Humbug!

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.
--Bill Vaughn

Except for kids still intoxicated by their first drinks and their first kisses, everyone agrees that New Year's Eve is our most overrated holiday. For a while, I was afraid it was just me -- that everyone except, pathetically, myself was having an hilarious time. But I finally looked around and realized that the only folks having an hilarious time were the sorts who also had hilarious times on Arbor Day and John Quincy Adams's Birthday.

But this year, for maybe the first time, I've also wondered if the entire week between Christmas and New Year's is also overrated. Looking around at happy people on the street, however, this time I'm sure it really is just me.

As a kid, the week following Christmas was a riotous exercise in the joys of consumption -- playing with every toy, building with every building set, challenging friends and siblings to play every game -- riding new bikes, blowing myself up with new chemistry sets, causing catastrophic collisions with new electric train sets¹ -- all in the dreamy illusion that vacation from school would last forever. Finally, I'd wake up dazed on New Year's Day, put on the funny hats my folks brought home from a dance or party, gaze around at the demolished remnants of my Christmas presents -- and face the cold reality that school began in the next day or so.

But while it lasted, Christmas week was the veritable Mardi Gras of childhood.

As the years passed, the orgiastic aspects of the week were left behind, but there remained the satisfaction of hanging out with relatives I didn't see the rest of the year, lots of good things to eat, Christmas decorations to enjoy, and general good humor all around.

This year, I had a very enjoyable Christmas with relatives in Sonoma, but unaccountably had made reservations to return to Seattle the night of December 27. I returned home to a quiet, chilly, undecorated house -- a dark and austerely Cromwellian outpost in a dazzling world still celebrating the feasts and festivals of Merry Olde England -- greeted only by my two loving but somewhat prim feline companions.

Where did Christmas disappear to so suddenly? Surely, even Cromwell must have had his moments of doubt, moments when he felt he'd gone too far? That he'd thrown the baby out with the bath?

Anyway, Christmas week ends Friday, after which the festive Yule coach turns back into stale pumpkin pie for everyone, and we can all join together in putting our noses to the workaday grindstone.

At least, before it's over, there'll still be some hella good bowl games to re-warm my icy heart.

But next Christmas, I'm going to plan things out better!

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¹When I got bored creating devastating railway accidents, I found I could amuse myself by connecting my transformer's power pole to the ground pole with a piece of wiring. Observation: (1) Sparks fly; (2) the wire vibrates frantically, making a satisfying buzzing noise; (3) the wire begins to smoke; and (4) the insulation melts and burns off the wire. The short circuit fortunately could not draw enough power through the transformer to blow a fuse out in the garage (which would have resulted in my father's blowing his own fuse).

Merry Christmas!

© The New Yorker

Merry Christmas to my thousands of readers. I'm heading south by Amtrak tomorrow, spending Christmas week with relatives in Sonoma. May your holidays be happy, and every bit as warm as the WPIX-TV Yule log!

Rail to air

At 10:00 a.m. this morning, the final link was added to Seattle's light rail route between downtown and the airport -- the 1.7 mile link between Tukwila station and Sea-Tac Airport. By 11:15 a.m., your roving correspondent and irrationally exuberant rapid transit fanatic was riding the rails. I wouldn't have waited so long, but I wanted to make sure that the first few trains made the trip uneventfully, with no untoward collapses of the elevated tracks en route.

I'm pleased to announce that the trip went smashingly, and all seems in order. I timed the trip at 39 minutes from airport departure to Westlake (downtown) arrival. The fare is $2.50. If you ride out and come back within the two-hour transfer period, your return trip is treated as a free transfer. Because I took the bus downtown from my home ($1.75), the computer subtracted only another 75 cents from my fare card for the light rail ride to the airport, and zero for the return. Gaming the system is cool, even when you love -- with your whole heart and your whole mind -- the system that you're gaming!

My only criticism is that the airport station is not incorporated into the terminal building, as are rail connections at most airports. Instead, you have about a quarter-mile walk, most of it on a dedicated path through the pre-existing parking garage, to reach the transit station. But you could easily walk this same distance at other airports, such as Chicago or San Francisco -- you would just be less aware of the distance because you would be walking within the terminal building.

Lots of sightseers with small kids making the ride on the first day, but also a lot of flyers with their rolling luggage, many of them coming on board at stations along the route. Light rail is going to be a nice amenity for flyers, especially those headed for hotels or business offices downtown.

Next development will be tunneling the route from Westlake to Husky Stadium at the University, with a single intermediate station constructed under Capitol Hill. That extension's already under construction, and due for completion in 2016.

Dark matter

While you and I are obsessing over our Christmas gift list or, on a grander scale, hating Joe Lieberman for his antics in the U.S. Senate, some of our fellow humans are pondering the nature and future of the universe.

News comes this week from the Soudan Mine in the chilly iron mining country of northern Minnesota. After two years of reading sensors located in an old mine 2,000 feet underground, chilled almost to absolute zero (0.01° K.), scientists have observed two tiny blips of heat, which they suspect are the result of the sensors being hit by a couple of WIMPS. No, the WIMPS aren't the scientists; they are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles -- a form of "dark matter." The odds are about 75-80 percent that the detectors have detected WIMPS, rather than simply picking up some form of background radiation. Because of the small possibility of background "noise," however, no claim is being made at this time of a conclusive "dark matter" detection. But scientists are optimistic.

Dark matter particles are dark because -- although heavy -- they do not emit light, they have no electrical charge, and they virtually never interact with other particles. They just hang around space being heavy. Apparently, however, they do interact with the germanium/silicon detectors that the scientists have installed under the Mesabi Range, thus permitting the reported detection.

Dark matter, until now, has been a theoretical construct, hypothesized to explain why the universe, once created in the Big Bang, hasn't flown apart like scraps of an exploded firecracker. The universe is expanding, yes, but in a controlled expansion. The mutual gravitational attraction among all particles is the accepted explanation for the limited speed of expansion, but there's nowhere near enough visible matter to provide the graviational pull that would explain the observed data. Therefore, scientists have for some time suggested the existence of "dark matter" -- matter massive enough to provide the required gravitational tug to keep the stars from flying apart much faster than they do, but matter so "dark" that we can't detect it by our senses and instruments.

Until now. Maybe.

If dark matter exists, there's a lot of it around. Scientists calculate that 25 percent of the mass of the universe is dark matter, as compared with only 4 percent being found in atoms (including visible matter composed of atoms). (The rest of the universe's mass -- an incredible 70 percent or so -- is believed to be "dark energy," mass/energy that the predominant theory suggests is inherent in the nature of space itself).

Other scientific teams are working to confirm the Minnesota identification of dark matter, including an American team working in the Italian Alps, and the CERN team operating the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) near Geneva (the collider I've discussed in earlier posts).

Pretty cool stuff. Pondering these matters should calm us and diminish the usual irritation caused by the elevated mass and energy of frenzied Christmas shoppers at the local Wal-Mart.

GOP hot air

Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), has demanded that the clerk read a proposed 767-page amendment to the Health Care Reform bill now being considered by the Senate. The reading of bills and amendments is virtually always waived as a waste of time. No one listens, of course, despite Sen. Coburn's disingenuous claim that the marathon reading will bring "a dose of transparency" to the debate.

Coburn's demand is just one more tactic in the Republican effort ("No, no, a thousand times NO -- whatever you propose, we'll say NO!!") to stall any health care reform bill into oblivion. The Republicans estimate it will take until midnight tonight before the amendment has been completely read.

"If we need to lay [sic] down in traffic to stop the bill we would," according to Republican sources.

The Republicans say that polls show that the Senate bill is not popular, and they are thus justified in filibustering the measure to death.

It wasn't long ago that right-wing bumper strips reminded us that "America is a republic, not a democracy," meaning that the public elects legislative and executive branches, and expects them to use their sound judgment in legislating -- as opposed to enacting legislation directly by some form of polling. But that was then, apparently, and this is now.

President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress were elected barely a year ago on a platform that strongly endorsed health care reform. The issue was discussed repeatedly in the presidential debates. I would think that the only poll that counts was the one taken of the voters in November 2008. Congress and the administration are now attempting to do precisely what they were elected to do.

My advice to the good senator from Oklahoma would be -- were I not such a gentleman -- the same as that once delivered famously to a Democratic senator on the floor of the Senate by Vice President Dick Cheney.

My advice to the Democratic leadership is to keep the Senate in session through Christmas, if necessary, to keep the bill moving. Let Sen. Coburn explain to his family back in Oklahoma that he can't celebrate Christmas with him this year, because he needs to read the phone book into the record on the floor of the Senate.

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1:45 p.m. -- The senator offering the amendment withdrew it after 139 pages had been read, denouncing the Republican maneuver: "People can have honest disagreements, but in this moment of crisis it is wrong to bring the United States government to a halt."

Christmas magic

This afternoon, downtown Seattle was dark and gloomy. No longer freezing, as it's been for the last fortnight, but not much warmer. A typical Seattle drizzle -- wet enough to keep me damp, but not enough to make me run for cover or -- God forbid -- use an umbrella.

I was a man on a mission -- trying to find a Christmas present for the most recent addition to the family. My mission led me deep into Pioneer Square, the area where Seattle all began. An odd district of old stone buildings, none over about three stories high. At Christmas, huddled in the gloom of winter, their exteriors forbidding but lit up warmly from within, it all felt very much like the London of Charles Dickens.

A rusticated stone building contained what appeared -- from the outside -- to be a small toy store. I entered. I was delighted. Although the street entrance was unimpressive and easy to miss, once inside I found myself wandering about in a magic world of children's toys, a maze of small rooms, each brightly lit, with a hidden stairway near the rear leading down to an even richer offering of toys on a lower level.

I looked about me, half expecting to see the jolly toymaker himself, hard at work at his craft.

And the toys were wonderful. Not the kind of toys you see advertised on kids' TV shows. These were the kinds of toys you see in photos from yesteryear. Only better. A whole room of jigsaw puzzles in various shapes and sizes. A room of stuffed animals, from baby teddy bears to giagantic giraffes. Stacks of hardwood blocks and building toys. An entire corner, its shelves filled with wonderful chemistry sets (the best of which was priced at a pricey $269!), telescopes, microscopes, and other encouragements for the young scientist. Games of all types, from this year's most advertised models all the way back to classics such as Risk and Monopoly. Miniature toy cars and trucks --sturdily built from cast metal (not plastic!).

Adding to the magic -- or to the confusion, which may be the same thing -- were plastic balls, balls the size of croquet balls, rolling around the store underfoot, rolling under their own power, untended, changing direction each time they hit an obstacle -- such as my feet. They must have contained batteries and some internal mechanism that made them roll, but the effect on the unsuspecting visitor, already transfixed by the magic of the toys of Christmas, was unnervingly Hogswartian.

This is a child's Christmas as it should be presented, I felt. These are the kinds of presents I want to give. Heck, these are the kinds of presents I want to receive. Does Santa know?

I stumbled, intoxicated, out of the little shop, out into the gloomy, Dickensian drizzle. Now at home, sober, I look back on it all and mull over the cruel reality -- I'll probably get a tie for Christmas.

Progress

The cynics among you -- among whom I'd certainly consider myself, were I in your shoes -- probably suspected, after reading last month's posting about my efforts to master the Pathétique, that in another year I'd shamefacedly stand before you, scuffing the ground with my foot, confessing that once more I'd made little progress.

Well, in the past month I haven't made a lot of progress, perhaps, and I can't seem to force myself to practice anywhere near as much as I should, but I have made progress. (No matter how lazy you are, if you play a piece even a couple of times a day, you're bound to improve!) I still miss notes, I still fumble over fingering on some of the chords, and I definitely have my problems with the trills -- I have no intention of inviting you to a recital! -- but it's getting there, and it's increasingly fun to play.

But the disparity between the recording of the sonata to which I linked you in my November 12 post and the sounds that come out of my own piano is disheartening. Hitting the right notes is only an initial step, as I can hear only too well. But -- the upside of my distance from my goal is that it reinforces my conviction that I need lessons. I'm still planning to look for the proper teacher, once we're into January.

I'm excited at the prospect. Further details as events warrant.

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

An autistic boy stares off into the distance when you try to talk to him. A victim of stroke needs constant encouragement to perform exhausting and boring physical exercises. A lonely elderly woman is becoming vegetative through lack of any social ties.

These are just three examples of people who desperately need person-to-person interaction -- not just casual social friends, but someone who will work with them intensely, hour after hour. Someone constantly encouraging, constantly engaged, constantly attentive; someone who never shows boredom, discouragement, frustration. Someone a bit like a saint.

Or maybe a robot.

In a recent New Yorker article, medical professor Jerome Groopman discusses the emerging field -- and developing technology -- of "socially assistive robots." These are machines designed to interface with human beings. Whether the robots move or are stationary, speak or make noises, appear human or remain simply machine-like, they are all designed to work with patients, often tirelessly doing or saying the same thing over and over, giving the patient the non-ending support and encouragement that he or she needs. The robot ideally performs the same tasks that human therapists can do now, but does them indefinitely, beyond normal human endurance.

The simpler robots, such as some used in physical therapy, simply measure the effort exerted by the patient, and offer pre-recorded verbal encouragements. More sophisticated robots, working with children suffering from autism, use their half-machine, half-human characteristics to lure kids -- kids often comfortable with machines but who have difficulty sharing interests and information with other humans -- into child-robot relationships that, it's hoped, will evolve into improved relationships with other children. Similarly, robots working with the elderly are designed to fill a vacuum in their lives, giving them someone with whom to bond, a bonding that may also encourage them to bond among themselves (a function that animal pets often perform as well.)

Dr. Groopman notes that while some of these robots may be fairly simple in their intellectual attributes, others are being designed with the ability to learn from experience and, based on that learning, to modify their own behavior and responses. For example, some who work with recovering stroke victims are able to determine to what extent a particular patient is introverted or extroverted. The more introverted the patient, the more physical distance the robot maintains between robot and patient, the lower the pitch of its "voice," the more slowly it speaks, and the more encouragement it offers.

We have obviously reached in real life the first, halting steps toward the artificial intelligence (A.I.) that we have been reading about in science fiction for decades. In many ways, these developments seem miraculous and wonderful, but science fiction has trained our minds to suspect that it will all go wrong in the end.

Groopman mentions the "uncanny valley" effect: the uneasiness or revulsion people feel when a robot seems too human, but not entirely human. At present, designers avoid this effect by designing deliberately non-human characteristics into their robots. But this effect may not always be a problem. Already, elderly patients have been observed looking forward eagerly to spending time with their robots. One researcher observed a woman who called a robot her "grandchild."

'Others said that they would like to arrange their schedule around singing to the robot ... it's the high point of their day.' ... 'One woman spun quite a yarn,' Mataric said. 'They had whole internal stories about how the robot fit into their lives, however unreal those stories may be.'

Here, the robot is not just a tool that facilitates amused interaction among elderly women; interaction with the robot itself appears to have become their prime social objective. "We were wired through evolution to feel that when something looks us in the eye, then someone is at home in it." These women find their robots better company than their own peers.

And can we blame them? Isn't this really what we all would like? A totally non-judgmental friend who is constantly encouraging and forever patient, who has only our best interests at heart? One to whom we can tell the same story over and over, and get the same appreciative laugh every time? One who always gives, and demands nothing from us in return?

In other words, aren't these robots way too good to be enjoyed only by the disabled, the elderly, the autistic? As they develop further, as they are made ever more human, as they become ever more skilled at being the kind of buddies we always craved, surely -- human nature being what it is -- there will develop black markets in robots, robots obtained without a prescription, dubious claims of a medical need for robots. In the end, doesn't the battle over marijuana shows that sooner or later we'll get what we crave, robots on demand?

Everyone will have his own personal robot or robots. Where the economy demands interpersonal cooperation, cooperation and empathy we no longer have the patience or skills to develop ourselves, we will gladly delegate to our robots the task of working things out among themselves on our behalf.

At the end of his article, Groopman quotes an MIT psychology professor who expresses fear that patients now being helped by robots will find it too easy to limit their social life to interaction with their robots. Look at email, he argues. Has email facilitated human contact, or replaced it? What the professor sees as a threat, however, mankind may well find a blessing. Human relations are messy. Robot relations will be tidy and warm and fulfilling. If there are conflicts between persons, between nations, let the robots sort it out -- we trust them.

Hey, I read sci-fi! I go to movies! I already know the ending to this story!

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Jerome Groopman, Robots That Care, The New Yorker (Nov. 2, 2009)

Crime and Punishment

A frosty but sunny day in Seattle. Trees, still yellow-leafed, shine golden against the blue sky as I traipse across the UW campus. The "mountain is out," as we say in our quaint local patois. Excited students, purple-clad, drift toward the stadium, hoping against hope to watch the Golden Bears be vanquished in this afternoon's game. Life is good, and in times like these my fancy lightly turns to thoughts of, well ... murder, punishment, ruined lives.

Three recent news items:

• Item. An Italian court in Perugia has found Amanda Knox, age 22, a former honors student at the University of Washington, guilty of knifing to death a fellow exchange student, and has sentenced her to 26 years in prison.
  
• Item. An Indiana boy, 17, reportedly has admitted that, while wrestling with his 10-year-old brother, he killed him with a chokehold. His brother's last words were, "Andrew, stop." He then further strangled his brother and hit his head against a rock to make sure he was dead. The defendant, a good student and apparently well-liked at school, says he'd been wanting to kill someone ever since eighth grade.
  
• Item. A Missouri girl, 15, a lazy but gifted student, reportedly has admitted killing a 9-year-old neighbor by strangling and stabbing her, and then slitting her throat. The defendant says she killed the girl because "she wanted to know what it felt like."
  

Three promising lives, ended practically before they began. Three more promising lives, essentially ended or soon to be ended by the judicial system.

Assuming all three defendants are, in fact, guilty¹, it's hard to dispute the lengthy sentences they will receive. And yet, whenever I read of a young person sentenced to life imprisonment, or to a term ensuring that they will not be released until late middle age, my mind rebels at the waste involved.

I recall myself at age 17, say, or 15 -- and I remember stupid things I may have done at that age. Nothing that would have brought me into the criminal justice system, thank God, but just dumb decisions that make me wonder now who that dumb kid was and what I could have been thinking of. What would it be like to reach the age of 40, say, having spent over half of your life in jail, and know that you were in prison, and would stay in prison, because of some act committed by a 15-year-old idiot who you could hardly recognize as even being yourself. But that's the fate reserved for these kids.

We learn in law school that criminal punishment has four principal objectives: retribution, protection of society, deterrence, and rehabilitation. As modern Americans, we like to believe that our principal goal is at least to attempt rehabilitation. But in murders as egregious as these three (and especially the latter two), where the murders are so willful and the pain to the survivors so devastating, we recall the original reason the criminal justice system was created: to grant the sovereign the exclusive right of retribution, in order to prevent private retribution and self-perpetuating family feuds.

None of the three defendants will be subject to the death penalty. We are thus spared the spectacle of the state killing in order to deter and punish killing. But the deliberate waste of the obvious gifts and talents these three young people might someday have brought to society may be a price we have to pay to preserve domestic peace and order.

A dark cloud seems to pass over the sun as I continue on my walk across the beautiful campus -- the beautiful campus that Amanda Knox once called home.

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¹Ms. Knox will appeal her conviction. Under Italian law, her appeal apparently results in a de novo trial by a higher court. Her conviction is not considered final until the appeal runs its course.

On your left!

Ok, gang. I'll try to make this post, short and to the point.

First, my disclaimer: (1) Seattle is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the country, and I'm proud of that fact; (2) although I'm no fanatic, I enjoy biking myself, for both fun and exercise.

Now, here's the meat. Too many of you bicyclists are reckless, insane and arrogant. Forget about the messengers downtown, the ones who swerve their way through traffic-congested streets, treating red lights as mere warnings as they dash into the intersection. Not talking about them. They live a different life by different rules, dedicated to a higher cause, and I of course appreciate their prompt deliveries. They risk only their own lives.

No, my concerns are aimed at those riders who choose to share my sidewalk while I'm out in running or walking mode. Look, guys, have fun, ok? Dress up in flashy lycra, colored so you look like a Harlequin at a Venetian masked ball, if you choose. God knows, that's your own business. But here's my request. No, my demand: Seattle has richly supplied you cyclists -- us cyclists -- with bike trails and bike lanes. Seattle also permits you to ride on the sidewalks, asking only that you exercise caution and yield the right of way to pedestrians.

But you gotta do your part.

My point? Let's assume -- just as hypothetical -- that I was out briskly walking across Montlake bridge an hour or so ago, enjoying the late autumn sunshine. And let's suppose that a biker came up behind me on the narrow sidewalk at about 20 mph. Let's suppose he bellows as he begins his pass -- at about the same time that the sonic boom from his approach hits my eardrums -- "On your left!" And finally, let's suppose that, having brushed by me so closely that I'm nearly knocked off my feet, he speeds off obliviously.

I submit that this constitutes neither cautious driving nor yielding the right of way. And yet this happens over and over and over. And over.

Listen up, bikers. "On your left" is a warning to a pedestrian that you are approaching from behind. Its purpose is to avoid undue surprise, so that the pedestrian doesn't suddenly change direction into your bike's path. You, the bicyclist, on whom the law imposes the duty of caution, need not puff yourself up with an attitude of great superiority while calling out the phrase. You need not suppose that you are a magnificent athlete, merely because your little machine allows you to move faster than a runner or walker. Got that?

Call out the phrase early, call it out politely, and ride slowly. And don't pass within inches of me as you go by. I'm no toreador, showing off how close I can stand before a rampaging bull as it charges past me.

Looks of arrogance are unwarranted, it goes without saying. No sneering. No hauteur, no condescension, no disdain -- you're not driving a freaking Porsche, after all, just a simple vehicle that even 7-year-olds own and know how to ride. Nothing about your demeanor should suggest that pedestrians are mere irritants, like ruts in a road, impeding your swift progress on your appointed rounds.

Your "On your left" should not suggest the diesel horn on a 15-axle semi. Nor is it the equivalent of "Make way, knaves!" shouted by a mounted knight, sword in hand, as he thunders through a herd of scattering peasants. The phrase establishes no right of way, no empowerment to commit mayhem. It is a simple courtesy, a warning to help prevent injury to either biker or pedestrian.

I simply bring these basic principles to your attention, dudes, because I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more.

Happy cycling.