Category Archives: public transportation

On randomness

Posted on by

The nature of a random event is both complex and chaotic, but again, predictable in a certain way. When you flip a coin, the result is both random and predictable because you will get either a head or a tail, but never know which one since all events are individual and isolated, independent, and do not foreshadow in any real way what the next result might be. Sometimes we use the word “random” to refer to unpredicted outcomes such as rain shower on a sunny day or an unannounced visit from weird Aunt Hortensia who normally lives in Portland but just happens to be in Minnesota for the weekend for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, neither the rain nor the visit are random, being more a part of predictable chaotic patterns to which we may not be privy. They seem “random” but if we had more information, we would understand how they might be “strange,” but certainly not random. Teenagers love to abuse this word to describe events that seem tangential or extraneous to them, but then again, it’s because they don’t see a bigger picture. The idea of randomness has bothered me every since I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927) which tells the story of a number of people who are killed when a bridge collapses. “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below,” but is any of it random? The people are relatively unrelated and their stories and lives are all incredibly different, but they all die together when the bridge collapses. The question that the novel proposes, I suppose, is the random nature in life’s events–is there a meaning to it all or is it all random? How was it that those five people were all on the bridge at the same time and that the bridge decided to fail at that moment. At the end of Conan Doyle’s “The Cardboard Box,” Holmes remarks, “What is the meaning of it, Watson?” […] “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” So sometimes, life looks really, really, random, even when, perhaps, it’s not.

On randomness

Posted on by

The nature of a random event is both complex and chaotic, but again, predictable in a certain way. When you flip a coin, the result is both random and predictable because you will get either a head or a tail, but never know which one since all events are individual and isolated, independent, and do not foreshadow in any real way what the next result might be. Sometimes we use the word “random” to refer to unpredicted outcomes such as rain shower on a sunny day or an unannounced visit from weird Aunt Hortensia who normally lives in Portland but just happens to be in Minnesota for the weekend for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, neither the rain nor the visit are random, being more a part of predictable chaotic patterns to which we may not be privy. They seem “random” but if we had more information, we would understand how they might be “strange,” but certainly not random. Teenagers love to abuse this word to describe events that seem tangential or extraneous to them, but then again, it’s because they don’t see a bigger picture. The idea of randomness has bothered me every since I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927) which tells the story of a number of people who are killed when a bridge collapses. “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below,” but is any of it random? The people are relatively unrelated and their stories and lives are all incredibly different, but they all die together when the bridge collapses. The question that the novel proposes, I suppose, is the random nature in life’s events–is there a meaning to it all or is it all random? How was it that those five people were all on the bridge at the same time and that the bridge decided to fail at that moment. At the end of Conan Doyle’s “The Cardboard Box,” Holmes remarks, “What is the meaning of it, Watson?” […] “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” So sometimes, life looks really, really, random, even when, perhaps, it’s not.

On public transportation

Posted on by

There is something inherently populist and democratic about public transportation, and it isn’t that I want to get up on my soap box and scream about this being the only sustainable means of transportation, but that may be true. The car with one person in it is not only extremely isolating and egotistical, it is a waste of resources, and I would not be suprised to see a day when that mode of transportation is gone. When I am in large cities I make sure I know where the subway goes, how the buses can get me to and fro, when the trains leave. I don’t mind letting someone else drive, I don’t care if I have to sit next to a complete stranger. The fact is I am also a complete stranger to whomever my seat companion is. Why should the world be just for me? Yes, subways can be noisy, smelly, slow, and inconvenient. Often they are packed in the mornings with hundreds of thousands of people going to work. They all know that even if they had a car, there would be nowhere to either drive it or park it if they all decided to abandon the subway. The reality of the situation dictates that they must use public transportation because taking their own car is impractical. The big benefit of public transportation is its sustainability over the long haul—subways and trains are a long term investment that can pay out over decades, whereas highways are less sustainable and more expensive. One of the personal benefits of public transportation is the connection it creates among its users. One tends to feel a little more sympathetic towards all of humanity if one sees and experiences lots of humanity every day. Locked up in your car with your cell phone and your café latte, you tend to see yourself as unrelated to the rest of the people and have no real sense of empathy for others. You drive like a brute as if you were the only one on the road. When you have to share a subway car or a public bus you have to learn to share and take turns, let the slower ones have their chance to move, give the mothers with babies a chance to sit down, let that tired factory worker sleep. Humility, empathy, kindness, sharing, these are not simple qualities or experiences, but they are a commentary on what kind of people we are or have become. You can have bad experiences on public transportation, no doubt, you might have to stand, someone might get sick, some kids might make a raucous, things happen, but at least you are in the middle of humanity having a real experience, not locked up in your air-conditioned car complaining about how rotten the traffic is and how much parking costs. Today I took a much needed nap on the bus, and nobody bothered me one little bit. Now that is sustainable transportation.

On public transportation

Posted on by

There is something inherently populist and democratic about public transportation, and it isn’t that I want to get up on my soap box and scream about this being the only sustainable means of transportation, but that may be true. The car with one person in it is not only extremely isolating and egotistical, it is a waste of resources, and I would not be suprised to see a day when that mode of transportation is gone. When I am in large cities I make sure I know where the subway goes, how the buses can get me to and fro, when the trains leave. I don’t mind letting someone else drive, I don’t care if I have to sit next to a complete stranger. The fact is I am also a complete stranger to whomever my seat companion is. Why should the world be just for me? Yes, subways can be noisy, smelly, slow, and inconvenient. Often they are packed in the mornings with hundreds of thousands of people going to work. They all know that even if they had a car, there would be nowhere to either drive it or park it if they all decided to abandon the subway. The reality of the situation dictates that they must use public transportation because taking their own car is impractical. The big benefit of public transportation is its sustainability over the long haul—subways and trains are a long term investment that can pay out over decades, whereas highways are less sustainable and more expensive. One of the personal benefits of public transportation is the connection it creates among its users. One tends to feel a little more sympathetic towards all of humanity if one sees and experiences lots of humanity every day. Locked up in your car with your cell phone and your café latte, you tend to see yourself as unrelated to the rest of the people and have no real sense of empathy for others. You drive like a brute as if you were the only one on the road. When you have to share a subway car or a public bus you have to learn to share and take turns, let the slower ones have their chance to move, give the mothers with babies a chance to sit down, let that tired factory worker sleep. Humility, empathy, kindness, sharing, these are not simple qualities or experiences, but they are a commentary on what kind of people we are or have become. You can have bad experiences on public transportation, no doubt, you might have to stand, someone might get sick, some kids might make a raucous, things happen, but at least you are in the middle of humanity having a real experience, not locked up in your air-conditioned car complaining about how rotten the traffic is and how much parking costs. Today I took a much needed nap on the bus, and nobody bothered me one little bit. Now that is sustainable transportation.

On having coffee on Beacon Hill

Posted on by

Walking around Boston today was a fascinating experience. Although I have been here before, I’ve never had a chance to visit Harvard, or the Commons, or Beacon Hill, or the colonial historic district and all its old historic sites. All of the Italian restaurants, the cobble stone streets, the brownstones, the T, Harvard, were all wonderfully folkloric, picturesque, curious. wonderful. Even the cemeteries were creepy and ancient. Yet, it was a strange accident of just going the wrong way which took me up Beacon Hill, past the new state house and up Joy street. The state house was closed because it was Saturday, so I meandered up into Beacon Hill with its brownstone row houses, fancy cars, narrow streets, Christmas decorations, piles of snow. I was a little chilled by the damp cold of the morning, so I walked into a small coffee house to get something warm to drink. I got my double espresso with a drop of milk and took a seat by the window to watch the people go by. Being Saturday morning, the place was bustling with all sorts of folks, tall, short, skinny, fancy, gym clothes, running clothes, rich, not so rich, me, delivery guys, double-parkers. And everyone wanted their coffee a little differently. Lots of people want their coffee with soy milk–cow milk being a problem. Many people didn’t want coffee, but they did want tea or cocoa. Some people had trouble deciding, but indecision may or may not have been their exact problem. The conversations were animated and people talked about Christmas, traveling, work, men, women, coffee, shopping, flowers, the price of clothing at Saks. But Meghan, the young lady making the drinks was unflappable even when people got a little testy about whether the whipped cream for the top of their quadruple caramel mocha (with sprinkles) was real or not–it is, by the way. She questioned me about how much milk I wanted, and she listened well, and aced my version of a Spanish “café con leche.” I like a strong coffee drink, not a milky milk drink with a little coffee in it. I was fascinated by Meghan’s persistence and patience as she maneuvered among a flotilla of persnickety customers. I know she wasn’t making that much money either. Baristas don’t make tons of money, but here she was, this hardworking young person, doing her job on a sunny Saturday morning in January. I was in the coffee shop about a half hour watching the world go by, interact with Meghan (and colleague, Jessica), talk to each other, get their coffee, and move on. In a way, this little coffee place is not really a microcosm of the world, but it was a microcosm of life on Beacon Hill this morning. When I travel I am often more interested in the coffee houses and beer joints than I am in the museums and historical monuments. Life is in the people who live in these places, who work behind counters, who serve the public, take tickets, brew coffee, make sandwiches, give directions, help a lost traveler. Meghan and her fellow Bostonians were very kind to me as I meandered from Boston to Cambridge and back to Boston. What I will remember about today will be the people. Harvard was closed, so I didn’t even meet anyone there–not memorable. Coffee with Meghan on Beacon Hill? Priceless.

On the pastoral

Posted on by

Is the countryside really nicer than city life? I’ve lived in a big city or two with underground trains, tons of surface traffic, people everywhere, concrete canyons and paved right-aways, neon lights, smoke and fog, buses, trucks, and cars. The steady drone of city life is like a huge upset beehive with lots of angry bees. Horns honking, people shouting, trucks groaning, movers moving, venders selling, distributers delivering everything. The white noise can be a little overwhelming for the senses, and I don’t even want to talk about the smells or the unsightly stuff that one might witness. I love the city where you always have a million things to do at a quarter to three in the morning, but it can wear on your nerves. The countryside, however, is a little different: noise stand out because of its absence. Birds singing, a brook gurgling, wind fanning the trees, sunshine on your shoulders, and absolutely no people, When I’m up in the woods of northern Minnesota, and no one is around, every step you take breaks the silence that reigns over the area. Waves lap on the shore of the lake, kicking up a little foam. Another breeze rustles the branches of a small tree that stands next to you. A fish jumps in the lake, a loon flaps heartily across the surface of the lake as it takes off, a wolf howls at sunset, calling his troops home. The urban environment of the city is home to conflict and discord, noise and chaos, straight lines and concrete paths. The forest and the lake are the dialogic opposite to the pressure of the city. Time stands still and only reluctantly passes as the sun slowly slides across the sky. No one is in a hurry. A squirrel suns himself on a rock before heading off to find more acorns. The smell of grass, leaves and forest, a pungent mixture of wetness and decay, a lazy multi-layered perfume that Mother Nature shares with everyone. There is no sense of urgency, the paths are crooked and unpaved, the ground is uneven, a boulder juts from the ground like a stranded iceberg. Wild raspberries grow in unorganized clumps, and you have nowhere to go, no neon, no noise, no trucks, no delivery vehicles. There are no phones ringing or cars or stoplights or crowds. Life in the country is both simple and uncomplicated; the complete opposite of the way the urban crush can be 24/7. Nobody cares what time dinner might be, so the sun comes up and it goes down, creating a natural rhythm that is unaffected by neon, noise, and nattering neighbors. The forces of nature of much larger than anything man can create–buildings, streets, bridges, and artificial parks. In the cities, we use parks to remind us of the country in case we forget or get nostalgic about the peace we have left behind in the wilderness, creating artificial ponds and fake forests, trying to find the peace we sacrifice the fast-paced life under the lights. The country, wilderness, a forest, a mountain meadow, a dry dessert, a quiet river valley, an empty canyon, the prairie, these are the places where time stops and a person might recollect their thoughts and remember that not everything is a schedule, landscapes are not always created with straight lines, and that mud, rocks, grass, trees, creeks are natural and intriguing. Nostalgia for natural places will probably lower your blood pressure.

On the pastoral

Posted on by

Is the countryside really nicer than city life? I’ve lived in a big city or two with underground trains, tons of surface traffic, people everywhere, concrete canyons and paved right-aways, neon lights, smoke and fog, buses, trucks, and cars. The steady drone of city life is like a huge upset beehive with lots of angry bees. Horns honking, people shouting, trucks groaning, movers moving, venders selling, distributers delivering everything. The white noise can be a little overwhelming for the senses, and I don’t even want to talk about the smells or the unsightly stuff that one might witness. I love the city where you always have a million things to do at a quarter to three in the morning, but it can wear on your nerves. The countryside, however, is a little different: noise stand out because of its absence. Birds singing, a brook gurgling, wind fanning the trees, sunshine on your shoulders, and absolutely no people, When I’m up in the woods of northern Minnesota, and no one is around, every step you take breaks the silence that reigns over the area. Waves lap on the shore of the lake, kicking up a little foam. Another breeze rustles the branches of a small tree that stands next to you. A fish jumps in the lake, a loon flaps heartily across the surface of the lake as it takes off, a wolf howls at sunset, calling his troops home. The urban environment of the city is home to conflict and discord, noise and chaos, straight lines and concrete paths. The forest and the lake are the dialogic opposite to the pressure of the city. Time stands still and only reluctantly passes as the sun slowly slides across the sky. No one is in a hurry. A squirrel suns himself on a rock before heading off to find more acorns. The smell of grass, leaves and forest, a pungent mixture of wetness and decay, a lazy multi-layered perfume that Mother Nature shares with everyone. There is no sense of urgency, the paths are crooked and unpaved, the ground is uneven, a boulder juts from the ground like a stranded iceberg. Wild raspberries grow in unorganized clumps, and you have nowhere to go, no neon, no noise, no trucks, no delivery vehicles. There are no phones ringing or cars or stoplights or crowds. Life in the country is both simple and uncomplicated; the complete opposite of the way the urban crush can be 24/7. Nobody cares what time dinner might be, so the sun comes up and it goes down, creating a natural rhythm that is unaffected by neon, noise, and nattering neighbors. The forces of nature of much larger than anything man can create–buildings, streets, bridges, and artificial parks. In the cities, we use parks to remind us of the country in case we forget or get nostalgic about the peace we have left behind in the wilderness, creating artificial ponds and fake forests, trying to find the peace we sacrifice the fast-paced life under the lights. The country, wilderness, a forest, a mountain meadow, a dry dessert, a quiet river valley, an empty canyon, the prairie, these are the places where time stops and a person might recollect their thoughts and remember that not everything is a schedule, landscapes are not always created with straight lines, and that mud, rocks, grass, trees, creeks are natural and intriguing. Nostalgia for natural places will probably lower your blood pressure.

On bifurcating paths

Posted on by

How do we end up where we are? The other day a visiting student asked why I became a college professor, and I was at a loss for words. The bifurcating paths of my own life seem chaotic, capricious, and strange. How does one pick a major? Deciding a path of studies is simple for many, but how did a boy from the prairie of southern Minnesota decide to study a language to which he has no ties, neither genetic nor tradition? I had no family in Spain. None of my family had ever been a Spanish teacher or a professor of literature. My people are farmers who tilled the ground, raised chickens and pigs, milked cowes, bailed hay, and picked corn. Nobody had ever conjugated a verb in Spanish, no one had ever read the Cid or Don Quixote, no one had ever worked in a university, written a scholarly paper, or published a book. So an economics professor who didn’t know me put me in a Spanish class when I was a freshmen, but only because I had already studied Spanish for five years in junior high and high school. I had done that because my mother and the Spanish teacher were best friends who had met in the League of Women Voters. So what happens if the Spanish teacher’s husband doesn’t get a job in the local college that brings him (and his Spanish teaching wife) to my home town? What would have happened if I hadn’t had a politically active mother who was interested in social justice for women? Where do the bifurcating paths begin? Does it matter that my father had a terrible job in another town that motivated him to search for better work in the town where I grew up? The paths have been splitting over and over again for decades and continue to split even as I write this. So I majored in Spanish at an American-Lutheran-Swedish school whose specialty was really pre-med majors and Lutheran pastors. After I graduated I couldn’t get a decent job, but I was motivated to go back to school by a random comment by a favorite History professor–“What about Middlebury?” he said. After I graduated from Middlebury I decided I wanted to live in Europe for awhile, so I did that. Six years earlier, in 1980, walking past a bulletin board at St. Louis University in Madrid I saw an advertisement for the graduate program in Spanish at the University of Minnesota. I applied in 1985, they loved me, I loved them, and I graduated with my PhD in medieval Spanish literature in 1993. The combination of happenstance, historical caprice (Franco was dead), luck, coincidence, serendipitous causalities, and unnatural timing have carried me through the vortex of the space-time continuum to this place called Waco. If the dominoes had not fallen in a very specific way, I might be someone completely different, but even knowing that, I wouldn’t change anything, and I say that as if I had any control over any of that chain of choices and happenings. I am the most unlikely person doing a most unlikely job given my history, family and circumstances. How does this happen?

On bifurcating paths

Posted on by

How do we end up where we are? The other day a visiting student asked why I became a college professor, and I was at a loss for words. The bifurcating paths of my own life seem chaotic, capricious, and strange. How does one pick a major? Deciding a path of studies is simple for many, but how did a boy from the prairie of southern Minnesota decide to study a language to which he no ties, neither genetic nor tradition? I had no family in Spain. None of my family had ever been a Spanish teacher or a professor of literature. My people are farmers who tilled the ground, raised chickens and pigs, milked cowes, bailed hay, and picked corn. Nobody had ever conjugated a verb in Spanish, no one had ever read the Cid or Don Quixote, no one had ever worked in a university, written a scholarly paper, or published a book. So an economics professor who didn’t know me put me in a Spanish class when I was a freshmen, but only because I had already studied Spanish for five years in junior high and high school. I had done that because my mother and the Spanish teacher were best friends who had met in the League of Women Voters. So what happens if the Spanish teacher’s husband doesn’t get a job in the local college that brings him (and his Spanish teaching wife) to my home town? What would have happened if I hadn’t had a politically active mother who was interested in social justice for women? Where do the bifurcating paths begin? Does it matter that my father had a terrible job in another town that motivated him to search for better work in the town where I grew up? The paths have been splitting over and over again for decades and continue to split even as I write this. So I majored in Spanish at an American-Lutheran-Swedish school whose specialty was really pre-med majors and Lutheran pastors. After I graduated I couldn’t get a decent job, but I was motivated to go back to school by a random comment by a favorite History professor–“What about Middlebury?” he said. After I graduated from Middlebury I decided I wanted to live in Europe for awhile, so I did that. Six years earlier, in 1980, walking past a bulletin board at St. Louis University in Madrid I saw an advertisement for the graduate program in Spanish at the University of Minnesota. I applied in 1985, they loved me, I loved them, and I graduated with my PhD in medieval Spanish literature in 1993. The combination of happenstance, historical caprice (Franco was dead), luck, coincidence, serendipitous causalities, and unnatural timing have carried me through the vortex of the space-time continuum to this place called Waco. If the dominoes had not fallen in a very specific way, I might be someone completely different, but even knowing that, I wouldn’t change anything, and I say that as if I had any control over any of that chain of choices and happenings. I am the most unlikely person doing a most unlikely job given my history, family and circumstances. How does this happen?

On warp speed

Posted on by

At some point in the future science and technology will reach a point where we figure out how to go faster than the speed of light. I know this seems impossible at this point because mass increases to infinity at the horizon of the speed of light, but just because the problem seems impossible almost guarantees that someone will find a solution. We will laugh at our own simplicity, our primitive nature of sticking to our old scientific paradigms even in the face of real proof that upholds a hypothesis and turns it into a theory. I suppose our tendency to stick to an established paradigm is only too human. We want to explain our world, so we deem that which we don’t fully understand as impossible. Traveling faster than the speed of light will probably have something to with creating energy fields which move mass outside the boundaries of standard time and space, whatever that might mean. I don’t believe we really understand three-dimensional space or this thing that we call “time.” We move through space and time in what we perceive to be a lineal fashion, but these are only our primitive and conventional manner of describing a complex and chaotic process which we simplify so we don’t go mad. To imagine that all times and all spaces exist all in the same moment and space doesn’t make sense to our little brains. We fall victim to our own egos and hubris by imagining that we understand “reality” just because we live inside of it. For century we could not get past a geocentric universe even in the face of the truth because not being the center of the universe is more frightening than changing the paradigm. Warp speed won’t be discovered tomorrow, or the next day, or even next year, but we did land a two thousand pound rover on Mars last week, and that seemed impossible not too long ago. The fact that we can imagine warp speed means that sooner or later an engineer and a physicist will figure it out. When that happens, we will move out toward the planets and eventually the stars. When that happens, we will marvel at our simplicity. And the answer will have nothing to do with our preconceived ideas of motion, work, speed, mass and velocity. The new paradigm will cast aside ideas of fuel, propulsion, and everything else we know about concerning the speed of things. Change is not the only constant in the universe, but we may have to revise our idea of constant. From our relative perspective, light travels at a specific speed, but what about other perspectives? We didn’t think that communicators were possible, but now we all have them. We also did not think that Ipods or digital music were possible, but now they are commonplace. Warp speed may take a little longer, but the way technology is progressing, I might see it in my lifetime. We will redefine things like time and event horizon, and velocity will mean something else. Understand the implications of warp speed, hardly, but without having the ability to imagine it, we just grow old and boring.