If only I'd had the forethought to buy a less fuel-efficient car

My 1994 clunker got 19 mpg when it was new. According to cars.gov. That's 1 mpg too many. If you want to conserve gas, you should convert to gallons per mile (or gallons per 100 miles) and decrease that more-relevant number. Assuming they drive the same amount, trading in a car that gets 10 miles per gallon for one that gets 12.5 miles per gallon saves the same amount of gas as going from 20 mpg to 33.3 mpg or from 40 mpg to 200 mpg:

1/10mpg = .1 gallons per mile
1/12.5mpg = .08 gallons per mile
.1gpm - .08gpm = .02 gallon savings per mile

1/20mpg = .05 gallons per mile
1/33.3mpg = .03 gallons per mile
.05gpm - .03gpm = .02 gallon savings per mile

1/40mpg = .025 gallons per mile
1/200mpg = .005 gallons per mile
.025gpm - .005gpm = .02 gallon savings per mile

I think that in order to qualify for the "cash for clunkers" your new car should pass the following 3 criteria:

1) the new car gets at least 4 more mpg than the old one.
2) the new car gets at least 20 miles per gallon
3) the new car uses at least one fewer gallons per 100 miles

This graph illustrates these three criteria and their max, whicx is my proposal:

It's Called a "Cross WALK"

Not a "Cross DRIVE THE FUCK THROUGH".

Do you know how many people I've yelled that to? A lot.

Space Taxi: Diary of a Long-Haul Tanker

At the bottom of the ocean, thermophilic bacteria have evolved to take nourishment from heat coming through cracks in the earth’s crust. Though similar in most respects to other bacteria, these thermophiles have the unique ability to harness this heat energy. Through natural selection, generation by generation, their species has adapted to take advantage of unseen power radiated from below the ocean floor. Organs that once digested physical nourishment have slowly mutated to perform this dual purpose.

If string theory is correct, space contains many more dimensions than the four that we can perceive. Imagine that some vastly intelligent being lives right next door to us along one of these unseen dimensions. Could he be sending information to us in some manner not easily measured by modern technology? He may even be looking forward along our “temporal” dimension and sending us clues.

Neuroscience is in its infancy. We’ve hardly even guessed at the function of vast portions human brain; much less the selective pressures and adaptations that carved it. Could we be evolving to better receive these signals? Even inchoate, such an ability would certainly confer a selective advantage. Could this vastly complex organ be only part thinking machine and part … antenna?

I doubt it, but my passengers are pretty fired-up about the idea. That’s why they’ve hired me to .. blah blah blah blah blah blah … etc.

Vacation to Earth

Someday, most people will live in extra-terrestrial biodomes, space stations and ships. It will be considered a great luxury to get back to and spend even a few days on Earth, where you can walk around *outside*; see the sky; jump into a pond; etc. It's the only place we're perfectly adapted to.

There's a *big* dipper too?

What if you only existed for a week at a time, once a year (say from Christmas to New Years)? And you aged normally during these weeks and lived until these one-week periods totaled a normal human lifespan? So you would live for several thousand years, one week per year. What would you do? If possible, you'd create a cult where successive generations of people could each function as your main contact, updating you on what happened over the past year. How closely could you keep up with what was going on? Would this cult try to manipulate you? You couldn't let this cult control your information too closely. Would you be exceptionally wise or just have no idea what was going on most of the time? What language(s) would you speak? I'm imagining an interaction with the public much like that of The Pope. Would your pronouncements be any more or less insightful or relevant than those of The Pope? Would you take the time to learn to drive? You could probably get pretty rich, or at least sustain yourself in high style, on antiques and compound interest.

It would be nice if you, for example, had met Jesus. But it's not that likely that you would have, given the rate at which people and information traveled back then. Also, I don't think that he was nearly as famous during his life as he is now.

Time Travel

Traveling forward in time is simple. You can travel close to light speed, fall asleep locked in a closet, or just sit there (if you're satisfied with your current rate of travel which is one second per second). Backward is another story. The logical problems can be solved if the state of the universe is "saved off" at periodic intervals like a hardDrive backup. Then, when you go to a previous state, all of the states after the destination state are blown away and, if you travel forward again, it's just like locking yourself in a closet. So, the future world you arrive at will only be the same as the one you left if every single coin flip and other random event turns out *exactly* the same as they had in the world you remembered.

This leaves the physical problem of conservation of mass. If you go back in time, the destination universe suddenly has more mass (you are added). This can be fixed by relativity, but the amount of energy to account for something big (like a person) is far too much for any conceivable device to generate. You also need to absorb the energy released by your disappearance in the present. However, something tiny, like a subatomic particle, could be managed this way. Information, for example, in the form of one spinning quark per bit (spin direction = bit value) could be sent. Say, 32 (enough to win the lottery) would be perfectly reasonable for a modern device.

Of course, the problem of random events reoccurring still exists, but if you minimize the amount of time it has to travel backward and the influence of those who know the result, you could probably still win it (though it may take a few tries).

The comet

What if we sent a probe to look closely at a comet that had been flying through the galaxy and found, attached to the comet, messages and probes that had been placed there by intelligent life from other planets as it passed through their solar systems? It's sort of like graffiti on a New York City subway train.

Artificial Gravity

Why can't a space ship, instead of giving an intense thrust at the beginning of the trip, just continuously accelerate at 9.8m/sec*sec for the first half of the trip and turn around and accelerate at the same rate in the other direction for the other half of the trip (reaching zero velocity at your destination)? In one year, you're already going 1/10 * the speed of light, plenty close to experience the effects of relativity. You also get gravity for free assuming the "floor" of the ship is on the same side as the thrusters.

Hello World

Until today, I hadn't ridden my bike in years (and hadn't been a big rider even back then). On an impulse, I filled the tires and rode in to work today. It's about 15 miles through Lexington, Arlington, Cambridge and Boston and it took about an hour. I don't even have a helmet. It turned out to be quite pleasant. We'll see how well I get home tonight and sore I am tomorrow.

It would be very nice if this could become a regular thing. I tried public transportation for a while. It was a long multi-phase trip (bus/subway/bus). Eventually it got to be too much. When I was stuck on the stalled T underground for 45 minutes and was, therefore, a half hour late to pick up my two small children from daycare and unable to call (because I was underground), I decided to start driving to work. The problem is that the drive is now taking at least 45 minutes, usually more. It can be as long as two hours when the weather is bad or when Boston's many many many construction delays clog my main, alternate, and alternate-alternate routes. This seems to be happening more and more often and I can't leave work 2 hours earlier everyday just in case. Did I mention that when you're late to school (they're in school now) they charge a dollar a minute per kid? 10 minutes late = $20. This is completely reasonable. If they didn't, parents would be late every day. The teachers have lives too. However, it's also not affordable. We're already paying $33k per year. It's not a fancy place. That's just how much it costs to have 2 kids in preschool. We've spent well over $100k to this point.

We don't eat out much and I drive a 15-year-old car that I bought on eBay. I'll be very happy when they start kindergarten. Public kindergarten will be like a 33 grand raise. What to do with all of that money ... how about paying off all of the debt we've gotten into trying to survive in Boston with 2 kids on a postdoc + medical resident salary? It's a generous postdoc, but it's turning out to be insufficient. I think Boston's a fantastic place to be either rich or childless, but if you're neither of those, there's no good reason to be here. We're both signed up for 3-year employment contracts and when they end (in a year and a half) I'll be more than ready to move either back to Madison (where we came here from) or some other place in the middle of the country.

So, why do we live in Lexington? We used to live in a two-family in Arlington. Unfortunately, (as almost everyone I know in the area who has small children has found out) families sharing a space with anyone but other families tends to result in serious and ongoing noise/lifestyle conflicts that almost never end well. It certainly wasn't going to end well in our case. A full description of what happened would require at least one full post in itself. See this NYTimes article for a good description of the general phenomenon.

We didn't want to move out unless we could close off the possibility of landing in the same (apparently all-to-common) situation, but you can't control who moves in around you. So we searched Craigslist for an affordable, non-fraudulent, cat-allowing, de-leaded (our kids don't eat paint, but it's the law around here), single family house to rent. What we found was a tiny house in Lexington. It's actually not much more money than we were paying in Arlington and it's got a gigantic yard.

So now, though Lexington has more history and character than typical post-WW2 Brady-Bunch land, we're in the suburbs and, of course, transportation is an issue. I haven't mentioned gas prices because I'm actually pro-high-gas-prices for the obvious reasons. I just have to figure out a way to fulfill my responsibilities to my family and my job within the confines of what we can afford in terms of housing and transportation. So, maybe riding my bike will work out. I don't think driving once in a while will be a problem, especially if I fold in a grocery-shopping trip on the way home. I can probably also work from home a day or two a week (assuming I'm productive).

Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about this morning. Speaking of being productive, I better get to it. Happy First-Blog-Post-Ever Day (in case anyone reads this).