When GPS goes Bad

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson

I love GPS; my wife does not. She does not trust it and would rather use a paper map. And she's right. GPS is a great tool but never trust it 100%.

When we drove from NY to Winnipeg, Canada, last summer, the GPS led us to a bridge that no longer exists. We could see that there was once a bridge but it had been torn down and replaced by a new bridge perhaps a mile away. This was a case where we had to trust our eyes and overrule the GPS.

A similar event occurred to a man in Spain but with tragic result. Man Drowns After GPS Guides Him Into a Lake. "The driver was following the GPS directions when the car fell into the water, sinking in just a few minutes. Apparently, it was a very dark night in a bad rural road. The man was a foreigner who didn't know the area. When he saw the end of the road, it was too late. He didn't have time to stop the car."

The day before in Switzerland, a van became stuck on a "glorified goat trail" while following GPS instructions (pictured above). The van was air-lifted out.

A friend of ours said no one would believe that her GPS sent her on to dirt roads during a trip. We replied that we understood perfectly. The same happened to us last summer as we experience many dirt roads in the farm country of Wisconsin.  Many new GPS have a travel setting to exclude dirt roads from trip routes.

Another thing to keep in mind is that GPS positioning is not 100% accurate. We often find our GPS is about 100 yds off in predicting when to turn. Once I was on an access road adjacent to and parallelling a highway and the GPS thought I was on the highway and was not helping us in finding an on-ramp.
Bottom Line

Trust your eyes, not the GPS.

If you speed on strange roads at night or in fog you might not be able to brake or stop if the road suddenly curves or ends. I recall two such incidents. Once in the fog I was cruising down an empty road I'd never driven before when suddenly there was a barrier and the road ended without warning. (maybe I missed the warning?) Another time I drove nearly the entire North-South length of Idaho on a mountain highway. I thought the speed signs on curves were mostly for trucks and that I could safely do 10 mph higher than the suggested speed in my car. And I could, usually, except once. There was one very sharp curve that got my adrenaline pumping as I had to fight for control to keep my car within my lane and not drifting in to oncoming traffic. Lesson learned - don't speed on unfamiliar roads.

Parliaments

Anytime a large, emergency spending bill makes its way through Congress, the potential for mischief is great.-Chris Chocola (Indiana Congressman, 2003-2007)

I've just finished listening to the lecture series, The medieval world. II, Society, economy, and culture. I've enjoyed the series during my commute and today's lecture on the origins of representative democracy and parliaments struck a chord.

The professor began by pointing out that true Democracies are very rare; the common example is Athens in ancient Greece where any of the 5000 free men in the city could propose law and vote on it. The US is actually not a democracy; its a Republic where we elect those who represent us and conduct government. Republics are also uncommon in world history with Rome as the classic example. The Roman Republic lasted for several hundred years until the 1st century AD. Then over a thousand years passed before a representative government reappeared with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.

The story behind the Magna Carta is revealing. King John of England was also Duke of Normandy in France which did not please the French King who fought long and hard to seize John's french lands. This constituted an "Emergency" for King John which allowed him to raise new taxes and fees on his top noblemen, the Barons, in order to pay for the long war. Apparently the Barons did not mind the taxes so much when John's brother, Richard the Lion Hearted, asked for it because Richard won his battles and could reward the Barons for their generosity. John however was terrible at war and kept losing his battles and had nothing to show or give away for the money spent. [I'm reminded of Obama and the Stimulus plan but I won't go there.]

Eventually the Barons had had enough and "forced" King John to sign the Magna Carta which required kings to "ask" the Barons for money by pleading the case before them. Barons now had the right to say no if the "emergency" was unjustified in their eyes. This led to a new dynamic of quid-pro-quo where the King with hat in hand would have to listen to the Baron's requests and make deals in order to receive the money to run his wars. There was greater fiscal responsibility because no Baron wanted to give up his money without good cause. It was their money!

The English Kings hated dealing with this new "parliament" of nobles and called it only as a last resort. But with the Hundred Year War the need for funds was great and so reluctantly Parliaments were called again and again and each time the Parliament attached more power to itself as it bargained with kings. As towns became wealthy the British king added town leaders to Parliament as additional sources of funding (and perhaps to influence the vote?). Hence Parliament became more representative.

Now interestingly, Royalty was right to fear Parliament. When in session they were a royal pain making demands. When not in session they got mad over being ignored. One cause of the English Civil War (1642–1651) was King Charles I's refusal to invoke a radically Protestant Parliament which was opposed to the king's Catholic wife. Parliament went to war against the King and won in 1651. Charles I was killed, his son, Charles II, exiled and the country ruled by Parliament as the Commonwealth of England (1649–53), and then as a Protectorate (1653–59), under Oliver Cromwell's personal rule. During this period Parliament was extremely puritanical and outlawed Christmas as well as Opera, Plays and just about any element of fun. At Cromwell's death the Parliament restored Charles II as King and there was much rejoicing.

The French Kings managed not to call a Parliament for centuries but when a funding crisis occurred in 1789, King Louis XVI invoked an Estates-General (i.e. parliament) as a last resort. The Estates-General used this rare opportunity to pass new laws, seize power, imprison and eventually kill the King, and begin the French Revolution.

The founding fathers of America established a constitution to balance Parliament (Congress) and King (President) against one another as history had shown the dangers of either side obtaining total power. However after learning about the history of Parliament I realized that we are lacking a key ingredient from parliamentary history. Our modern Congressmen and Senators have no skin in the game, it's NOT their personal money that they are managing. It's bad enough that they have an enormous slush fund from taxes, and fees, and social security to spend as they will. But they can also pass bills that are completely unfunded. When expenses exceed revenues (as they typically do), congress borrows money or raises taxes and fees.

Instead of sharing the pain of expenses, congressmen today try to grab all the Federal Pork they can for themselves and the folks back home. So let's make it personal. What if we replaced all federal tax with higher state taxes and Congressmen would have to fund the federal government out of the funds of their own states? Now each bill has a cost that is felt back home as there is less to spend on the state level. The nature of Pork might change - instead of "free money for us" from the slush fund, state residents might realize that their representative is taking their money and spending it on his supporters and friends.

Bottom Line

The federal budget is a disaster in every country today with a Representative Democracy. There is no incentive for fiscal responsibility, no reward for saving money, no recognition for running a lean government with fewer workers. Instead people re-elect leaders who bring in the most Pork for local projects and businesses. Representatives can raise more funds by offering government jobs as rewards to friends. And they raise salary and benefits sky-high for government workers to win the union vote.

We need to change the system to encourage fiscal prudence over fiscal largess.

Names!

People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world.
- Barbra Streisand song

One of the hardest things to remember is a person’s name. My wife and I once sent a Christmas card to an old friend and used the wrong first name for her new husband. Research shows that even after 50 years you can remember many of the faces from your High School Year book but the names are a distant memory. The reason is that names have no meaning. You may recall relevant personal facts like a friend’s hometown or job because these are talking points and something you can relate to. But there is rarely any cosmic meaning to whether a person is named Joe or John.

So in order to remember a name you must assign it some meaning. I once knew a fellow train commuter named George. To remember the name I linked it to the cartoon and song “George of the Jungle”. When I saw the person I’d think of the song and the name. Another example. For some reason I kept forgetting the name of musician Jethro Tull whose music I like. So I linked the name to the phrase, “For whom the bell tolls” and that reminds me of Tull and then I can remember Jethro.

Many websites teach that the way to remember names is repetition:

When you are first introduced to someone, use their names several times when you talk to them. “Hi, Jim, nice to meet you. So, what do you do for a living Jim? Do you have any kids, Jim? Jim, it was great to meet you!” If you don’t catch their name when it was originally told to you, ask for it again and then use it.

I’m skeptical. There are many things in school I learned via repetition that are now gone. On the other hand, I do remember things that used memory aids like HOMES for the names of the Great Lakes. Or “A rat in Tom’s house might eat Tom’s ice cream” to spell arithmetic. If Jim mentioned above were slender I might link him to “Slim Jim”. But be careful never to let it slip out and say it aloud!

I have an uncommon last name so when I introduce myself to people I often say, “Kibble, as in Kibbles and Bits”. I hope this helps them to remember me.

Bottom Line

Each of us has different responses to stimuli. I tend to forget what I hear and remember what I see. At meetings I take notes so that I can see the words that must be recalled for later. Likewise names are more meaningful to me when they are written down and spelled. Perhaps I should imagine people wearing their name as a nametag or written on their forehead?

See http://www.43folders.com/2006/07/10/remember-names for more ideas.

How to Remember, part 2

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out … It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."- Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet

As promised yesterday, there is another memory trick for memorizing a list that does not rely on a story chain. Have you ever wondered why people say, “In the first place” and “in the second place?” The tradition is over 2000 years old.

In ancient Greece, the Athenians (for awhile) had a democracy and any male could speak before the legislative body to propose a law. Those who succeeded in politics were the frequently the best at public speaking. And so in Athens around 300 BC we find the first schools that teach rhetoric and speaking skills. One method taught was to picture your speech laid out in the rooms of your house or at significant stopping points along some route. You picture your first key point in the first room or place. Your second talking point in the second place, etc.

To use yesterday’s grocery list as an example:

I visualize a cabbage as the doorknob of my front door. The hallway is filled with carrots growing. Then I see the kitchen with leeks hanging from the ceiling. The living room is filled to the ceiling with beets. There is a cow in my backyard. The back gate has loaves of bread impaled on it.

It helps to make the pictures outrageous so you’ll remember them. It also helps to have a Greek style house where you can walk through rooms in a circle around the central courtyard. In my house I reached a dead end rather soon and had to step outside.

There is also a variation on this technique that ties a new list to an ordered list you already know. The most common example is the song, “This old man” since the images and numbers are so tightly linked with rhyme:

1. Thumb
2. Shoe
3. Knee
4. Door
5. Hive
6. Sticks
7. Heaven
8. Gate
9. Spine
10. Over again (or big fat hen?)

Now I would imagine the grocery list as follows:

I stick my thumb in the cabbage. It’s stuck there
My shoe is filled with carrots.
My knee has swollen so it looks like a beet. (I’m moving the leeks to #6)
There is a steak nailed to my door dripping juice
Honey from a hive is pouring onto a slice of bread
The sticks look just like leeks.

If someone asks what is the fourth item on the list, I think: 4 = door. What’s on my door? Oh, yes, a juicy steak.

Bottom Line

This technique of linking items to places or a well-known list is more difficult than story telling but it has advantages. You could recite the list backwards or recall any single item from the list upon request. And forgetting one item won’t break a chain causing you to forget everything following it. The disadvantage comes when trying to memorize more than one list at a time. Having multiple items in your rooms or nailed to a door will get confusing. And how will you separate one list from the other? Rooms in different houses? By some secondary key like color, scent, or sound?

Why We Forget

"Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories, sweetened thru the ages just like wine,
Memories, memories, sweet memories" - Elvis song

As much as we want to remember things, it appears that the brain is really designed for being forgetful and unobservant. The opposite condition, perfect recall, can in fact be overwhelming and a detriment to survival. Many Idiot Savants have amazing gifts of memory but at the cost of being autistic. And so evolution favors forgetting.

The flaws in our memories and observations are detailed in a book I’m enjoying called, “Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average” by Joseph T. Hallinan. Here are some of the anecdotes from just the first CD:

• A researcher made a film where a man walked into an empty classroom and sat down. The scene cut to a close-up of him, seated, looking around. What most viewers failed to notice was that a different actor was used for the close-up shot.
• The human eye has a very small zone on the retina for detailed vision. The vast majority of what we see is peripheral. We are fooled into thinking we have great vision because the eye is rapidly moving about taking three shots a second that get stitched together in the brain as one image.
• This means that a lot of detail about us is not observed – the brains fills in the gaps with what we expect to see.
• This trait works against us when it’s our job to find the rare occurrence: a radiologist looking for tumors on an X-ray or an Airport Security guard looking for gun as the luggage is scanned. They miss on average 25-30% of the items they are trained to look for. The brain has a built-in quitting threshold that makes the snap judgment all is normal and there is nothing interesting to see.

It turns out there is a lot we don’t know about memory and recall. My brother-in-law is working with lab mice in an attempt to locate where memories are formed in the brain and to physically detect the brain change where a memory is stored.

Bottom Line

While the facts above may be interesting (and clutter the brain) of what use are they?

It turns out that most of the time, what we do and what we see are subconscious. We walk, drive, eat, etc. on autopilot as we focus on a conversation or a phone call. Those tasks we do under autopilot make a very fleeting imprint on the brain and are soon forgotten.

A common example of this is forgetting where you left your keys. You walk in the house (autopilot) while thinking about the kids or the bathroom and set down your keys on the first empty space you pass. Then you forget about the keys because there are other more important things to think about.

The solution to this is to make your key dropping habit a conscious act.

1. Try to pick one location you always use.
2. When you don’t use that location, then pause one second as you set down the keys to visualize yourself where you are standing in the house, look attentively at the surface where you are placing the keys, and make up a story like “I’m putting my keys on the dining table because I need to run to the bathroom.” This should be a deeper impression on the brain and aid in recall.

Emergency Alerts

“Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised” - Denis Waitley

When a disaster happens how will you become informed of Emergency and Disaster Warnings?

1. The Emergency Alert System
   You’ve heard this an TV and radio as “This is a test of the National Emergency Alert System, this is only a test….BEEEEEEEP” During an actual emergency the BEEP would be followed by instructions on what to do.


2. TV & Radio Coverage (after the emergency)
   Many emergencies will knock out the power so it’s useful to have a solar powered or hand crank radio to follow the new reports and broadcasts by officials to learn what to do after the disaster has struck. When is the power coming back? What roads are closed? Is it safe to go outdoors?


3. Warning Sirens
   Many towns have sirens to warn of tornadoes, fires, nuclear power plant melt-downs, etc. My blog posting, Emergency Sirens, talks about the importance of understanding what your town sirens mean – is there an all clear signal or just danger signals? One signal or many? Continuous or repeating?


4. Residential Alerts
   Sometimes the police will drive through neighborhoods using their public address system to issue evacuation alerts, see Fire at Night.


5. NOAA Weather Bulletins
   Make sure your emergency radio or HAM radio can pick up the National Weather Service channel for 24 news and alerts. You can also buy alarm clocks or special devices to wake you in the middle of the night if there is a NOAA alert.

Bottom Line

Keep in mind that most emergency operations suffer from terrible communication. Don’t rely solely on news from officials. Use common sense also!

During the East coast blackout, I listened to NYC emergency center radio reports at my office for news when railroad service would be restored. (Electric trains were stuck and needed to be moved out of the way) I slept overnight at my office. The next morning my wife called to say a friend could see trains moving so I should ignore the radio and get to the train station. Sure enough diesel engines were running and I got home.

My first hint of 9-11 after getting off the commuter train in NYC was a crowd of people staring at TVs in a bank’s display window (my first thought –was, Oh no, a stock market collapse). Nothing was said on the train or at the train station about the World Trade Center. No sirens in midtown Manhattan. I got to work and about an hour later was told that all non-essential personnel should go home because Rockefeller Center could be a target. While walking south back to Grand Central Station I passed hordes of people all walking north along Madison Ave. I had no clue why. (Turns out the mayor had evacuated the entire southern region of Manhattan) Next I’m fortunate to be on one of the last trains out of the city before the lines are shut down. It wasn’t until I got home and watched TV that things started to make sense.

Common Sense Preparedness

“Common sense is not so common.” - Voltaire quotes

Since I’ve started writing this blog, I pay more attention to the things I do. Sometimes I’ll stop and realize that I’m in an unsafe situation and that a small action on my part can make a huge difference towards my well-being:

Examples:

I like to keep my hands in my pockets. This is not a good idea while walking (you want your hands free to break a fall if you trip). It is especially stupid for me to have a hand trapped in a pocket when I go down two flights of stairs after work each day.

I’d like to consider myself a safe driver. But occasionally I realize that I’ve gotten too close to another car’s bumper while on cruise control and need to back off and either pass or slow down the cruise control a bit.

Another time cruise control gets me in trouble is with tight curves in the road. Under normal conditions I can handle the curves no problem at full driving speed. But occasionally I’m surprised by black ice or water on the road from melting ice and belatedly discover that a speed that works for a dry road may cause a skid or some anxious moments keeping the car under control. A few months ago while driving to work I was surprised to come around a curve and find a disabled car parked halfway on the road & shoulder. I had to swing wide onto the opposite shoulder to avoid a collision while struggling to stay on the road.

Another danger while driving is distractions inside the car. I pass the time commuting by listening to educational CDs. When one ends I need to eject the CD, grab the next and plug it in while keeping my eyes on the road. Not always easy but I try to make this less distracting by pulling the next CD out of its case before I start driving so it’s easily available.

Years ago as a teenage driver with my mom in the car, a bee flew in the window. I was freaking out and trying to shoo the bee out of the car while still driving. My mom pointed out how stupid that was. A bee sting would hurt a lot less that a car accident.

Bottom Line

Sometimes all that is required to prepared for the worst case is just common sense. This can mean some very simple things like keeping your hands free while walking and on stairs, maintaining a safe driving speed and distance, and keeping your eyes on the road – always!