Drivers Are Not All Blind

Ride like everyone is blind and out to get you. That's good advice, but with time you are obviously going to figure out this is not really true. And then you will need to refine your mental image.

First, lets assume the truth is most drivers are sighted, although sometimes there is a time lag before they "clue in" and recognize a motorcycle as another vehicle on the road. Until then they may see the motorcycle, but this unusual sight is placed mentally in the same class as unicorns or dragons. Once their brain responds correctly, after a lag of 1 to 5 seconds usually, they realize that this object obeys the same rules of the road, and laws of physics, as a car, and they react accordingly.

Does this knowledge have any implications for your driving strategy? More often than you think, you are in a situation where a car driver has less than a second to recognize your motorcycle. Let's say you are stopped in the middle of a road, waiting to make a left turn, a big SUV is approaching from behind. At the last second, the SUV swerves around you, but then you realize there was a smaller car tailgating that SUV. That tailgating driver has less than a second to recognize you as a vehicle on the road. Other situations will occur that are more difficult to predict, such as a driver who is fiddling with their collection of CD's, then looks up at the last minute to see where their car is. Of course this is stupid behaviour, but it happens. The reason it happens is because the stupid driver has pretty good reflexes or they would have had an accident a long time ago, and learned their lesson. The problem for you, the motorcyclist, is that the stupid driver's reflexes are only fast enough when cars are involved, but that extra second delay in responding to the sight of a motorcycle is too much, and a crash may happen.

So far, you might be wondering how this is different from driving as though everyone is blind? Actually, not too different, but there is one place where you could benefit from this knowledge. Sometimes you are in a situation where you have the right of way, where the car driver is looking straight at you, and you decide to move ahead. At this point, you have forgotten, or are ignoring just this once, the rule that everyone is blind. But then the driver pulls out in front of you anyway, as if they were deliberately trying to kill you. But no, it turns out there was no homicidal intent, it was just that 2 second delay in the recognition. They simply didn't see you early enough.

One of the very worst situations for a motorcyclist is the oncoming car, making a left turn. It happens because of two visual problems. Just a quick reminder, "seeing" involves light going into the eye and making an image on the inside of the eyeball, on a screen called the retina. The brain has sensors that pick up this image and interpret what is going on, including such calculated things as size and motion of the image. The brain does not "see" everything on the retina as equally important. Big things and moving things get transmitted to the brain first. Close stuff takes priority over faraway stuff. Familiar stuff is recognized quickly, unfamiliar stuff takes more time to figure out. Now lets continue with the car turning left.

The small size of the bike on the retina of the eye makes it look further away than a car at first glance, and there is also the 2 second delay in recognition. The reason this type of accident is so bad is that you have almost no reaction time, and the car is a solid object that will bring you to a sudden stop. Sudden stops on immovable objects are very hard to survive, compared to sliding along a horizontal surface.

What can you do about this situation? If you see an oncoming car with it's turn signal on, and you are all alone on the road, you could try a slight weaving motion. This has the effect of increasing your visibility to the car driver. It's a bit hard to understand at first, but think of it this way. If a motorcycle is coming directly toward you, it presents a still image on the retina. Although it is slowly getting bigger in the car driver's eye, it is just not moving enough to get attention. The eye is better at detecting motion across the field of view. Think for example you are looking for toad on a muddy path. If that toad moves you are going to see it, until then it is almost invisible. As a motorcyclist, you want to be that moving toad, and hope the car driver is not really trying to kill you, and trust me most of them they aren't.

Photo: I photoshopped this together from an Australian Cane Toad, a motorcycle accident picture from a left turning car, and a Rebel "doo rag" from this web site. I would recommend Mr. Toad get a helmet to go over that doo rag.

What, Exactly, Is Buddha's Golf Handicap?

I don't usually watch the Fox News Sunday, even though it is available in Canada. (Unlike the Fox News Network, which I can't get, and probably wouldn't watch unless I needed to raise my blood pressure for medical reasons)

But I saw this on the Huffington Post about today's Fox News Sunday, with Brit Hume advising Tiger Woods to become a Christian.

Apparently Tiger is only a Buddhist, and the upgrade to Christian would include the necessary forgiveness to get his life back together and his family, and provide a great example to the rest of the world, according to Fox TV commentator Brit Hume.

In the past I have written my immortal classic on a similar topic, titled "What Kind of Motorcycle Does God Ride?". Now I get to ask the question "What is Buddha's Golf Handicap, and why is it better than Jesus'?"

The first assumption is that without his superior golf ability, Tiger Woods is just another guy like me that nobody would care about. Brit Hume would not be talking about him. Nike wouldn't be sponsoring him. Nobody would watch him on TV. Cocktail waitresses would not be throwing themselves at him. He would not be making $100 million plus a year. For all I know, maybe his wife wouldn't have even married him.

Tiger has done really well with Buddhism up to now. With all those Christian golfers out there, you know some of them had to be praying to Jesus to get that long putt in the hole. Let's face it, Jesus couldn't get the job done as consistently as Buddha. And please, no excuses about "God is away protecting our troops in Iraq", because Tiger was winning long before that situation came up.

So no matter what bells and whistles Christianity has to offer, that Buddhism seems to lack, the biggest reason to not piss off Buddha is for the sake of his superior understanding of golf, compared to Jesus.

However, Brit may have a point about the forgiveness angle. As a Christian, you have not inconsiderable leeway for carousing and coming back on board later. It might be worth while for Tiger to consider a compromise that allows him to still retain Buddha's expertise at golf, but get more sponsors to replace the few he lost, and allow him to get his life back together.

I might suggest Tiger examines what he really wants out of life. Then choose the ones that don't conflict with each other (such as, apparently, wife and/or several cocktail waitresses). I would advise him to look into getting an endorsement from the Christian Broadcasting Network, but have a lawyer write up the contract in such a way that Buddha is not thrown off his game. The CBN may be reluctant to sponsor a part-time Buddhist to the tune of 4 million a year, but if it boosts their sales of miracle water by 20 million, then everybody's happy. I'm sure Tiger Woods can do a teary "genuine" Christian confession on CBN. Things like that have been done before. I would not be at all surprised to find out the dapper Brit Hume has a few women hiding in the shrubbery, and is already thinking about his own exit strategy.

Picture: I photoshopped a triumphant Buddha into a golf cup because I couldn't find any decent pics on the internet of Buddha putting or driving.

What Happened to Jerry Pournelle?

Back in the eighties, I used to read a computer magazine called Byte. In it was a column I also often read by Jerry Pournelle. I still remember his frequent use of the expression "Sigh.", as a complete sentence to indicate exasperation yet acceptance of computer glitches. I first heard of Jerry Pournelle as a science fiction writer, and one of his more famous science fiction novels was "A Mote in God's Eye" co-written with Larry Niven.

So what happened to Jerry since then? Byte magazine went under in 1997 and Jerry since then has been writing a blog.

Apparently, like a lot of people in the last decade he has become even more conservative. Back in the eighties, the term conservative had almost no meaning for me, when the political divide was much less distinct than it was today. The distinctions could be partly because I can recognize it easier now, and partly because people were not as polarized by inflammatory newspapers, TV and radio in the eighties. And the "War on Terror" had not yet begun with all its attendant propaganda.

The signs of Jerry being conservative were there to see in the eighties, if I had cared. The book "Mote in God's Eye" had a racist and colonial theme, with Earth colonizing a planet whose indigenous (and intelligent) species was called the Moties. In fact a similar theme to the recent movie "Avatar" about Earth colonizing the moon of Pandora.

However, Pournelle and Niven's book has a theme of racism, discussions of the need to exterminate the Moties, fear of the Moties' high birth rate, unlike the movie Avatar whose theme is more the preservation of nature, and the evils of greed-driven colonization.

Since the book came out in 1974, there have been a lot of changes in the world. So how has Jerry adapted his ideas to the realities of today? He has written recently in his blog about education, about the terrorist attack (the underwear bomber), about Afghanistan, and about global warming. In the first three, he seemed to be against racial integration in schools, and in favour of racial profiling in airports, and in favour of more troops for Afghanistan. That, in my mind confirmed that he was leaning heavily to the conservative side of the spectrum. And so when I came to read his take on global warming, I was not surprised that he came out as a denier . I wonder why so often people who are racist, also happen to be in favour of war, and to top it off also deny global warming? Just a coincidence. Or could it be a result of political propaganda rather than logical thought influencing their conclusions?

So in "Musings on Climate Change", January 2, 2010, we get the summary statement:

"And I am far more afraid of ice than a couple of degrees warming. I fear shorter growing seasons more than I fear longer growing seasons. If the climate must change -- and stasis is unlikely -- I'd rather be warmer than colder. I'd also rather be richer than poorer. Enough. It's bed time."

Every statement he makes in this summary, taken by itself is true, in fact nobody ever disputed them. He seems to have completely missed or ignored the points that are being made in the Global Warming issue. Considering the negative impacts that scientists have suggested such as flooding, massive human refugee populations, runaway temperature feedback, extreme weather effects, migrating diseases and pests, and species extinctions.

But to me this is intellectual dishonesty, as he should know that every scientist on Earth agrees with his final concluding points, I myself would prefer a couple of more degrees this fine January morning in Canada.

Not really changing the subject here, but it's a similar technique in his article " The Truth about Afghanistan, and its meaning for US policy" December 2, 2009.

Here is Jerry's version of truth:

"The obvious truth about Afghanistan is that there are two conditions for an American victory, assuming victory means building a democratic republic in the territory we call Afghanistan. One has to do with the number of troops. The other is the length of the commitment: how long will we stay?"

I think it's the same kind of conservative logic that we get from "Mote in God's Eye". He follows up his supposed military logic with a comment that Obama's policy will meet neither condition. But what Jerry is really talking about is his (incorrect) assumption that a victory is needed to establishing a democratic republic in Afghanistan. Which nobody in Washington is thinking about any more. What they are thinking about, in case Jerry has not noticed, is the stability of the neighbours, specifically Russia and Pakistan that are dealing currently with Muslim extremists uprisings. And planning for the withdrawal of US troops without creating total chaos. Obviously the war is hopeless with Jerry's assumption of victory. I think most people are long past caring about a democratic and corruption free Afghanistan where everybody can fly their kites and listen to Western music. They probably just want the killing to end, and recognize that genocide is not an option. Unlike "A Mote in God's Eye", where it was inevitable.

Then without reading more, I can see catchphrases in his titles that make me think Jerry is getting quite extreme in his Republican right wingism. Titles like "Big science strikes back" and "Breathtaking arrogance of the EPA". Words like "tyranny" (Google counted 168 uses) and phrases like "There is no better term for the ObamaCare Bill than Despotism. ."

So that's what happened to Jerry Pournelle. From being a respected science fiction writer to being a Teabagger. He has gone from writing a book titled "The Mote in God's Eye" to being the mote in God's eye. As Jerry used to say ... "Sigh."

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/index.html

Story of Noah's Ark Compared to Global Warming

I like a fairy tale as much as the next guy. But I don't actually believe that Cinderella is the literal truth. I draw the line at making an imaginary friend out of my Fairy Godmother. And no amount of therapy can help me if I start killing and torturing people based on what my Fairy Godmother tells me.

Of course I'm partly kidding, in that the good Fairy Godmother would not actually tell me to kill or torture someone. Realistically, my fairy Godmother would limit herself to telling me that something is mine, even though the law does not agree. Then when I try to regain the imaginary "rightful possession of my property", and the owner fights back, well then the Fairy Godmother cannot be held responsible for what I do.

These fairy tales I am referring to are Evangelical religion that believes in the literal truth of every word in the Bible, and believes global warming is a fairy tale. Let me explain with the story of Noah, why bible stories are like fairy tales to me.

It is apparent to me that the story of Noah was substantially made up by people who had no knowledge of the world as we know it today. They did not know how big the world was, no clue how many species of animals there were in the world, and probably also had little concept of the balance of nature. If there was an original true story of Noah, it could have been a local flood where Noah took a couple of goats, a pair of camels, maybe cows, his wife and kids, the dogs and cats and some food and floated around for a while till the water went down. But then, I think some religious fanatics got hold of this simple story and tried to make it into something bigger than it was. They exaggerated the story to the point where it included the whole world, all the animals and every living human. I'm sure those story tellers were thinking that no one will ever question them, as nobody will ever know how big the world is, nobody will ever know how many animals there are. But just to be on the safe side they didn't actually say which animals are on the boat, or how many, so that on the off chance that somebody finds a new animal, they could reply "Oh yeah, that one was on the ark too!"

In the artist's conceptions of Noah's ark , you regularly see elephants, tigers, giraffes, and hippos (and for the most extreme groups, dinosaurs too), we should remember that almost none of these animals were known to the writers of the story of the flood. They probably imagined no more than 20 pairs of animals on the boat. They also didn't know how high the highest mountain on earth was, when they innocently wrote that the flood would cover it. Nor were they aware that oxygen masks would be required at that height.

The problems with this fairy tale are almost too many to count. But while nobody really believes in Sleeping Beauty or Peter Pan, which are both more believable, many people are fanatically trying to prove the fairy tale of Noah's Arc is true, and that global warming is false.

If it were not bad enough that the Story of the Flood is so comical, the point being made by the writers is that everyone on Earth has to believe in their God, or they are condemned to hell and drowning. It stops being comical for me at that point.

It is discouraging that some highly educated people also believe the story of Noah as the literal truth. By educated I mean they apparently paid tuition, took notes and regurgitated facts. But if "educated" people cannot be convinced that the story of Noah is false, with it's unending array of comical impossibilities, how would you ever explain the importance of alternate energy sources to the world economy and environment?

Here is a fairly elaborate attempt at explaining all the myriad holes in the Ark story, just to give an idea of how much thought has gone into it.



Picture: Noah's ark scaled-down replica being built on Mt Ararat by Greenpeace activists, I'm pretty sure they don't believe in the literal truth of the story, but they are using it in a figurative way to warn of potential flooding from climate change.

No More Broken Promises Ever Again

Last year I set up a new major religion. For 2010, I will start up a new political party for the United States of America, one that brings guaranteed results. No more disappointments ever.

It has often been commented that both Democrats and Republicans are hoping for the other guy's President to fail. For example, the Democrats were hoping for Bush to fail, meaning America would lose the war in Iraq. And the economy would crash and everybody lose their jobs. And how about another terrorist attack just for good measure? Then Republicans were hoping for Obama to fail. Meaning no health care, no bailing out the auto industry or the banks, no stimulus package, losing the war in Afghanistan, and having the economy crash and everybody lose their jobs. It would be the icing on the cake to have another terrorist attack and many Americans killed.

Am I understanding that right so far? Because if so, I have a candidate and a slogan everybody could get behind. I would call it the Party of Failure, and the campaign slogan would be "Guaranteed to F****n Fail". For Prez, I would nominate Borat, and I would like Sarah Palin as the VP. Best of all, Borat is not even qualified to be President, as he was born in Kazakhstan, and is an illegal alien. Now there's a change you can believe in, and nobody who voted for him would ever be disappointed once he got in the White House. Next time don't vote for change and be disappointed, instead, vote for failure and get exactly what you voted for.

Don't sweat the details of the PoF platform, because as president of the USA you are pretty much going to fail no matter what you do. So I am not going to worry about the details of what is being promised. Put 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan? You lose. Put 200,000 more? Still lose. Take out all the troops next year? America is still the most hated country on the planet.

Spend one trillion dollars of stimulus money? No new jobs, no improvement of infrastructure either. Money disappears, economy continues death spiral. Don't spend any stimulus money? Same happens, except this time you do not understand why the debt still increased by one trillion dollars.

Health care? Sure, it sucks, so go ahead and create those death panels. Insure 30,000,000 extra people that aren't even sick. People are still going to die of sickness, and the debt will still increase.

Guantanamo? Turn them all loose, or give them all a fair trial, or waterboard them till the cows come home. I'm pretty sure all those options lead to a major failure. You're going to meet voter expectations no matter what you do.

Bail out the banks that crashed the economy, and then sit back and watch as the top executives take 25 billion dollars of the bailout money as performance bonuses. What greater failure could you ever aspire to?

Send President Borat overseas, and you can be sure that he would not only be touching the Queen of England's tushie, he would be mud wrestling with her. And of course losing. And not just bowing to the Japanese Emperor, but bowing while puking on him. The Borat administration is guaranteed by the campaign slogan to be a foreign relations fiasco beyond compare. While back at home the economy tanks. And instead of all the voters wailing and gnashing their teeth in frustration, everybody can be smugly satisfied and say "I knew this would happen."

Picture: http://garlinggauge.com/2007/11/09/very-nice-borat-endorses-obama/

The Myth of Limitless High Priced Oil

Here is a comment off the Internet about why we should not invest in alternate energy right now.

"Crude oil, next to water, is the most plentiful liquid in our globe. We are not in danger of running out of crude for at least 100 years — probably much longer. The supply during this period would be limited by the price, not by any metaphysical limit of the amount of crude oil. A higher price will produce massive amounts of crude. There is no reason, at this point, to impoverish our nation with a new system of expensive, unproven “sustainable energy.” Does anyone have any doubt that by 2100 we will have found new ways of tapping nature for our energy needs?"
by derekcrane

To me it does not matter whether we have more or less oil than water, or whether oil is second or tenth on the list of earth liquids, or even if oil is a liquid, gas or solid. However, an estimate of the number of years left is worth knowing, and although 100 years seems to have been picked out of the air, I'm going to go with it, as I have nothing better to offer.

Derek is quite right in stating that the price will dictate the amount of oil available. But is he aware that there are two sides to the price issue? Side 1. How much it costs. Side 2. How much you can afford to pay. Derek seems to ignore the affordability, probably thinking that America will always have enough money to pay for the oil no matter how much it costs.

It is very complicated calculating the real cost of oil. It's not just the cost per barrel on the market alone. It's how much more money was wasted, either in trying to obtain oil (whether successful or not), transporting and extracting the oil, in protecting your oil supplies, defending supply routes, or in trying to deny other people access to oil that you want for yourself. Also in trying to fight an evil dictator who happens to be sitting on top of the world's richest oil reserves. All these problems get worse as the oil gets more scarce, and more valuable. For example, the more an oil tanker is worth, the harder pirates will try to capture it.

Was the war in Iraq priced into the cost of oil in the US? Then oil would cost a lot more, but instead the cost of the war was largely assigned to a military budget, and paid for out of the general tax pool. Which means basically money was borrowed from China, because the US tax pool does not want to pay for anything. If an unlimited supply of oil was available in the US, maybe the war would not have taken place. If oil was cheap, Saddam would be no threat.

Another cost that is not being calculated is the cost of global warming. Maybe that cost will turn out to be zero, but it would be prudent to budget for it anyway, starting now. Lets say the US military is right in it's estimate that global warming is going to cause a big (and expensive) security threat. That cost is not being assigned to oil right now, but it probably should be.

As oil gets harder to find, it takes more oil to produce the oil, so the price does not go up linearly, it goes up exponentially. In Canada's tar sands, we may already be operating at less than 50% efficiency, where two barrels of crude are burned to extract one barrel.

Not only is the price of oil going up, but your buying power is decreasing. In fact, already America does not have enough money to pay cash any imports, including oil, imports are financed by borrowing. It takes years to build up a debt but the lender (mostly China) can pull the plug in minutes when they think they no longer need you. At the point where your loans are called in, you no longer have enough credit to continue importing oil. When that happens, do you really care whether or not there is any oil left?

The world used to have lots of alternate sources of energy, but the exploitation of oil has just about eliminated any competing energy source. That's because oil has more bang for the buck than anything but atomic energy. Other energy sources, such as hydroelectric, solar, wind power are at least ten times as dilute, which makes them expensive and non-competitive. Especially so when so much of the secondary cost of oil is being hidden in military budgets and government subsidies.

Why should we invest in alternate energy starting right now? Because if we do nothing now, we are wasting time we will need to develop new technologies. Waiting till the last minute (even if it is more than a hundred years from now) and hoping for the best is not a good plan. Right now we can afford to do the research, and we have unemployment since all our manufacturing process has gone to China. We would not really miss the money invested in developing alternate energy sources, or in reducing our energy consumption. Using a word like "impoverish" is quite an overstatement for a country that spends billions of dollars a year in useless doodads from China, that get tossed in the landfill within weeks for some new toy.

Picture: from http://earthfirst.com/oil-about-to-run-out-leading-energy-expert-says/

Bank Bonuses Again

So an AIG executive has resigned over a pay issue.

All the bank executives want pay in the millions of dollars. Back in the eighties, air traffic controllers wanted a pay hike too. But Ronald Reagan fired all of them, and hired any back on at a reduced rate, and the skies have not been full of falling planes. It took guts, we need the same medicine for these morons running the banks.

One difference in the analogy is that the banking fat cats actually did crash the economy. Also, the bankers are asking for millions of dollars a year each do keep on doing what they did so well. The air traffic controllers only wanted a little more pay and a 32 hour work week.

I wrote about this before, and the same still is true.