Kids Teach Us About Us

I have a nearly five year old son.

The best part about observing my son as he grows and develops is that he has a lot of behaviors that I think we have learned to stifle as we age, so in a way he's a window into our "true selves." Impulse control issues aside, I am constantly admiring how much it seems he can teach about user friendly design issues and the various thoughts and observations that run through our heads that he'll say out loud while we stifle them at some point from being uttered.

The latest thing I noticed is that, like other people, he lives in a magical world. If it doesn't directly relate to something he wants or something he's directly curious about, he just takes it for granted. He doesn't ask questions about most of the things around him, and somewhere he files it away that that's just the way things are.

I can't for the life of me remember how we got directly on the topic, but I enlightened him to the fact that poop comes from food. Apparently he thought poop just appeared.

Me: "Yes, food you eat turns into poop after many hours. Where did you think poop came from?"
Him: "My butt."

We live in a world where you literally have more knowledge available to you than ever before. The Internet, your library, the bookstores...you can learn everything from how Twinkies are made to how to survive in the woods to how to grow your own food. You can learn about World War II and the sex lives of Romans and ancient Greeks. You have access to knowledge that great men and women in history would have killed to know. It's almost laughable the sheer volume of information that we have access to yet take for granted. And yet today we have people that believe the world operates on a set of arbitrary magical rules. Ignorance is almost celebrated in our culture. It's a sad commentary.

For the most part this quick post is little more than a random observation. I was simply struck by the fact that my son had naively never thought to question why he had to go to the bathroom. It just...happens.

Although now he thinks that when he eats food, he's eating poop.

Oops.

Centralia (Or, Why You Shouldn't Set Your Town on Fire)

WARNING: There is some objectionable language in this post. If it will make your head explode, wait to read tomorrow's post instead...

On a recent trip my family stopped in the now nonexistent town of Centralia, PA.

In case you're not familiar with Centralia (I linked to the Wikipedia article about it for a full story) it's a small town...excuse me, was a small town...in Pennsylvania not far from an amusement park called Knoebels. In 1962 a bunch of yahoos decided to burn some waste in an abandoned strip mine that ended up setting a 400 acre coal deposit on fire for the next 250 years.

Thanks largely to politics, the fire raged underground out of control. Had they intervened early on they could have stopped the fire; instead it was allowed to burn on while suits pretended it was a non-issue.

They would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for a little boy falling into a backyard subsidence. Whoopsie.

He survived, though. The town largely didn't.

Eventually the government bought out most of the town and razed the structures. Today only a smattering of houses remain, along with a blocked off portion of route 61 (accessible by foot and motorcycle, if you're careful), cemetaries that have more residents than living people in town, and vents from which smoke and gases rise and a town landfill. Oh, and graffiti. Lots of defacement from resident asshats.

I found it utterly fascinating. This town became a ghost town; utterly and completely barren aside from sidewalks. You can't really tell where anything was except for the upheaved sidewalks, actually. There used to be signs telling you about taking your life into your own hands due to unstable ground and benches and Centralia signs, but they're all gone now, probably taken by souvenir collectors and...well, asshats.

It's quite eerie; I couldn't believe that the town disappeared, completely, in an amazingly short amount of time. It's almost postapocolyptic to see trees popping out of pavement. It's even neater to think that this is the town that inspired the video game (and movie) called Silent Hill. Here's some of the sights we saw...
Here's what we believe is the spot where the time capsule is buried. It's supposed to be dug up in 2016. That's assuming it's not being baked by the fire under the town.

My wife got a huge kick out of this. That smiley face is tarred on the road. Evidently the road crew...often out patching the roads as it's cracking and heaving from the ground issues...was willing to have some fun.
My wife said this little church on the hill is now abandoned and was the last one open for the town.
I was surprised to see so many windmills near the site of the town! This was taken from a small rise in what looked like a town landfill. The landfill's surface had little more than fireworks, broken booze bottles, and a toilet and some other home waste scattered around. By home waste, I mean windows, paneling, shutters...evidently as homes were destroyed some of the remains found their way to the landfill. Oh, and there was a lot of pavement broken up, like pieces of roadway laying around.
One of the few homes still standing and inhabited. The black shadow is a person that was out mowing; I blocked it out since I didn't get her permission to use her in the picture. The brick pylons are apparently there to hide support beams; the homes were part of row houses, and as most sold their homes they were demolished. To make up for the now missing parts the beams were hidden in these brick supports. Neat, huh?
This is part of old route 61. The image blacked out here is my daughter. Did you think I'd expose her image on the site?? Yeah, right.

The tree on the left is coming from the center of the four-lane. I put this one up for scale...my daughter is on the upper range of average height, so you can get an idea how tall that tree is in the picture.
One of the myriad graffiti in the road of abandoned 61.
Some more of old 61. It's blocked off by huge mounds of bulldozed dirt at each end.
See the heaving and cracking from the heat of the ground fire?
More of the cracking and heaving and graffiti. The blur in the shot above is my daughter again. We hiked quite a way down the road to find the cracking. If you look closely you can see some of the gas rising from the cracks. There were a few weird smells in the town too...one of the things to be careful of in the town is the fact that there are concentrations of poisonous gas from the fire.
One of the reasons I hate seeing what people do. Actually I'm kind of torn...this one shows some artistic merit, but still, I hate the graffiti around the remains of the town. This was again on old 61. It's quite evident that kids use it as a party place.
Another shot of the foilage growing in the middle of the freeway.
This reminded me of watching "The Wonder Years."
Hey...where's the crack in the road we were promised? This was near the beginning of the hike my daughter and I undertook on old 61. I began to think we'd never find it.

This was one of the few buildings we found still standing. Kind of. Apparently this was some kind of building used as a bathhouse for miners in the town, and later a storage building. We don't know what was in that bag near the "door" and my wife refused to stop here, fearing we'd find something we didn't want to find in there. I thought it would be neat, but feared we wouldn't find what she didn't want to find in there and would be disappointed. In the end we didn't look for two very different reasons, I guess.

My wife and I had stopped here about five years ago or so and remembered signs that warn people about the danger of wandering around here; those signs were gone. There were apparently other signs and benches and such here as well at one time. Other pictures can be found at this site. I couldn't believe how a thriving mining town of 1,100 people dwindled to just a few people in such a short amount of time...it's mind-blowingly amazing to me. We actually stopped on the way down and on the way back simply because we couldn't believe our eyes, how little there was left to the place. It's like the town just shriveled up in embarassment after letting petty politics keep from taking decisive action to stop the fire when it first started, and the fact that they were warned about violations previously in relation to the burning of the landfill trash and they continued to ignore regulations.

Simply. Amazing.

It's been a long post, and there's plenty of information floating around about Centralia as well as a number of references that can be found off Wikipedia of where Centralia has shown up directly or indirectly (like the previously mentioned Silent Hill movie).

Nostalgia and the Transformers

I was a big fan of The Transformers growing up. I remember it was a priority for me to get to a TV every afternoon back in 1984 to get my fix of the cartoon and later I would pore over the latest Transformers comics.

Non-fans may be surprised to know that the comic franchise continues today, published by IDW comics. Not bad for a 25 year old toy.

Today the live-action version of Transformers is reinvigorating the franchise; new toys, new fans, and reignition of nostalgia for old fans like me. Thanks to the new movie release apparently some of the license holders of the Transformers brand decided to release remastered cartoons of the first season of Transformers on DVD. My wife and son picked it up for me for Father's Day.

I knew there's going to be some inevitable nostalgia rot. I have fond memories of the stuff I liked...but as I grew up the cringing parts sort of disappeared. Now they're captured in detail on DVD for me to relive and wonder, "What the hell was I thinking?"

There were technical mistakes. Color mismatches. Characters that aren't supposed to be there right in the scene ("Where's Bumblebee?" He's standing three feet behind you. Suddenly he's driving up to the group. Whoops.) In the first episodes the Autobots fly. In the third episode, Optimus takes a rocket pack from Sideswipe to fly after escaping Decepticons. So...can you fly, or not?

There were obvious mistakes in science and logic. One episode had Decepticons getting energy by stealing it from some crystal from the Earth's core (Fire in the Sky). As they extracted it the Earth cooled...um...our planet surface isn't primarily heated from the heat in the core, I'm afraid. It would make it hard to stand outside. And how do you have a forty foot robot transform into a handgun?

There's the plain weird...in the first season of The Transformers, I think the easiest way to cripple an autobot in car or truck mode is to tip him over. Every time someone is blown down a hillside or onto their side, someone has to step in to put them back upright before they're asked if they can transform. I'm surprised they don't all transform into turtles.

There were philosophical errors. Optimus believes in sanctity of life and freedom. They made the dinobots, and on the first activation the three Dinobots go on a rampage and "destroy" equipment before being stopped. So naturally, believing in the inalienable rights of all beings, he orders them deactivated forever and stuck into a collapsed cavern. Naturally the Autobots get into trouble, Wheeljack enhances the intelligence of the Dinobots enough that they are sent out to save the day, and now that they're suddenly beneficial to them Optimus graciously allows them to join the Autobot ranks. That's a nice message to send kids...if you're useful, you can live. But we're the good guys.

Which segues into the error of stereotypical cliche's. There is no depth of character; the beings are either good or evil. It's pretty clear cut. The bad guy wants to rule the universe. Why? No one knows. The good guy is entirely consumed by just stopping the bad guy. What happens if the bad guy is stopped? No one knows. Cartoon Optimus would have no purpose if not for that one goal. They're robots...giant computers...yet apparently computers that can't aim since most of their shots miss wildly. If someone's shot, they're fixed within ten minutes if it's not vital to the storyline that the character is mortally wounded. They're apparently not very good with building weapons either since we lowly humans have weapons that will level a city, while these four-story mechanical beings with interstellar travel have weapons that make little pops and sparks and the guy hit grunts a little big before getting back up and declaring himself injured, but would be okay.

There's even the GI Joe cartoon cliche of specialization. Every Transformer has a weapon that does something special. Starscream has null-rays. Megatron's fusion cannon. Who is building these weapons, themselves? They're weapons specialists and manufacturers? Shouldn't they just have a generic gun that just blows the limbs off each other? GI Joe took it one step further...when the one guy on the whole force that specialized in cold-weather fighting has a cold or breaks a limb, apparently the Joes just have to sit back while COBRA executes their latest scheme in the arctic.

But I still loved it.

I think it comes from the cartoon being a platform on which to hitch dreams. The idea of giant robots from another planet that can shift and fold into everyday objects was just plain cool. What if we could transform? Or had friends that were giant robots that could take us places? Wouldn't it be handier than having Mom and Dad hauling us to the mall? Of course the reason for all the shortcomings becomes crystal clear when you realize that as far as the company behind Transformers was concerned, the cartoon and comics were vehicles to sales. Sales slump, they introduce new robots. When The Powers That Be wanted to push sales of a new line of revamped toys they released the 1986 animated movie where many of the key characters...including Optimus Prime...were killed off. Supposedly the execs behind the movie were bewildered at the ensuing backlash they received from fans (they had actual emotional ties to these characters? No way...) (see links here and here).

Transformers obviously struck a chord in many of us as the franchise made enough money that it is still around today. More importantly the initial wave of Transformers had an audience that was static; as we grew up, so did the series. Only not as cartoons. As comics. (Okay, once there was enough of a chasm that the audience of the original series were having their own series, there were inevitable "reimagines" of Transformers like Beast Wars and Transformers Animated...ugh...).

My wife is a big critic of the cartoons from the early years. She finds them shallow and silly with inane dialog that appeals to the most childish of the childish, and I can't say I don't entirely disagree while re-watching the series. But I also handed her a copy of the Transformers Spotlight comic centered on Cliffjumper; a little red transformer that was almost looked like a brother to Bumblebee on the series (the toys were just repaints of each other) and was voiced on the cartoon by Casey Kasem. In the comic, Cliffjumper was stranded on a planet when his ship "had trouble". He befriended a sister and brother left parentless, and he helped around their farm. Eventually some Decepticons appeared and he dispatches three of them before they call for reinforcements and take the native friends hostage; Cliffjumper gives himself up to spare his friends, but in a turn...let's just say that you don't cross Cliffjumper. My wife's height of compliment was to say that she thought it was okay...which for a story about a cartoon series robot, is saying quite a bit. There are nuances in the comic that show more development you'd never see in the cartoons, such as when the flesh-and-blood friends ask Cliffjumper if he hurt other people and he refused to answer...he was an assassin, and the television series would never even allow the phrase "I'm going to kill you" to be uttered. The line between pure good and pure evil is made murky in these stories and makes the story more real in the process.

There have been other comic storylines that flesh out actual characters of dimension; the Megatron Origins series depicts Megatron as becoming a defacto leader of the Decepticons after the Autobot government basically opresses segments of the people and Megatron was an energon miner who traveled down a road of rebellion; he accidentally kills someone during an uprising and escapes imprisonment to fight in the underground gladiatorial arena where his skills were admired and honed. After reading that one I could almost sympathize with Megatron and his desire to kill all the Autobots.

Now the entire franchise has been rebooted with the live-action movie. I wasn't a huge fan of the new movies at first; since then the background has gradually been augmented with more background information and backstory from comic prequels (Alliance and Defiance, as well as a Reign of Starscream from just after the first movie). I've come to enjoy the film franchise as it stands in its own right. I still miss seeing the Dinobots, though. In another way I'm glad not to see them in the film. I'm afraid of what they'd have done to them and I kind of liked the characters as they were in the comics.

Lottery Jackpot

I had a post not long ago where I mentioned the lottery and hope in the context of people perpetually falling for email hoaxes. Coincidentally I ran across this article discussing the American Powerball lottery and at what point it is worth playing, mathematically and statistically, playing the lottery.

I play the lottery sometimes when I have a couple spare dollars in the wallet. I play in casinos once in a great while as well. I am well aware of the statistics, and even if I weren't aware then five minutes of reflection should lead you to the conclusion that the casinos manage to air condition those huge spaces somehow and paying large sums of money to the hundreds and hundreds of people elbowing you away from their favorite lucky slot machine isn't the reason.

The summary of the article should be no surprise. The best way to make millions is to already have millions...

The New Enterprise NCC-1701

My son was playing with a Hasbro model of the new starship Enterprise from the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie and I started thinking about the various starships from the Star Trek franchise over the years.

It suddenly occurred to me that in Star Trek V, the brand new Enterprise-A was depicted as being in a constant state of disrepair. It was "brand new" and as such had all sorts of glitches and problems to work out in a shakedown cruise. It was new, undergoing refit (retrofit?), and that was the excuse given for the running gags of half the ship not working properly.

In the latest Star Trek movie, the eleventh in the series, the Enterprise wasn't even given a proper christening; her first voyage out of spacedock was to respond to a call for help from Vulcan. The ship not only performed admirably but managed to go toe-to-toe with a ship that is supposedly five miles long (heck, the new Enterprise is supposed to be over 700 meters in length...)

I then realized that the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the fresh refit transitioning between the old series and the first movie, worked without problems (except for the imbalance in the engines causing a wormhole...).

Unless I'm missing something, apparently the only time the running gag of "it's new, so it's expected to not work right" was in Star Trek V. Maybe it was such a dud that they decided not to revisit that plot device, unlike, say, time travel screwing up the timeline...