Erik Neu: Ideas

Forget What You Learned in Driver's Ed: How to Adjust Mirrors to Eliminate Blind Spots

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 03:46:56 GMT

I came across these instructions for adjusting your automobile side mirrors to eliminate the notorius "blind spots" on each side. I've been trying it for a couple of weeks, and it seems to work quite well. So well that it makes me wonder why the practice hasn't spread.

I can remember clearly, back 25 years ago in driver's ed class, the instructor explaining how to set the side mirror (singular--this was before right-hand mirrors had become common), so that it showed a little bit of the side of your car. He even quizzed us as to why we should set it this way. The answer, of course, was to provide a reference point, or context, for what you were seeing. Now I see how misguided that practice is.

The best defense I can think of, other than tradition, is that by giving you a reference point, you can ascertain with an immediate, un-thinking glance even as you are pulling away, that your mirrors are adjusted as you expect. Whereas with the blind spot elimination technique, you can not verify so quickly and casually that the mirrors are set right; there is a brief calibration process that is needed, and it is definitely best undertaken while not in motion.

So, I find myself wondering whether this practice falls into the "safety feature that you are not sure whether you want to become dependent on" pattern. That is, if you get accustomed to this practice, will you be disciplined enough at all times--when driving someone else's car; when driving your spouse's car and you don't anticipate getting on a multi-lane road (which is typically when the blind spot becomes a consideration), but plans change, and you do--to take the time to perform the calibration?

(Some other cases of this pattern are: auto-shutoff irons, anti-lock brakes.)

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:49:16 GMT

Also, (in regard to the idea of a selective reading from a novel) what about book previews? Why not have book previews, just like we have movie previews? I personally love movie previews, and they often entice (and more often, dissuade) me to watch a film. Why not thave the same thing for books?

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:49:14 GMT

Have you ever read a book (I'm thinking primarily of fiction), and really wished you could get someone you know to read it, because it conveys some truth you have previously grasped, but never articulated? It happens to me moderately frequently. But getting someone else to read a book just because you think it is interesting or relevant can be a tall order. I know my own reading list is quite backlogged, and I wouldn't be terribly receptive to most requests of this sort.

That got me to thinking--what I'm really looking for is a selective samplilng of the book, calculated to convey much of the essential flavor of the book, in 20 pages? Not an abridged version, nor a Cliff Notes-style synopsis. It should use only the verbatim language of the book. That way, when I am trying to explain to someone the mental state of the protagonist of Lucky Jim, for instance, and the language used by the author to describe it--eloquent phrasing describing a trivial existence; an internal voice with mastersful phrasing inhabiting a weak and defeated character; self-conscious without being self-psycologizing--they could read 20 pages, and have a clue as to what I'm talking about.

I know this will probably make me sound like an awful philistene to some, but it seems, to me, of at least hypothetical usefulness!

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 17:43:55 GMT

More advanced thinkers than I on the theory that very good architecture and design could slash the amount of living space we feel need to be comfortable.

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 13:41:13 GMT

Yet another article stating that rising property values are driving the stiff property tax increases that are squeezing homeowners. I agree with the conclusion (i.e., the stiff increases are occurring, and are painful), but not the premise. Rising property values don't drive taxation, rising spending and budgets drive taxation.

Suppose a municipality has a hot real-estate market, where prices go up 12% per year 3 years in a row--a 40% total increase in valuation. Let's assume taxes are assessed based on market value. Let's also assume, for the sake of simplicity, that the town is completely full--there is no new construction. Therefore no new sewer lines, no new schools to be built, no new roads. So you would expect the town budget to be essentially flat--it should go up at about the rate of inflation, but no more.

However, since real estate values increased by 40%, if no adjustment is made to the property tax rate, then property tax revenues will increase by 40%, overflowing the town's coffers. The town would have three choices. One, find a way to spend all that extra money. Two, save the money for the future. Three, find a way to bring the real level of taxation in line with budgetary requirements and expectations.

The key is to change the rate. There are two levers, working together, which set the real level of property taxes: the valuation and the rate. So if the valuation goes up sharply and unexpectedly (what might be called a windfall profit, if it happened to a corporation!), then the compensating adjustment would be to decrease the rate, so that the overall level of taxation remains constant, and in line with the budgetary requirements.

Another way to look at the problem would be a scenario involving declining valuations. Assume valuation in a town decline uniformly by 10%. However, nothing changed in the town's spending needs. Would you expect to see the real property taxes decline by 10%? No, what would happen is that the rate would be increased to compensate for the decline in valuations (or more likely in that scenario, a combination of partially-compensating rate increase, combined with emergency budget reductions).

It is nauseating to hear the specious, self-serving arguments, so frequently advanced by officeholders, that the heavy increases in real taxation are not in fact tax increases, but are merely the obvious and unavoidable by-product of the hot real-estate market.

The exception to this argument would be the case where increases are spread unevenly within a taxation jurisdiction. For instance, if a subway is being built, and prices skyrocket for homes in the vicinity of the planned stops. Or the few remaning extraordinaly large land parcels (1), zoned for residential use, are experiencing a disproportionately heavy hit. In those cases, the pain is localized, and can truly be explained primarily by rising valuations. But I think it is pretty clear that those scenarios are very much the exceptions, not the rule.

In fact, the second scenario is where the article begins , but it moves rapidly away from that, and without doing a good job explaining why it is a special case.

(1) E.g., a single family house on 30 acres in a typical suburb, where lots are 1/3 acre of less; since the land component of the total price is rising dispropoprtinately, it will have a very heavy impact on a taxpayer whose residence is disproportiantely composed of land, rather than dwelling/improvements.

Eliminating Mud Room Puddles

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 03:48:55 GMT

Up here in Minnesota, snow melt from winter shoes and kids snow clothes becomes a nuisance. We are fortunate enough to have a laundry room entrance, and in that laundry room, we have a couple of industrial carpets. Still, after a morning of in-and-out, the carpets become quite damp, so that if you step on them in your socks, your socks get wet--always unpleasant, especially at the temp we keep our house!

Anyway, this makes me think of an invention. It's a little fuzzy in my mind, but in its ideal form, it would involve having a gently grated, heated floor with drainage beneath. So that all the dampness and snow melt would quickly disapper. Maybe gentle fans to accelerate the process.

Idea for a quieter horn blast, for use at stoplights

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 03:39:56 GMT

This morning, turning into our building, I was second in line at a left-turn signal. It turned, and the car in front of me didn't move. I wanted to give them a "friendly little beep", to alert them to the fact that the light had changed. But that typically takes a lot of finesse, and early on a cold morning, I wound up laying it on a bit more than I meant to. No big deal, but it was a co-worker, after all. It occurred to me, it would be really nice if horns had a chirp button, which when pressed, would cause them to emit a audible but not too loud or prolonged "chirp", like they do when confirming you have locked your car with the remote. It might have to be a bit louder for this purpose--maybe a bit louder, and three chirps in quick succession could be the universal signal of "go, the light has changed"

Sheets & Blankets: A Solution Is Overdue

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 02:56:14 GMT

As I tuck my kids into their slovenly beds, and consider that our own is only a bit better, I find myself wondering--why? Why haven't there been improvements in bedding fastening? I am thinking of sheets and blankets with sturdy grommets that can be anchored to cleats; the cleats would be built into the edges of mattresses.

Obviously, this is an area crying out for standardization (de facto, as opposed to de jure, would be fine). I can envision just how it would happen, too. A big mattress maker just needs to push the whole thing. They would have to have some partners lined up, and as a sales come-on, give away a set of grommeted bedding with purchase of a mattress set. Other mattress makers would follow suit, the standard would be better-established, and grommeted bedding would become increasingly common.

Imagine the productivity, aesthetic and comfort benefits that we could realize!

(Grommets are round metal holes that are affixed to fabric.)

Other Energy Saving Ideas

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 14:04:43 GMT

In addition to attic fans, here are some other energy-saving approaches. None is going to cure our problem, but they all seem helpful and pretty easy.

Hybrid cars. Okay, zero points for originality here. 18 months ago, when gas was around $1.50, I thought hybrids were somewhat marginal. But with gas at $2.50, or more--project what it might be over the 10-15 year life of the car--and they start to look pretty good.

Programmable Thermostats. This one is so easy. I installed them immediately upon moving into the first 3 houses we owned. The fourth house--in Minnesota--came with one. I personally like it cold when I sleep, so they are a double-bonus to me. Anyway, if you turn the house down to 60 (really not that cold) at night and when away, it adds up.

Zoned heating. Houses are so big nowadays, and families so small. Many rooms go long periods without use. Wouldn't it be great to heat the rooms you are using to a nice toasty temp, and leave the other ones cool? Yet you never see zoned heating, outside of the odd electrically-heated house. I'm not sure what the practical technologies are for achieving this with forced hot-air, but it can't be that hard.

Attic Fans: Save Some Energy

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 02:53:18 GMT

The house I grew up in in Connecticut had central air conditioning, but it also had an attic fan. When conditions were right--which was more often than not, with Connecticut's slightly humid but relatively mild summers--it provided a far cheaper nighttime alternative to A/C.

An attic fan is a great big fan mounted in, well, the attic. It is as powerful as--I'm guessing wildly here--50 table fans, or a half-dozen ceiling fans. What it does is suck all that cool night air in from the cool night, into the house, to replace the stale, humid, warm air that remains in the house even after the outdoor temp has cooled.

They work best in areas where the summer evenings are reasonably cool (60s), like Connecticut, or even better, Minnosota, where I now live. I imagine an attic fan, installed in a 2500 square foot house as part of the build, wouldn't cost more than $600. Unfortunatley, they seem to be completely out of style, which is a shame, because they are such a cheap, energy-efficient, eco-friendly option.

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 03:11:37 GMT

I heard a suggestion for how New Orleans would be re-built. The historic, touristy part happened to be the least damaged. So that, and the valuable seaport, would be most of what remains of the new New Orleans--a "rump" city. The rest of the city would be located away from the flood zone, just like so many small towns on the upper Mississippi were after the 90s floods.

New Weather Metric: Temperate Daylight Hours

Sun, 14 Aug 2005 18:24:10 GMT

Here's a way I have found to rationalize tolerating the short Minnesota warm season. We moved from Indiana, where the summer is hot and humid, so that is our natural point of comparison.

If you count the number of temparate daylight hours--rather than the number of temperate days--Minnesota compares much more favorably (I'm too lazy at the moment to do the math). Minneosta averages 15 degrees a year above 90. Most of those are only a little above 90. They can be moderately humid, but not generally as bad as Indiana, and there is always a breeze. So it is a rare day in Minneosta where it is so hot, even in the heat of the day, that you couldn't at least be comfortable sitting outside in the shade, sipping a cool drink. And there are essentially zero days where even the mornings and evenings are uncomfortable. So, during the time of long daylight, in places like Indiana (never mind points farther south), many of those hours are fit only for indoor, air-conditioned existence. Thus, measured on a basis of hours of temparate daylight, Minnesota looks better!

Fri, 27 May 2005 04:19:54 GMT

I'm reading a book called Freakonomics. Just barely into it, but one of the behaviors it discussed hit home for me. A day care had a problem with parents arriving late. So they decided to enact a penalty system to charge tardy parents (this was years ago, I know it is quite common now). They charged $3 any time the parent was late.

Guess what happened? Incidences of lateness increased! Because the presence of the penalty removed the moral stricute to arrive on time, and the penalty wasn't large enough to hurt. Not to mention it didn't distinguish between 5 minutes late and 1 hour late.

The thing is, I have independently thought of a very comparable example, close to home. Our library does not charge a late fee. But I have noted I wish it did. Because the standard $0.25 per day fee is still a pretty cheap price to rent a book, if you think about it that way. For instance, if I need another 10 days to finish a book---well, that's only $2.50, which is way cheaper than buying it. And I knew I would feel less guilty if they charged that quarter a day!

Wed, 27 Apr 2005 01:11:49 GMT

I find it quite ironic that Japan is being considered for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council at a time when its future is imperiled by catastrophic population decline!

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 02:40:33 GMT

I can't believe the NEC (National Electrical Code) isn't stricter about residential circuit breaker panels. I've lived in three houses, all built in the 1990s, and the labeling of the breakers is SO iffy.

For starters, there is the usual half-literate scrawl and uncertain abbrevs. for the various rooms and locations. Worse yet is the fact that they are inaccurate and incomplete. On top of all this, the label is typically separate from the breaker switches. In some cases, there aren't even line numbers to match up. So if you find the DR lights you need to turn off are 6 rows down on the label right-hand side of the label, you have to count 6 down on the right hand side of the panel. Much better if there were a label next to each breaker switch.

Finally, there is no provision for lock-out. Okay, realistically, it is hard enough to get building maintenance personnel to lock-out regularly, homeowners are unlikely to do so. But they could at least have a mailbox-style flag to set, to indicate that breakers have been intentionally turned off.

Good Design Reduces Need for Raw Space

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 02:51:39 GMT

I have a fragmentary theory of home architecture...I think very good design might be substituted, to an extent, for pure size. For instance, I seem many three-car garages where the third bay is devoted not to an automobile, but to a pile of stuff. The pile is usually fairly haphazard. A decent-sized two-car garage, with a high ceiling for overhead racks, an accessible attic, and some other thoughtful storage knick-knacks, could store more stuff, better, in less space.

This applies elsewhere, too. Better storage in closets (two rows of hangers, for starters), and you don't need so much space. As I said, this is just a fragmentary theory. The generalization probably is that better design would reduce the raw space required. I have maintained for quite a while that living rooms and dining rooms tend to be vastly under-used. The former even more so here in MN, where three- and four-season sun rooms are popular.

And every bad should have storage (drawers) underneath.

Another good space-utilization idea is to have front-loading washing machines, and a laundry folding shelf above. Voila, 10 square feet of space out of thin air.

Sun, 27 Feb 2005 13:17:06 GMT

Picked up from Dave Winer... Michael Gorman, the president-elect of the American Library Association, publishes an article that I would say is pretty close to an hominem attack on the practice of blogging, with search engines dragged in for good measure. Very annoying. I will resist the urge to indulge in point-by-point nit-pick, since those are SO boring.

Google is notoriously ineffecient? Give me a break. Sure the "Google exposes the mind of God" hype is way over the top, but surely someone so learned as Mr. Gorman should be able to resist the tempation to attack a straw-man.

It sounds like Gorman feels personally and unjustly attacked by bloggers, in response to an article he wrote in which he (his words) " temerity to question the usefulness of Google digitizing millions of books and making bits of them available via its notoriously inefficient search engine". So I am guessing he is lashing out in response. I can imagine, that if I were to meet him in person, he would undoubtedly be interesting, and might well be affable. So long as we kept the discussion away from blogs and search engines.

This is yet another example of disdain from the professional librarian class, for the power of the web and of search. Though in some ways well-meaning, I can't help but feeling they are willfully consigning themselves to the role of "dinosaur", just like the experienced mainframe professionals, in the eighties, who disdained the PC. Though the notion that "information doesn't exist if it can't be found on the web" is imperfect, it carries an important core truth for the average person (actually, far beyond the average person--I think it is relevant up to, say, to somewhere around 98th percentile of motivation for information-seeking).

For sake of argument, let's agree that few "of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts ". What is that supposed to prove? Are Blog People somehow unique in this regard. So only the people who do engage in this activity are wise enough to have truly well-informed opinions on the usefulness of digitized information? (And what does he mean by "Blog People", anyway?)

A couple of irionies. The article is presumably an op-ed piece, which is very close to the blog form. Also, he doesn't have the savvy even to link to his own article, so that we can easily trace back to the genesis of his controversy. Perhaps that is a test of motivation--if you aren't willing to look it up, if you only will take the time to read it if it is a simple click away, perhaps you aren't intellectually worthy?

WSJ Article: "A Back-Seat Driver For Your Teen's Car"

Sun, 27 Feb 2005 03:51:47 GMT

The Wall Street Journal has an article about different technologies used to monitor the driving habits of teenagers. I've long been convinced that such things would be common by the time my kids are driving (less than 6 years away, now).

Surprising to me, there is no mention of accelrometers (to measure how much force is generated going around a curve).

The article also points out a subtle benefit--peer-pressure inoculation. Teen Passenger: "Let's see if we can beat them to the mall". Driver: "Can't, the car has spyware installed".

My Kind of Guy

Sun, 27 Feb 2005 03:45:28 GMT

WSJ: At a Drexel University campus forum last May, professors complained about funding cuts at the library. Rather than apologize for the belt-tightening, President Constantine Papadakis told them he'd prefer to have an all-digital library with no books at all.

Sat, 26 Feb 2005 04:52:37 GMT

I bet you could harvest contacts from Wikipedia's history and discussion pages, and get free "consulting" of about the quality you would, best-case, expect from Google Answers. I did it once.

Sat, 26 Feb 2005 04:46:17 GMT

I just posted a question on Google Answers. I have heard nothing about how this one of Google's experiments is going.

This sends me off on a bit of a tangent...I'm thinking of something Google and Microsoft have in common. Google has lots of experiments going (Google Answers, Google News, Gmail, Froogle), but only their mainstays--Search, and AdWords--make money. Microsoft is rather similar--they are in many businesses, but I have often read that only Windows and Office make money.

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 03:21:42 GMT

Newsweek has an article on "click fraud": people (or software) rapid-fire clicking--obviously, in bad faith--on a competitor's search ads (such as those on the right hand of Google results pages). A few months ago, I started wondering about this. I found some site (can't remember where) that had an essay suggesting it was actually pretty hard to spoof in a way that couldn't be detected. Based on this article, maybe what I read was over-optimistic.

Sense of Spelling, Sense of Direction

Sat, 29 Jan 2005 23:37:53 GMT

As someone who has a fairly poor sense of direction, and is also not a Myers-Briggs "Senser" (as in, for example, ISTJ), I am prone to forget where I parked, if I am not careful. I have friends, OTOH, who have never forgotten where they parked (at least not since college, while sober).

The same factors seem to be at work in finding one's way. These friends go somewhere once, as passenger, and they know they way. Heck, they probalby will even try a shortcut. Not me; I need to look at a map and work hard to commit it to memory.

I have found an analogy to explain this deficiency, to my directionally-gifted friends. I happen to be a very good speller, and I have noticed an inverse correlation between being a strong speller and a strong Senser. I'm not saying these friends are terrible spellers, but I think they would mostly agree, they are mediocre at best.

For me, it is very difficult to imagine what it would be like to be a poor speller. I somehow, almost magically, know how to spell almost every word I know. And it has always been that way. Spelling tests were a cakewalk requiring no real study--at most, I might note a word I didn't know on the list, would absorb its spelling, and be ready to spell it as if I had known it for years. Furthermore, I know what I don't know--for the occasional word whose spelling I am shaky about, I am fully, reflexively aware of my lack of knowledge.

I am attempting to make this comparison with all possible modesty. The key point is that I can't possibly tell you why I am a good speller, it comes effortlessly. And likewise, I think, for my friends and there sense of direction.

Reader's Digest Version of Live Sporting Events

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 04:00:44 GMT

This CNN-Money article discusses the notion that sports may be the most TiVo-resistant form of programming, because people want to see sports "live". I think there are two flaws in that thinking.

First, if you just start the game 30-40 minutes late, you can see it "nearly live", but still skip the commercials. That seeme pretty appealing. You will still know the result soon enough to be current "at the water cooler".

Second, I have an interesting notion, which looks like a business opportunity, let's call it XYZ Sports Editing...this assumes there is a market for non-live sports...Wouldn't it be nice to watch a "Reader's Digest" version of sports events? Sort of like they do with the Olympics tape-delay (only better), where you: 1) Only watch something if it turned out to be watchable; 2) Have the chaff--not just the commercials--cut out?; 3) Have control so that you can drop into the full-length version if you want.

If you had someone "edit it down", I would think you could watch a typical pro game (pick your sport) in 1 hour or so. Football and baseball seem particuarly favorable for such treatment.

The interesting twist is that I think this could be done in a way that wouldn't require approval from the broadcaster/original content provider, because it wouldn't infringe on copyright. It assumes that the customer of XYZ has TiVo'd the game. Then, right after the game is over (or even as it is in progress), the editors at XYZ would begin reviewing and editing down the game. But, when done, they would not be distributing the game itself, only a series of editing instructions that meshes with timecodes for the real game. So, an XYZ customer would download the editing info, and that would be paired up with the full-length game already recorded on their TiVo. This is how video editing software works. Seems like it should be legal??

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 00:52:16 GMT

Here is another good counter-example in the face of claims that the cost of liability is over-stated: "Hospitals usually claim they're trying to protect mothers and babies from harm. But the truth is that hospitals ban VBACs for legal and business reasons, not medical ones. Several mothers have sued in recent years when VBACs led to uterine ruptures and damage to mother or baby. Some of these women won awards in the millions, usually because the emergency C-section had taken too long or the doctor hadn't warned them of increased risk. A key issue in such suits is a 1999 American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists guideline calling for "immediate" availability of O.R. teams to support VBACs. Immediate, on-site availability of such teams thus quickly became a de facto legal standard."