Letter Never Sent

A while back, I heard a good podcast from BBC’s In Our Time, on Søren Kierkegaard’s view on the aesthetic life leading ultimately to despair. I spent a little time googling up some information as I know very little about Kierkegaard. This seemed interesting:

In the aesthetic life, one is ruled by passion. In the ethical life, one is ruled by societal regulations. In the religious life, one is ruled by total faith in God. One can never be truly free, and this causes boredom, anxiety, and despair. True faith doesn’t lead to freedom, but it relieves the psychological effects of human existence. Kierkegaard claims that the only way to make life worthwhile is to embrace faith in God, and that faith necessarily involves embracing the absurd. One has faith in God, but one cannot believe in God. We believe in things that we can prove, but we can only have faith in things that are beyond our understanding. For example, we believe in gravity: we feel its effects constantly, which we recognize as proof of gravity’s existence. It makes no sense, though, to say we have faith in gravity, since that would require the possibility that, someday, gravity would fail to materialize. Faith requires uncertainty, and thus we can have faith in God because God is beyond logic, beyond proof, and beyond reason. There’s no rational evidence for God, but this is exactly what allows people to have faith in him.

As an agnostic, this is the problem I have with staunch atheists. To deny even the possibility of a God is to make a leap of faith. Just like to believe in God requires a leap of faith. In this sense, both atheists and theists lack a healthy sense of doubt, even though we’re dealing with ideas that are beyond proof. The existence of God is essentially unknowable as he presumably stands outside natural law and physical reality. In my experience, both extreme theists and atheists have more in common with each other than they do agnostics. They seem to be reacting to some bad experience by moving toward one pole or the other, in search of certainty.

This thing with my Dad being in the hospital. I haven’t talked about it much, mostly because I didn’t want to jinx anything. The further we get toward survival, the better I feel.

Knowing what to do has been the hardest part. Since my brother and I are my father’s next of kin, we have had to navigate a sea of problems, ranging from the medical and legal to the personal and financial. I think we’ve done okay, all things considered.

It’s weird how difficult experiences can be valuable. On the one hand, you wouldn’t voluntarily experience something painful, but while going through it you get a sense of the gravity and meaning that seems to exist under the surface of daily life. When you see a daily parade of shattered families walk through the ICU with fear in their eyes or crying in huddled groups, it makes an impression. The message is: every day that you go about your normal routine, someone somewhere is having their heart ripped out. Suffering is universal, so stop being such a jerk.

The other thing you learn is that everyone needs access to medical care. I don’t advocate any particular plan, but most people don’t plan on being hospitalized. So, if employers are not forced to offer health insurance and people are not required to have health insurance, it stands to reason that many people are taking the risk of serious injury and the subsequent crushing medical debt. Even people with health insurance are often insufficiently covered. How can healthcare be optional in this country? We’re ignoring the problem.

Since I’ve been back in San Antonio for about three weeks, I’ve gotten to know the surrounding restaurants very well. Too well. In between visiting hours, I normally walk across the street to Chik-fil-A, so I don’t have to pay twice for parking. As far as fast food goes, Chik-fil-A is top of the heap. You can actually tell what kind of animal the sandwich came from. They also do things a little differently:

1. The employees at Chik-fil-A always say “My pleasure” when I say, “Thank you”. Even if it is part of some cynical marketing ploy, I like it.
2. There are fresh flowers on each table. The other day they were yellow daisy-like flowers. Today they were purple daisy-like flowers.
3. Little Texas Pete hot sauce packets! I am all for condiment selection. Hot sauce is essential. (Don’t miss the Texas Pete Wikipedia article wherein someone gets a little free with the truth: “In late 2003, Chick-Fil-A opted to carry Texas Pete sauce (packet-form) in its restaurants nationwide. Same-store sales catapulted over 45% in 2004. Many analysts close to the firm heralded the decision to carry the sauce, largely attributing the company’s success to the sauce itself. In several third party surveys, Chick-Fil-A customers have exclaimed, “Texas Pete doesn’t go on the chicken sandwich, the chicken sandwich goes on the Texas Pete,” and “Best thing since the chicken sandwich.”)
4. They play Christian music as background music. I don’t really have a problem with this except it’s generally bland and I don’t know any of the songs. That’s okay. Background music is not supposed to be good.
5. Real lemonade. Tart and sweet. ‘Nuff said.
6. At the entrance to the playscape, they provide the kids with little alcohol towelettes so they can clean their grubby hands.

I saw this high school kid yesterday with the whole 80’s metal look: black Iron Maiden t-shirt, tight grey jeans, and long hair with Dave Mustaine bangs. I’m amused by how often teen fashion recapitulates past trends and then I remember how we were no different in my time, aping the teens of past generations who seemed cool. In a way, fashion is regressive and evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. It looks for inspiration from the past while adding the stamp of the present; creating culture while maintaining direct links to previous layers of culture. I would like to see people drawing fashion inspiration from far-flung periods in time or from extrapolations of the future, but we will continue to see kids drawing inspiration from more recent trends simply because, as a culture, we lack both a deep sense of history and an imagination for the future.

Let’s say you created a program with a simple yet specific goal: to persist. This program would iterate by replicating itself and branching off into new directions with very simple changes to the underlying code. Each version of the program is without volition, yet, if successful in persisting long enough to replicate, it will pass along key components to the next version. This would grant further success and the program would survive.

DNA is this program and we who inhabit the earth are its compiled result. If all life is the result of this process of iteration (biological evolution), it makes sense that to iterate more rapidly and efficiently it would help to have multiple branches, populations, and individuals iterating in parallel rather than attempting to iterate serially from a single line of individual organisms. In other words, maybe our rich biodiversity is the result of Life increasing its processing power by developing in parallel.

Life started out with a limited ability to create new versions with significant variation. In the beginning, presumably only a handful of different organisms existed (maybe even an ur-lifeform, or grandfather organism) and these tended to be unicellular with minute amounts of genetic information. As life forms evolved and grew more complex, they incorporated other single-cell organisms into them and adapted sexual reproduction, which granted enhanced variability in genetic information through the combination of two sets of different yet fundamentally compatible DNA sequences.

Other thoughts:

1. Life has developed from simple forms with limited genetic information and a limited impact on its environment, to complex forms with complex genetic information and a more pronounced impact on its environment. How will this trend continue? Will it?
2. Life has developed multiple methods of reproduction trending from simple to more complex, which has led to greater genetic diversity. Is there a logical improvement on sexual reproduction? Intelligent, self-directed mutation? A networked organism comprised of intelligent individually evolving components?
3. The human genome consists of 3 billion base pairs, which is equivalent to about 750 MB. Our genome contains genetic information from more primitive organisms (bloatware?) just as our physical structure has primitive antecedents.
4. Our biological systems have tended from simple to complex. Consider the development of the eye, or the heart (fish have a two-chambered heart, birds a three-chambered heart, and mammals a four-chambered heart), for example. Is technology the proper extension of this complexity? (This is a point made in The Singularity is Near)
5. Semi-related: The symbolic use of information in religious sources like the Bible is reminds me of the idea of DNA as living information: From John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” and Revelation 1:8 “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”
6. Zawinski’s law: “Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”

Yesterday I had an itch to set my thoughts careening by reading some good science-fiction. I went down to the library and picked up Vernor Vinge’s “Marooned in Real Time“. It did not disappoint. It was interesting enough that I ended up finishing it in one day. It has the perfect mix of intrigue and ideas that set your imagination afire. The basic plot is a murder mystery with the twist that it takes place as the cast of characters travels through time using bobble technology. Bobbles are basically stasis spheres, so you don’t really travel through time as much as everything remains in suspended animation while the world goes on without you. The characters in the book end up bobbling through millions of years of real time and are able to observe changes to earth geography and evolution in progress.

Far future earth evolution is exactly the kind of thing that’s fun to speculate about. How will life change? What new animals will arise from current forms? Will any creatures achieve sapience? Likewise, if we could travel through time for millions of years, how far could we go? What would happen to the universe? What would we see if we could stick around until the end of the universe?

The pleasant side effect of reading about the flow of millions of years is that it makes all of your problems shrink to insignificance. At a long enough time horizon, nothing really matters. When the going gets tough, this idea can provide relief and perspective. One of the humbling facts about existence is the knowledge that everything you do, everything you have, everything you know, is temporary… even humanity, even this world. If everything is temporary what is the proper attitude of life? How should this inform our conduct?

When you sit in traffic, you realize how most people are driving solo. It’s horribly inefficient, but there’s no reason to believe people will ever double up or that traffic will ever get better. That’s just not what having a car is about. The whole point to having a car is that it provides the freedom for you to go where you want on your own schedule. No need to ask someone else for a ride or to schedule your outings around another person. Your car is your earth capsule; a climate-controlled extension of your home base.

It seems like a certain population density is required to make mass transit a rational choice. It has to be prohibitively expensive in terms of travel time and money to encourage people to use mass transit options. In places like New York City, it is rare and expensive to have dedicated parking. Likewise, in such a dense city environment, it often does not make sense to drive yourself. As a result, people take the subway or a cab rather than deal with the hassle of driving.

In almost every other part of the country outside New York City, it makes sense to drive yourself as most mass transit options are simply worse than driving. In the future, I think the solution to horrible traffic will be cars controlled by artificial-intelligence and demand-based toll pricing.

Automated cars will allow more efficient driving and a more pleasant commute. Cars controlled by AI will be able to drive much better than human drivers and they will be able to interact with one another to avoid road hazards via ad hoc networking or a centralized traffic control system. With AI drivers, cars will be able to travel at a high speed and will be able to coordinate to maintain efficient traffic flow. Just like timed traffic signals facilitate traffic efficiency by coordinating access and cross traffic, cars controlled by AI will be able to work together to maintain the most efficient flow of traffic throughout the system.

Demand-based toll pricing is another way to improve traffic flow. As our infrastructure needs increase, governments will struggle with providing and maintaining the roadways. When you add new roads or highways you would think this would reduce traffic congestion, however traffic congestion quickly increases to use up the newly available capacity. In other words, adding new roads does little to reduce traffic congestion. The only real answer is to control demand and to encourage more efficient use. Gasoline taxes are a blunt instrument in that people who contribute little to traffic congestion (for example, people who drive within their immediate area) bear the same tax burden as commuters who clog the highways trekking into the city from the exurbs. The most efficient way to control traffic and to pay for the roads is to encourage the expansion of tollways, especially demand-based tollways. For example, most tollways already support toll tags or some similar way of automatic payment. Why not alter the toll prices based on congestion? In other words, the more traffic, the higher the tolls. Late at night, when there is no congestion, allow free travel. During rush hour, keep raising the toll amount until congestion shrinks to allow a set average speed of say 50 miles per hour.

While the highway system was built as a common resource it is indisputable that some people use this common resource more than others and that some contribute a lot more to traffic congestion than others. It is reasonable to expect heavy users to bear more of the cost.

Heard on NPR about televangelists fighting Senator Grassley’s request for information on their finances and how these tax-exempt organizations spend their money.

For example, Grassley wants to know for what tax-exempt purpose Joyce Meyer Ministries, based in Fenton, Mo., bought a $30,000 malachite round table, and spent $11,219 on a French clock and $19,162 on Dresden vases.

He’s also interested in the total amount of “love offerings” received in lieu of salary by Bishop Eddie Long of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., and how Long reports them on his W-2 forms to the Internal Revenue Service.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries, in Newark, Texas, also received a letter. Grassley is curious about reports that a gathering of ministers presented Kenneth Copeland with a “personal gift” in excess of $2 million, in celebration of the organization’s 40th anniversary.

On the one hand, some religious groups want to abolish the separation of church and state when they want to change the law to reflect religious principles, but when it comes to protecting their finances from taxation and scrutiny they want to preserve the separation of church and state.

Influence is a two-way street.

I must be getting old or inflation must be getting bad. Every time I end up at the store, I see things that cost way more than they should. Today at Target, I noticed they were selling Christmas stockings for $12.99. Thin, felt-like polyester Christmas stockings for $12.99. It struck me as seriously overpriced. Everywhere I looked I saw total junk going for way more than I would expect. Holiday goods are probably a special case because during the holidays consumers have a heightened emotional state when shopping. They’re excited about the holidays and everything that comes with it, so they’re more likely to buy stuff they might never buy otherwise.

A few months after I bought my Mustang, I received a couple speeding tickets. Being naive in certain aspects of Life, I had a few things to learn about owning a sports car. Namely that it takes discipline to drive like a normal person when you don’t have to, and that sports cars make you more conspicuous to law enforcement. These were expensive lessons that I have fully incorporated into my Way of Life. As a result, I’ve become a slow and cautious driver. Now, whenever I cruise past the highway patrol I wince like a pyromaniac who has suffered 3rd degree burns.

One thing you notice when you get a traffic ticket is that there is a thriving business in traffic law. The week after you get a ticket your mailbox is deluged in come-ons from every traffic attorney in the county. Normally, I would just pay the fine and kick myself for throwing good money away. But as I received letter after letter, I figured there must be something to it. If it was a scam or useless to hire an attorney for a speeding ticket there would not be a thriving business around it, right? I wanted to find out for sure.

The next time I was downtown I stopped by one of the “firms” lodged like ticks near the courthouse. I asked what I needed to do to get a lawyer to handle my ticket. For the two tickets I had they charged $200 for representation. Even though I was concerned about spending money for what could turn out to be worthless, I was dying to know if this was a better option than just paying the fines, which I had no problem with aside from the considerable expense.

Using an attorney I might be able to keep the tickets off my record and maybe not pay the fines at all. After talking to an older gentleman who told me he always uses a lawyer for traffic tickets, I signed up, wrote out a check, and left the clerk with the tickets. The clerk issued a bond later that day to cover me until my court date and a few days later I received a note explaining what I needed to do next (just show up and say “Here” when they called my name at the docket) and that I would have to appear in court in 6 months. A few months later I received another letter that my court appearance was rescheduled another six months after the original date. Basically, this meant I would not appear in court until over a year after I had received the tickets. My guess is the traffic lawyers like to do this as a delaying tactic, especially since my court appearance was scheduled for the week after Thanksgiving, which might be inconvenient. The delay was also a good thing in that it allowed me to put off an unpleasant trip downtown, although it took everything I had to remember to go.

When my court date finally approached, I got up early and was down at the Courthouse for my 8:30 AM appearance. If you’ve never been to court for a traffic violation, you’re in for a treat. The whole thing is a remnant of bygone days when you had to interact with other people and wait patiently like cattle. It was fun to observe the random cross-section of my fellow Dallas citizens. Although, I imagine more higher-income people would not waste their time challenging a ticket. You’re more likely to see the lower and middle classes represented. People for whom a few hundred dollars and an increase in auto insurance premiums can cause a serious hardship and a cascade of negative consequences. This is one of the unpleasant realities of the criminal justice system. The penalties sufficient to encourage compliance from the bulk of the populace are often an extreme burden for those living paycheck to paycheck.

When you go to your assigned court room, the judge comes in, explains a few things, then proceeds to do a roll-call from the docket. This determines which cases will be handled. In Dallas, they use a stand-by system where they don’t call the witness (the police officer) in until they know you’ve showed up. The judge goes through 40-50 people to determine which cases will be on the second docket call. If you show up the case goes forward, if you do not, the judge would likely issue a warrant for your arrest. About 30% of people on the docket were not present. When they call your name, you say “Here” and the prosecutor tells the judge whether the state is ready to proceed or not. Generally, the state is ready pending arrival of the witness. After the docket has been cleared, the judge declares a recess until the second docket call an hour later where the real business begins and the attending officers make their appearance.

When you come back for the second docket call, they do another roll-call and the prosecutor announces whether the state is ready to proceed. If the witness (the officer) is unavailable, the case is dismissed. If the witness is available, you or your lawyer will generally make a deal with the prosecutor: dismissal for things like “no proof of financial responsibility” (no auto insurance) if you can prove you had insurance at the time, or “deferred adjudication” if you plead no contest for something like speeding. Deferred adjudication basically means they dismiss the ticket if you can go six months with no other offenses, but you still have to pay court fees, which can be equivalent to 50-75% of the original fine. And if you fail to keep your nose clean for six months, you would have to pay the fines. Besides pleading no contest, another option would be to plead innocent. But this is generally a bad idea as it wastes everyone’s time and suggests that you might be a prima donna who doesn’t want to play ball.

In my case, both tickets were dismissed because the witness was unavailable. Dismissal means it never happened. No fines, no court fees, no increases in your insurance premiums, no six hours watching “comedy” defensive driving. Could I have achieved the same result without a lawyer? Only if I could be certain the witness would be unavailable. Otherwise, you would have to be prepared to make your case with the prosecutor pro se (representing yourself). They hand out deferred adjudication like candy and I probably could have received it by working directly with the prosecutor. So, the jury is out on whether it was a good investment. I’d be curious to hear of anyone else’s experience.

In my case, I never even met with my attorney. His clerk showed up to make sure I was there as they are responsible for the bond if I was not. Then I never saw him. Luckily, the case was dismissed, so I didn’t need him anyway. Aside from moving the dates, I did everything else myself. I got the impression that the attorneys are there mainly as backup and to ensure that you get a crack at deferred adjudication. I’m not convinced they do anything else and some of them seemed pretty useless and just as seedy as you might expect. One lawyer had silver hair in a ponytail AND crutches for a broken foot. Another in a tired brown suit looked like he just crawled out of a whiskey bottle.

Even though I spent $200, it was a good experience and preferable to the $600 I would have had to spend in fines. I am still not sure if hiring a lawyer made any difference, but I would probably try it again.

Things I learned:

• As bureaucratic and imperfect as it seems, the legal system works pretty well. At its most basic level, the Law aims to define negative behaviors and prescribe remedies. There is something comforting about this emphasis on creating order from the general human chaos. This is no small task. There are rules and then there are the ways we carry out the rules. Reason is a necessary basis for Justice. Justice guarantees our freedom and harmony by theoretically ensuring that all men are treated equally in the eyes of the Law.
• Traffic offenses are criminal offenses. As a result, you are protected by the Constitution. Pretty cool, huh?
• As the judge put it, the aim of the law is generally to encourage compliance. In other words, while the measures may be punitive, the goals are noble. This is a good distinction as people often attribute a nefarious dimension to the role of Law in Society. As I have some experience with people and their failings, I prefer this imperfect system to the law of the jungle.
• When it comes to motor vehicle violations, unlike in other areas of criminal law, intent is irrelevant. You are responsible for what you do in your vehicle, even if you did not mean to do it.
• Drive the speed limit.