Scott Bush

In 1986 a film was released called The Hitcher. In 1986 I was watch­ing Trans­form­ers (the ani­mated movie) for the twen­ti­eth time, not some slasher film. Fast for­ward 21 years; a remake of the film is released to lit­tle fan­fare and some pretty bad reviews:

Ulti­mately, this is a bit of trash that will most com­fort­ably line the cages of those who have no mem­ory or attach­ment to the orig­i­nal. This in itself is an idea more ter­ri­fy­ing than any­thing por­trayed in The Hitcher. ~Dal­las Morn­ing News.

So when I vis­ited my friend for an evening of pop­corn and a good scary flick, I wasn’t too pumped when she sug­gested The Hitcher. “It’s more gore-scary, not supernatural-scar,” she said, cer­tainly not endear­ing me any more to the idea; I’m no gore/torture fan (which is why I’ll never watch the Saw, Hos­tel, or Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre series). But then she told me it was the orig­i­nal, which was a “cult clas­sic.” I thought I’d give it a chance. I’m glad I did!

The plot is sim­ple: a young man (C. Thomas How­ell, of E.T. and Red Dawn fame) picks up a hitch hiker who tries to kill him. He escapes, but tries to pro­tect oth­ers from the hitcher and ends up get­ting involved in a string of killings for which he is blamed. The hitcher, played excel­lently by Rut­ger Hauer, pur­sues him across dusty high­ways from one lonely gas sta­tion or diner to another in what appears to be the Nevada desert.

What sur­prised me most was its sheer watch­a­bil­ity. Despite the ter­ri­ble choices the main char­ac­ter Jim Raw­ley makes later in the film, early on he seems very real­is­tic. Case in point: when he first escapes from the hitcher. His dis­be­lief fol­lowed by extreme exu­ber­ance just seem real. And later, when two cops are shot right in front of him, his screams and reac­tions seem like some­thing I’d do (assum­ing I was stu­pid enough to have got­ten myself in that posi­tion). Of course, no such film can actu­ally con­tinue to be real­is­tic and his Raw­ley con­tin­ues to make idi­otic moves that fly in the face of logic, such as when he steals a cop’s gun (for the sec­ond time, no less) or man­ages to sleep through a room­ful of cops being shot or stabbed to death. Another thing pre­vent­ing me from sus­pend­ing my dis­be­lief: the hitcher’s appear­ance in places he couldn’t pos­si­bil­ity get with­out being noticed. But what­ever; it’s a great flick. Oh, and not gory really at all—other than some intense gunshots.

Oh, two more items. It’s full of ‘80s stuff like rotary phones, white guys with afros, and every­one smok­ing. And I noticed a voice I rec­og­nized near the end. I closed my eyes and sure enough: it sounded like Armin Shim­mer­man. The cred­its (and IMDB) proved me right. For you non-nerds out there, Armin Shim­mer­man played Quark on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Awe­some.

To com­mem­o­rate Thanksgiving—and to com­bat the cease­less com­mer­cial­ism of the “black Fri­day” shop­ping orgy—I would like to share with you the lyrics to a song called I Want More (part 1) by the group Faith­less. (I could fill pages about how great Faith­less’ music is, but I’ll con­trol myself and only say they won the “Best musi­cal group ever,” as deter­mined by me.)

Lis­ten­ing to this song (or sim­ply read­ing these lyrics) inspires me to real­ize that most of us yearn to pos­sess some­thing more, to own another phys­i­cal trin­ket or bauble. In real­ity, if you’re read­ing this entry on a com­puter then you’ve likely got every­thing you need to sur­vive. Even if you are short a bit on your bills, can’t afford to eat lunch out every day, or feel the pinch at the gas pump, you really do have far more to be grate­ful and give thanks for than not.

“I Want More Part 1″

Hey friend your mis­ery bewil­ders me
How come you’re never sat­is­fied or grat­i­fied
Four walls n’ a roof, elec­tric­ity,
Sta­ble mind, wife and child,
Hot and cold water to run any­time.
But still you whine.

What d’ya mean
I want more

I was told as a child,
I want more never gets
Learned to count my bless­ings
Long before I saw an aba­cus
So what ya fam­ily don’t speak
At least they’re alive
Show me a man with­out guilt
Or a soul that ain’t lied
You don’t know what ya got
Open your eyes, look around
Really, hear me you,
Ain’t got no rea­son to be down

What d’ya mean
I want more

You decide. Hint: I took this photo in the Wash­ing­ton State Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, not a bar­ren desert that dou­bles as a test­ing ground for nuclear weapons. Ha ha… seri­ously though, this doll didn’t know she was tak­ing steroids; her trainer told her it was just vit­a­min injec­tions (sounds like Barry Bonds).

(If you’re curi­ous why I’m look­ing at half-built parade floats, it’s because my col­leagues and I were check­ing out the 14-foot-tall inflat­able house that will rep­re­sent the Northwest’s largest home­builder in Fri­day morning’s Macy’s Thanks­giv­ing parade.)

Well, at least every­thing you know about geog­ra­phy. To cel­e­brate acknowl­edge the end of Geog­ra­phy Aware­ness Week (seri­ously; it’s the third week in Nov.) I thought I’d share a dis­cov­ery I made a few weeks ago. Fair warn­ing: you may find this disturbing.

Get­ting it wrong

Let’s start with a quiz: Which is big­ger, Green­land or Africa? (Take a look at a map; I’ll wait). Some of you may have even known the map so well you quickly answered “Green­land!” with a smile, proud you knew the answer. But you’re wrong. Green­land occu­pies about 0.8 mil­lion square miles, while Africa com­prises 11.6 mil­lion! That’s four­teen and a half times bigger!

Don’t feel too bad if you got it wrong. It’s not really your fault; it’s what you were taught grow­ing up. So was I. That’s why I was so astounded when I noticed a “strange” map in a survey’s office win­dow. Upon inspec­tion I learned it was a Peters Pro­jec­tion map:

Who knew map­ping was so tough?

Besides his cool first name, Ger­man his­to­rian Arno Peters is known for pre­sent­ing a new map of the world in 1973. It dif­fered from the ubiq­ui­tous map of the world, called the Mer­ca­tor pro­jec­tion (it’s the one that appears in all of the maps in the search link above), because it is area-accurate.

I don’t claim to know much about map-making, nor will I try to fully explain the intri­ca­cies and trade-offs car­tog­ra­phers deal with when devis­ing flat ver­sions of a sphere. (If you’re inter­ested, Wikipedia has lots of info on this topic). But what it comes down to is this: the Mer­ca­tor pro­jec­tion was devised in the late 1500s by a Euro­pean for sailors. Its lines are true and shapes accu­rate, but it dis­torts the sizes of areas; this is espe­cially true the fur­ther an area is from the equator.

Peters, who was inter­ested in equal­ity (good for him!), intro­duced his Gall-Peters Pro­jec­tion map with the hopes it would elim­i­nate the West­ern– and northern-centric bias inher­ent in the Mer­ca­tor pro­jec­tion. Think about it: where’s the cen­ter of the Mer­ca­tor map? Europe. Where does its equa­tor run? Sixty percent—not halfway—up from the bot­tom of the map. His con­cern was non-Western peo­ples were being dis­crim­i­nated against by over­stat­ing the size, and there­fore dominance/power, of the north­ern hemi­sphere. (The north­ern hemi­sphere occu­pies 18.9 mil­lion square miles; the south­ern, 38.6. Yet it appears much larger on the Mer­ca­tor projection.)

Another ben­e­fit of the Gall-Peters map: all north-south lines are par­al­lel; all east-west lines are par­al­lel, so accu­rate com­par­isons can be eas­ily made. That would come in handy when answer­ing ques­tions like “which is fur­ther north: LA or Las Vegas?”

Get­ting better

Peters’ ver­sion isn’t the only attempt to rec­tify the Euro-centric word view: the Aussie’s have their “upside down” world map, too. There are prob­a­bly oth­ers, too. Maybe ones show­ing Mada­gas­car as the cen­ter of the map? What­ever coun­try is in the cen­ter is is some­what arbi­trary, right?

Even my beloved Google Maps, which I can­not lav­ish enough praise upon, uses the Mer­ca­tor pro­jec­tion and there­fore inac­cu­rately depicts the rel­a­tive sizes of the con­ti­nents. Maybe one day they’ll change, or at least offer a choice. But it is heart­en­ing to read that some atlases are using a dual approach to offer the best 2-D rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our 3-D globe. The Mer­ca­tor is used for near-equator areas, while areas nearer the poles are shown in equal-area projections.

Keep all that in mind next time you look at a map.

Dark­ness envelops the room, unscathed by the fee­ble early morn­ing Novem­ber light. More (though greener) light comes from the dig­i­tal clock on my bed­side table, though I can­not read its glow­ing face with­out my glasses. There’s no need to see it, how­ever; the alarm chirrup­ing from my cell phone–rather than a bird–tells me that it’s 6 a.m.

With­out look­ing, I quickly silence the phone’s alarm with fin­gers trained by rep­e­ti­tion. My wife lies to my left, undis­turbed by the noise. She will sleep another two hours before her own alarm rouses her. I am jeal­ous of this fact, yet I turn toward her warm body and kiss her back. The demands of the upcom­ing day crowd out the rem­nants of my dreams. The minute I’ve allowed myself to enjoy the com­fort of my bed has become five and again my phone insists I get up.

Glasses bring what lit­tle light there is in the room into focus.  I stand unsteadily and stum­ble toward the bath­room, kick­ing aside the extra pil­low I’d tossed from the bed the pre­vi­ous evening after read­ing. The well-worn car­pet beneath my feet is a stark con­trast to cool linoleum that greets me in the bathroom.

Light assaults me with harsh vio­lence as I flick the switch. The fan, too, seems impos­si­bly loud at this hour but expe­ri­ence tells me it will not wake my wife nor the woman in the unit below. I shut the door and stand at the sink, not­ing the wave of disheveled hair sculpted by six hours against my pillow.

Mer­ci­fully, the water splashed into my face brings the first sense of alert­ness back to me. My pupils have made peace with the three bulbs above the mir­ror. I start the shower and yawn, which simul­ta­ne­ously causes my jaw to pop like a fire­cracker and alerts me to the sour taste of morn­ing breath. The hot water from the shower brings me all the way to my senses and I run through the famil­iar pat­terns of wash­ing and think­ing of what I must do today.

I leave the bath­room fan–and there­fore the light–running after my shower, and it’s by this illu­mi­na­tion that I chose my clothes. After only the briefest fash­ion checks (“can I wear a brown shirt with these khakis? No, try the blue shirt instead”) I dress, pulling on socks and a belt before pack­ing my pock­ets with wal­let, pen, blue­tooth head­set, and a few quar­ters. I return to the bed, this time on the oppo­site side, and kiss my wife. She mum­bles “I love you,” a sen­ti­ment I return and tell her to have a good day and be safe; she tells me to, too. It is a con­ver­sa­tion only I will remem­ber. Fully awake now, I no longer begrudge her the addi­tional rest as I did 25 min­utes earlier.

Within the kitchen fix­ture hangs an energy-efficient bulb, and its muted glow inten­si­fies while I grab the left­overs from the fridge I’d pre­pared the night before for my lunch. The bulb is only just fully awake when I, now wear­ing shoes and jack­eted, flick it off again. It will snooze another hour or so before my wife rouses it again, when its light will add to the fee­ble rays of a North­west Novem­ber fil­ter­ing through our windows.

Last Mon­day I reaped one of the rewards of cor­po­rate employ­ee­ship: atten­dance at a company-paid edu­ca­tional sem­i­nar. I’m only being half face­tious. The oppor­tu­nity to learn or hone a skill on com­pany time and dime really is a win-win. The employee gains insight, skills, and tech­niques while the com­pany has a more effec­tive (and hap­pier) employee.

So the scene is set for my drive to one unre­mark­able hotel ball­room near SeaTac air­port for “Google AdWords Sem­i­nars for Suc­cess.” It was an all-day event designed for begin­ner– to inter­me­di­ate level AdWord prac­ti­tion­ers. The class’s top­ics included an intro­duc­tion to AdWords, step-by-step account setup and man­age­ment, how to bid, basic SEO tech­niques, and an intro­duc­tion to Google’s other bid to con­trol all of teh intar­webs, Google ana­lyt­ics. It was a very busy day but sur­pris­ingly, I found it all useful.

Some of the top­ics of note included the abil­ity to dis­play image– and video ads on the AdSense net­work. (AdSense is the pro­gram where web­site own­ers opt to dis­play “Ads by Google” on their site in exchange for a por­tion of the rev­enue gen­er­ated by those ads.) You can also geo­graph­i­cally tar­get ads, so that the ad you’re run­ning is only dis­played to peo­ple in, say, the U.S.; or just Wash­ing­ton state; or even a par­tic­u­lar city. You can­not (yet) tar­get zip codes, but you can define an area by geo­graph­i­cal coor­di­nates (some­what like an image map for those of you who coded HTML back in the mid-to late-90s). Of course, geo-targeting is based pri­mar­ily on where your IP address is reg­is­tered; Google doesn’t really know where you are. That’s another rea­son not to love AOL (as if you needed more). All AOL IP addresses are shown to gen­er­ate from West Vir­ginia, so if you dial up or con­nect to broad­band pro­vided by AOL, those “find sexy sin­gles in [city]” ads will adver­tise Reston or Man­as­sas even though you’re in Seat­tle or else­where. There are some mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors that the instruc­tor glossed over, such as log­ging into Google or other sites where you iden­tify your loca­tion. I’m sure there’s a lot more to that process than she under­stood and it was well beyond the scope of the class.

One thing to note: I got a fat pen bear­ing Google’s logo (just styl­ized text) down the side. What’s strange to me was the lit­tle clip also bore the URL “www.google.com” Why?! If you can’t fig­ure out where Google’s web­site is then you have other issues. It’s like Burger King stat­ing “We sell burg­ers.” (Please don’t con­strue this anal­ogy as me advo­cat­ing in any way that you should actu­ally ingest any­thing from Burger King.)