grass is plenty green. Which is why I want you off my lawn.
[TV] The Last of Mad Men
[Books] Unfinished Book: Assassination Vacation
[Rant] Robots Quietly Wait
[Tech] Technorambling
[Travel] Colorado Springs
Sunday, June 07, 2015
[TV] The Last of Mad Men
My first thought on the finale was "That was some weak tea, dude." Upon further reflection, I've had second thoughts. The finale was all about character resolutions so let's go through them and see what we've got. (I am going to refer occasionally to Matt Weiner's recent interview on the topic.)
Peggy/Stan - This came out of the blue for me. At first viewing I thought it must be some kind of dream sequence. They were always fast friends and occasional frenemies (a word I hate) but I never sensed anything romantic between them, then all of a sudden…face-sucking devotion. Weiner said he had to be sold on this idea, and was, but I'm not. I think they would have been better served leaving their final exchange about being defined by work as their ending.
Joan - Joan is still awful. I know, she has become something of a feminist icon and is in some eyes symbolic of all the terrible things men have done to women, and so her final act -- doing exactly what she wants in defiance of yet another man who can't let her be her own woman, or something -- is probably supposed to be heroic. To this end they had to demonize her ex-husband one last time with an offhand comment lest we think she may be in the wrong for passing off the child of his cuckolding as his own. As you know I'm allergic to politics, so I just look at her personally. She treats people terribly and has since the very first episode. She tries to fish Peggy into her movie production scheme, which Peggy rightly wants no part of. She has always done exactly what she wanted and thought of her own fulfillment above anything else, including her own soul -- even now, when she has enough money to not live in fear and insecurity, she still has a need for authority and control above all else. Yes, I know I am probably the only one who sees it like this, but she's awful. Nice rack, though.
Betty - A true tragedy; something we rarely see in television. She finally found her footing in life -- going back to school. She is still cold and distant to her kids, although she had made minor strides to connect with them more. She was improving and learning. Then her life ends. There's really no lesson I can see in this other than bad things can happen at any time. No silver lining. No symbolic logic. Just flat out tragedy. That in itself took some dramatic courage, but also from a dramatic standpoint, I think she came to peace with dying a bit too quickly. We maybe could have used another episode to dramatize it rather than reducing it to "I watched my Mother die and I won't do that to you." (On the other hand, if it was extended I might be complaining about it dragging on. Sometimes there's no winning with me.)
Pete - came to the realization that his inescapable dissatisfaction with everyone and everything was the source of much of his problems; the key conversation being a dinner with his brother where he saw that it was a legacy from his father. (If there is an ongoing lesson from Mad Men, it's a Gatsby-esque the-past-is-always-with-you sort of thing.) He gets out of advertising and rebuilds his family and seems to finally be on the road to the success he's always wanted now that he's turned his back on everything he thought would bring him success. In contrast to Betty, this is the one true happy ending. Not sure if Pete deserved it, but it was nicely coherent and built up well over the final episodes.
Roger - seems to have finished up by marrying someone more childishly neurotic than himself. My guess would be this marriage is as doomed as his others. It's hard to say how Roger comes out in the end. I do hope he rids himself of that ludicrous mustache.
Sally - turns out to be the most successful of all. Faced with a dead Mom, an absentee Dad, and an uncertain future in the care of relatives, she is more defined by what she doesn't do. She doesn't follow Don's pattern and check out and disappear to Europe as she had planned. She doesn't follow Betty's pattern and distance herself emotionally and take it out on her brothers by spewing hostility. She simply starts caring for them and decides to help however she can. In that, there is hope that she has broken with her emotionally dysfunctional inheritance. This is the most uplifting of the endings.
Which brings us to…
Don - Where to begin? The past few episodes have seen him stripped of everything. Perhaps as the result of his perpetual habit of fleeing when things get uncomfortable. Or perhaps he purposefully (subconsciously) stripping himself of everything just to see what was really there. At the Esalen Institute he is even stripped of his charisma as they are not the sort to be influenced by his looks or his charmspeak. When his niece is facing having given up her baby, a situation essentially identical to Peggy in Season 2, he gives her the Peggy speech about how she must put it behind her and move on, how she will be surprised how much it will have "never happened." Unlike Peggy, his niece isn't buying it, offering a simple, "I don't think you are right about that."
Now Don has nothing. His job, so important to his identity, has been abandoned. His family, in the midst of the worst possible tragedy, doesn't want him involved. And now he cannot even move someone with his words. All the striving of his life, all the constructs he labored to build, and the relationships he tried so deftly to manage, and he is still Dick Whitman, terrified and desperate for any amount of real love, security, and acceptance. All his life he has been beating against the current, borne back ceaselessly into a childhood in a whorehouse.
Then he is in group with the Bald Guy. The Bald Guy has a great nuclear family, his job is stable and steady, and he is the least charismatic man alive. In other words, he's Don's exact opposite ( a truly inspired moment by Weiner). Yet he puts into words exactly how Don has felt his whole life -- on a shelf in the cold dark refrigerator, occasionally there is beautiful light and warmth from the outside, but it never takes. You always end up unselected and back in the cold dark. (I would cynically point out that while it might be nice to be chosen to be removed from the fridge, it just means you're going to get eaten.) And in this image of his opposite expressing his exact feelings, Don sees that he is not really alone in his angst, the bulk of humanity is in the same boat. In the being-middle-aged industry, we call this an existential crisis.
And so we get the Coke commercial, and there are a few schools of thought about it. In the dumbest school it in indicates Don has rejected his previous life completely become a hippie of some sort. I'll ignore that. Then there are two variations of Don returns to McCann and creates that commercial. One is that his journey was for naught and all he got out of it was a new, cynical angle to sell sugared water. That kind of invalidates the entire final season, if not the whole series. The school I adhere to is the one that says the journey from "It's toasted" to teaching the world to sing was a personal one. Don once described advertising as convincing people that they are OK. He didn't really think people, including those in his life, were OK. He knew he was not OK: all along he had felt as though he was not part of the world, that his loneliness and alienation were personal. Yet he discovered that the wars inside himself are the same sort as the wars inside everyone else, and so maybe people really were OK, and by extension so was he. Or if not OK, at least qualified to sing a happy song on the side of a mountaintop.
Throughout its run, the world has tried to box Mad Men into whatever social context it felt was urgent. Matt Weiner always defied them. He always saw the disconnect between the mythology and the reality of the times he was portraying. The reality is that the time of Mad Men, like all times, was personal, not political. There are no great societal lessons from Mad Men; it was a simply bold vision of life and lives, of people on their journeys. And because of that, in the tradition of great humanities, it shined a light on us.
That is some seriously potent tea, dude.
Addenda:
Peggy/Stan - This came out of the blue for me. At first viewing I thought it must be some kind of dream sequence. They were always fast friends and occasional frenemies (a word I hate) but I never sensed anything romantic between them, then all of a sudden…face-sucking devotion. Weiner said he had to be sold on this idea, and was, but I'm not. I think they would have been better served leaving their final exchange about being defined by work as their ending.
Joan - Joan is still awful. I know, she has become something of a feminist icon and is in some eyes symbolic of all the terrible things men have done to women, and so her final act -- doing exactly what she wants in defiance of yet another man who can't let her be her own woman, or something -- is probably supposed to be heroic. To this end they had to demonize her ex-husband one last time with an offhand comment lest we think she may be in the wrong for passing off the child of his cuckolding as his own. As you know I'm allergic to politics, so I just look at her personally. She treats people terribly and has since the very first episode. She tries to fish Peggy into her movie production scheme, which Peggy rightly wants no part of. She has always done exactly what she wanted and thought of her own fulfillment above anything else, including her own soul -- even now, when she has enough money to not live in fear and insecurity, she still has a need for authority and control above all else. Yes, I know I am probably the only one who sees it like this, but she's awful. Nice rack, though.
Betty - A true tragedy; something we rarely see in television. She finally found her footing in life -- going back to school. She is still cold and distant to her kids, although she had made minor strides to connect with them more. She was improving and learning. Then her life ends. There's really no lesson I can see in this other than bad things can happen at any time. No silver lining. No symbolic logic. Just flat out tragedy. That in itself took some dramatic courage, but also from a dramatic standpoint, I think she came to peace with dying a bit too quickly. We maybe could have used another episode to dramatize it rather than reducing it to "I watched my Mother die and I won't do that to you." (On the other hand, if it was extended I might be complaining about it dragging on. Sometimes there's no winning with me.)
Pete - came to the realization that his inescapable dissatisfaction with everyone and everything was the source of much of his problems; the key conversation being a dinner with his brother where he saw that it was a legacy from his father. (If there is an ongoing lesson from Mad Men, it's a Gatsby-esque the-past-is-always-with-you sort of thing.) He gets out of advertising and rebuilds his family and seems to finally be on the road to the success he's always wanted now that he's turned his back on everything he thought would bring him success. In contrast to Betty, this is the one true happy ending. Not sure if Pete deserved it, but it was nicely coherent and built up well over the final episodes.
Roger - seems to have finished up by marrying someone more childishly neurotic than himself. My guess would be this marriage is as doomed as his others. It's hard to say how Roger comes out in the end. I do hope he rids himself of that ludicrous mustache.
Sally - turns out to be the most successful of all. Faced with a dead Mom, an absentee Dad, and an uncertain future in the care of relatives, she is more defined by what she doesn't do. She doesn't follow Don's pattern and check out and disappear to Europe as she had planned. She doesn't follow Betty's pattern and distance herself emotionally and take it out on her brothers by spewing hostility. She simply starts caring for them and decides to help however she can. In that, there is hope that she has broken with her emotionally dysfunctional inheritance. This is the most uplifting of the endings.
Which brings us to…
Don - Where to begin? The past few episodes have seen him stripped of everything. Perhaps as the result of his perpetual habit of fleeing when things get uncomfortable. Or perhaps he purposefully (subconsciously) stripping himself of everything just to see what was really there. At the Esalen Institute he is even stripped of his charisma as they are not the sort to be influenced by his looks or his charmspeak. When his niece is facing having given up her baby, a situation essentially identical to Peggy in Season 2, he gives her the Peggy speech about how she must put it behind her and move on, how she will be surprised how much it will have "never happened." Unlike Peggy, his niece isn't buying it, offering a simple, "I don't think you are right about that."
Now Don has nothing. His job, so important to his identity, has been abandoned. His family, in the midst of the worst possible tragedy, doesn't want him involved. And now he cannot even move someone with his words. All the striving of his life, all the constructs he labored to build, and the relationships he tried so deftly to manage, and he is still Dick Whitman, terrified and desperate for any amount of real love, security, and acceptance. All his life he has been beating against the current, borne back ceaselessly into a childhood in a whorehouse.
Then he is in group with the Bald Guy. The Bald Guy has a great nuclear family, his job is stable and steady, and he is the least charismatic man alive. In other words, he's Don's exact opposite ( a truly inspired moment by Weiner). Yet he puts into words exactly how Don has felt his whole life -- on a shelf in the cold dark refrigerator, occasionally there is beautiful light and warmth from the outside, but it never takes. You always end up unselected and back in the cold dark. (I would cynically point out that while it might be nice to be chosen to be removed from the fridge, it just means you're going to get eaten.) And in this image of his opposite expressing his exact feelings, Don sees that he is not really alone in his angst, the bulk of humanity is in the same boat. In the being-middle-aged industry, we call this an existential crisis.
And so we get the Coke commercial, and there are a few schools of thought about it. In the dumbest school it in indicates Don has rejected his previous life completely become a hippie of some sort. I'll ignore that. Then there are two variations of Don returns to McCann and creates that commercial. One is that his journey was for naught and all he got out of it was a new, cynical angle to sell sugared water. That kind of invalidates the entire final season, if not the whole series. The school I adhere to is the one that says the journey from "It's toasted" to teaching the world to sing was a personal one. Don once described advertising as convincing people that they are OK. He didn't really think people, including those in his life, were OK. He knew he was not OK: all along he had felt as though he was not part of the world, that his loneliness and alienation were personal. Yet he discovered that the wars inside himself are the same sort as the wars inside everyone else, and so maybe people really were OK, and by extension so was he. Or if not OK, at least qualified to sing a happy song on the side of a mountaintop.
Throughout its run, the world has tried to box Mad Men into whatever social context it felt was urgent. Matt Weiner always defied them. He always saw the disconnect between the mythology and the reality of the times he was portraying. The reality is that the time of Mad Men, like all times, was personal, not political. There are no great societal lessons from Mad Men; it was a simply bold vision of life and lives, of people on their journeys. And because of that, in the tradition of great humanities, it shined a light on us.
That is some seriously potent tea, dude.
Addenda:
- To expand on the pitfalls Weiner dodged, when you turn your series into a socio-political commentary it ceases to be about the time in which it is set and become about today. It's no longer about the characters and their relationship to their world, it's about our world's judgment on them. It also becomes shallow and small-minded and outright pompous. Fall into that pit and you get Masters of Sex or The Knick -- shows that create a minor splash then fall off the radar when it becomes clear they exist to just bolstering our progressive social mythology. On the other hand, the one historical series that hasn't tripped up on this account yet is AMC's Halt and Catch Fire, which I don't think has ever been on the radar. So go figure.
- It's going to be interesting to see what happens to the actors involved in Mad Men, and if they ever escape the glow. Hamm has scored a couple of commercial films and probably has a leading-man-in-a-rom-com future. Elizabeth Moss looks on track for a career of "serious" roles after her work on stage and on Top of the Lake. But what about the others? I don't see any of them breaking big. Slattery and Kartheiser seem more like second banana character actors to me. Will Christina Hendricks ever be anything but a bombshell? This is not a comment on their acting skills, which are certainly top notch, but the Hollywood machine doesn't really care about that. It cares that when people look at you they see Pete Campell or Roger Sterling or a nice rack. As fine as they were, it's going to be a struggle for them to get a role outside their image, and if they do they are going to have to really nail it.
[Books] Unfinished Book: Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell
A confessed assassination junkie, Sarah Vowell travelled the country investigating sites of renown connected to U.S presidential assassinations -- Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. She is obviously quite knowledgeable on this topic and she writes in lively, clear, and entertaining prose. At first, it seemed like I was in for a good time with Assassination Vacation.
But nothing, and I mean nothing, got by without her striking a moral pose: a few innocuous words from a park ranger bring to mind the horrors of Guantanamo; Garfield's election is when the Republican party turned evil, etc. This is a scourge. God forbid anyone produce a creative work anymore without devoting a solid percentage of it to positioning it in the correct socio-political and ethical framework. It's depressing, but also understandable to a certain extent. Vowell is young (or was when she wrote this) and young people are simultaneously thoughtless and self-assured in their beliefs. I also blame Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for convincing an entire generation that smug political snark counts as witty insight.
In any event, I could tolerate the need of a 21st century progressive to pass sanctimonious judgment on folks from a century and a half ago when it came to the Lincoln assassination because that's the planted, inherited narrative we all have as our legacy. I was hoping when she got to the Garfield assassination she would let up and focus on the story. Nope. It got worse. She reached the point where the effort to identify and skip past the narrow-minded moralizing made it no longer worthwhile to continue. So I did something I have only done a handful of times in my life. I quit on a book before finishing.
Assassination Vacation got excellent reviews and was highly spoken of on a couple of forums I visit. That's how it came to my attention. Perhaps it would work better for people younger than me (that's most people) who expect, and possibly require, to know the moral positioning of the author of their reading material. For me, it's just an annoying distraction.
But nothing, and I mean nothing, got by without her striking a moral pose: a few innocuous words from a park ranger bring to mind the horrors of Guantanamo; Garfield's election is when the Republican party turned evil, etc. This is a scourge. God forbid anyone produce a creative work anymore without devoting a solid percentage of it to positioning it in the correct socio-political and ethical framework. It's depressing, but also understandable to a certain extent. Vowell is young (or was when she wrote this) and young people are simultaneously thoughtless and self-assured in their beliefs. I also blame Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for convincing an entire generation that smug political snark counts as witty insight.
In any event, I could tolerate the need of a 21st century progressive to pass sanctimonious judgment on folks from a century and a half ago when it came to the Lincoln assassination because that's the planted, inherited narrative we all have as our legacy. I was hoping when she got to the Garfield assassination she would let up and focus on the story. Nope. It got worse. She reached the point where the effort to identify and skip past the narrow-minded moralizing made it no longer worthwhile to continue. So I did something I have only done a handful of times in my life. I quit on a book before finishing.
Assassination Vacation got excellent reviews and was highly spoken of on a couple of forums I visit. That's how it came to my attention. Perhaps it would work better for people younger than me (that's most people) who expect, and possibly require, to know the moral positioning of the author of their reading material. For me, it's just an annoying distraction.
[Rant] Robots Quietly Wait
I belong to a facebook group that follows news and events and such for Las Vegas (no surprise) where recently someone started a thread about a minor dust-up in Sin City over the Uber and Lyft ride-sharing services. Traditional cabbies are feeling threatened; their union is preparing for battle against the upstarts. The cabbies response to this is a typically self-destructive protest: some are planning to park their cabs somewhere on The Strip for a couple of hours as a demonstration of...well, I don't know what. It's really just a form of acting out.
Here's the thing about cabbies in LV. They are cool enough individually, often clever conversationalists as they whip you around town. But every single one of them is on the make. They make heavy use of something called long-hauling, especially from the airport. LV is structured so that you can take either the freeway or city streets to get to your hotel. Taking the city streets is shorter distance-wise but because of traffic it takes about the same time as a longer route down the freeway. Naturally cabbies, who are paid by the mile always try to take the freeway. They do this all the time. The occasional tourist will never notice and only be out an extra few dollars (maybe one hand's worth of blackjack), but once you are a veteran visitor it really grates on you. This would easily be solved if the cab authority/city council would implement a zoning system with fixed rates. But I suppose the cab union or some group has wielded enough power to prevent it. Thus the attraction of Uber.
So through their own corruption the cabbies have pissed everyone off, and their response to Uber is to do something so profounding futile and childish that people will hate them even more. They just don't realize life as they have known it is already over. But they'll learn. Or maybe they won't. Maybe they'll just go through life with a victimized-by-the-man chip on their shoulder. Hey, it's easier on your self-esteem than admitting you're on the wrong side and adapting.
But that's not my point here. My comment in the facebook thread was "Long-term winner: Driverless cars." I don't think I need to go into that topic here as I have done it in depth in the past. But it made me think further about the automated world we are barreling toward. In the age of automation what would a trip to Vegas be like? More specifically, at what points will I actually need to interact with a human being?
I certainly don't need to see people at the airport. Exit the plane, take the shuttle to the terminal, pick up my bags, and grab a cab. I already don't have anyone involved. If I have a driverless cab that gets me to the hotel, then no humans needed. What about when I get a rental car? National already lets me just walk to the lot and get my own car. I have to check out with some guy before exiting, but he does nothing that can't be automated.
At the hotel, no reason I couldn't check in and have my room assigned at a kiosk. I rarely need help with my bags, but I have no doubt baggage handling could be automated. Even if I couldn't get direct transport to my room, I bet it could be automated at least to the point of having your bags waiting in a central area on your floor.
Having checked in I might want to hit the casino, where there will be no dealers, all the games will be electronic. Maybe you could even use your phone to play and pay for your chips with Apple pay.
Dining out is an interesting conundrum. Certainly, I would have no problem ordering my food from a touch screen at the table. Food could be delivered via a robot cart of some sort, but I suspect a lot of folks would want an actual person to talk to about suggestions for food and wine and such. That may become a sign of an upscale restaurant -- real, live servers. That is to say, you want to talk to someone, you'll pay for it. But you don't need it. The genius of buffets is just that: minimizing server labor.
Entertainment -- ah here we go. I have no interest in seeing a robot Cirque du Soleil. I already know machines can do things people can't. I want what people can do. And however perfect a robot might mimic Frank Sinatra's voice and phrasing and emotion -- the robot is not feeling it. Mimicry is novelty not art, otherwise Elvis impersonators would be as big as Elvis.
So I got pretty far before we found something people had to do. Now the response to this might be that while I didn't have to interact with any people, there were people behind the scenes that had to come through for things to work smoothly. I only agree with that a little bit. You need people but not that many.
You need systems people to maintain the automation certainly, but that's done wholesale. That is to say, you need mechanic when your car breaks, but not every car needs its own mechanic. So you need driverless cab repair services and perhaps even car routing assistance if things get fouled up, but that doesn't replace the number of cabbies no longer needed. And in that robot restaurant, you need people to resolve problems, address complaints, and offer assistance to the overly confused, but you don't need a server for every five or six tables. You've gone from needing a staff of twenty to cover the floor to a staff of two. Probably something similar going on in the back of the house.
So there are a couple of clues about how to position yourself for a career in the future. Creative work seems relatively safe. Anything that requires abstract thinking is good, too. Being good at dealing with uncertainty in general and when problem solving in particular -- like diagnosing a failure in an electronic poker system -- is going to be good too. But if your job just requires diligence, not wit, you're in trouble. If you can do it by following a checklist, you're toast.
And let's speak bluntly, IQ and creativity, the two human qualities most required for employment in this future world are already considered elitist qualities. And let's be even more blunt, they cannot be learned. Through diligent effort you might be able to increase your IQ a point or two or learn some tricks that can provide something approaching minor inspiration, but for the most part if you aren't born with brains or creativity, you're probably not going to acquire them. There is definitely going to be a class warfare aspect to this.
One thing we have in our favor as we approach this is our unmatched skill for hypocrisy. We can claim sincere beliefs in things while acting oppositely, with a straight face. For instance we might simply make it an honorable thing to be left behind. Instead of neglecting or denigrating folks who can't keep up, allow them the badge of honor of entitled righteousness. We do that to some extent already with virtually every disaffected group and many individuals today. Those who have adapted and overcome the difficulties of the world to find success find it in their interest to tell those who haven't "It's not your fault, we are in the wrong; it's us, not you, but we're trying to fix the situation -- here's a program (protect you industry) or a social norm (perceived authenticity) to prove you are of value" even though they wouldn't change places for anything. The underlying world goes on as it will and those who can't achieve in reality are mollified by the ego massage. The traffic in drugs will be permitted, but controlled, and Don Corleone will give up protection in the East, and there will be the peace.
That sounds dark and negative, but honestly, it's a feature not a bug. The desire to have other people feel of value is real, despite the hypocrisy of it -- partly for moral/religious reasons (they, too, have an immortal soul, no different from yours) and partly because we all know luck plays a role in the world and the folks who have "made it" know they could find themselves on the other side faster than they think.
The alternative to this self-worth management is to force the world to stop -- to say "That's far enough, no more progress, we're happy as we are ever going to be. No robots allowed." There is a naive, egalitarian appeal to that but it hides a greater evil. To stop the world from going the way it wants will require an exercise of authority unseen outside North Korea and brings costs beyond anyone's expectations (see: The War on Drugs). I do not know if the age of automation will bring greater overall happiness to the world, but I know stopping it will make the world much less happy.
Here's the thing about cabbies in LV. They are cool enough individually, often clever conversationalists as they whip you around town. But every single one of them is on the make. They make heavy use of something called long-hauling, especially from the airport. LV is structured so that you can take either the freeway or city streets to get to your hotel. Taking the city streets is shorter distance-wise but because of traffic it takes about the same time as a longer route down the freeway. Naturally cabbies, who are paid by the mile always try to take the freeway. They do this all the time. The occasional tourist will never notice and only be out an extra few dollars (maybe one hand's worth of blackjack), but once you are a veteran visitor it really grates on you. This would easily be solved if the cab authority/city council would implement a zoning system with fixed rates. But I suppose the cab union or some group has wielded enough power to prevent it. Thus the attraction of Uber.
So through their own corruption the cabbies have pissed everyone off, and their response to Uber is to do something so profounding futile and childish that people will hate them even more. They just don't realize life as they have known it is already over. But they'll learn. Or maybe they won't. Maybe they'll just go through life with a victimized-by-the-man chip on their shoulder. Hey, it's easier on your self-esteem than admitting you're on the wrong side and adapting.
But that's not my point here. My comment in the facebook thread was "Long-term winner: Driverless cars." I don't think I need to go into that topic here as I have done it in depth in the past. But it made me think further about the automated world we are barreling toward. In the age of automation what would a trip to Vegas be like? More specifically, at what points will I actually need to interact with a human being?
I certainly don't need to see people at the airport. Exit the plane, take the shuttle to the terminal, pick up my bags, and grab a cab. I already don't have anyone involved. If I have a driverless cab that gets me to the hotel, then no humans needed. What about when I get a rental car? National already lets me just walk to the lot and get my own car. I have to check out with some guy before exiting, but he does nothing that can't be automated.
At the hotel, no reason I couldn't check in and have my room assigned at a kiosk. I rarely need help with my bags, but I have no doubt baggage handling could be automated. Even if I couldn't get direct transport to my room, I bet it could be automated at least to the point of having your bags waiting in a central area on your floor.
Having checked in I might want to hit the casino, where there will be no dealers, all the games will be electronic. Maybe you could even use your phone to play and pay for your chips with Apple pay.
Dining out is an interesting conundrum. Certainly, I would have no problem ordering my food from a touch screen at the table. Food could be delivered via a robot cart of some sort, but I suspect a lot of folks would want an actual person to talk to about suggestions for food and wine and such. That may become a sign of an upscale restaurant -- real, live servers. That is to say, you want to talk to someone, you'll pay for it. But you don't need it. The genius of buffets is just that: minimizing server labor.
Entertainment -- ah here we go. I have no interest in seeing a robot Cirque du Soleil. I already know machines can do things people can't. I want what people can do. And however perfect a robot might mimic Frank Sinatra's voice and phrasing and emotion -- the robot is not feeling it. Mimicry is novelty not art, otherwise Elvis impersonators would be as big as Elvis.
So I got pretty far before we found something people had to do. Now the response to this might be that while I didn't have to interact with any people, there were people behind the scenes that had to come through for things to work smoothly. I only agree with that a little bit. You need people but not that many.
You need systems people to maintain the automation certainly, but that's done wholesale. That is to say, you need mechanic when your car breaks, but not every car needs its own mechanic. So you need driverless cab repair services and perhaps even car routing assistance if things get fouled up, but that doesn't replace the number of cabbies no longer needed. And in that robot restaurant, you need people to resolve problems, address complaints, and offer assistance to the overly confused, but you don't need a server for every five or six tables. You've gone from needing a staff of twenty to cover the floor to a staff of two. Probably something similar going on in the back of the house.
So there are a couple of clues about how to position yourself for a career in the future. Creative work seems relatively safe. Anything that requires abstract thinking is good, too. Being good at dealing with uncertainty in general and when problem solving in particular -- like diagnosing a failure in an electronic poker system -- is going to be good too. But if your job just requires diligence, not wit, you're in trouble. If you can do it by following a checklist, you're toast.
And let's speak bluntly, IQ and creativity, the two human qualities most required for employment in this future world are already considered elitist qualities. And let's be even more blunt, they cannot be learned. Through diligent effort you might be able to increase your IQ a point or two or learn some tricks that can provide something approaching minor inspiration, but for the most part if you aren't born with brains or creativity, you're probably not going to acquire them. There is definitely going to be a class warfare aspect to this.
One thing we have in our favor as we approach this is our unmatched skill for hypocrisy. We can claim sincere beliefs in things while acting oppositely, with a straight face. For instance we might simply make it an honorable thing to be left behind. Instead of neglecting or denigrating folks who can't keep up, allow them the badge of honor of entitled righteousness. We do that to some extent already with virtually every disaffected group and many individuals today. Those who have adapted and overcome the difficulties of the world to find success find it in their interest to tell those who haven't "It's not your fault, we are in the wrong; it's us, not you, but we're trying to fix the situation -- here's a program (protect you industry) or a social norm (perceived authenticity) to prove you are of value" even though they wouldn't change places for anything. The underlying world goes on as it will and those who can't achieve in reality are mollified by the ego massage. The traffic in drugs will be permitted, but controlled, and Don Corleone will give up protection in the East, and there will be the peace.
That sounds dark and negative, but honestly, it's a feature not a bug. The desire to have other people feel of value is real, despite the hypocrisy of it -- partly for moral/religious reasons (they, too, have an immortal soul, no different from yours) and partly because we all know luck plays a role in the world and the folks who have "made it" know they could find themselves on the other side faster than they think.
The alternative to this self-worth management is to force the world to stop -- to say "That's far enough, no more progress, we're happy as we are ever going to be. No robots allowed." There is a naive, egalitarian appeal to that but it hides a greater evil. To stop the world from going the way it wants will require an exercise of authority unseen outside North Korea and brings costs beyond anyone's expectations (see: The War on Drugs). I do not know if the age of automation will bring greater overall happiness to the world, but I know stopping it will make the world much less happy.
[Tech] Technorambling
I see the laptop I selected a couple of years ago, the Dell XPS 13, is still discussed on the various review sites as the laptop-to-beat in most comparisons. It's a good one, I'll admit, and given my history with Dell it's a significant admission. I had battery go bad a few months ago, but was able to replace it inexpensively on my own. Lately the power cord has been flukey, but if that gets out of hand it's another easy replacement. I bought it from the Microsoft Store as part of their Signature Series -- they resell laptops that they have tuned and cleaned all the bloatware from -- which was another wise decision. All in all, it's worked out well, so I can readily recommend you make the same choice if in the market for a laptop. Although I must admit the new Surface looks awfully sweet. If I was in the market it would be the only competition for an XPS at this point. The Surface lacks the XPS 13's performance, but excels in convenience and flexibility.
In truth, I could probably get away with a $200 Chromebook of some sort. Everything I do is on the web. Writing, banking, shopping, reading, music -- all of it streamed. (If my internet connection goes down I'm pretty much dead. I have to resort to filling my time with housework.) The only software I run locally anymore is for editing photos. And while my photography has taken a back seat to time working on the house the past two or three years, that appears to be changing since I just purchased an new DSLR.
My old camera was a Nikon D50. I was a big ungainly thing, no image stabilization to speak of, but when I nailed it with that camera I was able to take some astounding pictures. Sadly it suffered from a known issue that caused it to have some sort of especially bad dust spots, which I had to remove from all my pics using Photoshop. Nikon eventually offered free cleaning and inspection to everyone in an attempt to resolve this, but by that time the shutter mechanism had given up the ghost. I probably could have sent it in to Nikon and told them to fix everything, but by then my frequent traveling was coming to a temporary end, and technology had advanced quite a bit making it fairly obsolete. So I left it on a shelf, where it still sits.
I picked up a relatively inexpensive point-and-shoot a while back, only to find out the picture quality is really not that different from my phone. One important thing I have come to learn is that a larger sensor makes for better quality photos (this is not the number of megapixels, but the actual physical size of the sensor in the camera.) Sensor size is the primary difference between a quality camera and something consumer grade. Another thing I learned was that zoom is not that important, in fact most serious photographers spend their money on high quality fixed lenses called "primes" often trying to mimic exactly what that eye sees. Beyond a certain point zoom is detrimental to quality, especially for ad hoc photography, which is pretty much all I do. Lastly, I learned about taking photos in "RAW" mode -- creating an uncompressed image that allows more flexibility in editing. These RAW images can then be saved to JPG/PNG for presentation. That eliminated most point-and-shoots, which have smaller sensors and focus on gaudy megapixel and zoom numbers and don't support RAW.
So after I settled into the house I got back in the market for a quality camera. It's really quite confusing. There are new formats, differing standards, a lot has changed, but it's still safe to focus on sensor size. The smallest sensor you want for serious photography -- by which I mean a serious amatuer or hobbyist -- is called APS-C. This is the one you will get in most entry-level and intermediate DSLRs and also in some of the newer more compact formats.
The next size up is referred to as "full frame" and at this point you start to get into professional level territory. Naturally, having learned my lessons about image quality, I thought I should go full frame but in the end I couldn't justify the cost. The cheapest full-frame I found was the Sony A7 which, with lens, would have run me no less than $1200. I simply cannot delude myself into believing I am at the $1200 camera level as a photographer.
So I scaled back to APS-C and search for the cheapest one and happened upon a dealer on eBay selling a Canon EOS Rebel T5i DSLR for under $500 with a short zoom lens (maybe 3x). That's a fair amount less than my old Nikon cost years ago, and it's probably many times the camera at least. Ain't progress grand?
Now it's up to me to re-ignite my photography hobby, which has been dormant the past few years, as evidence by my smugmug page. I just hope the house cooperates.
In truth, I could probably get away with a $200 Chromebook of some sort. Everything I do is on the web. Writing, banking, shopping, reading, music -- all of it streamed. (If my internet connection goes down I'm pretty much dead. I have to resort to filling my time with housework.) The only software I run locally anymore is for editing photos. And while my photography has taken a back seat to time working on the house the past two or three years, that appears to be changing since I just purchased an new DSLR.
My old camera was a Nikon D50. I was a big ungainly thing, no image stabilization to speak of, but when I nailed it with that camera I was able to take some astounding pictures. Sadly it suffered from a known issue that caused it to have some sort of especially bad dust spots, which I had to remove from all my pics using Photoshop. Nikon eventually offered free cleaning and inspection to everyone in an attempt to resolve this, but by that time the shutter mechanism had given up the ghost. I probably could have sent it in to Nikon and told them to fix everything, but by then my frequent traveling was coming to a temporary end, and technology had advanced quite a bit making it fairly obsolete. So I left it on a shelf, where it still sits.
I picked up a relatively inexpensive point-and-shoot a while back, only to find out the picture quality is really not that different from my phone. One important thing I have come to learn is that a larger sensor makes for better quality photos (this is not the number of megapixels, but the actual physical size of the sensor in the camera.) Sensor size is the primary difference between a quality camera and something consumer grade. Another thing I learned was that zoom is not that important, in fact most serious photographers spend their money on high quality fixed lenses called "primes" often trying to mimic exactly what that eye sees. Beyond a certain point zoom is detrimental to quality, especially for ad hoc photography, which is pretty much all I do. Lastly, I learned about taking photos in "RAW" mode -- creating an uncompressed image that allows more flexibility in editing. These RAW images can then be saved to JPG/PNG for presentation. That eliminated most point-and-shoots, which have smaller sensors and focus on gaudy megapixel and zoom numbers and don't support RAW.
So after I settled into the house I got back in the market for a quality camera. It's really quite confusing. There are new formats, differing standards, a lot has changed, but it's still safe to focus on sensor size. The smallest sensor you want for serious photography -- by which I mean a serious amatuer or hobbyist -- is called APS-C. This is the one you will get in most entry-level and intermediate DSLRs and also in some of the newer more compact formats.
The next size up is referred to as "full frame" and at this point you start to get into professional level territory. Naturally, having learned my lessons about image quality, I thought I should go full frame but in the end I couldn't justify the cost. The cheapest full-frame I found was the Sony A7 which, with lens, would have run me no less than $1200. I simply cannot delude myself into believing I am at the $1200 camera level as a photographer.
So I scaled back to APS-C and search for the cheapest one and happened upon a dealer on eBay selling a Canon EOS Rebel T5i DSLR for under $500 with a short zoom lens (maybe 3x). That's a fair amount less than my old Nikon cost years ago, and it's probably many times the camera at least. Ain't progress grand?
Now it's up to me to re-ignite my photography hobby, which has been dormant the past few years, as evidence by my smugmug page. I just hope the house cooperates.
[Travel] Colorado Springs
How long has it been since I did a travel post? Too damn, that's how long. So I was in Colorado Springs, for work of course, but that didn't stop me from snagging an extra weekend for some exploration.
Colorado Springs is interesting in that it is clearly someplace you go for a specific activity. Not exclusively recreation -- that activity might be attending the Air Force Academy -- but usually recreation. And outside of the recreational centers the place approximates one of the nondescript Detroit suburbs I am so familiar with -- anonymus strip malls, aging middle class neighborhoods, and office buildings peppered between the major arteries, except with mountains in the background. But the recreational centers, which are available in spades, are a delight.
First let me say that if you ever visit Colorado Springs the place to stay is The Broadmoor, a legendary resort with old school service values. The Broadmoor complex is enormous including a small lake and some nature trails. The grounds are spectacularly landscaped and maintained, and all the buildings are architectural in a style I would simply call Old World Class. It put me in mind of a place I visited years ago, the Greenbrier. The target market is wealthy folks with a strong attachment to golf (there are three courses). High-end luxury by any standard. Naturally, I did not stay here. It was where the conference I was attending was running, so I did get to spend the bulk of my day within it's confines. It would be tough to overstate the exceptionalism. If you get the chance and have the money do stay there.
Colorado Springs is all about the outdoors and the prime attraction is Pike's Peak. There are a couple of ways to get up the mountain. The obvious one is to drive -- it's 19 miles at typically 25-30 mph so if you don't stop you'll reach the top in less than an hour. But you do want to stop. There are numerous overlooks and roadside rest stops, all of which have remarkable views of the surrounding miles. The second way is to take the cog rail. This is a train/shuttle that slowly carries you up the mountain at a leisurely pace such that you get views the whole time. It stops at the top to allow for exploration and, presumably, trinket shopping. Round trip is about 3 hours. I'm guessing it' a nice relaxing way to get up Pike's Peak. Here's a good overview of the rail trip. As for me, I drove. It's a pleasant trip up with a couple of nice stopping points that you will miss on the railway. It is much less of a white knuckler than many other winding mountain roads I've driven in the southwest, especially with the low speed limits. Nothing to fear here.
The third way up would be to hike or bike. I would love to bike up but it would probably kill me, not just because of the inclination but also the near complete lack of air about 12000 feet. I exaggerate, but only slightly. Above the timberline, simply exiting the car and walking across the street labored my breathing. (Here's a potential dream trip for me. Ship my bike out for two weeks in Colorado Springs to acclimate and make multiple summit attempts.)
The other thing about Pike's Peak is that any time outside the summer months you run the risk of the weather working against you. At some point earlier in the year, the road had opened all the way to the summit, but a series of snowstorms had the road close above 12,000 feet, so I never did summit the damn thing. But I was lucky in a way. After I turned to head back down another storm hit and the subsequently closed the road down to about 10,000. Win some, lose some. Pike's Peak is recommended if you are in the area. Might even be worth the trip down from Denver (about an hour-ish).
Closer to town -- in fact, pretty much right in town -- is the Garden of the Gods. A park featuring winding paths among massive stone outcroppings. Very cool looking, and a haven for rock climbers. You can see them spidering up any number of faces. The folks here are very lucky t have such a spot within a fifteen minute drive of most of them I would think. The trails are ideal for running along. It's one of those things you would show someone to explain why you liked living here after they got an eyeful of the mid-grade suburban sprawl. Yes, the rocks here are not Utah level rocks, but they are a sight. Another one recommended.
The final event of the weekend was a 10K. It consisted of about 4 miles up the side of the mountain, then turn around and finish in a downhill sprint. I don't know what possessed me to want to do this. Since there is no air to speak of, why would I want to engage in an activity that required me to breathe more of it? But there I was as the sun was coming up lined up and ready to go. It was as bad as I thought. By mile 3 I was alternating running and walking. By mile 4 I was just walking until I got to the turnaround then, through the magic of gravity, I was flying down to the finish. The great thing about this race was that it finished at the zoo. You cross the finish line and walk through the run expo and there you are face to face with a giraffe. I was unsure why he was looking at me like that, perhaps he thought I was an idiot to be running around without any air to breathe, when a young child leaped in front of me with a clump of lettuce and fed him directly from his hand. At the Cheyenne Mountian Zoo you can feed the giraffes by hand.
But the big thing I got from this visit was a re-ignition of my desire to travel to new places. Not necessarily exotic places, just new. Travel-wise I've been running on rails the past few years. Vegas and Florida, long weekends to Chicago and Mackinac Island. As much as I love comfortable escapes, I need to go have experiences like this. Things I haven't done and seen before. Like I said, not epic, just new. Let the planning begin.
Colorado Springs is interesting in that it is clearly someplace you go for a specific activity. Not exclusively recreation -- that activity might be attending the Air Force Academy -- but usually recreation. And outside of the recreational centers the place approximates one of the nondescript Detroit suburbs I am so familiar with -- anonymus strip malls, aging middle class neighborhoods, and office buildings peppered between the major arteries, except with mountains in the background. But the recreational centers, which are available in spades, are a delight.
First let me say that if you ever visit Colorado Springs the place to stay is The Broadmoor, a legendary resort with old school service values. The Broadmoor complex is enormous including a small lake and some nature trails. The grounds are spectacularly landscaped and maintained, and all the buildings are architectural in a style I would simply call Old World Class. It put me in mind of a place I visited years ago, the Greenbrier. The target market is wealthy folks with a strong attachment to golf (there are three courses). High-end luxury by any standard. Naturally, I did not stay here. It was where the conference I was attending was running, so I did get to spend the bulk of my day within it's confines. It would be tough to overstate the exceptionalism. If you get the chance and have the money do stay there.
Colorado Springs is all about the outdoors and the prime attraction is Pike's Peak. There are a couple of ways to get up the mountain. The obvious one is to drive -- it's 19 miles at typically 25-30 mph so if you don't stop you'll reach the top in less than an hour. But you do want to stop. There are numerous overlooks and roadside rest stops, all of which have remarkable views of the surrounding miles. The second way is to take the cog rail. This is a train/shuttle that slowly carries you up the mountain at a leisurely pace such that you get views the whole time. It stops at the top to allow for exploration and, presumably, trinket shopping. Round trip is about 3 hours. I'm guessing it' a nice relaxing way to get up Pike's Peak. Here's a good overview of the rail trip. As for me, I drove. It's a pleasant trip up with a couple of nice stopping points that you will miss on the railway. It is much less of a white knuckler than many other winding mountain roads I've driven in the southwest, especially with the low speed limits. Nothing to fear here.
The third way up would be to hike or bike. I would love to bike up but it would probably kill me, not just because of the inclination but also the near complete lack of air about 12000 feet. I exaggerate, but only slightly. Above the timberline, simply exiting the car and walking across the street labored my breathing. (Here's a potential dream trip for me. Ship my bike out for two weeks in Colorado Springs to acclimate and make multiple summit attempts.)
The other thing about Pike's Peak is that any time outside the summer months you run the risk of the weather working against you. At some point earlier in the year, the road had opened all the way to the summit, but a series of snowstorms had the road close above 12,000 feet, so I never did summit the damn thing. But I was lucky in a way. After I turned to head back down another storm hit and the subsequently closed the road down to about 10,000. Win some, lose some. Pike's Peak is recommended if you are in the area. Might even be worth the trip down from Denver (about an hour-ish).
Closer to town -- in fact, pretty much right in town -- is the Garden of the Gods. A park featuring winding paths among massive stone outcroppings. Very cool looking, and a haven for rock climbers. You can see them spidering up any number of faces. The folks here are very lucky t have such a spot within a fifteen minute drive of most of them I would think. The trails are ideal for running along. It's one of those things you would show someone to explain why you liked living here after they got an eyeful of the mid-grade suburban sprawl. Yes, the rocks here are not Utah level rocks, but they are a sight. Another one recommended.
The final event of the weekend was a 10K. It consisted of about 4 miles up the side of the mountain, then turn around and finish in a downhill sprint. I don't know what possessed me to want to do this. Since there is no air to speak of, why would I want to engage in an activity that required me to breathe more of it? But there I was as the sun was coming up lined up and ready to go. It was as bad as I thought. By mile 3 I was alternating running and walking. By mile 4 I was just walking until I got to the turnaround then, through the magic of gravity, I was flying down to the finish. The great thing about this race was that it finished at the zoo. You cross the finish line and walk through the run expo and there you are face to face with a giraffe. I was unsure why he was looking at me like that, perhaps he thought I was an idiot to be running around without any air to breathe, when a young child leaped in front of me with a clump of lettuce and fed him directly from his hand. At the Cheyenne Mountian Zoo you can feed the giraffes by hand.
But the big thing I got from this visit was a re-ignition of my desire to travel to new places. Not necessarily exotic places, just new. Travel-wise I've been running on rails the past few years. Vegas and Florida, long weekends to Chicago and Mackinac Island. As much as I love comfortable escapes, I need to go have experiences like this. Things I haven't done and seen before. Like I said, not epic, just new. Let the planning begin.
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