The scariest universe

A winning strategy for making a scary movie is to repeatedly startle the audience with things that jump out on screen. A winning strategy for making a scary movie set in space is to have aliens jump out on screen. Add some tension-filled music, and what you've got is fear that translates well to film.

But fear felt while watching a movie is a lot different than fear felt outside the cinema, in real life. Outside, a prankster who hides behind a tree or garbage can and waits for you to pass nearby before jumping out and shouting “Boo!” may cause your heart rate to spike, but being startled like that is the exception. These days, being born human comes with the privilege of not being prey, and our fear is mostly driven by less-jumpy emotions such as worry, dread, and despair. So though our scariest movies about space involve aliens jumping out at the audience, our real-life fears about space are different.

Possibly the scariest thought about space is the idea that it's empty and impassable on scales that matter—that we're forever stuck on this planet. Only (as this idea goes), it's not even for forever that we're stuck; the average duration of a mammalian species is a couple million years, and so humans will probably have what in geological terms is a pittance of time to enjoy being stuck here. Then, soon after we're gone, most evidence of our existence will be wiped out, with only some plastics and interstellar radio waves lasting awhile longer to serve as our legacy in an uncaring, mindless universe.

Stuck here on Earth with each other. Stuck in a nest that we foul. We never end poverty, or war, or beat all diseases, or learn the answers to all questions. We muddle through, generation and generation, each responding to the challenges of its times, solving some problems while creating others. Our numbers rise and fall until our species enters into a terminal decline, after which we're all gone and no one is left to ascribe meaning to any of it.

So the next time an alien jumps out at you on screen, take delight in being startled—in imagining a universe that's not vast and barren. It's not as lonely as a universe as we may have, and it's nowhere near as scary.

Ticket to Ride rule variants

Here are seven Ticket to Ride rule variants Laura and I have come up with. These are all variants we've used only when playing together, in a two-player game, but some of the variants might work in a game with three or more players.

Rule variant #1: Players can't hold more than fifteen car cards in their hands at any time.

By canonical rules, there's no limit to how many cards a player may hold in their hand at any time. But Laura and I have noticed that in our two-player games, the strategy of hoarding cards tends to win over the strategy of playing cards soon after they're drawn. Probably the success of hoarding has something to do with allowing the hoarder to keep their destinations a secret longer and not tip off the other player too early in the game. In any event, hoarding becomes overplayed.

This rule variant prevents hoarding. It restricts the maximum number of cards a player may hold to fifteen, thus forcing players to make routes sooner and risk exposing their destinations earlier in the game. The variant also makes it harder to collect a lot of cards of the same color—necessary for completing longer, more rewarding routes.

Overall, I've observed that this variant brings more balance to the game.

Rule variant #2: Players start with zero car cards.

By canonical rules, players start with four randomly drawn car cards; the cards may or may not be of colors useful to the player. This rule variant changes that by allowing the player to better control their hand at the beginning of the game.

This variant has the least impact of any of the variants described here, though it's well suited to being paired with rule variant #1 (no more than fifteen cards in hard).

Rule variant #3: Players may discard two destination cards at the beginning of game.

By canonical rules, players must keep at least two of the three destination cards they are dealt at the beginning of the game. This has the effect of sometimes forcing a player to try to connect two unrelated pairs of cities. An example of this is connecting longitudinally oriented Duluth–Houston and connecting latitudinally oriented Vancouver–Montreal. Connecting one pair of those cities doesn't help with connecting the other pair.

This rule variant lets a player start the game by keeping only one destination card, thus allowing the player to better avoid having to complete unrelated destinations.

Overall, I've observed that this variant brings more balance to the game.

Rule variant #4: Players may draw an extra destination card.

By canonical rules, when a player draws destination cards—including the cards dealt to the player at the beginning of the game—the player draws three cards and must keep at least one (or two if at the beginning of the game and not using rule variant #3 (players may discard two destination cards)).

This rule variant allows a player to optionally draw a fourth destination card. However, if the player draws a fourth card, then that player must keep two cards, not one (or keep three if at the beginning of the game and not using rule variant #3).

This variant has the effect of letting a player see more destination cards but at the risk of being more likely to get stuck with unrelated destination cards. I've found it's usually better to draw four cards early on in the game, when the benefit of drawing four outweighs its risk, and to draw three later on in the game, when the risk from drawing four outweighs its benefit.

Rule variant #5: Custom destination cards.

Sometimes Laura and I make our own destination cards and add them to the ones that come with the game. We each make up a small number of destinations—say, five from each of us—and write each destination on an index card. The destinations are worth as many points as is the length of the shortest possible route between the two cities. No player can use the same city twice on any of the destinations they make up. (So, for example, one player can't make both the destinations Phoenix–Helena and Phoenix–Pittsburgh.) Players don't see the custom cards the other player creates.

When players draw destination cards, they draw two cards from the canonical deck and one from the deck of custom index cards. (In a variation on the variant, the opposing player decides how many from each deck to draw from.)

This variant prevents a player from memorizing the entire deck of destination cards. Thus, players are less likely to know what destinations their opponent is trying to complete. This has the effect of bringing more balance to the game. It also makes the game less predictable and more fun, as players find themselves connecting cities they rarely connect when playing with only the canonical deck.

Rule variant #6: Remove from the deck all destination cards worth more than X points.

By canonical rules, the destination cards range from 4 points (Denver–El Paso) to 22 points (Seattle–New York). This rule variant causes all destinations worth more than X points, where X is, say, 13, to be removed from the game.

Laura and I have noticed that the strategy of keeping long destinations tends to win over the strategy of keeping short destinations. However, the strategy of keeping long destinations is available only by luck, as it requires a player to draw at least one of a few cross-country destinations.

This rule variant eliminates that luck factor by removing those long destinations altogether, forcing all players to connect a greater number of short destinations.

Rule variant #7: Players can complete multiple routes in one turn.

By canonical rules, players can make only one route per turn—by connecting two adjacent cities. Long routes are harder to complete than short routes because long routes require more car cards of the same color, but long routes are worth geometrically more points than short routes, and long routes allow a player to span more distance in fewer turns.

Despite the trade-off between long and short routes, Laura and I have noticed that the strategy of completing long routes tends to win over the strategy of completing short routes. But some destinations make it hard to avoid short routes while other destinations make it easy to use long routes. For example, the most direct path connecting Duluth—Houston (8 points) comprises five routes, three routes of length 2 (6 more points) and two routes of length 1 (2 more points), while the most direct path connecting Los Angeles–Miami (20 points) comprises only four routes, three of length 6 (45 more points) and one of length 2 (2 more points).

But the destinations a player ends up with is largely based on luck. This rule variant counteracts that luck by allowing a player to make multiple short routes on the same turn, thus saving turns and earning more points. For example, a player could connect Houston–Kansas City (length 5: 10 points) in one turn and Kansas City–Duluth (length 3: 4 points) in the next, earning more points in fewer turns than if the five routes were completed individually. (Houston–Kansas City is another destination card, too, which can provide a further bonus.)

Here are the conditions that allow a player to make multiple routes in one turn.

1. The routes must together form a contiguous path.

2. The combined length of all routes is less than or equal to 6.

3. All routes must be completed using car cards of the same color. For example, a length-2 red route and a length-3 light gray (any color) route may be completed at the same time by playing five red cards. A player may not play 2 red cards and 3 blue cards to complete those same routes.

When completing multiple routes in one turn, the player is awarded points for the combined length of the routes. For example, if connecting Houston–Kansas City, length 5, then the player is awarded 10 points as though completing a single route of length 5.

This rule variant has the most impact of all the variants described here. Firstly, it increases the value of some of the game's short destinations. For example, Denver–El Paso and Houston–Kansas City can each be completed in one turn. That means more points in fewer turns, as well as not tipping off the opposing player before completing the destination.

Secondly, this variant allows some cities to become fully blocked in one turn. Vancouver and Las Vegas each have only two short routes, and so a player may block, say, Vancouver, by completing both of that city's routes in one turn. That prevents the other player from being able to connect any destinations including Vancouver, including the coveted Vancouver–Montreal destination worth 20 points. (Las Vegas doesn't have any destinations, unless possibly so if playing with rule variant #5 (custom destination cards)).

Against the categorical imperative

I reject the categorical imperative. I believe it fails to lead to sound moral conclusions, so I give it little credit as criticism against ideas—mine or others'.

The reason I mention this is so no one around here uses the categorical imperative to argue against something I write. I don't want anyone to have the expectation that I'll be influenced by what you have to say if that's the case. I reject the categorical imperative.

Not that anyone has done such a thing. As far as I remember, no one—myself included—has mentioned the CI here at JEC until today. But today's post is a prudent warning in case I someday make a comment such as, “Nearly all middle-class Americans would improve their circumstances if they spent a lot less money.” That sort of comment inspires CI-based reasoning these days.

For those of you wanting a refresher on the CI: it's the idea that you can determine an action as morally good or bad by asking yourself whether everybody doing that action would make for a better or worse world. If everybody doing it would be a good thing, then the action itself is good. Otherwise, the action is immoral.

This sort of reasoning goes on everyday. Sometimes it lends itself to pleasant ends, such as when someone decides not to litter because of the mess there would be if everyone littered. But sometimes the CI lends itself to unpleasant ends, such as when someone finds themselves pressed to tell the truth and admit that their friend's new haircut is ugly. As for the spending-less-money maxim I wrote two paragraphs earlier, the likely CI-inspired reaction is to worry about the consequence of wrecking the economy if all middle-class Americans consumed less. That's needless universality, I say.

My problem with the CI is that it starts from the assumption that monoculture is a good thing—that in a moral world all people would act the same when in the same context. Though I can accept a lot of axioms as hypotheticals, this is one I find too unlikely. First, there's the practical problem that people don't in fact act the same—one person deciding to do X isn't going to cause everyone to do X—and so measuring humans against such universality is questionable. But more importantly I believe monocultures are themselves bad things. Diverse ecosystems are stabler and more productive than monocultures, and so the best moral measurements will acknowledge that people ought to act differently—even when in identical contexts.

But don't let me convince all of you of this. We shouldn't all reject the categorical imperative. Proponents of monoculture fulfill an important part of our diverse ecosystem.

Goathead

According to its wikipedia article, Tribulus terrestris has many names: bindii, bullhead, burra gokharu, caltrop, cat's head, devil's eyelashes, devil's thorn, devil's weed, goathead, puncturevine, and tackweed. That the plant has three names that use the word “devil” isn't surprising to those of us who share an ecosystem with it. The contrarian in me wants to find something good about this plant, but I can't. And right now it's in season.

Since learning how to identify them last year, I've watched with both fascination and dread as goatheads have grown like the weeds they are all around town. They're easy to spot, with their ground-hugging stems and tell-tale dark green leaves that shout from fifty feet away: “I'm not native to the Sonoran.” The mature plants that have budded dozens of bright yellow flowers are handsome, though right now most of the goatheads around town lack flowers. I suspect they're waiting for a monsoon rain for nourishment before releasing their devil thorns wholesale.

The plant is especially woeful to cyclists; the seeds' tetrahedral shape causes them to land on the ground such that at least one thorn is guaranteed to stick up, waiting to hitch a ride in a tire. The thorn is sharp and hard. Though I can crush a seed between a rock and asphalt, it takes some manly strength to do so. So a seed that pierces a tire and hitches a ride is not damaged by the ordeal. This plant is good at invading.

During the last few weeks I've been uprooting all but the biggest plants I've seen while on my way to or from work. I've destroyed plants along the jogging trail on North Central Ave, along the canal, in the canal path in cracks in the asphalt, and in people's front yards. The plants that grow alongside roads and canal paths are especially destructive: their stems creep onto the road or path, where the plant gains direct access to passing rubber and a free ride. Fortunately, those plants tend to be the sickliest and can be pulled up by the root more easily.

Here's an example of a goathead creeping onto the canal path:

And here's one that I uprooted. You can see that it has only a few flowers and seeds. But in another month this plant would likely have a hundred seeds and have caused countless flat tires.

I uproot the plants with brute force, yanking them out of the ground with my hands. Sometimes I get a clean pull; sometimes the plant breaks off at the root. But I believe that both forms of trauma kill the plant; the plant is not hardy.

Is my fixation with killing goatheads doing any good? Probably not. But it's fun to kill goatheads, and every kill gives me an irrational feeling of accomplishment.

You are not a beautiful snowflake

After years of earning and spending money, a person gets to believing that dollars are real things. And why should we believe differently? Of all the things we surround ourselves with, money has the most day-to-day impact. Whether it takes the form of dollar bills, checks, or electrons whizzing around in a data center somewhere far away, money is how we most alter other people's behavior to our benefit. The difference between me walking out of Fry's Electronics with a flat-screen TV and either (1) going to jail or (2) not going to jail has everything to do with money. So in a way, money is as real as anything else: it has cause, and it has effect.

But most of us agree that money is a peculiar kind of real thing. We've all read or heard enough history to know that sometimes money loses its ability to cause much effect. Markets occasionally collapse, and money goes from real to imaginary—and it does so quickly. (Picture pre-WW2 Germans shoveling Mark banknotes made worthless by hyperinflation.) Though few people alive in the United States today have lived through such a scenario, so sharp are our imaginations about it that we get the feeling the essence of money is transient and illusory.

And yet, despite knowing this, many Americans act as though it's our birthright to live a long, healthy, and rewarding life as paid for by money. Anything less and we're not getting our due. It's tacitly agreed across the bitterest of political rivalries that in any fair world (most) Americans get to consume an order of magnitude more resources than the typical Asian factor worker assembling our gadgets. Pressed about the inequality and we may proclaim that opportunities are evening out and eventually Asian factory workers too will have such abundance—such is the marvel of the modern world. But how easy faith is when it upholds one's privilege.

Now, I generally try not to hold it against someone when they do what's in their self-interest. If it's possible for someone to get away with consuming more than most other people on the planet, then I expect that person to do so. To expect otherwise is to set oneself up for disappointment. Blame the rules, not the person—if one insists on blaming something.

But such selfishness aside, the belief in “our due” is leading Americans to a crippling cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, our hopes for long, healthy, and rewarding lives will manifest only through the efficient, uninterrupted flow of resources made possible by a stable monetary system. On the other hand, we realize that money isn't always real, and current circumstances suggest that the First World's current monetary reality isn't so strong.

So which is it? Is abundance our birthright, or will the misfortunes of the past visit us once again? Though we hope for continued abundance, no one knows with certainty what will happen in the future. But the sane course is to realize that both scenarios are possible—as well as all shades of gray in between—so that one needn't add bafflement to grief should our future lead to lesser wealth.

To put it in plainer perspective, the per capita GDP of the world, normalized for purchasing power, is about the same as the poverty line for a single American. Poor is average. What makes you deserving of wealth?

South Mountain

My comment last Thursday that I'm not in good form got me wondering just how bad my fitness is these days. So far this year I've accumulated a couple of notable failures, the first being not getting to the top of Browns Peak in April and the second being failing the Hour Challenge on the 2012 LMI course with prolific JEC commenter and super-running-streaker Bobby et al. But just how out of shape am I?

Yesterday I sought to answer that question with my litmus test for fitness here in Phoenix: the South Mountain time trial. It's a 1200ft climb up the smooth asphalt of San Juan and Summit Roads through a Sonoran landscape to the mass of TV towers that adorn the United States' biggest city park.

There's an official South Mountain time trial race that takes place every year in May. I've never done it; every year I've either been out of town or too uncaring. But from what I hear, it's a well run event that doesn't cost much and is a lot of fun. It's also a short course. It starts at the turn-off onto Summit Rd and finishes at the top. My SoMo time trial starts at the bathrooms a mile-and-a-half further down San Juan, which adds five minutes of a rolling climb to the course.

Yesterday, by relying on the previous weekend's three-night stay in high-elevation Colorado along with a few hard rides to and from work during the workweek that followed, I mustered all my available strength and finished SoMo in 28:13. That's a good time for me. It's probably in my all-time top ten.

Though at first I was happy with that result and optimistically concluded I'm not in bad form, a sober night's rest—metaphorically, not literally—got me thinking otherwise. That is, I am in bad form, but my performance was comparably good because bad form makes me work harder. Whereas, when in good form, I've got the hustle of a pro baseball player who just signed an eight-year deal.

Yesterday I biked up South Mountain with my heart in my throat, beating about 180 times a minute until the end, where SoMo cruelly has its steepest grades and my heart rate spiked higher than what's theoretically possible, as according to the (obsolete) heuristic that one's max heart rate is 220 minus age. For as long as I've had an HR monitor, I've never sustained as high a heart rate for as long a time while on the bike; my usual half-hour all-out effort heart rate is in the range of 170-175bpm.

So now I'm not sure what to think, but it goes something along the lines of: who cares?

Mesa Verde National Park

This last weekend Laura and I took a road trip to Colorado. Though ostensibly the purpose of our trip was to visit Laura's cousin, Tim, in Durango, I had my own goal: to bike Mesa Verde National Park.

Mesa Verde is in the southwest part of the state, near Four Corners. It's mountainous and forested like central Colorado, but it's also dry like Arizona. A long time ago, when I was about ten years old, my family drove through the park, and somehow I got it in my head that I would return someday and bike it. Mission accomplished.

Near the campground there were many deer. I worried about colliding with one on a fast descent.

Higher up, there was a lot of beautiful, twisty-road scenery.

8572ft—This is the highest elevation I've ever ridden a bike. One of the benefits of not being in great form these days is that the thin air didn't bother me so much since I expected to suck a lot of wind. But I noticed the thin air on the descents—less air resistance means faster speeds!

Why yes, that is a cheap, frayed rubber band holding an expensive electronic gadget to my expensive bike. Your point?

The highlight of the ride wasn't the climbing or the descending or the scenery. It was going through this mountainside tunnel.

* * *

Though I had fun biking a small part of Colorado, the experience made me realize how good road biking in Arizona is. American civil engineering is about the same everywhere in the Continental 48, with the same 6% grades up and down mountains. Thus, the roads of Mesa Verde feel a lot like the roads in Phoenix's South Mountain park—only with thinner air and more motor traffic.

As for epic climbs, Arizona has many of those, too: Mt Graham, Mt Lemmon, Mingus Mountain—none of which I've yet biked. I think future adventures await me.