Active vs. passive safety: SUV edition

Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of the sport-utility vehicle:

• Big and Bad: how the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety (gladwell.com)

(A stylistic note for language pedants: I think that “S.U.V.” has become sufficiently common that one can get away with writing it unpunctuated, as “SUV” — but I certainly don’t object to Gladwell’s usage.)

Gladwell contends that people buy SUVs because they feel safe — they’re big and tall and heavy, not unlike road-going castles.  Of course, SUVs in general aren’t notably safer than other vehicles: being tall, they tend to flip over more readily than vehicles with lower centres of mass (hence the alternate expansion “Suddenly Upside-down Vehcile”), and being heavy, they don’t stop with nearly the alacrity of most lighter vehicles.  But this isn’t actually about being safe — it’s about feeling safe:

[W]hen S.U.V. buyers thought about safety they were thinking about something that reached into their deepest unconscious.   “The No.   1 feeling is that everything surrounding you should be round and soft, and should give,” Rapaille told me.   “There should be air bags everywhere.   Then there’s this notion that you need to be up high.   That’s a contradiction, because the people who buy these S.U.V.s know at the cortex level that if you are high there is more chance of a rollover.   But at the reptilian level they think that if I am bigger and taller I’m safer.   You feel secure because you are higher and dominate and look down.   That you can look down is psychologically a very powerful notion.”

SUVs are perfect for grass-eaters.

(Of course, there are a number of good reasons to buy an SUV, and there are probably even a number of reasonably safe SUVs available, but if you bought your SUV because you think SUVs are intrinsically safe — baaaaaaaa!)

As Gladwell points out, SUVs emphasize passive safety.  They don’t corner or stop very well, so you’re unlikely to be able to avoid a crash in an SUV by virtue of last-ditch evasive maneuvers.  SUVs also feel safe (as discussed above), lulling their herbivorous drivers into a false sense of security and making them less likely to avoid crashes by virtue of awareness and early avoidance.  SUVs, however, are perceived to excel at surviving crashes — all that size and mass must be good for soaking up impacts from those annoying Civics and Miatas.

This sort of “safety” appeals to people who like to think that crashes are inevitable, rather than avoidable — you’re not going to be able to avoid that truck, or stop in time to miss the kid on his bike, so you’re better off armouring yourself as much as possible to attenuate the impact.  Most people don’t even speak of “crashes” any more — instead, they’re “accidents“.  Accidents are unforseeable and unavoidable: “It’s not my fault, officer, it was just an accident!“  As Gladwell writes:

We live in an age, after all, that is strangely fixated on the idea of helplessness: we’re fascinated by hurricanes and terrorist acts and epidemics like sars—situations in which we feel powerless to affect our own destiny.   In fact, the risks posed to life and limb by forces outside our control are dwarfed by the factors we can control.   Our fixation with helplessness distorts our perceptions of risk.   “When you feel safe, you can be passive,” Rapaille says of the fundamental appeal of the S.U.V. “Safe means I can sleep.   I can give up control.   I can relax.   I can take off my shoes.   I can listen to music.”

Contrast this attitude with that of Lucky over on The Great Motorcycle Pizza Tour:

On my bike, the only blind spots I have are those built into my head. I take up less space than a car, and as such need less space to dodge dangerous obstacles like remedial physics students in cages. Furthermore, I know how to look for, identify and evaluate dangerous situations. As my MSF instructor said, not all crashes are avoidable, but they are all preventable. I’m not terrified in traffic because I identified the danger and took action a quarter mile beforehand.

In a car, on the other hand, I’ve got blind spots, a huge footprint and sluggish handling to contend with. Plus, there are a variety of distractions available to me in a car. There’s the radio to fiddle with, climate control settings to adjust, coffee-like beverages to drink, rapidly prepared hamburgers to eat, cell-phones to answer, and the list goes on. Who’s really in control of where that thing is headed?

(From his post Quite Contrary)

What Lucky describes is an addiction to active safety, and I have it too.  I hate giving up control of my own well-being, and I love the confidence that I earn when I’m aware of and alert to what’s going on around me (in both immediately physical and vague socioeconomic senses) and am prepared to respond appropriately.  I’d probably be perfectly happy on a motorcycle as long as I can maintain this attitude.

Of course, there’s nothing about an SUV that precludes you from maintaining an active interest in the world around you, and there’s nothing about a motorcycle that inoculates you against careless inattention.  The key ingredient here is you, the vehicle’s operator.

I just wish that (as an unarmoured pedestrian) more people would take an active interest in the world around their four-wheeled cages.

Bonds, Steroids, and Hypocrisy

Perennial favourite Reason Magazine gives us this alliteratively-titled gem:

• Bashing Barry Bonds

Bonds may be an asshole, and he may be a steroid-using asshole, but by all statistical accounts he appears to be a damn good baseball player.  Why, then, does he attract so much vitriol?  Nick Gillespie has a suggestion:

Whether Bonds is ultimately accepted by fans is less interesting to me than what his censure suggests about our society’s attitudes toward drugs: We remain convinced that even in contests where certain substances weren’t banned, it’s somehow uniquely immoral to use drugs to transform ourselves or give ourselves an edge. This attitude seems impervious to change, even as Americans increasingly rely on drugs in all aspects of our lives—to control our cholesterol, to improve our attention span, to change our moods on a daily basis.

(I do believe that I’ve mentioned this once before.)

I used to believe that this great tsunami of righteous indignation about sterrrr-oids came down to a naive, vaguely laudable, and strongly impractical aversion to cheating.  Cue tangent:

If someone’s struggling in what I believe to be a good cause, I want them to cheat as much as they can possibly manage.  Then again, I’m a tedious empiricist, so I’m more interested in what you can accomplish than I am in what you might have been able to accomplish had you not been so woefully encumbered by what you’re pleased to believe are chivalrous standards of behaviour.  And in any case: if both sides can “cheat”, is it even immoral (or unsporting) to do so?  “All’s fair in love and war” — and in everything else of real importance.

Oh, right, baseball’s a “national pastime”, not a “matter of real importance”.  Sure.  Looking at the amount of money consumed by this “pastime”, one might be forgiven for thinking that baseball is of greater national concern than the procurement of an effective shoulder arm for the men and women we send off to war (the perceptive reader will note that this is yet another example of cheating in a good cause).  Then again, that’s the status fucking quo, isn’t it?  Slap a yellow-ribbon bumper sticker on your luxury SUV and carry on!

Yeah, it’s not so much that Joe Baseball is freaked out about sterrrr-oids — it’s just that he (or she — Jo Baseball is homophonic; let’s not discriminate) is simply aghast at the notion that a man such as Bonds (a role model to all those poor innocent children!) would cheat, would seek an unfair and underhanded advantage in what is essentially a metaphor for the ideal American way of life — that beautiful game of baseball.

Well, not so much.  Please forgive the long quotation:

Baseball fans are excruciatingly well versed in the reality that, as ESPN’s Bill Simmons has written, “people have been cheating in baseball for decades.” Discussing the Hall of Fame chances of Mark McGwire, another record-setting slugger who almost certainly used performance-ehancers, Simmons notes that players have

…fixed games, stolen signs, corked bats, slimed balls, popped greenies and, yes, injected steroids and rubbed HGH cream. We’re told that baseball is America’s pastime, the implication being that it mirrors real life. And you know what? It’s true. A long time ago, Babe Ruth showed us that athletes, like everyone else, are imperfect. More recently, [accused gambler Pete] Rose hammered home the point for any of us who might have forgotten it. What did McGwire make clear? That human beings are always searching for an edge, and when they find it, they use it.

It’s a curious fact that, as Simmons notes, you almost never hear fans dismiss the accomplishments of someone like Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry, who openly admitted cheating (by doctoring the ball). But if there’s a hint of drug use, there’s a big problem.

Short version: everyone cheats, but Bonds (and to a certain extent Mark McGwire and company) are — gasp! — using drugs.  I suppose that’s beyond the pale.

At the same time: well, Viagra.  Need I say more?  Drugs — perfectly legal drugs — have become so ubiquitous that some of them are their own fucking punch-line.  If baseball is popularly supposed to be a metaphor for life in a creepy Pleasantville-ish idealized-’50s imaginary world, then surely popping a blue trapezoidal pill to make your cock hard is metaphorically equivalent to shooting D-bol to — look out, folks, here comes the metaphor — knock it out of the park with your big hard wooden bat, am I right?

While I’m on the subject of baseball as a metaphor for life, let’s take another look at this:

What did McGwire make clear? That human beings are always searching for an edge, and when they find it, they use it.

Good for him!  Seek out an edge, exploit it, and expand it.  That’s progress, folks — that’s why we treat infections with antibiotics (and why we’ve developed ABs vastly more potent than penicillin) rather than only praying over the afflicted.  That’s why hundreds of millions of us can communicate in real time over copper wire, fibre-optic cable, and thin fucking air rather than only passing on verbal messages between whoever happens to be within earshot.   That’s why we live ’til we’re ninety rather than ’til we’re thirty.

Let’s not be too eager to condemn high-profile athletes for what we’d all love to do in the first place, if we thought we could get away with it.

Quebec asks oil companies to — pretty-please? — be nice

That is, the province wants to collect a “carbon tax” on gasoline and diesel fuel:

• Quebec to collect nation’s 1st[sic] carbon tax (CBC)

It’s interesting to see carbon-dioxide emissions (or, in general, pollution) put into purely economic terms this way.  But anyway:

Quebec will implement Canada’s first carbon tax in October, collecting just under one cent a litre from petroleum companies in the province, which will raise about $200 million a year to pay for energy-saving initiatives such as improvements to public transit.

The tax will amount to 0.8 cents on every litre of gas sold in Quebec, and 0.9 cents on each litre of diesel fuel.

About 50 companies will be affected by the tax.

Well, if Québec’s “energy-saving initiatives” go as well as California’s promotion of solar power, they’ll surely need the money.  And besides, everyone loves sticking it to those evil awful oil companies, rather than making the poor benighted consumers pay even more for gas.  But, er, if you make oil companies pay an extra cent or so for each litre they sell, what’s to stop them from simply jacking up the price of oil by an extra cent?

Oh, right.  You ask them nicely not to:

Natural Resources Minister Claude Béchard said Wednesday he hopes the petroleum industry will pay the tax without passing on the cost to drivers when they fill up their cars at the pump.

Yeah, that’s going to work really well.

“We all have a responsibility. Every Quebecer has a responsibility. It’s important for every Quebecer. So I hope that all those companies will have the same sincerity that we have, that Quebecers have,” Béchard said.

Hang on: what the fuck does that mean?!  “Sincerity”?  That means “freedom from deceit”.  It would be entirely sincere for the oil companies to say, “Hey guys, the province is sticking us for a cent a gallon, so we’re going to stick you for a cent a gallon.  Thanks!”  No deceit there.

Of course, someone with an actual education in economics has a different view:

But Jean-Thomas Bernard, who teaches economics at Laval University, said the fate of the carbon tax is a foregone conclusion.

“It will end up being paid by the consumer.”

Bernard said there’s little any government can do to control the cost of fuel without triggering a shortage or an increase in the price.

This is, of course, difficult for people who expect the guv’mint to solve all of their problems (without raising taxes, of course) to swallow.

And what happens when we ask, say, the oil companies what they’re going to do?

 Petroleum industry spokesman Carol Montreuil said there is no guarantee companies will swallow the tax, rather than tacking it onto the price of fuel at the pump.

No kidding!

So basically, Québec is imposing a carbon tax upon consumers without officially imposing a carbon tax upon consumers, and they can blame the evil awful oil companies for it.  Deceitful, but pretty clever.

Beers of Milwaukee, vol. 11

Nous sommes de retour.

One thing I’ve noticed lately is that — despite popular prejudice north of the 49th — the United States actually has more excellent breweries (and more available excellent beers) than Canada.  I can get outstanding California microbrewed porters in Milwaukee — but I can’t even get Mackeson Triple Stout in Vancouver.

Case in point: Butte Creek’s Organic Porter.  This stuff comes from Chico, California — quite a trip for a microbrew on this continent.  Their website claims that their porter has “a crisp hop start and a smooth chocolate finish” — well, I’ll buy the “smooth” part, and the finish has a rather nice bittersweetness that might remind one of chocolate if one has read enough advertising copy.  (I can’t taste the hops they mention.)  I kinda like Butte Creek’s porter — it’s a decent thick dark beer, just a little bit sweet (but not too much — not quite as sticky-sweet as Okanagan Springs Brewery’s porter).  It’s less eccentric than Breckenridge’s vanilla porter — if you’re not into vanilla beers (as I, quite inexplicably, am) this stuff makes an adequate substitute.

Butte Creek’s porter is pretty damn good beer, and if it’s the best porter in your liquor store you should consider yourself quite fortunate — but it doesn’t make my top five.

On the local side of things, I also bought a bottle of Sprecher’s “Premium Reserve” doppelbock.  I cracked it right away, which was perhaps a mistake.  (Sprecher’s website suggests that this beer ages rather more than gracefully.)  As it stands, this beer’s too sweet and fruity for my taste.  It has an unpleasantly saccharine aftertaste that makes finishing a pint something of a chore.  (I am, however, quite intrigued by their imperial stout.)

Next, I think I’ll look for more of Flying Dog’s “Gonzo” imperial porter.

Kiddie drinks for actual kids

If you’re an alcohol snob like I am, you’ve probably turned your nose up at wine coolers, hard lemonades, and other fruity-flavoured drinks designed to taste like they aren’t alcoholic.  “Kiddie drinks”, you might call them, “fit only for children and fratsquatch.  The closest any adult should get to such a concoction is a dangerously smooth martini.”  (You probably also insist that martinis are only made with gin, vermouth, and olives.  Pedants are we!)

If so, you may be interested to note that a handful of clever students from Helicon Vocational Institute have invented what might be best described as alcoholic kool-ade:

• Students invent powdered booze (CNN.com)

The latest innovation in inebriation, called Booz2Go, is available in 20-gram packets that cost €1-1.5 ($1.35-$2).

Top it up with water and you have a bubbly, lime-colored and -flavored drink with just 3 percent alcohol content.

Sounds like exactly the sort of thing I wouldn’t like!  But that’s okay, it’s not for me:

“We are aiming for the youth market. They are really more into it because you can compare it with Bacardi-mixed drinks,” 20-year-old Harm van Elderen told Reuters.

[...]

“Because the alcohol is not in liquid form, we can sell it to people below 16,” said project member Martyn van Nierop.

The legal age for drinking alcohol and smoking is 16 in the Netherlands.

Imagine that: kiddie drinks for actual kids!

I’m not sure how the Dutch are going to deal with it, but can you imagine the wave of righteous indignation that would sweep this continent’s “concerned parents” if someone started selling this stuff over here?  “Oh my God, they’re corrupting our precious children!  Someone make a law!”

I don’t know what’s behind our atavistic compulsion to pwotect da poow widdle chiwdwens — my guess is that it’s an adaptation evolved over millennia of grave danger, and that now that we’ve eliminated all but noise of those dangers we make up new ones to justify what seems like paranoia.  What I’d like to know is whether there’s a causal relationship here — does alcohol consumption lead to “corruption”, or does “corruption” lead to (among other things) alcohol consumption?

I suppose we need to define “corruption” first, which is itself rather problematic.  Most definitions of “a corrupted child” sound to me like “isn’t properly fearful of and obedient to authority” or merely “doesn’t cater to my values and pisses me off with his damn devil music”.  No conflict of interest there at all.

Do we have any good (that is, statistically robust and verifiable) reason to believe that drinking-age laws work?  I suspect that they’re based on obsolete moral fashion and misplaced parental paranoia, and should not be on the books… but I’m willing to be proven wrong.

Why I like Ron Paul, vol. 3

Ron Paul vs. Jon Stewart:

• Ron Paul on The Daily Show (Lew Rockwell)

Government?  Wasteful?  No, not the government!

“Stop and search” catches a dangerous… tourist

Well, it was his own damn fault for being foreign:

• ‘I took a picture of Tower Bridge and was arrested for terrorism’ (Intel Daily)

How this sort of thing “preserves freedom” is beyond me.

FCC censorship deemed “arbitrary and capricious”

This must be a sign of coming Armageddon — Fox Television has just done something decent and honourable:

• FCC policy on expletives ruled arbitrary (msnbc.com)

In particular:

A federal appeals court on Monday found that a new Federal Communications Commission policy penalizing accidentally aired expletives was invalid, saying it was “arbitrary and capricious” and might not survive First Amendment scrutiny.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not, however, outlaw the policy outright. In a 2-1 ruling, it found in favor of a Fox Television-led challenge to the policy and returned the case to the FCC to let the agency try to provide a “reasoned analysis” for its new approach to indecency and profanity. It added it was doubtful the FCC could do so.

[...]

In a majority opinion written by Judge Rosemary Pooler, the appeals court said all speech covered by the FCC’s indecency policy is fully protected by the First Amendment.

There’s a great deal of irony to the notion of Fox Television leading the fight for free speech in broadcasting, but I’ll take progress where I can get it.

We are told over and over again that some words should not be uttered — that some speech is less free than others. We are admonished not to cry “fire!” in a crowded theatre, and that seems reasonable — who wants to cry wolf? We are told not to incite hatred or violence, and that seems not just reasonable but noble — a benign sort of thought control that, if diligently practiced and ruthlessly and universally applied, might perhaps prevent some percentage of the atrocities that have graced the headlines of the twentieth century. (Of course, like the Metropolitan Police, we can never know for sure.) We are forbidden from profanity, obscenity, and vulgarity — in certain media, during certain times of day (don’t worry, it’s not that bad) — to foster “decency” and “family values”.  (Whether this censorship actually works remains somewhat obscure.)

All of these prohibitions accustom us to shutting the fuck up when Authority tells us to be seen, not heard. How can an inculcated habit of acquiescing to censorship not be dangerous? In a time when both left-leaning and right-leaning (I can’t really say “liberal” or “conservative”, because they are neither) politicos, pundits, and activists embrace bigger and bigger government as the solution to every problem; when we’re declaring perpetual wars to justify federal power-grabs and paint criticism as unpatriotic; when the mainstream media care more about Paris Fucking Hilton than they do about Russia’s resurgent nuclear missile programme — this ubiquitous habit of acquiescence scares the shit out of me.

But if it saves the life of just one child….

FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps said the court’s decision was “disappointing to me and to millions of parents and concerned citizens across the land” but “doesn’t change the FCC’s legal obligation to enforce the indecency statute.”

“So any broadcaster who sees this decision as a green light to send more gratuitous sex and violence into our homes would be making a huge mistake,” Copps said in an e-mailed statement. “The FCC has a duty to find a way to breathe life into the laws that protect our kids.”

I’m amused that Copps emailed his statement to msnbc — the free availability of the word “fuck” on the internet makes his quest Quixotic.  I’m also amused by Copps’s admission that broadcasters are (despite the FCC’s censorship) already sending “gratuitous sex and violence into our homes” — if the “indecency statute” doesn’t work, why is it on the books?

What annoys me about Copps’s facile moralizing is that he blithely assumes that censorship laws like the “indecency statute” do, in fact, protect kids.  Protect them from what?  What, exactly, is the big bad bogey-man (sorry, that was sexist: bogey-person) from whom the brave knights of the FCC are protecting America’s terrifyingly vulnerable and heart-rendingly innocent children?

Well, you know, indecency.  And stuff.