Embracing Chaos

Next week I’ll be giving a talk at Ignite Seattle about Transhumanist Morality.  It’s going to be a fun challenge to summarize my thoughts on the next thousand years of human history and how it forms a basis for a system of morality in 5 minutes or less!  But I’m up for the challenge.  The real question is if anybody else will get anything out of it.  ;)

The last Ignite Seattle event was tons of fun and highly educational.  A really good crowd of people — a great way to meet like-minded geeks in town that you didn’t know existed.  I wrote about the bridge breaking competition.  There will be another Make Magazine competition this time around, but I won’t spoil the surprise.  Brady and Bre have promised us more space since it was so packed last time around.

So if you’re in town and want to hear me blather, come by the CHAC next Tuesday, February 13th at 8:30 pm for talks.  (Or even better, at 6:30 for the Make Contest which should be rad.)  Hope to see y’all there!

I’ve had my own system for interpreting that "chance of rain" numbers that meteorologists use to predict weather.  Along the lines of how people say eskimos have 137 different words for snow, here in Seattle, rain isn’t a simple yes/no thing.  I wrote about it here a little while ago.  The basic idea is that the % chance of rain is actually the % chance that a random person on the street would consider the current weather to be "rain."

I’ve also long believed that in Seattle it’s impossible to get over about 98% chance of rain because some die-hard hold out would always say "This ain’t rain.  Back where I come from we have real rain and this ain’t it."  Well last night I feel confident there was a 100% chance of rain.  It was a full on  storm.  Things broke.

In one night we got a record 2.2" of rain with winds gusting to 74 mph.  Roads were closed everywhere.  Power flickered all night.  Things banged loudly.  My neighbor’s basement flooded because water was coming up through the drain!  By work I saw a manhole cover that looked like a beautiful fountain with jets of water squirting up through the holes.  My rug in my basement got fairly wet, as far as I can tell because of water coming down the chimney!!  It was a bad time to realize that the last time I pulled my fileserver out to work on it I didn’t plug it into a UPS.  Oops.

A couple friends and I wanted to experience the weather so we put on full snowboarding / mountaineering outfits and wandered out.  We ended up spending a good chunk of the evening standing on a rooftop patio with a great view of the city, watching the city be destroyed.  Explosions filled the night from lightning and transformers blowing.  We could always tell which ones were lightning because the flashes were white and brief.  Whenever a transformer would blow, there would be a pulsing glow that would linger for a second or two.  They were also typically bright green, although we did see one or two redding purple ones.  I’m pretty sure the green blasts were from large amounts of copper wire burning very quickly in a  giant short-circuit.  I’m not sure what metal they’d use in transformers that burns reddish purple.  Occasionally we saw what must have been a whole substation go because the glow would last 3 or 4 seconds.  For some reason we were cheering.  After one such explosion, we saw all of Bellevue go dark, only to light up again half a second later.

It was amazing.

At some point we realized that the street’s own transformer was at eye level less than 20′ from where we were standing.  When we finally connected the large explosions in the distance to the utility pole mounted bomb next to us, we decided to go inside.  Show’s over.  Don’t wanna die tonight.

Some people complain that the holidays have become too commercial.  That the holiest of christian holidays has become an excuse to accumulate material things, and that the true meaning, whatever that was, is being lost.

I disagree.  I think now is the time to

Buy More Stuff!

I have to give props out to all my friends who have been dutifully going down to Westlake center on the weekends to spread the good word.  Someday soon I hope to have time to join them.

The only thing that really surprises me about this is that some (clearly unamerican) people argue with them.  My friends have gotten into prolonged arguments with shoppers and other passersby who don’t like the message they’re  spreading.  My friends retort with "How could you possibly tell your family and friends that you love them except by buying them more stuff?"  But even this doesn’t persuade those who are persistently disturbed by this message.

Maybe someday they’ll get it.  But I’m not holding out much hope.

Hats off to the Squire Park Neighborhood Association!  Not too long ago (not too recently either — I’ve been a bit of a pile about posting this) they blocked off my street for a couple weekends and painted a giant mural in the middle of an intersection.

Why?  To slow down traffic of course!  How does paint on the ground cause people to drive slower?  I’m not really sure, but it sure does.  I see cars slow down and even try to "go around" whatever this thing is in the middle of the street.  I think the fact that it’s so unusual is enough to make drivers question what’s going on.  It reminds me of the uncomfortable feeling I get when I see a car driving the wrong way down a one-way street: "Something’s wrong here.  I’m not sure what’s happening.  I’d better slow down because who knows what will happen next." 

I understand they’ve done two of these now.  And I understand they have further plans for this intersection.  If these street murals become commonplace they probably won’t be so effective.  But for now it’s a beautifully creative and constructive way to address a local community problem.  And now that I know about the fantastic group in my neighborhood, I’m looking forward to participating in future projects.  Go team!

I’ve climbed Mt. Rainier twice now.  Once in 1996 and once in 2006.
(I hope in 2016 I’m still up for it!)  I get a lot of questions from
friends who are interested in trying the climb themselves.  So I
thought I’d write some notes on how you could prepare.

First off, if you don’t have a fair amount of rock climbing
experience and mountaineering experience, or have a lot of experienced friends who are
willing to babysit you, go with a guide service.  This year I
went without a guide service and I’m really glad I did it.  But 3 of
the 4 of us had been up previously with RMI.  RMI used to be the only officially licensed guide service, but the NPS just opened up to allow two more: Alpine Ascents and International Mountain Guides.  How all this pans out remains to be seen.

Going with RMI had some fantastic benefits:

• Lighter pack
• Don’t need to carry safety gear b/c the guides carry that for you.  (lighter pack)
• Don’t need to carry a tent b/c RMI operates a building at Camp Muir.  (lighter pack)
• Don’t need to carry a stove or a rope or a bunch of other stuff.  (lighter pack)
• More likely to summit b/c you’re carrying a lighter pack
• Don’t need to learn crevasse rescue skills
• Really just need to haul your body up the hill without much thinking

As for training and preparation, I have some specific advice as well.  Get in shape.  It’s really physically draining.  Get in really good shape.  Stairmaster, bike, run, whatever.  The best thing you can do is to hike to Camp Muir a lot.  Camp Muir is the 10,000′ base camp for most people trying to summit Mt Rainier.  It’s a 5,000′ vertical ascent from Paradise, which makes it a really solid workout.  IMHO it’s also a fantastic way to spend a sunny Summer day.  Plus you get experience at moderate altitude.  If you do that a half dozen times in a summer with increasing weight each time, you’ll be in pretty good shape.  And you’ll get to know your gear pretty well, which is also super important.  I like to load my frame pack up with several gallons of water as ballast.  Get to the top, and make some friends by giving it away to the thirsty climbers, and save your knees the effort of hauling it down the hill.

Wear lots of sunscreen, especially on the bottom of your nose.  I recommend Aloe Gator 45 Gel, which has the physical consistency of crisco.  You might need steel wool to get it off, but it’s one of the only things that can really protect you from the super-bright glacier-reflected rays. 

Also, talk to your doctor about getting some diamox (acetazolamide).  It’s an altitude sickness drug which can both cure a case of AMS ("acute mountain sickness" — no, really, it’s a technical term) and will also help you acclimatize to the altitude faster so you’re less likely to have a problem in the first place.  It’s generally quite safe unless you have sulfa allergies.  The first time I went up, the stupid RMI guides advised one of my climbing partners not to take it (because drugs are bad and they’ve never needed it), and he didn’t summit because of AMS.  The worst thing about it is that it makes you pee more, and the benefits are marked.  Be sure to try drinking some coke when you’re on it.  It’s truly bizarre — no matter how fresh the bottle, it tastes flat and you can’t feel any bubbles on your tongue.  Diamox’s mechanism is to crank the CO₂ thermostat in your blood-stream to keep your blood’s pH neutral as you ascend, and a side effect is that carbonated beverages taste flat.  Go figure.

You’re gonna need a lot of gear.  Much of it can be rented.  I don’t really feel like going into it all here — maybe I’ll write more later if y’all want.

Be prepared for a really long hike.  We took 34 hours from car to car and of that 21 hours were spent hiking with a heavy pack on.  Our packs were about 55 pounds each getting up to base camp and probably 20 pounds up to the summit.  It took about 4 days before I didn’t feel constantly hungry and thirsty.  It’s intense.

And of course, like the lawyers say, use your head.  If you have to read this, go with a guide.  I’m really no expert, and people die up there.  But when you’re standing on top of the world at 14,411′ it all feels worth while.

Pike or Pine?  For those of us who live in Seattle, this is an eternal question.  Often rhetorical.  The two streets run parallel from downtown through Capitol Hill and nobody can keep them straight.  This fact was institutionalized by the local sketch comedy show Almost Live in a game show called "Pike or Pine?" where contestants were asked which of the two streets various landmarks are on. 

"Where is the Paramount Theater?"

"Oh, I go by there every day on my way to work.  It’s just before the bus-stop where I get off.  It’s … it’s … it’s on Pike!" 

"Oh, I’m sorry.  It’s actually on Pine."

Personally, I’ve given up trying to keep them straight.  I just call them both Pinke.  (Pronounced with a long I sound.)  It’s much easier this way.  I don’t need to think about it.  When I get there I can generally figure it out.  Many people I talk to don’t even catch that I wasn’t specific and understand the general idea which is perfect.  Some people hear it and understand my intent instantly.  Some ask.

I think this generalization stresses out the people I’m talking with less.  I think that if I were to specify one of the two streets specifically, people would sit there and rack their brains trying to remember which one I had named.  Since they’d have probably a 30% chance of misidentifying the street in their heads, and I’d have about a 40% chance of having said the wrong one in the first place, the odds of successful communication would be just 54%.  That sounds no better than a coin-flip to me, especially considering that 12% of the time communication would have worked because we both got it wrong!  I think information is actually being conveyed more effectively by not specifying Pike or Pine, but instead just saying Pinke.

The forecast today calls for an 80% chance of rain.   Traditionally this means that 80% of the time it will rain, but that there’s a 20% chance it won’t rain at all.  Here in Seattle we interpret those numbers a little differently.

In Seattle, when the forecast says 80% chance of rain that means if you ask a random sampling of 100 people on the street “is it raining right now?” 80 of them will say “yeah, it’s raining” and 20 of them will say “no, this isn’t rain.”  For those of you who haven’t ever been in Seattle in the Winter, it’s never quite dry here.  And it rarely actually rains either — real rain with lots of big heavy drops.  We tend to have this persistent heavy fog that moves downward and gets things wet.  Sometimes it’s lighter and sometimes it’s heavier — it’s pretty arbitrary when you’d call it rain and when you wouldn’t.  Thus the consensus model.

Right now I’d actually say we’ve got about a 60% chance of rain.  80% is pretty darned heavy IMHO.  I don’t think it’s possible to get over about 98% chance of rain because some transplanted diehards from monsoon territory will always hold out and say “this ain’t real rain” as their goretex hats turn into buckets.  Likewise, in Winter I suspect the minimum chance of rain is about 5%, owing to the bitter so-cal transplants who whine that it’s always raining here, regardless of what’s happening in the sky.

So grab a double-tall skinny hazelnut latte and hunker down by the fireplace for a few months.  Here’s looking forward to snowboarding!