The Obsession That Is Apple

As I write this, the world is less than 72 hours away from the introduction of yet another blockbuster product from Apple, Inc. Of course I refer to the iPad, which promises to be as much of a game-changer as sliced bread or beer in cans. I suspect that the malls on Saturday will see lines of drooling Apple fanboys snaking past the Gaps, Starbucks, and Macys, and ending at the front doors of the Apple Stores. The lucky ones will have pre-ordered their iPads and will actually dance out of the stores with iPad in hand. The rest will wait their turn to touch the iPads that are chained to the tables, but most won't walk out with them. The initial supply has already been virtually exhausted. And I, to the amazement of all who know me, will be nowhere to be found.

Journey back through time with me to Super Bowl XVIII, in 1984. The iconic Macintosh commercial had its one and only airing during that game. I think it could be argued that this was the most impactful single commercial ever created. At the very least it's up there with the Lyndon Johnson campaign commercial called Daisy that ran in 1964. Anyway, it was just after the 1984 commercial aired that I bought the first Mac for our company. We had already been through a couple of IIe and IIgGS Apples. Since then, at work and at home, I've gone through something like twenty Mac desktops and laptops. As new ones have arrived, the old ones went to our daughters and their children, a couple of young people who couldn't afford one on their own, and my mother. Mom, by the way is approaching 99 years of age and credits her laptop with keeping her mind sharp as she plays solitaire and other games daily. The first iPod came along in 2001. Since then, I'm on my 4th or 5th iPod. I'm also on my 2nd iPhone (3rd if you count the one that Apple replaced on warranty. And now there's the iPad.

What is it about Apple products that creates this kind of brand loyalty? Well, first there's design. No other manufacturer seems to understand that people like having something that looks and acts cool. And Apple, more often than not, is in the technological vanguard. Think of this, a subject that I discussed at lunch today. The iPad is the third new product category in a row in which Apple is defining the form factor: the mp3 player, the smart phone, and the personal media player/reader. iPod, iPhone, iPad. And don't forget how Apple has rewritten the rules for music sales with iTunes, how it's changed software development and sales with the App Store. And now it seems likely the entire media business is going to feel the force of Apple's innovation.

And yet I'm not there, in line for an iPad. Fear not. I can't imagine that I won't have an iPad, and sooner rather than later. I'm just waiting until I've got a good feel for how this new magic fits into my life. Will I stop buying newspapers and subscribe instead to electronic versions? Science fiction writers have been predicting that for decades. Will I miss having a real book in my hands? Will I really use it to look at live timing and scoring while I watch sports on TV? So I'm waiting a bit while some of these questions are answered. Or I could just be truthful and admit that the most important reason for buying an iPad is that it's way cool?

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Whilst finishing my lunch, I renewed my acquaintance with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I had forgotten what a great piece of satire it is, although its founder swears with a straight face that it's not satire, but is an actual religion. He points out that there is every bit as much scientific evidence for the existence of the FSM as there is for any other claimed deity. Point well taken. As you might expect, he has the same respect, or lack thereof, for Intelligent Design, at least for intelligent design by a deity other than his Noodly Goodness, the FSM.

If you're killing a few minutes and need a chuckle or two, I suggest you Google Flying Spaghetti Monster and visit the web-site. I get the biggest kick out of reading the hate e-mail. It's amazingly vituperative and equally amazingly misspelled. And it led me to the quote of the day: “ The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. ”

-Bertrand Russell

It seems to me that if that's not a basic truth, there probably isn't one. As FSM believers are wont to say, "May the sauce be with you."

Space and The Obama Budget

Dateline Washington, February 2. From the Washington Post News Service:

Obama nixes back-to-the-moon program

The Obama administration is killing Constellation, NASA’s ambitious back-to-the-moon program. …Instead…the administration wants to invest $6 billion over five years in a commercial space taxi to carry astronauts into low Earth orbit…

Well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s good news and bad news… and more good news and more bad news. Here’s what I’m talking about.

Good News: We won’t be continuing the work on a new rocket, Ares 1, and a new crew capsule, Orion.

Bad News: We’ve already spent $9 billion on Ares and Orion. To make matters worse, Obama’s budget includes another $2.5 billion to shut the project down!

Good News: Without the new rocket and crew capsule, there’s no way for us to get to the International Space Station (ISS), which is another spectacularly bottomless money pit. The shuttle fleet is being decommissioned and disposed of through a gigantic yard sale, so nobody will be using that to get to the ISS either.

Bad News: In yet another example of backward thinking, the $6 billion commercial space taxi will be good only to do exactly what the shuttle fleet had done: give rides back and forth to low Earth orbit, i.e. the ISS.

The Worst News: There is not a thin dime in the budget for exploration. $17 billion wasted, to go nowhere but to the Hubble and the ISS. Not a single dramatic piece of science has been done in the ISS, the Hubble is on its last legs, and there won’t be any more Mars rovers, unmanned visits to the rest of our solar system, or colonists on the moon or Mars.

Unmanned exploration is the best thing we can do right now. It’s cost-effective, relatively quick, and completely safe. But that won't happen. Clearly, though, our government is on a different page. It seems to me that we’ve somehow decided that our destiny lies here on Earth and nowhere else, and that’s sad. I had hoped for more.

The Law

Herewith, the promised enlightenment on the Law of Unintended Consequences. It’s a “Law” like Murphy’s Law, rather than a real law like Boyle’s Law. (Extra credit for anyone who can quote the latter without reference to Wikipedia or Google. Shockingly, I managed to dredge up an acceptable approximation.) While there’s no official statement of the Law of Unintended Consequences—let’s just call it The Law—the function of it is this: For every action taken, there will be consequences, both the expected consequences and the unexpected ones which will be, more often than not, negative in nature.

Take as an example Kudzu, also known as the vine that ate the South. It was first introduced to the U.S. from the Orient in the last part of the nineteenth century. Because it was hardy, with a strong and extensive root system, the thought was that it would prevent soil erosion. Besides, it was a nice looking vine that could be used decoratively. Eventually someone with the best of intentions thought it would be worth a try to prevent the erosion of the soil beside highway interchanges and on medians. And it didn’t even need mowing. Bonus!

Enter The Law. It certainly did the intended job, but something else happened. Kudzu loved the climate in the Southeast U.S. And just like Topsy, it just growed. And growed. And growed. Anyone who has driven the highways and byways of the region has seen it, covering anything that doesn’t move for more than 15 minutes in a row. And nothing seems to deter it, although we can be sure that when something is found to fight the Kudzu, it will also cause birth defects, or black holes. It’s The Law.

I was reminded to write about this by a recent article from the Associated Press under the lead “Asian carp a hungry threat.” “[They] can reach 4 feet long and weigh up to 100 pounds.” Not surprisingly, they are starving out the native varieties of fish and are threatening Great Lakes fishing. They also tend to leap out of the water in response to motors, turning themselves into 100-pound unguided missiles ready to KO the unwary boater.

But from whence did the Asian carp come, and why? From Asia, of course, “to cleanse fish ponds and sewage lagoons” in—you guessed it—the deep South. From there into the Mississippi and who knows… Tomorrow the Great Lakes, and then on to Canada! It’s The Law again.

One more example that is—it seems to me—a whole lot less humorous. It’s the military version of The Law, also known euphemistically as Collateral Damages. This is what it means in English: People we didn’t mean to kill, but did anyway.

In Defense of Participles

Are students taught about participles any more? I, for one, am getting sick and tired of hearing people who should know better using a participle when a past tense is called for. Chief among this group are the TV newsreaders, who prefer to be called “anchors.”

Perhaps that appellation causes them to think they know something about matters nautical. If that were so, they’d never report, “The boat sunk in 100 feet of water.” No, no, no! The boat didn’t “sunk;” it SANK! Why do they make that mistake when they’d never make the opposite mistake and say, “The boat has sank”?

Sink, sank, sunk, sinking. Present, past, past participle, present participle (also gerund). Does no one learn to conjugate verbs anymore?

Same goes for stink, stank, stunk, stinking.

And you wonder why I’m sometimes referred to as the anal-compulsive grammarian?

Book Review

The Tender Bar

By JR Moehringer

Remember that book you’ve always thought you had inside you? You know the one I mean; a cross between Animal House and The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met. The one that’s populated by the loons, goons, and weirdos that have crossed your path and defined your character. The one that actually explains how you became who and what you are. Well, you can forget about it; JR Moehringer has beaten you to it.

This excellent memoir—in spite of the rather silly wordplay in the title—takes us along for the ride as a mostly fatherless boy travels the path to manhood with the help of the denizens of a bar called Publicans. Among the surrogate fathers are engaging characters like Bob the Cop, Smelly, and fuckembabe. And Uncle Charlie, the ringleader of this merry band.

Pulitzer-winner Moehringer has crafted his characters with loving care, putting one in mind of Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight. The reader can’t resist the invitation to get into the author’s head and watch while he learns to live, love, drink, dream, and deal with his fears and failures. The crazy path that takes him from his grandparents’ decrepit home in Manhasset to Arizona to Harvard to Lord & Taylor to the New York Times always leads back to Publicans and—fortunately for us—always leads back to writing.

Pour yourself another drink; it’s a comfortable place to spend some time.

Fermi’s Paradox

Anyone who has studied physics, and many that haven’t, will have heard of Enrico Fermi. In the first half of the 20^th century, Fermi and his colleagues were busily re-writing the physics textbooks. The collegial atmosphere that surrounded these brilliant men led to many discussions that ranged far from their specialties. One of those discussions was on the possibilities and probabilities of life—and particularly intelligent life—elsewhere in the universe.

Fermi had a reputation for doing lightning fast, complex computations in his head and came up with the result that there were probably billions of planets capable of supporting life, and millions of them probably held intelligent life. But if that was so, Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” And that’s the paradox.

Where, indeed. A number of possible answers to that question have been posited, and if you’re interested enough to explore them, I suggest you Google “Fermi’s Paradox.” For now, let’s consider the three most obvious answers. First, ETs don’t exist. This answer is the least fun, and to me, the hardest one to accept. It requires us to believe that in the ten billion years that our galaxy has existed, on the billions of planets it encompasses, intelligent life has arisen on only Earth. It seems to me that the odds against this being the true answer are—well— astronomical.

Second possibility: They exist, but haven’t been in touch with us. And I ask, “why not?” Well, civilizations younger than us may not have the ability to communicate with us yet. Okay. But since Earth is a middle-aged planet of a middle-aged star, there must be civilizations older than we are, and one would think that they would have been in touch. If they have the capability to know of us and to communicate with us, it’s hard to believe that they wouldn't want to talk. Maybe they just haven’t found our number yet.

Third possibility, and my favorite: We have already been visited by aliens, and perhaps colonized and even fathered by them. To paraphrase Walt Kelly’s Pogo, “We have met the ET, and he is us.” There’s no generally accepted evidence that this has happened, although there are a number of researchers who believe they have found concrete evidence of long-term visitations by aliens to early Egyptian and Aztec civilizations. None of the evidence is incontrovertible but it is tantalizing. If this possibility interests you, let me suggest Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken.

One more possibility; call it 2a: Persistent civilizations have learned that the universe is a dangerous place, and the best way to get by is to keep your head down and make as little noise as possible. An excellent fictional treatment of this rule of survival can be found in The Forge of God and its sequel, Anvil of Stars, by Greg Bear.

Sooner or later, this puzzle, too, will be answered. At least that’s the way it seems to me.