The hot debate about computerized cars

I watched the president of Google talk, and he was talking about computerized cars. These are cars with sensors and software that can drive instead of the driver. He basically said that the car software is really buggy right now, but gave the example of someone who's completely drunk, driving home. He said right now the buggy software is a better driver than a drunk.

Ray Kurzweil, the futurist, said Europe is going to adopt computerized cars before the US, because of the future overage of lawsuits in the US, preventing these cars from being on American soil even though safe computerized car technology will exist.

I think it's really interesting how people react violently to violent car death. People horrifically dying is super sad. The interesting thing is there's nowhere, really, to put the emotions, and there are tons of emotions.

It's kind of like people with memory loss getting totally obsessed about their lost memories.

When someone dies violently in a car, I've seen people ask the unanswerable question of, “Why?” They then try to come up with a reason, any reason. It's interesting how quickly and emotionally the answers get slapped together.

Everyone involved in this hurried diagnosis has the best of intentions.

Mothers don't want other mothers to go through the same thing they're going through. Or maybe they're exhibiting mama bear syndrome and trying to kill the thing that hurt their kid.

Kids at the school of their deceased compeer get temporarily derailed from leaning toward anarchy and  take up another, just cause.

The churches want their parishioners alive so they can do what parishioners do more.

And, I'm guessing well-meaning police officers, who want to send a cautionary warning, look through the autopsy reports and see an extremely low alcohol content in one of the victims and release to the press the verbiage of “alcohol contributed to a fatal crash.”

This quotation gives an answer to “why?” and gives people a direction to focus their tidal wave of energy. I'm just not sure it's the most effective thing we could be doing. I think most people who get totally hammered and drive are feeling at least a little suicidal.

It's only a matter of time before someone gets run over by a computerized car, and angry mothers change the direction of their fury from alcohol to software.

But here's the happy ending to the story. A guy staggers out of the bar, 20 years from now, completely wasted. He steals a couple of cement bricks and puts them on the driver's seat so his car will start. He presses the autopilot button, crawls into the back seat, and goes to sleep.

And the computerized car drives the drunk safely, and uneventfully, home.

Links:

• Utah County cars driving on up to 10% ethanol
• Google is creating computerized cars
• Ray Kurzweil's AI site
• Police say alcohol contributed to a fatal crash

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Beer and aspartame

I once knew a girl who drank her soda with half of it filled with Coke and half of it filled with Diet Coke. I revelled in her audacity, because that mix is the substance 99% of people will find something wrong with. She's my hero because of her concoction.

But this isn't really her story, besides the anti-aspartame folks probably dislike her mixture as much as the anti-sugar folks. This story is the story of aspartame. For those of you who don't know, aspartame is the same as NutraSweet, which is in Diet Coke.

I used to joke and say that aspartame made me bald. It was a joke because I'd never tried it before I went bald. I've always bald-facedly laughed in the faces of anti-aspartame folks. Actually, it's more that I've always thought that aspartame can't be as deadly as people say it is. I try to not laugh at people.

Then I read one of Alobar's posts where he says that aspartame is a poison. It all makes sense now, because now I know how to deal with aspartame.

If you ingest most poisons that aren't immediately lethal, the cure is to drink a lot of water. So, I've decided that from now on, I'll drink at least as much non-aspartame drinks as I drink aspartame drinks.  My days of drinking Diet Coke all day long are over, as are my days of slowly poisoning myself.

Which leads me to another problem that needs a solution. If all you drink is beer, then you'll get dehydrated and get a headache.  You need to drink about as much non-alcoholic beverage as you do beer to avoid dehydration.

Putting both of those together, I'm changing my drinking regimen to only beer and Diet Coke.  Drinking the beer will flush out the poison aspartame and drinking the Diet Coke will hydrate me from the alcohol.

It's nearly perfect.

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