MADRacing Shift Paddles

I've been looking and asking around for shift paddles for the DSG (Direct Shift Gearbox) in the Audi TT for a while. Others have replaced the standard plastic paddles with the slightly larger aluminum paddles from the VW R32, but I was holding out for something that really changed the shape and usefulness of the paddles. I finally found what I was looking for from MADRacing of Portland, OR.

Before:

After:

These paddle are significantly taller than even the R32 paddles -- much, much easier to hit from a regular 10-n-2 drving position on the steering wheel. The design and execution are tremendous; on par with OEM fittings. They look and feel like they should have been there all along.

Moving from Boston to Berkeley

Well, we are down to our last month in the Boston area. All our preparations seem to be moving ahead as smoothly as we could possible hope [knock wood]. Google Earth says this is going to be our new view of the world:

Looks pretty good -- boy, the Sutro Tower looks really tall in Google Earth (black vertical thing on the horizon).

My new job will provide me plenty of welcome challenges, I think -- I'll get to work with technology in a classroom setting. Plus it's starting to get real toasty in Boston. Every time I've been out there, and every time I've cheked weather.com, it seems to be sunny and mid-70s in Berkeley.

But I just finished 8th grade portfolio reviews at Rivers, and the melancholy is starting to set in, too. Listening to the kids talk about the changes in their lives has made me consider my own. This may be a rather lonley summer, as my new co-workers will not be at my new school again til fall, and we don't really kow anyone else in the neighborhood. Tho we'll be settling in and setting up the new house, I think I'll miss Boston, and Rivers a lot during those weeks.

And the Red Sox are winning and I leave town -- an interesting (a)symmetry given that we moved to Boston in the summer of 1986. I made one last trip to Fenway: Braves at Red Sox, May 19th. Imagine the nastiest, cold-drizzly night game (the second of a double-header). The Red Sox got killed, 14-0, and it never really stopped raining, but in the bottom of the 9th inning, the crowd was still strong and loud, and very wet (Mr. Chang, this is for you):

Go Red Sox.

Kites and Sand

It never fails that when I travel to the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston gets pounded by some bad weather. Mid-March, I came west to interview, and Boston got a coating of snow. Last weekend we travelled west to check out our new house in Berkeley, and Boston got a crazy Nor-easter. Not one to pass-up a chance to enjoy the good weather, we went kite flying with Matthew and Tony:

We told Matthew about our friend Jessie Doktor and her family back in Boston, waiting out the storm in Children's Hospital while she under-went chemo. We visited Jessie before leaving for San Fran, and were told about the Doktor Family's "sand from around the world" collection. So here is Matthew collecting some sand for Jessie:

This is sand from Fort Funston on the Pacific Coast. The dunes over-looking the shore were blanketed in flowering ground-cover of cacti or succulents -- squishy! It was a very windy day, as we were to find out later when we lost a kite (thankfully recovered). We had a great time, and were glad we might be able to share it with the Doktor Familty, too!

Boundaries, Narcissism, and the Deep Economy

I am on a flight to Chicago and considering an article in the Globe about a recent narcissistic tendency among our (American) youth. I suppose it's easy to condemn the current generation's non-chalance about our consumerism, but this article drove home some specific points about expectations of happiness versus misery generated by this narcissism.

The article highlights a study conducted by a team lead by Jean Twenge at San Diego State University: "The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students' inventory scores have risen steadily since the test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982."

I am also in the middle of Bill McKibben's new book on the Deep Economy, which also tries to weigh materialism and happiness. McKibben talks about consumption models that allows the following equation: "the most economically productive citizen is a cancer patient who totals his car on the way to meet with his divorce lawyer". Though I gotta think there's a cheaper way to remove oneself as an economic burden than destroying a car and holding up traffic, I take his point: our society values things on their economic merits.

And, of course, our nation's materialism is built on the labor of others; others who are paid a pittance of the money we actually spend. Another example referenced by McKibben (from "Not on the Label" by Felicity Lawrence) describes a Ugandan coffee worker who was told the cost of Starbuck's coffee: his eyes welled with tears when he realized people willingly paid the equivalent of 5,000 Ugandan shillings per cup, and he made about 200 shillings -- per kilo!

I think these two memes intersect at some dark point where the set of items that define our 'self' is so large, that we loose ourselves in that crowd. For example, McKibben compares a young Chinese factory worker's intense reaction to receiving one plush toy, to his own daughter's bland satisfaction in having another to add to her pile.

The implication of the Globe article is that the constant reinforcement of "specialness" creates a kind of needy, compulsive behavior that I think of as an addiction. And I've been pondering solutions, assuming 'cold turkey' is not a viable option.

Unexpectedly, I flash to the reaction of our students to our school's dress code -- at every opportunity they stretch it, do a lawyer-act on it, loophole it, and otherwise ignore it. There are two topics we cannot escape at Admin Team meetings: parking and dress code. The kids really hate being told what to wear (and where to park their increasingly large vehicles).

But I'm starting to see this as an addict's dysfunction. An addict's behavior, our psychologist friends tell us, is marked by an inability to establish boundaries. I understand the concept as: if you can't deny yourself some random thing or behavior (fill in the blank), you can't break your dependance.

So it really bothers me when I have to explain or justify the dress code, because the reason to enforce it is basically existential. If I can't trust the kids to follow a simple, clear dress code, how far can I trust them?

In fact, the general experience of air travel provides example after example of people not paying attention to simple requests. People don't wait for their seating number to be called, they crowd the jetway door. People don't turn off their cell phones when asked, they squeeze in one more minute. I've been watching them all day. It's astounding.

Where does all this mental wandering get us? For me, this is about a generational justice: that we have squandered the earth's bounty, imperiled the earth's future, and taught our kids how to fiddle while the planet burns for the next 100 years. Yeah, that's about as dark as it could possibly get.

Well, but if we get this right, we will have basically stared down and solved the most incredibly large and daunting world problem, ever. What kind of world would be on the other side of "done"? Imagine a world all fixed up, sustainable, with power and food and water -- and justice. What else is there? I think we start building the Starship Enterprise and looking for Vulcans at that point.

The first step to recovery is recognition. And, of course, I'm not immune to the addiction. I'm flying over the New York farms described in McKibben's book, adding to the CO2, thumb-typing this blog post into my Palm Treo.

Hi, my name is Winston, and I love my car.

Having a Frank Grimes Moment

Litebob Squarefinger. Boston was sent over the edge this week by the sudden, scattered appearance of strange electronic devices with these obscene little emoticons:

 

click for Wikipedia article

In this, the "Week of the Super Bowl" and it's advertizing "blitz", what could be appropriate than a terror attack from the Cartoon Network? The reaction of the blogosphere, and of many of my friends and assoicates, has sent me into Frank Grimes-like spasms of disbelief: Ahg! Aiwt! Emg! Ufpk!

Recall: Frank Grimes was a character from a Simpsons episode that went nuts cause everyone around him actually was nuts. Exposed to the insanity of Homer's careless and lazy behavior at the nuclear power plant, and compounded by the acceptance of this behavior by all others at the plant, he snaps. So follow me thru this, and see if I snap -- the blogosphere seems to think this whole thing hilariously funny. It seems to think that the folks in Boston over-reacted, sending in the Bomb Squad to explode some cartoon ad made of Lite Brites.

Boston got punkd. Boston got pwned. Boston got its panties all twisted. Boston is clueless. Laugh at Boston:
"And, uh, the real fake bombs?" on Blue Mass Group
"Attack of the Killer Cartoons ..." on Democratic Underground

Let's put this in context. If you work for some branch of emergency services, your Wednesday morning included a fake pipe bomb at a big hospital in central Boston and mysterious packages found on two busy bridges over the Charles; concurrent with a series of puzzling reports of electronic devices attached to bridge abutments and under highway overpasses. Connect these with other reports of security alerts in other cities (in Britain and Washington DC), and there is no way anyone should think that the reposnse professionals in Boston over-reacted. They responded just as they should.

By contrast consider that the two "performance artsits" were told by their advertising employers that they should keep quiet while chaos reigned around them. After their court appearance, they launched into a non-sequitor about 70s hair styles while claiming their seriousness and sincerity. Tell me you don't feel the pangs of Frank Grimes. Aiwt! Ufpk!

But almost worse than all this is the sense that a huge number of the "informed public" (Olbermann!) has gotten this completely wrong. In fact, they seem to be encouraging the perpetrators to not only continue dumping on Boston, but ot rub Boston's collective nose in it. That there is some "reason filter" that is not set quite right, or some "logic mechanism" is just not switching on.

There are other examples in recent headlines: the lady who wanted to win a Nintendo and drank so much water she died. The mental giants running the radio show explained to callers warning of the danger, "They signed releases so we're not responsible, okay?". So even after these mooks were told of the danger, they did not tell the contestants, or even consider having some medical consultant available for them. And still the comments to the news posts include many responses that basically blamed the dead woman for drinking the water. She was punkd. She was pwned. She was clueless.

Yes, and rape victims wear short skirts. I guess in a world where people eat bugs on TV to win money, this seem like acceptable behavior. If you're a rube, you deserve it.

Similarly, our national conscience is fixed to "American Idol" not just for the winners, but for the losers: we love those early episodes and the delusional wailers who think they have a shot. We even take some of the"best losers" and push them into the spot light, like William Hung. We've taken schadenfreude to a whole other level.

Further consider how lucky, really, the folks in Boston were that there was not some other "big thing": a big apartment building on fire, or even some ambulance headed to MGH stuck at Charles Circle with a life-threatening situation. What are the consequences of installing home-made, enigmatic, electronic ads in a City famous for its congestion? And for what? Ads? Contests? It's funny, huh? Ahg! Emg!

Finally, folks pay for billboards for a reason: you can't just paint big ads on the sides of skyscrapers. It's not your property. There are places for ads. "Artists" who spray paint graffitti on trains and buildings know they are committing a crime; defacing property is a crime. Over the summer, other city administrators in Philly were all upset over a Sony PSP ad campaign that paid graffitti artists to deface buildings with prescribed images -- but Sony actually paid for the wall spaces.

Or if ad tag lines are your language, let's use the one from Apple: Think Different. It seems that folks no longer have the ability to distinguish between "different" thinking and no thinking at all.

There are good places for ads and there are bad places; responsible behavior and irresponsible. There are art installations and there are crimes. When (when!?) did it become "okay" to attach a homemade electronic device to a column holding up a highway? I don't care what reason you have for doing it -- advertising, mooniniting, 70s hair styling, whatever -- when did that become a acceptable thing to do?

This accepance would reduce our basic economic relationships down to a giant network of confidence games: tricksters and marks. Anything goes as long as you're "in the know", and if you're not, it's your own fault for being a dope. The answers were right there on the internet, just search Google for "zebbler", d-uh. You were the idiot for not looking. Sucker.

Oxymorons: jumbo shrimp, reality-TV, marketing-genius.

Here's the litmus test -- ask yourself: what if the "artists" had not been hired by Turner? What if they had come up with a conceptual piece unrelated to cartoons, involving Lite Brites in public places? Would it be funny? Would they be prosecuted?

My inner Frank Grimes is especially appalled by those comments congratulating Turner and the advertisers on a "brilliant" move and for psyching the City into giving them a ton of free exposure. If we expect our style of democracy to work, then the market-place of ideas should not fail in this manner. It kinda makes me wonder if everyone shouldn't have to pass a test to vote. My trust is broken.

At least I still have the Simpsons.

Hottest Weather Ever

The NOAA has released it's summer report for weather in the US in 2006. It's conclusion? A very warm December pushed 2006 past 1998 as the hottest calendar year ever recorded. Check out this map -- no one near normal. In 112 years, almost every state is showing a triple-digit (one of the 13 hottest years). Hot.


"The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was the warmest on record and nearly identical to the record set in 1998. Based on preliminary data, the 2006 annual average temperature was 55°F, 2.2°F (1.2°C) above the 20th Century mean and 0.07°F (0.04°C) warmer than 1998."

And for the first time ever the US Historical Climatology Network calulation for average annual temperature broke the 55-degree (F) barrier. If the mean is just below 53-degrees, aren't we now officially two degrees into "global warming"?

The State of the Arctic

A stunning update to the arctic climate research going on at the NOAA reinforces all the recent news that climate change at the poles is accelerating.


Old Ice vs New Ice - 1988, 199, 2001, 2005
[ download the PDF here ]

This AP article summarizes the basic conclusions, adding to the drum beat that we are heating things up:

"Signs of warming continue in the Arctic with a decline in sea ice, an increase in shrubs growing on the tundra and rising worries about the Greenland ice sheet.

"There have been regional warming periods before. Now we're seeing Arctic-wide changes," James Overland, an oceanographer at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Washington state, said Thursday.

For each of the last five years it was at least 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) above average over the entire Arctic over the entire year, he said.

The new "State of the Arctic" analysis, released by the U.S. government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also reports an increase in northward movement of warmer water through the Bering Strait in 2001-2004, which might be a factor in continuing reduction of sea ice."

But there is some interesting cross-currents in the data, from the LA Times article by Robert Lee Hotz:

"Yet the researchers also found new patterns of cooling ocean currents and prevailing winds that suggested the Arctic, long considered a bellwether of global warming, may be reverting in some ways to more normal conditions not seen since the 1970s.

Taken together, these findings may be evidence, the researchers said, of the region struggling to keep its balance, as rising temperatures slowly overturn the long-established order of seasonal variations.

'This is a region that is fighting back,' said lead author Jacqueline Richter-Menge, a civil engineer at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H. 'There are things that showed signs of going back to norms, trying to right themselves under very dire circumstances.' "

The dude's name is Hotz.