Well, back from vacation again…

My cell phone has TomTom GPS on it (running in Windows Mobile). This is the same software and maps as the regular TomTom except this one is built in to my cell so it’s always with me. I’ve been using this for some time and it has been a great tool. I travel a fair amount and having a GPS with me all the time is beneficial not only when driving, but also when walking. Before I leave on a trip I can enter destinations in my contacts if they’re not already in there and just select one to have TomTom guide me there.

Occasionally when I put in an address it will be off by a bit, though rarely more than 20 or 30 feet and usually by 1 address number so it just puts me next door. 9 times out of 10 it’s spot on. The biggest problem is with new roads that aren’t yet in the system. This past week though I’ve experienced 2 incidents where it put us over 2 miles from our destination. Both on the island of Kawai in Hawaii, both put us on the correct road, just a long way from where on the road the places were. The first was Gaylord’s restaurant and the second was the Grand Hyatt in Poipu.

So, with these 2 experiences along with other more minor incidents I’m wondering if it’s not time to update our concept of what an address is. Many travelers already us GPS navigation and thousands more begin to every day. Most new phones include GPS receivers as do many new cars.

Businesses and individuals fairly quickly got used to the idea of including email and web addresses on business cards, literature, and websites. Maybe now is the time for everyone to get used to also including GPS coordinates – Latitude and Longitude. Street addresses have worked well for a long time, but new GPS technology allows for a better system.

For instance, the Grand Hyatt in Kauai might be listed as

21.8762 / -159.4397

Or

Lat: 21.8762
Lon: -159.4397

Seems bulky and just a lot of numbers, but if you’ve used a GPS and spent time entering country, city, street, and address # you’ll quickly see the benefit of just entering these numbers. It’s not only easier to enter, but far more accurate. Using GPS coordinates eliminates problems of street numbers or roads being off or of new roads or addresses not yet being entered into the system. Worst case you can see where you are currently, where you want to be, and pick your way through streets to your destination.

The best news is that this is not something that requires any major new technology or requires a standards body to establish a worldwide standard. The standard already exists. Anyone can determine the GPS coordinates for their location in about 30 seconds with any GPS device and then add them to their website.

The millions of us who use GPS will appreciate the effort!

Government Intrusion – Restaurants in New York are now required to publish nutritional information about their food. While I generally dislike government intrusion or mandates, this is one I agree with. This is not onerous on the restaurants and gives consumers the information they need to make good choices. Now, if we could all just make those good choices…

Slimy Employees – Both Coldstone Creamery and Pei Wei get awards. Coldstone has huge posters in their windows with huge letters touting that their new yogurt (nrgize?) is only 25 calories! In very small type they note that this is per ounce. According to the gal behind the counter the smallest portion they serve is officially 5 ounces but in reality is probably about 7. At least they did put the small type on there…Pei-Wei, a division of P. F. Changs, lists some relatively healthy looking nutritional information on their website and tout that it is for ONE SERVING. But they won’t sell you that one serving. If you try to order one serving they’ll refuse. Everything they sell is TWO SERVINGS. I think I’d trust a snake-oil salesman before Pei-Wei. What kind of slimy people work for this company? I worked in marketing for a number of years and I could spin the benefits of my product with the best of them, but I don’t think I’d have ever stooped as low as Pei-Wei or Coldstone.

Subway and Noodles get my award for health and honesty. They both publish nutritional info for all of their meals and they’re not misleading about it. They both also offer a number of meals that are both good tasting and healthy (low calories, high fiber, etc.)

An energy solution better than proper tire pressure – It’s not unusual in the summer for my wife to grab a jacket when we’re going out to dinner. Even when it’s 90F outside. Because though it might be 90F outside, it’ll likely be about 60F inside. When I jokingly ordered ‘some heat’ at Don Pablos the other night the waitress offered to switch places with me and I’d understand why it’s so cold in there. I guess I’d rather be cold than have some hairy waiters sweat dripping in my food, but I’d think that maybe hiring a few more servers so that they didn’t have to run so much and then turning the AC up a few degrees might be an alternative.

I know you’re 60, but are you over 21? – I was grabbing a quick bite in Chipotle today. 3 guys riding bikes came in for lunch and ordered beers. One of the 3 didn’t have ID on him and the manager refused to sell them more than 2 beers without the guy being able to prove his age. None of these guys could have been under 50 and I’d guess they were all over 60. I think even a 6-year-old wouldn’t confuse them with someone under 21. The manager said this was a corporate rule and there was nothing he could do about it. Besides the general stupidity of this there’s the added humor that Chipotle sponsors a pro bike racing team in Europe. One of these 3 guys was even wearing a Chipotle bike jersey. A 16-year-old working for Chipotle’s bike team in Europe can buy a beer anywhere the team travels in Europe. A 14-year-old watching the team can probably do the same (ID’s are rarely checked). And Europe (except perhaps the UK) has far fewer drinking problems than we do*. Go figure.

* UNICEF’s Report Card Number 7 on Child Well-Being in OECD countries did note that only about 15% of 11, 13, and 15-year-old’s in the US report having been drunk two or more times. While higher than France, Italy, and a few others, it is also about average for all OECD countries. This is the good news. The bad news is that our problems begin at about 16 and it’s between about 16 and 30 that our problems dwarf Europe’s.

This is an issue that has bugged me for some time. But I’ve had and am still having difficulty putting it in to words.

On April 21 in this post I pointed out the hundreds of people Texas considered good citizens one day, but perverts the next. This because of a law brought forth by Texas State Representative Harvey Hildebran to raise the age of legal marriage.

Arbitrary laws like this are scary. It’s one thing to say that murder, assault, rape, or theft are crimes. They clearly are. Always have been and I assume always will be. These are not arbitrary. They’re pretty concrete. A murderer, rapist, or thief is a murderer, rapist, or thief yesterday, today, and tomorrow. They’ve committed a crime, an offense against another, they’re a criminal.

What I’m having a difficult time getting my head around is how, with just the stroke of a pen, a person who, on Tuesday is celebrated as a new husband, on Wednesday is now magically a criminal and is prosecuted and imprisoned as a pervert – for the exact same action. If a 40-year-old and a 14-year-old want to marry who have they committed an offense against? And why is it an offense today but never before in history?

For all eternity, thousands of years, people got married at about 14. For most of history 14 was actually the average. And this includes tens of thousands in Texas. Each and every year between 1966 and 2005 the State of Texas issued more marriage licenses to girls under 18 to marry men twice their age, 178 in 1970, 51 in 2001, than all of the girls they’ve claimed have ever been the ‘victim’ of underage marriage in the FLDS community.

In 2001 Texas licensed 9 brides under 14 and in 1970 there were 51. It’d be interesting to find these 51 and see how they faired. Franklin and Arlene, Modesto and Ana, Roy and Rita, Gary and Paula, and the 47 other couples. If they’re statistically average almost half divorced and 10% served some time in prison. Should the state of Texas have taken all of their children and thrown all of the men in Jail? Would that have produced a better outcome than whatever became of these 51 couples?

Even in the period between when the law was passed and when it took effect there were 71 legal marriage licenses issued by the state of Texas to people under 16 to get married.

Were these husbands, these 71 men, perverts? Should they have been prosecuted and jailed? Their wives and children taken from them and forced to fend for themselves? How about the 2,460 men who married women under 17 in 2002? Or any of the tens of thousands who did so prior to this new law being passed?

Was this law raising the marriage age pure religious persecution? It was fine for decades for people to marry at 14, but not now that the Mormons moved in? Jesus’ adopted father Joseph would be thrown in Jail if he lived in Texas today. As would Solomon and a long list of other Biblical figures. It might be interesting to check the ages of the wives of a few highly regarded evangelists over the past century. I bet we’ll find some criminals amongst them.

For an act to go from celebrated one day to criminal the next is a huge leap. And one I cannot make.

I don’t at all disagree with discouraging people from marrying too young. But criminalizing it? Investigating, arresting, and incarcerating husbands and fathers because we personally disagree with their lifestyle or just because we think they made a stupid choice? Because we personally think that 14 or 15 is too young to marry?

If the bride and groom both want this, if neither disagrees with it, what good do we do in criminalizing it? Marrying this young is certainly not ideal, but is throwing the husband (and potentially the father of children) in jail going to help? In the process we’re going to create one more single-mother home with a bunch of fatherless children. And we wonder why we have so many problems in our society?

If we think that by making it illegal to get married at a younger age we’ll reduce any problems, we need to open our eyes a bit. We are sexual beings and we generally begin our sexual maturity in our early teens. This is God’s law and how he created us and no law we make will change that. We may have reduced the number of 14 and 15 year olds getting married, but just as many are having sex and making babies. Now they just do it without the benefits of marriage. That sure has worked well hasn’t it?

I strongly advocate waiting to get married until at least late teens, but better yet early to mid 20’s. I also advocate waiting to have sex until marriage. But let’s be realistic. [Some people, and perhaps most even, do not have the self-control to hold off on sex until their 20’s. We’re fooling ourselves if we think anything else.]

A Better Way

There are better ways to discourage youthful marriage and do so without incurring all of the problems of making it criminal.

One is to require counseling and even that the prospective bride and groom be required to review and sign, with the counselor, a document that spells out the potential pitfalls of getting married too young and that both the bride and groom are willing participants and are not being coerced against their will. A state can even require that this be done before a judge. Here though the Judge’s only function is to insure that they know what they are doing and that they are doing so of their own will – that neither are being forced.

And you know what, some of these marriages will fail. The couples will have arguments and disagreements and some will end in divorce. But this is better than the state going in and prematurely ending these marriages because you know what else? Some of these marriages, and maybe even most of them, will be successful. They will produce children who will grow up in a two-parent home with parents at least as imperfect as any of us who married in our twenties. But also parents who love them and want the best for them.

WWJD

Yes, What Would Jesus Do? If Jesus met a 40-year-old man who had a 14-year-old wife would he throw the guy in jail? If they had a kid or two would he call that proof that the guy had sexually abused an underage girl and then throw him in jail? Tell her that she was stupid to have married him and now she’s on her own to raise her children without her husband?

I don’t think so. I think he would encourage them in their marriage. Encourage them to stay together and raise their children to the best of their ability.

While you can’t purchase a Nautique today with audio volume tied to boat speed, that doesn’t mean the fine folks at Correct Craft don’t have the technology. In this case the audio coming out of the system isn’t Mute Math or U2 but the sound of an engine. Why the sound of an engine? Well, maybe because there’s no engine under that engine cover to make the noise for real?

The dead give away though is if you look close when the boat is ‘idling’ there are no exhaust bubbles.

This has been another piece of fiction from the fine folks at Crusty Logic

Blogs are a LOT of work! My hat’s off to all those who blog on a regular basis. Now that I’m back from vacation…

If Correct Craft had been having conversations with Tesla, makers of the Tesla electric powered sports car, for the past 18 to 20 months and perhaps had begun development on an electric powered tow boat, a modified 206 perhaps, what kinds of things might we be hearing?

That despite their desire to fit the motor completely under the floor thus completely eliminating the engine hump in the middle, they had been unable to do so. An 8” hump is almost worse and is more dangerous than the full engine hump. Well, apparently the motor actually does fit but there’s a heat problem. Fortunately nothing a water cooling jacket wasn’t able to fix.

Decisions, decisions… Fewer batteries means a lighter boat and a lighter boat means a better wake for slalom. Even a better wake than any slalom boat ever. But fewer batteries also means less time on the water between charges. OK, this one wasn’t that difficult – let the customer decide. 3 battery compartments on each side with optional ballast tanks for any that aren’t used. Those looking for the absolute best wake only put batteries in one on each side, others can choose to fill 4 compartments or all 6. One major advantage is that this is all easily configured by most dealers so the customer can choose and the dealer can deliver.

OK, the battery thing wasn’t really all that simple because ideally each configuration actually calls for slight modifications to the hull design for optimum performance and this isn’t something that hydro-gates or similar levers can accomplish. But 90% of the benefit can be achieved with 2 small modifications to the hull design and thanks to modern epoxies this can also be done by dealers via inserts that are cemented in place depending on battery configuration.

The final major issue is the fun one. The boat is over-powered. In initial trials drivers had to be very careful not to rip the rope out of people’s hands. Well, nothing that some software changes for a more ‘normal’ torque curve couldn’t solve.

And speaking of software defined torque curves, one unexpected benefit is the ability to make quick micro-adjustments to speed not possible with gas powered engines. Fine tuning with Zero-Off speed control promises the smoothest ride and pull ever. And yes, there is the potential that users will be able to select from a handful of curves on the fly to suit their own personal tastes.

So, when will we see this wonderful boat? Not anytime soon. Firstly, the above is all fiction anyway. Second, Correct Craft have a reputation to uphold and developing this boat to their high quality standards will take a bit more fine-tuning and then getting all of the appropriate approvals will take some time beyond that. BUT, once it does become available expect the best towboat ever for your $110,000.

Sen John Warner has asked the Energy Department to look in to what the impact would be of re-imposing a national speed limit. Some very quick comments:

– With newer cars the savings are much less than they were in 1974 when this was done the first time. Most cars get maximum miles per gallon throughout a range of about 35 to 65 and then see a mileage decrease as you drive faster than this range. Graph here. For most current vehicles the improvement in gas mileage is negligible. Much greater savings can be had with purchasing more fuel efficient cars, driving slightly less (eg, combining errands, walking…), driving more consistent speeds, etc.

– Many say that the national speed limit saved lives. Reality? Likely not. Fatalities from car crashes were declining rapidly in the years leading up to the 55mph national speed limit and actually leveled off a couple of years later. The decline is attributed to huge improvements in car safety features such as seat belts, anti-lock brakes, and tires as well as more people using seat belts. Many portions of the US also implemented ‘keep right except to pass’ laws for multi-lane roads.

More later…

Electric cars are starting to pop up. Everything from minimalist Zaps to sporty Tesla’s to Porsche conversions. With petrol now over $4/gallon in the US and higher elsewhere the number of electric cars is increasing rapidly. While there are many great benefits to electric cars, one major drawback that remains is how far they can go on a charge and what do you do when you run out of juice and need to recharge? Plug in for hours? Swap batteries? They’re starting to work great around town, but we have some work to do before we can reliably use them for highway trips.

Why not electric boats?

I assume one major obstacle is the small issue of electricity and water not mixing so well. This can be worked out though. In fact, the Navy powers many of their boats with electricity without water problems. Of course they also have onboard nuclear reactors to generate electricity and I’m not sure we’re far enough along with that for consumer use. However, battery and motor technology has advanced enough to make this a viable alternative and I’m sure boat builders can design a system to keep the batteries and motor both dry and adequately ventilated.

But oy vey, the advantages…

The batteries and motor are overall lighter than the equivalent power and run-time of 30 gallons of petrol and a marine engine. An electrical drive system is also comprised of many smaller components that can more easily be distributed around a hull for optimal weight distribution. It’d be possible to produce a center weighted slalom tow boat without a mid engine. Everything would be below deck and could even be a bit more forward than venerable towboats such as the Nautique 196 resulting in an even smoother wake. This also leaves room for massive ballasting to change the boats characteristics for wakeboarding or surfing.

Yes, the holy grail of perfect slalom, perfect wakeboard, and perfect surf from one boat is within reach.

Speaking of surfing, there’d be no CO fumes. Teak surfing anyone? This would not only be more environmentally friendly, but more pleasant for everyone when idling. We’d also be able to forego starting/killing the engine every time a skier or rider is down.

Unlike a car on a roadtrip, an electrical boat system would in most cases be able to tow people for an entire day on a single charge. No more trips to the marina or hauling cans when out of petrol. Of course some of us would miss catching up on the latest lake gossip at the marina, but we can still stop in for other purposes. So, plug it in overnight and it’s ready for the next day.

Electric drive is also quiet and smooth. These are both kind of strange in a car, but would be heaven in a boat. Imagine no more vibration. For Malibu fans out there I’m sure a subwoofer and transducer system can add the noise and vibration back in. Ever thought about what the engine vibration does to prop efficiency? And for those concerned about electrics ability to pull them up without dragging forever consider this, the Tesla roadster does 0-60 in 3.7 seconds.

Finally there’s cost. A very quick calculation gives us $90 for a day of petrol or $22 for a day of electricity. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Theoretically maintenance will be less as well, though I’m not sure I’d want to speculate until we’ve seen a ton more real data on battery/motor life.

So there you have it. I’m sure there are negatives that I haven’t thought of, but perhaps there are more positives as well.

Edit 2008.07.01: Boesch is selling this boat

Authorities in the tundra of Minnesota bungled one pretty well. Story Here.

I have no clue if this was a bungled case, a wrong prosecution, or, very likely a bit of both. It appears more than reasonable that the parents are innocent (though now victims of the state), the uncle guilty (though got away because the state bungled it), and the daughter a victim several times over (by everyone).

We’re all atwitter about gas costing $4/gallon. The major network news shows this morning have all covered it. They and much of the rest of the media are hyping it as this awful terrible thing that will ruin our country. President Bush MUST open up the strategic petrol reserves to help bring prices down. We MUST increase production from our own fields.

Really?

In 1976 gas was about $1/gallon. Based on standard US inflation it should now be about $3.85/gallon. $4/gallon or even $5/gallon is well within a reasonable tolerance of inflation. Just for comparison, an in-call escort has risen at almost twice the rate of inflation – in 1976 she charged $40/hr yet today she gets $300/hr. Gas would be $7.22/gallon at that rate.

If only our Federal Government Spending had increased the same as gas. In 1976 we spent $371 billion. In 2007 we spent $2.8 trillion. If gas had risen as fast as our politicians spending it would now be almost $10/gallon.