The Future, Again: iPods and Idiots

Tonight, I saw something thought-provoking in the Target parking lot (man, how often do you get to say that in your life?) and I thought I'd share it with you as we prepare to close out the year.

A car speeds out of the lot, a Mustang, it's hauling ass way faster than any car has a right to do in a parking lot, especially this one - it's one of those liability-controlled parking lots with the bright stripey crosswalks and Donita Dunes-sized speed bumps - and at night no less, with a light rain making visibility dicey.

But this guy's tearing ass. Naturally, a couple appears out of nowhere and has to jerk back suddenly to avoid Ben Hur as he piles on the right foot to impress his fourteen-year-old girlfriend. What hits me next is what the guy says. He yells after the speeding car. "Idiot!"

And it's loud enough for all of us in the lot to hear. Right then, I'm sure his wife took his arm gently, which is the next best thing to trying to get distance, going "I'm not with him" - too late, she knows we know he's hers, and of course, he wants us all to know how much of a badass he is, and to a certain extent it works; I wouldn't have messed with him, people that yell in public are dangerously retarded in ways scientists haven't even discovered yet.

But the one person for whom the yell really should have mattered - the guy in the getaway car - probably didn't hear a single syllable, what for the woofers and the tweeters, all those decibels of R. Kelly or whoever are building a fortress - an invisible wall of sound (stealing a little from Phil Spector, here) - and nobody's going to punch through, not if Mister Mustang doesn't want them to.

And that's what went through my head. Y'see kids, it's the future already, there's no more waiting around for this, you're living it. Jetpacks and all. And when they say that computers, or electronics, or cell phones, just technology in general - anything you see on Cnet - is changing the way people communicate (remember that word?), well, boy, they mean it.

I don't need to go sounding like an old fart just yet, I don't actually remember a time when people were courteous or kind - everyone's always been pretty much an asshole as long as I've been watching - but I do see this new old thing, this trend of social deafness increasing.

And I think it's starting to make a dent.

Consider guilt for a sec. Just quickly, we're (mostly) not Catholics around here so no need to dwell, but get the real feel for it. Remember that last time you committed a social faux pas? And you were caught? The red cheeks, the heat on the back of your neck, the awkwardness? All subtle signals to get you to listen up, to watch for signals, to change your direction to follow the flow. About as subtle as a baseball bat.

Sure, the image of the rebel is long-standing in people's minds, but it hasn't been until very recently that we've really embraced that you can be a rebel so easily; the old rebel had not only to shun criticism, but hear it first. Now, you can buck the system and be an individual easier than ever before.

Just turn up the Nickelback.

If you don't hear someone criticise you, there's a good chance you won't feel nearly as inclined to modify your behavior to suit those around you. Sure, you might see them, but our vision extends as far as 170 degrees, no more. Our peripheral sensory apparatus has always been hearing. And with our concept of personal space in this country being the human interconnectivity equivalent of "git offa my land", touch doesn't enter into it, especially if someone's about to chew you out. In terms of decibels, it might be good to remember a few things about human hearing.

Humans, we hear a nice range of frequencies, changes in which we're very sensitive to. You already know that. You might not know that the amplitude - the volume - has a huge range, too, and the numbers are pretty striking. Using a unit called a decibel (dB or dBA), you can measure the volume - or more specifically the pressure level - of a sound. And as it turns out, what we're looking for in conversation, and what we get from our iPod are vastly different. 45 decibels is the normal range for human conversation. When someone yells at you, it's more like 75 dB. An iPod can go as high as 130 dB with decent earphones. And it doesn't effect us linearly. Every 3 dB equals twice as much sound to our ears.

And be honest. When you've got your earbuds in, is it "reasonable volume"? Not me, baby - the big attractor for the iPod culture to me is that the world sounds like I want it to sound; the Coldplay effect just doesn't happen all the way for me unless I crank "Yellow" at full volume. I'm not hearing anyone, I'm pretending I don't see them, I've got that Matrix feeling where other people are there, they're just not real. This is living the movie.

So, someone yells. You have your iPod. They have a fight. iPod wins. If you have your music up, it wins by 55 dB, or to put it another, scarier way - 18 times the percieved volume of the guy yelling at you. At least in my mind, then, these individuals with the wires streaming from the sides of their head are effectively deaf. And, depending on what they're listening to, they might also qualify as retarded. According to Dangerous Decibels, the maximum amount of healthy exposure time to 115 dB is 30 seconds. That's all. And then damage stars.

This deafness, in fact, prompted the EU to levy noise caps on manufacturers of digital audio devices in the EU-participating countries: 100 dB is the max an EU digital audio player can be allowed to play at.

So is it widespread? Look at the numbers, you tell me. Not sure if you've seen these stats, folks, but 22 million adults in the US have iPods. Out of the 217 million adults in the United States, that's more than 1 in 10 with a digital deafmaker. This isn't just on the roads anymore. It's in airports. Coffee shops. Schools. Offices. Anywhere where people just seem to do better with a theme song for their life.

But it's making a little rebellion for all of us. It's getting bigger, our bubbles are getting smaller, we're defining lifestyles for ourselves, cutting and editing the film of life to rid ourselves of the parts we don't like, we're doing it every day. Part of that process is weeding out criticism, and in the case of the iPod Nation, or people like Mister Mustang, it's to the point where you don't really have to be truly deaf to stop criticism at the gate.

You just have to like music. Welcome, once again, to the future.

2005 - Happy New Year - 2006

Quotables

I'm forever on the hunt (it's a pretty passive hunt, but whatever) for quotables, just about anything that's got the right - well, let's call it the right patina. Anyway, I stumble on Bash's quote RSS feed and instantly hit a doozy:

[zien] ah i love water. it's like nature's fruit juice.
[cgom] ....FRUIT JUICE is nature's fruit juice. moron.

For an encore:

[savenor] i just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by fleeing the scene of the accident

And Encyclopedia Dramatica has this classic linked:

[possessed27] i <3 philosophy
[prop4g4nd4p4nd4] wtf does that mean
[possessed27] rotate it 90 degrees, you foo
[prop4g4nd4p4nd4] wtf
[prop4g4nd4p4nd4] i "ball sac" philosophy?

Hope everybody had a merry Christmas.

Myspace Account Deleted

Yeah, so I'm with T-Nuts on this. The hell with MySpace. If people want to get in touch with me, they can go ahead and put in the 30 seconds it takes to find me on Google and do it.

Encyclopedia Dramatica's Article on MySpace

Have fun with Rupert Murdoch's money, Tom. Wish I'd thought of it first.

Arms Raised in a "V"...

Tyler left this attractive message in my entryway - sorry, foyer - just before he went off to go be a monk or whatever he's going to do over in Hong Kong for three months.

The holiday's been the usual stress-fest; it'd be nice to have more news but it's been a lot of the same.

2006 is right around the corner. Unless something pisses me off or blows my mind I'll probably be pretty quiet until then; keep it tuned to this channel for updates.

Nukes: Always The Bottom Line

"If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe -- like in Germany, Austria or other countries -- to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe and we will support it."

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran

At this quote, of course, Israel expressed outrage. They don't like that idea. A lot of people don't like that idea. It's distressing to the Israeli people and to the continuing establishment of a Jewish homeland, we get that. I mean, I think even calling them Zionists is pretty uncouth as far as global political respect and understanding goes.

But, respect for the Jewish state wasn't the first thought on White House spokesman Scott McClellan's mind; he wasn't thinking about the Jewish people at all when he issued his reply to the press:

"It just further underscores our concerns about the regime in Iran and it's all the more reason why it's so important that the regime not have the ability to develop nuclear weapons."

What? Nuclear weapons? Nobody said anything about nuclear weapons, Scott. Keep your voice in your pants or wherever, man, just stop with the nuclear weapons thing for two seconds.

Ever since this administration, I swear, it's nuclear weapons, 24/7. They were seriously starting to go out of fashion, too, remember? Russia collapses economically, Tom Clancy spews out a few books about rogue states acquiring nukes from unpaid missile site guards, and then it doesn't even manage to make it into Hollywood's political-thriller scriptwriting basket, instead relegated back to an "atoms-for-peace-well-sort-of" plot tschotchke in such pseudo-scientific stinkers as Armageddon and The Core. Oh, man, The Core. Yuck.

And if it doesn't make it into Hollywood, Congress doesn't understand it, and nobody hears about it. Anyway, near as I can tell these days, it takes a sincere effort of the will to get people to ride the nuke train, even the much-ballyhooed threats of ADMs (suitcase bombs), neutron bombs (dirty bombs), and that one thing they do where they shoot a missile at a nuclear waste facility haven't really continued to make any front page news.

As far as I'm concerned, the public's lost interest, politicians have lost interest (seen any more requests for B-1 bombers, lately?) and McClellan couldn't squeeze any more glowing blood out of this turnip if he produced one of those frightening, fraught-with-terrorist-and-possibly-dictator-possibilities aluminum tubes out of his pocket (oh no!)

Then again, that's not stopping him, so maybe he knows something we don't. Maybe the worst-case-scenario could happen and there's knowledge we don't have that, if we did, would make us terrified of it just the same as this administration seems to be. Or maybe not.

Phishing Quiz

I was interested in a report I pulled off Digg.com about an e-mail Phishing Quiz, and the rather unsettling report that only 4% of those that took the test scored 100%, leading to a reasonable assumption that perhaps we're not as keen to the threat of Phishing as we should be.

Check it out. I scored 90% - I missed one. It's very subtle, but fortunately I missed it the safe way (thought it was a phishing scam when it was actually genuine). See what you get.

Take the Quiz

Saddam's House

So let me ask you something else.

Since when has anyone ever been able to boycott their own trial? When has anyone ever been allowed to piss all over a courtroom like Saddam Hussein has, yell at witnesses, make accusatory statements out of turn, and then declare the court unjust and decide he's going to walk out? Just, you know, walk outside, maybe go across the street, grab a mocha, read the newspaper, play a little bit of Everquest and then - hey - not come back to court for his own trial.

I'm a retard when it comes to law, I know, especially law that exists outside of our own country. Hell, even law in our country baffles the living shit out of me. Take Robert Blake, for example. Baretta. Like many out-of-work actors, he finds it hard to deal with life's completely unfair dealing of the cards, decides he can't deal with the stress of having to cope with another human being, and so he hires a hitman to ice his wife.

Now here it gets hazy, because I don't know if I can say that he actually did that, see; I might have to use the word "allegedly", because he was only found guilty - sorry - liable in civil court. So is he guilty? Is he not? You don't know! All we know is that while he's not serving any time, he's cutting a check for $30 million for something he apparently did in one court that they couldn't prove he did in a different court. Of course, the burden of proof is higher in criminal court than it is in civil court, but this kind of shit still stuns me sometimes.

But turning back to Saddam, what's really confusing me right now is the incredible amount of leniency with which he's being treated. Look, I'm not asking someone to sit behind him with a little water sprayer filled with mustard gas and, you know, every once in a while give him a couple of squirts on the back of the neck or anything, but the man is making a mockery of a court which is supposed to be trying him for crimes against humanity. Against humanity. The entire species. I mean, that's the crime we'd try aliens for if we could ever prove they've been sticking probes up the asses of backwoods farmers since the 50's, mutilating our cattle and assembling their various organs into the entire Jackson Family and David Gest.

I know that we need to treat criminals humanely. I mean, the fact that the most Saddam is complaining about is having to wear the same shirt for seven days and not being able to get a cigarette when he wants one is ample evidence that life's not been too bad for the Mother of All Dictators. Or the Father. I think that one's still trademarked by Hitler, actually. Whatever.

But this guy has gone way beyond common criminal status, and now, like parents afraid to discipline a child - except this child used chemical weapons to massacre an entire town, authorized the torture of civilians, and agreed to the killing of an untold number of enemies to his regime - the courtroom is letting this defendant push them around with his temper tantrums and outlandish whining about his treatment.

And the media's covering it, too, they're afraid of the same thing everybody else seems to be. What it is, I don't know. What's Saddam going to do, complain you to death? The man was pulled out of a rathole in the ground, for Christ's sake, he's powerless. For once, if it's any help to anyone, I'll append my signature to any document that authorizes whatever means necessary to get this guy to shut the fuck up so we can get on with it.

Seriously, guys. Can we drop this guy off a cliff and move on?

Oh, wait. I mean, hold him indefinitely in trial and delay it as many times as necessary so he can get his suit pressed and his blood pressure checked and appeal to the media until nobody cares and he dies from old age. I forgot, that's what we do to despotic, genocidal psychopaths these days. We ignore them.

Scary Quotes

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10355980/

"I think it's more important to put Christ back into our war planning than into our Christmas cards," said the council's general secretary, the Rev. Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman.

Bob, I realize that could be taken one of two ways, but still, you're scaring people. People like me.

KEEP CHRIST OUT OF OUR WAR PLANNING

Virtual Sailor

What does a guy who used to spend every weekend on the water do now that the winter's come early?

Well, I play Virtual Sailor, a simulation coded by a really smart guy.

I mean, smart.

What you're seeing is an actual screenshot; the game is gorgeous, the waves and the motion are very thoroughly modeled to make the feeling pretty awesome.

Some seriously high-tech 3d effects have made it into the newest release, including normal mapping and caustic lighting for underwater scenes, but I think the one thing that really does it for me is the waves.

Alright, I'll admit it. I've been looking for a sailing simulator ever since the weather got too cold to go out. But each one until this one was missing something - something I couldn't put my finger on but it was something that I felt that I'd know when I finally found it.

And I did, and I found what I was looking for. The feeling comes with the waves. This game models waves so well it's scary - you can pump the waves up to a horrendous gale-force height and have the ride of your life, or bump along gently with two-footers while you take in a leisurely sunset.

The shot you're seeing is Commencement Bay in Tacoma, some of you folks have been there before, and it's in this game!

I am absolutely amazed that this type of precision and feeling can be put into a game. We've come so far with hardware, and it makes me smile when I see people making the most of it.

http://www.avsim.com/vs/

Check it out if you've got a second. There's some good stuff going on there.

In White, Just in Time For Christmas

Re-recorded dialogue

The original liquid TV shorts

White box

That hairstyle