My Last Will and Testament, Part 1

No, I haven’t been diagnosed with anything. I just saw this article on Wired about green funerals that are coming into vogue, and I just wanted it on the record as to how I’d like my remains disposed of:

Bury me in a shallow grave in the forest.

Barring that, which I’m sure would violate several jurisdictions worth of laws, one of these green funeral things would be a decent second choice.

Eon, Epoch, Era – Orders of Timely Magnitude

Yes, yes. We all know that humans are causing global climate change. We’re responsible for increasing CO2 levels, and the resulting increase in temperatures. It seems, though, that we’ve been doing it for a lot longer than just since we started burning fossil fuels.

(Preemptive anti-anti-global-warming comment: So even if we have been affecting the climate for a lot longer than we thought, the amount of CO2 we’re putting into the atmosphere now is way above what we were doing back then. It’s like having some Scotch and thinking, “Well, that didn’t kill me. All those teetotalers are full of crap,” and then going out and drinking a bottle of rubbing alcohol.)

But this isn’t about global warming. It’s about time scales, and how self-centered we are. And I don’t mean that necessarily as a bad thing, just that we quite naturally center everything around us: right here, right now. Take this pair of sentences from the first paragraph of that linked article: “It started 200 million years ago and ended 55 million years later, give or take. For the past 12,000 years, we’ve been living in the Holocene.” When I read that, I hiccuped.

55 million  = 55 * 10^6 = 55,000,000
12 thousand = 12 * 10^3 =     12,000

Three orders of magnitude! Really? One epoch is on the order of tens-of-millions of years, and another is on the order of tens-of-thousands? At this point, are we really talking about the same thing? Does the word epoch really apply that broadly?

Oh. Yeah, well, I guess it does.

But still! It seems rather self-centered to consider our measly 10^4 years on planet earth to be on the order of the rest of life. I mean, in the race of life, we’re just barely past the starting blocks. If our 12,000 years of civilization were a mile, then I (as a representative of human civilization) have walked from my house to Constitution Avenue; the lowly cockroach is somewhere off the west coast of Australia.

Sure, we’ve probably had more short-term global impact than the cockroach. But that’s not my point. We have trouble imagining more-than-our-lifespan of years in any given direction, at best. Do we really imagine our civilization is going to make it to even a hundred-thousand years? Can we even comprehend making it to even just one million years?

Connection Between Ancient North American and Siberian Languages

My interest in computer languages led me to a moderate interest in human linguistics, thus I follow the Language Log blog. Far more interesting than belied by its gloriously ascetic formatting, they serve as my clearing house for meat-space communication formats.

A really cool post from yesterday draws attention to the fact that, for the first time, there is some real, serious evidence that languages from the far northwest of North America are directly related to languages from northeastern Asia. Kinda cool.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled Sunday Afternoon…

Pope Benedict, You Ruined My Day

Well that’s just great. Just freakin’ great! His eminence, Pope Benedict XVI, today announced Seven New Official Sins. (You can’t make this shit up.)

1. “Bioethical” sins (a.k.a. birth control)
2. “Morally dubious” experiments (a.k.a. stem cell research, and that freaky three-way you’ve been thinking of)
3. Drug abuse (But drug use is okay!)
4. Pollution (How’s the Pope-mobile’s gas mileage?)
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor (??)
6. Excessive wealth (Take that Bill Gates!)
7. Creating poverty (Wouldn’t this already be covered by #5?)

What a steaming, pile of crap! I am so pissed off! Why? I’ll tell you why: I just finished checking off my old sins list. I spent all day today on the couch today, doing nothing, just so I could cross off “Sloth” and call it a wrap. And then he goes and adds seven more to the list.

I think “Bait & Switch” should be a sin.

14th & K – Douchebag Central

There’s an interesting article in the Post today about the brugeoning club district centered around 14th and K Streets. That’s just a few blocks south of where we live, and we frequently pass through that area on the way to the metro. It’s also part of our ANC, and more specifically, our SMD.

Hedda and I have another name for it: Douchebag Central. It’s like somebody took some sort of nuclear too-rich-too-yuppy-too-wannabe-too-self-important bomb and dropped it on the intersection. On any given night, the streets around Franklin Square are jam-packed with ricers, hummers, and the valets parking them. The crowds spill out onto the street, blocking the sidewalk, waiting for their chance to get into an “exclusive” club. And the clubs deliver on the experience, thrumming with loud music, serving overpriced drinks, and offering the Average Kid a chance to hobnob with those-who-they-think-are-elite.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the Virginians and Marylanders are coming into the city to spend their money. And I’m pleased that such great night-time commercial activity is occurring in the downtown area just south of our neighborhood. And I’m quite happy that we live a mere two-or-three blocks from this epicenter, on the rare occasions we might wish to partake in it. And it’s a far sight better than the hookers and drug dealers that used to populate the area. Now, the infamous “No Right Turns Between 9pm and 5am” signs are (mostly) just an amusing reminder of that past.

But man, why do they have to be such douchebags?

One Lone Hooker

Hedda and I were sitting in our living room at seven o’clock this morning, drinking out morning coffee and chatting, like we do every morning. Since it was a nice morning out, we had the shades open on our front windows, and we were watching the street as we talked. In the middle of our discussion about something or the other, she interrupts herself to point out that this one girl has been walking up and down the street over and over. Is there really a prostitute out on our street so late in the day?

I hadn’t noticed her, but now I did, and yes she was. She wore skin-tight black jeans, four-inch spike heels, and a black puffy coat, smoking a cigarette. The look was unmistakable. Her makeup, perhaps mysterious and alluring to some John only a few hours before, now looked gaudy and tired in the morning light. She chugged her way down 13th Street, and back up again, the smoke rising from her drags, like a miniature steam locomotive running the Vice Express.

We weren’t sure who she was trying to pick up. Prostitution is down in our neighborhood these days – even during the prime hours! – and the surge in business brought on by the construction boom has also dwindled away, courtesy of a built-up block and a crappy housing market. But even in the fattest times, trying to turn a trick in the middle of a commuter corridor during rush hour couldn’t have landed much success.

Perhaps it was the lack of business; or maybe it was the dirty looks and odd stares she was getting from the smartly-dressed twenty-somethings emerging from the condominiums, passing her on their way to work; or it could be she was scared off by the MPD car that rolled by a few minutes later; or maybe she finally got picked up, but we realized we had seen the last run of her particular choo-choo when she failed to come back up the street after a few minutes.

My Place in the World

In some of my reading, I came across this most excellent quote from the late Stephen Jay Gould. It fairly concisely sums up my attitude with respect to my own life and its purpose, simultaneously intimating at the endless majesty and beauty I find surrounding me.

We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes — one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.

Recorded here for my future reference.

Things That Make Me Sad: Toothpaste Edition

Discovering I have half as much toothpaste as I thought, because of a huge air pocket in the tube, makes me sad.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to slit my wrists or anything.

Super-Walkable Logan Circle

This cool little walkability tool will provide you with a score for how walkable your particular home is. Or any address, for that matter.

Hedda and I score a whopping 97 out of 100! Clearly, Logan Circle is one of the most walkable neighborhoods in the country.

I am proud to say that there has been a trend of increasing walk scores throughout my life (excluding the tumultuous college years).

• House Where I Grew Up – 40/100
• First Apartment in Chicago – 92/100
• Second Apartment in Chicago – 92/100
• Apartment in Arlington – 94/100
• Condo in Washington, DC – 97/100

Living in walkable neighborhoods is a huge advantage in so many ways. Not only do you not need a car (we sold both of ours over three years ago), but the intimacy and connection with your neighbors is unmatched. We have friends up and down the street, many of whom we see on even a regular trip to the grocery store. It’s an intensely social experience.

How walkable is your home?

Tip of the hat to Blaster 151, for the discovery.

39,000 People Can’t Be Wrong: Metrobus Sucks

Hedda and I went to the Cubs game today, where they were soundly spanked by the Nationals. I’m unhappy with the loss, but not devastated – the Cubs won the previous two, and there’s another game tomorrow we’ll be attending. The last couple of days, however, have really soured my attitude towards DC’s wayward transit son: Metrobus.

Shortly after the final out, RFK Stadium belched forth almost 40,000 people onto the streets of Northeast Washington, flooding the streets in a river of people flowing towards their automobiles and public transportation like so many currents and eddies. The flow crushed the Metrorail system, causing huge backups and lines to advance down the escalators and crowd onto the waiting trains. Hedda and I, as we are not fond of being crushed, have been waiting for the D6 bus, which snakes through Northeast DC and downtown before eventually ending up at the corner of 13th and K, eventually heading through Dupont and Georgetown. To be blunt, it’s one of the easiest, most convenient ways to get from RFK back home for anybody living in the southern-ish yuppy-ville Northwest neighborhoods.

That is, if it ever shows up. Monday night, we waited for half an hour, before discovering the bus we were on was actually the bus after the bus we thought, and waiting for another half an hour before departing. The earlier bus just never showed up. Tuesday night we got lucky and happened to walk up right as the bus arrived. Again tonight, though, we waited for the bus with a hundred other people for almost half an hour.

Why doesn’t Metro have buses lined up waiting outside the stadium when the game ends? Why doesn’t Metro have special express shuttle buses ferrying fans to popular destinations, like Union Station, Dupont, and Georgetown? Why the hell do the buses to and from RFK run on regular four-o’clock-on-an-average-afternoon schedules on a Fourth-of-July baseball game against a popular team that they know is going to attract almost 40,000 people?!

It’s not like there’s no demand. Whenever the bus is there, people swarm onto it, filling it to capacity. Inevitably, riders are turned away. People want to ride the D6!

And it’s not like it caught them by surprise. Baseball games are scheduled well in advance – we’re talking years ahead of time here – and Major League Baseball knows which games are going to be big, since they were able to charge us extra for the “premium” game today.

If transit is going to be taken seriously, and it should be – must be – as the price of gasoline creeps ever higher, then Metro needs to get their act together. Start with the easy things. Baby steps are all I’m asking for. This should be a no-brainer. Make it happen.