Is Bigger Always Better?

Cruise ships keep getting bigger and bigger. The largest one yet, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, pictured above, is currently on its maiden voyage, having left Miami on Saturday. 

Icon of the Seas is enormous by any measure. The boat is nearly 1200 feet long–that’s four football fields, to give you a sense of scale–has 20 decks, and carries at capacity 7,600 passengers and 2,350 crew members. But those numbers, though impressive, are just scratching the surface: the ship has more than 40 restaurants, bars, and lounges, seven swimming pools, six water slides, an ice skating rink, and even a park, complete with trees and other live plants, in case you need a little pastoral tranquility during your voyage. One of the pools is the largest swimming pool aboard any ship, and another is the first suspended infinity pool on a cruise liner.

The Icon is so immense that it is divided into eight “neighborhoods,” to help people get their bearings. The pools are found in one neighborhood, and the rides and slides are in another. One of the neighborhoods, called The Grove, is reserved for high-roller passengers who have booked suites. It’s at the opposite end of the ship from the slides ‘hood, and has its own pool terrace, spa pool, and restaurants, so the bigwigs don’t have to rub elbows with the slide-riding masses unless they really want to do so.

I’m sure there are a lot of people who would be attracted to a trip on a floating pleasure palace like the Icon of the Seas. Cruise ship commercials always seem to show people careening down a water slide, so that option must appeal to somebody. Not me, however.

I’m not a big fan of cruises, generally, but in any event I would never want to be on a boat with thousands of other people. I can’t imagine the crush of humanity during the boarding and off-boarding processes. And it seems like the traditional model for a cruise–a calm, stress-free vacation with lots of time for reading, walking the decks, eating leisurely meals, and sunning and snoozing on lounge chairs–has been displaced by a more frenetic model that tries to cram every conceivable activity option onto gigantic vessels.

So, is bigger necessarily better? Cruise lines sure seem to think so.

Bobcat Sighting

One of our neighbors mentioned that he recently saw a bobcat crossing the street near our neighborhood. It was about the size of a medium-sized dog, he reported, and was easily identifiable by its spots and its short, bobbed tail–which is how the animal got its name.

Bobcats are another member of the menagerie of creatures that live in the Sonoran desert. The Arizona Game and Fish Department describes bobcats as typically measuring about twice the size of your standard housecat, weighing in at between 12 and 30 pounds and measuring two to three feet long. Bobcats like areas with thick brush and shade, and live on a diet of small mammals, birds, lizards and snakes–although the AGFD cautions that they also have been known to feast on house pets, including domestic cats and rabbits. Bobcats and coyotes are the two main reasons why people in this area typically don’t let their pets out to roam the neighborhood unattended.

The AGFD reports that bobcats rarely attack people, and most of the attacks that have occurred involve animals infected with rabies. There was an apparently unprovoked bobcat attack on a hiker in the Saguaro National Park recently, and officials think that rabies probably was the cause. 

I keep my eyes out when I walk around this area, because you never know what you might see. I’m not particularly interested in up close and personal interaction with the local critters, and I take to heart the AGFD’s admonition that people should recognize that wild creatures are, in fact, wild. If I see what I think might be a bobcat, I’ll happily steer clear.

Falling Just Short

I was sorry to see the Detroit Lions fall just short in their bid to make the Super Bowl this season, losing to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC championship game, 34-31. The Lions are the only team to have been in the NFL for the entire Super Bowl era and not made it to the big game at least once. The Cleveland Browns haven’t made it to a Super Bowl, either, but Cleveland was without a team for several years because greedy owner Art Modell, cursed be his name, moved the original Browns franchise to Baltimore in the ’90s. 

Because of this shared futility, and the fact that both teams have endured embarrassing winless seasons, there’s a certain kinship between Browns fans and Lions fans. Back in the ’50s, both teams were powerhouses and often played in the NFL championship game; in fact the Lions’ last championship, in 1957, came at the expense of the Browns. In that era, the teams were rivals–but that was long ago, and as Browns fans know all too well, in the Super Bowl era pre-Super Bowl championships and rivalries don’t really seem to count. Now Browns fans and Lions fans form a kind of mutual aid and encouragement society.

So I was rooting for the Lions yesterday, and held out hope when Detroit dominated the first half and built a 17-point lead. Unfortunately, the game turned in the second half, and with a botched interception, an untimely fumble, some dropped passes, and some failed fourth down conversions, the 49ers came roaring back. It’s the kind of cascading scenario Browns fans know all too well. You can debate whether Detroit coach Dan Campbell should have tried some of those fourth-down attempts, but he’s taken that approach all season long, and you have to be true to yourself. At least the Lions showed they belonged.

So this year’s Super Bowl will feature the Kansas City Chiefs, who’ve been the Super Bowl six times, and the San Francisco 49ers, who’ve been the game eight times. For the Browns and the Lions, hoping desperately to make just one Super Bowl, these are unimaginable numbers. Next year, we can hope to see a Lions-Browns “Get Off The Schneid” Super Bowl. It likely wouldn’t involve Taylor Swift, but we’d take it anyway.

The Great Sound Barrier

Yesterday was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birthday. The child prodigy who astonished the crowned heads of Europe, who then went on to become one of the greatest composers in history, was born on January 27, 1756. Yesterday marked the 268th birthday of this genius, who wrote some of the most beautiful and moving music known to humanity. He is long since gone, but fortunately for us his piano and violin concertos, sonatas, operas, serenades, and symphonies live on.

I’m currently reading Mozart: A Life, a very interesting book written by Maynard Solomon that tells Mozart’s fascinating life story and tries to put his musical creations into their proper chronological, biographical, historical, and critical context. Solomon often illustrates his textual descriptions of the depth and reach of Mozart’s music by choosing examples from certain of Mozart’s pieces, such as the portions of the Sonata in A minor shown below. The reader is supposed to be able to read the music, hear the music in his head, and thereby grasp the author’s point.

Unfortunately for me, I’m missing out on this element of the book, because I can’t read music. I briefly took guitar lessons as a youth, because everyone took guitar lessons during the ’60s, but I never understood the written representation of the music. Put pages like the ones below in front of me, or hand me a church hymnal and ask me to sing one of the songs, and in my mind it’s like looking at ants on a page. For me, trying to read written music could be called the great mental sound barrier.

Some people resolve to learn a new language; I should try to finally learn to read music. It’s something to add to my growing list of life goals.  

A Milestone For Women’s Sports

Women’s sports passed a milestone of sorts this week. A broadcast of a women’s college basketball game pitting the number one ranked South Carolina Gamecocks against the number 9 LSU Tigers went head-to-head with a broadcast of an NBA game–and drew more viewers. The women’s game attracted 1.56 million viewers, while 1.38 million watched the NBA game between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat.

Women’s college basketball has been on a roll lately. The days when the UConn team seemed to win every year, when even games between highly ranked teams were often lopsided, are long since over. The LSU and South Carolina women’s teams have won the last two national championships in the sport and have a strong and growing rivalry. I’m also proud to report that the Ohio State Buckeyes women’s team has made its mark, too–last Sunday the Buckeyes’ thrilling overtime win over the Iowa Hawkeyes drew the most viewers of any women’s college game since 2010. I should add that the Lady Buckeyes packed more than 18,000 fans into the Value City Arena for that matchup, which is the largest crowd for a women’s game in OSU program history.

We’re moving into the post-football period of the sports calendar, when sports-hungry fans who are used to tuning in to watch college or professional pigskin match-ups will be looking for alternative viewing options. With the women’s college game offering exciting, competitive contests, compelling story lines, and some terrific players, don’t be surprised to see the women’s games go toe-to-toe with the NBA or men’s college games and hold their own in the ratings. And if you haven’t watched a women’s game in a while, you might give it a try.

Alligators On Ice

An unusual phenomenon occurred in North Carolina during the recent cold snap, which took temperatures down into the teens. At The Swamp Park, a tourist attraction that allows visitors to observe alligators in up close and person circumstances, the swamps froze–leaving the alligators encased in ice.

Locals dubbed them “gatorcicles.”

When temperatures fall below 32 degrees and the alligators can feel the waters start to freeze around them, they apparently have the instinct to move toward the surface, push their snouts above the water line so they can continue to breathe, close their eyes, and then allow the ice to form around them, leaving them suspended in the water. The technique is a form of brumation, which is the reptile equivalent of hibernation. Alligators evidently can survive for several days in that condition, alive but with body processes slowed.

It would be weird to see an alligator suspended in ice like that, but I would definitely not want to be around when the thaw came and the gators warm up. Those of us from northern climates know that cold weather can be an appetite stimulant. 

“Memories,” Undemanded

For some time now, Facebook has included a “memories” feature that picks out Facebook posts from the same day in years past, pulls them out of the dustbin of history, puts them on display, and lets you know that you’ve got a “memory” to revisit. I’m sure Facebook thinks the “memories” feature is a great idea, and there probably are people out there who like it, but I find it jarring and off-putting, for several reasons.

First, the Facebook use of “memories” is inaccurate, because frequently I don’t remember the “memory” at all. Sometimes that’s because the Facebook “memories” algorithm selects something someone else has posted where you might have been identified, or it picks an incident that was so trivial that you’ve long since forgotten it. When you’re picking random Facebook posts from years past, that’s bound to be a pretty common scenario. 

Second, the “memories” feature is a powerful reminder of just how much information Facebook has stored about you. You may not remember what you were doing or thinking about on this date 13 years ago, but Facebook definitely does! I typically just share my blog posts on Facebook and really don’t post much else, but that’s still a lot of “memories” to choose from. If you are a more frequent poster, you’ve created quite a record that Facebook can dig into and resurrect. 

And finally, if you’ve been on Facebook for a while, some of the “‘memories” that the feature revives might well be unpleasant ones. Over a lifetime, there are bound to be some things–the loss of loved ones, a friendship gone sour, participation in something that now is the source of some embarrassment–that you’d rather not be randomly reminded of. I’d prefer that a mindless algorithm not dredge them up.

All of that is why I really don’t pay attention to anything the Facebook “memories” feature posts. I’d rather just go with the actual memories I carry around in my head. 

A Screen Too Far?

This week, Ford and Lincoln showed off the newly redesigned 2024 Lincoln Nautilus. You can read a Car and Driver article about it here. As the photo above shows, the car’s interior definitely has a cool, technology-laden vibe. 

The remarkable thing about the new Nautilus, however, is that it has two display screens. There’s the screen on the center console, just to the right of the steering wheel, which is pretty standard these days. But if you look above the dashboard, hard up against the bottom of the windshield, you’ll see another screen–a 48-inch, panoramic “infotainment” display screen that extends the width of the vehicle.

As a Popular Science article on the vehicle explains, the panoramic screen has the highest resolution Lincoln, and its parent company Ford, have ever offered. What is displayed on the screen, and where it is displayed, is customizable, and when the vehicle is set in park the panoramic screen will allow the passengers in the car to engage in gaming activity or watch video-streaming apps. Later, Ford plans advances that would allow the panoramic screen to support video conferencing, too.

Interestingly, one impetus for the new technology is the desire to have a standard platform going forward for new Ford and Lincoln vehicles, including specifically electric vehicles. Ford recognizes that electric vehicles take longer to charge than internal combustion cars take to gas up, so the new dashboard array is intended to prevent the driver from getting bored while the charging process is underway. Rather than checking your watch and fretting about how long the charging is taking, you can pass the time playing a game or surf for the latest YouTube videos.

The Nautilus is the next step in the long-term trend to add more and more technology into motor vehicles–which presents a challenge to Luddites like me, who tend to be tech-averse and use only a tiny fraction of the tech on their current cars. I just want the car to deliver me safely from point A to point B and don’t want to wade through a thick owner’s manual trying to figure out how to program different functions. But obviously, there is a broad range of people who really like this new technology and will happily take whatever time is needed to create a panoramic display loaded with apps suited to their individual tastes.

With the new, customizable panoramic screen and programming options, the Nautilus nudges cars farther away from their roots as a simple mode of individual transportation to rolling entertainment centers. And it makes you wonder: how many screens and display items and lights and gizmos can one car’s interior hold?

Into Deepfake Territory

Today is the New Hampshire Republican primary. The Granite State not only will hold the first primary in the country–on the Republican side, at least–but it also has recorded another, more troubling first: the first apparent Artificial Intelligence-generated “deepfake” hoax of the 2024 election cycle.

According to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office, a number of residents of the state received a robocall purporting to be from President Joe Biden telling them not to vote in the primary because “voting only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again.” There’s only one problem: Biden didn’t record such a robocall, nor was it actually sent by the person shown as the caller. The fake robocall apparently used AI to convincingly mimic the President’s voice, to the point of using some of his familiar phrasing. The New Hampshire AG is investigating what it sees as an illegal effort to suppress voting.

Who would have engineered the fake robocall? We might never know, but it is clear that AI makes it much easier to create phony photos, like the one above, phony voice recordings, and other fakery. Thanks to AI, the ability of foreign countries, political opponents, or self-proclaimed pranksters to implement “dirty tricks” or disseminate misleading information has increased exponentially. The Biden robocall is likely just the first effort in what may be a barrage of deepfakes and phoniness. 

My grandmother used to say “believe none of what you hear, and half of what you see.” In our modern AI world, you really aren’t able to absolutely believe what you learn from either of those senses. As we roll forward into an election year, voters will need to raise their skepticism threshold, restrain their natural credulity, and be on guard against being hoodwinked. We’re heading into deepfake territory

The NFL Without Angst

After the Browns took their spanking in Houston and were knocked out of the playoffs, I retreated from the NFL for the rest of that weekend–thinking, correctly, that it would just be too painful to be repeatedly reminded by the commentators and pregame shows that the Browns had fallen short. 

I didn’t know at the time how long my voluntary retreat from the NFL would last . . . but when this weekend rolled around, the lure of watching a few games proved to be irresistible. And as I watched the two games yesterday, I realized that checking out an NFL playoff game when you don’t have a dog in the fight is pretty entertaining. The games were close, the stakes were high, the hits were bone-jarring, the football took some funny bounces, and the speed, athleticism, and power of the players was awesome. High-level football is a sport that is made for American sensibilities, and when you don’t have a particular connection to any of the teams you can appreciate the game and the players in all their glory.

Congratulations to the winners, and condolences to the losers. After it became clear Kansas City was going to beat Buffalo, CBS showed a shot of an obviously anguished Bills fan moved to tears by the impending loss–and I knew exactly how he felt. Eventually the fans of all but one team will share that feeling. I’m past that point and can now just enjoy the spectacle as the remaining teams fight it out. 

Vehicular Insecurity

You go to a concert at a public facility, you park your car in the facility’s parking lot . . . and then when you come out after the concert, your car is gone. That’s the sad story told by one Oakland, California resident, whose car was stolen as she attended an Alicia Keys concert at the Oakland Coliseum. When she walked out with her daughter after the concert, her Kia Forte was gone. 

She’s not alone. Oakland has experienced a remarkable surge in auto thefts. Last year, Oakland set a new record, with police reporting 13,999 stolen cars between January 1 and December 10. That’s a 46 percent increase over the same period in 2022 for Oakland, which had never before experienced more than 10,000 auto thefts in a year. Those numbers mean that Oakland experiences, on average, about 40 car thefts a day. Oakland police say that more car thefts were reported last year than car break-ins–but they think that is simply because so many break-ins occur that residents don’t even report them anymore. It’s dispiriting to think that crime in a major American city has become so commonplace that residents have been conditioned to just accept it as part of life.

Police say the car thieves particularly like Kia and Hyundai vehicles. And the spike in auto theft has a multiplying effect, because the thieves often use stolen vehicles in committing other crimes, including burglaries and robberies. In Oakland, reported burglaries were up 25 percent and reported robberies were up 36 percent from 2022 to 2023. 

The woman whose car was stolen at the concert says Oakland is now like “a lawless city.” With statistics like these, it’s hard to disagree with that assessment, or to imagine what it would be like to live in Oakland. You have to think that people who care about their personal and the security of their property and can afford to leave are doing so–which just means that the poor people left behind will be victimized more often. It’s a depressing example of how the failure to address spiraling crime can cut the heart out of a city.  

NYC’s “Congestion Pricing” Proposal

New York City has come up an interesting approach to trying to ease congestion on Manhattan’s famously jammed streets: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (“MTA”) has proposed assessing a fee on people who drive into the city’s core business area. The congestion pricing proposal would charge commuter cars $15 a day for entering the Central Business District below 60th Street, place a surcharge on cabs and for-hire vehicles, and charge trucks from $24 to $36.

The MTA says the proposal will generate billions of dollars in revenue that will be used to modernize New York’s aging subway system. The MTA is accepting comments and will hold virtual and in-person hearings on the plan, which is considered the first “congestion pricing” plan to be proposed by an American city. The comment period will extend until March 11. 

Some people in the area aren’t waiting for the hearings and comment period to voice their opposition to the plan. Several lawsuits have been filed, including a recent lawsuit by Lower East Side residents who say the plan will have a devastating environmental impact on their neighborhoods. Other objections to the plan have been voiced by elected officials who represent constituents in NYC “transit deserts,” where there are no viable public transit options and commuting by car therefore cannot be avoided, while others question the MTA’s ability to carefully spend the billions of dollars it forecasts will be generated by the fees.

The MTA says a thorough environmental analysis has been done; opponents say it was a rubber stamp of the proposal. You also have to wonder just how the MTA can accurately forecast what the impact of the fees will be. Manhattan’s commercial real estate market has been devastated already by the COVID pandemic and the shift to work from home policies; making those who are commuting to work pay $75 a week for the privilege of driving on Manhattan’s clogged arteries isn’t going to help that trend. Moreover, if more businesses shift to remote work approaches because employees don’t want to pay the added commuting costs, how is that going to affect the viability of the restaurants, bars, and storefronts that are key elements of the NYC economy? 

That distinct possibility makes you wonder whether the MTA forecasts of billions of dollars in revenue are actually going to be realized, or are based on assumptions about commuting that will prove to be baseless in the face of changes that companies and their employees might implement in response to the tax. And even if significant revenue is generated, given the cost overruns we’ve seen in large-scale American public works projects, can New Yorkers really count on the MTA to spend the money wisely and complete subway update projects on time and on budget, without concerns about politicized sweetheart deals, inefficiencies, disruption, and delays?

We’ll see how this all plays out, but for now I know one thing: I’m glad I don’t live in a city where I’m taxed for simply going to work.

My Airport Survey

I was sitting at my gate at the Southwest Airlines terminal at John Glenn International Airport when a pleasant woman came up and asked if I would be willing to complete a survey about the airport. When I said “sure,” she handed me an electronic device with the survey questions—and I was off.

As I completed the survey questions—which always takes longer than they tell you, of course—I realized I like JGI. I’d love more direct flights, of course, but it is a very manageable airport—convenient, easy to navigate, and usually quick to get through. It’s not enormous and overwhelming like some airports, and it’s always clean and the people are friendly. Would I trade it for a larger airport with more direct flights? I’m not sure about that, but in any case JGI is what I’ve got, and it’s pretty good.

Sometimes it takes a survey to make you realize how much you like something.

On The Nine-Year Plan

This week a University of Miami football player, tight end Cam McCormick, was granted a ninth season of college football eligibility by the NCAA. By the end of the 2024 season, McCormick will stand alone as the longest-tenured player in college football history.

McCormick was a member of the University of Oregon 2016 recruiting class. To provide a sense of how long ago that was, a key Ohio State recruit that year was Nick Bosa–who’s been a big star in the NFL for years now. McCormick redshirted his first year and then played as a redshirt freshman. Thereafter, his playing time was affected by a series of injuries that caused him to miss a few entire seasons, and he was granted an extra year of eligibility due to COVID. Then, after seven years at Oregon, he transferred to the University of Miami, where he has been for two years. McCormick is now 25 years old and still harbors dreams of playing in the NFL.

When I was in college, we sometimes referred to classmates who weren’t exactly taking crippling course loads as being on the “five-year plan.” What would it be like to be on a “nine-year plan,” and spend almost a full decade in college? At least McCormick has used his time productively: he’s got a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Communication and a master’s in Advertising and Brand Responsibility from the University of Oregon, he’s completed a number of internships, and he’s currently enrolled in the University of Miami’s post-baccalaureate program.

It’s hard to imagine nine years in college, following a football dream, but you have to give McCormick props for dedication and determination. Whether he makes it to the NFL or not, he’s given his dream his best shot–and nine years on campus.

Excitable Email

We’re trying out a new email system at the office. It has an AI feature that suggests simple responses, and also proposes the next word or phrase as you begin to type. The idea is that you will be more efficient and productive if you are helped along in responding to the barrage of emails that hit the inbox every day.

It’s a good concept, and Lord knows that we can use help in responding to the daily email onslaught. But here’s the thing: the tone of the proposed email responses is often a bit too excited for my tastes. They suggest liberal use of exclamation points–far more than I would use in the normal course–going well beyond the standard “Thanks!” response to include messages like “Great!” or “Terrific, thanks!” I think some of the simple suggested responses may also include emojis, although I’ve tried to shut that out of my conscious mind.

Since AI responses are based on some kind of training, the excitable response proposals mean that someone has trained the AI on the notion that boundless enthusiasm and lots of exclamation points are good things when responding to emails. I’m not sure that is the right way to go. One of the tough things about email communications is how to bring an ongoing thread to a respectful, but definite, termination point. Indicating that you are thrilled by a humdrum response to a question you posed may just precipitate further responses by someone who thinks you are eager to learn exactly what they did to answer your request for information–and no rational person would want to prolong an email chain unnecessarily. Or, such a response may cause the other party on the thread to wonder whether you are being sarcastic, or have an appallingly low excitement threshold, or have guzzled 15 cups of coffee already.

One of the challenges involved in the use of content-generating AI in the business world will be striking just the right tone. When it comes to email responses, being a fountain of positive, exclamation point-filled energy may sound good in the abstract, but may not be the right course in practice.