The Windshield Wiper Enigma, Pt. 2

Friends,

Professional bloggers roll out topical series, with a new installment each day, week, or month to keep you coming back for more. Skilled amateur bloggers write related posts in sequence with maybe a little less frequency or regularity, but a continuity that keeps their readers entertained and intrigued. I wait a year and a half to write an unexpected, unannounced follow-up piece to an inarguably pointless post.

That's what you get at Tangent Space(s). Thanks for reading anyway.


Some background information
That I would even try to bring you up to speed on this is absurd

In the calendar year of 2011, I drove my friends' SUV while they were overseas. In the spring, I noted how laughably inadequate the three windshield wiper speeds were. I blogged about it, and if you don't clearly remember that ridiculous bit of writing, I recommend you read it now.

If you're like me and too lazy to click a link, I'll give a brief summary of my findings. The three wiper settings had periods of 6.9, 1.9, and 1.3 seconds. The problem was that the first setting was almost always too slow, the second often too fast, and the third ran the risk of breaking the sound barrier and thus shattering my windshield.

Last winter I bought a car. It's a 2009, and after my old '97 and even my friends' 2005, it has been like a breath of modern, windshield-wiping air. But was I right that it's in the interval between 2s and 7s that the most useful wiper settings are found?


The Grand Experiment
In which we discover if my passionate complaining has any grounding whatsoever in reality

I knew that, with this brand new 2009 world of wiping, I'd be writing this blog entry someday. I didn't want my previous post and its numbers to make me biased, so I took some time to familiarize myself with the usefulness of the settings before I timed the periods. [Pretty crafty science-y move there, am I right?!]

My new car has 6 wiper settings. Four are grouped together, then there are two more individual settings, as follows:

1-A
1-B
1-C
1-D
2
3

The settings increase in speed, so that 1-A is the slowest and 3 is the fastest. It's a very wide spectrum, as in I could listen to an audiobook of Don Quixote between the wipes of 1-A, and Setting 3 is being researched by the military for the development of high-speed rubber blade weaponry.

At any rate, I found that I almost always use Setting 1-D. For most rains, it is the best choice. I occasionally need to up it to Setting 2, and for light sprinkles I use the slower 1 settings. So, just how fast are these settings? Drumroll please (man, people will call out for a drumroll for anything...)

1-A:  9.4 seconds
1-B:  7.8
1-C:  5.9
1-D:  3.5
2:      1.6
3:      1.2

Aha! So, at least for my visual clarity preferences, somewhere around 3.5 seconds is the most useful, versatile windshield wiper period. No wonder I was so dissatisfied when my best options were 1.9 and 6.9 seconds! Come on, car companies.


What about you? Any updates in your windshield wiper experience in the last year and a half? Any thoughts? Comments? Ideas? Limericks?

Jon

Don't text while driving or while making an important relational decision

Friends,

Before I start in on this topic, I have about a million disclaimers to make.  A few of them include the facts that:

- I love facebook
- I love my iPhone and its sundry features
- I check my email all the time (in fact, too many times)
- There's no actual recent example of texting (etc.) that is motivating this blog post, so no need to be paranoid or suspicious (unless you broke up with me in 8th grade via a note; you know who you are)
- I'm not writing this from some moral high ground.  I'm writing it from a cocoon of blogging, texting, and emailing from which I rarely emerge

So don't read this as an attack on technology or social media.  I'm not one of those oldfangled people griping about how smartphones and the internet have robbed us of face-to-face interactions with each other.  I'll never advocate a long-term abandonment of facebook in order to free up more time for, um... honestly, I'm not even sure what else there is in life. 

And yet, and yet...


The evils of written text
I was torn between "sundry" and "divers" in that last section, but I was worried you might think I meant "more than one diver"

There are just some things [apologies, confrontations, break-ups, rejections, and the like] that need to be communicated in person.  Or, if not that, over Skype.  In the absence of physical presence or video chatting, some form of telephone.  But don't write it down.  Don't ever write it down.

The problem is, written communication, in which you don't have to look a person in the eye, is just so much easier.  And that, of course, is why we do it.  In the face of something potentially scary or nerve-racking or unpleasant, we'd much rather communicate the words without actually saying them.

The problem with that problem is, people have dignity that demands personal, actual communication. When you need to make one of these communications, I think it's a pretty simple cost-benefit analysis:

the other person's need to be dignified as a human vs. my desire to be comfortable and/or save face

And honestly, I think it pretty much comes down to how selfish we are in that moment.

In sixth grade, it was easier to ask out girls in a note instead of in person or on the phone.  So we sometimes did it that way.  It must have been much, much easier for those girls to break up with us in a note, too.  Because they often did it that way.  In high school, when we were too old for notes but before texting had been invented, we sent our friends to tell people we were mad at them, or else did it over AIM.  In college, we left a note that said, "Dishes!" on the sink.

The only thing we didn't do was make meaningful noises with our mouths to the actual people involved.

And now, in the information age, we have many more weapons in our talk-dodging arsenal.  We've graduated from wide-ruled notebook paper and post-its to texts, emails, and Facebook messages.  But the dilemma is the same, and so is the solution.

Look the person in the eye.


Please comment (ironically in written text form)
But there's no dilemma, unless you're planning on breaking up with me via a blog comment

Do you struggle with this communication dilemma?

Have you been hurt by a text that should have been a meeting? 

Am I making all of this up?

Jon

Scramble with Friends

Friends,

I'm sure competitiveness (and every other character trait) can probably be quantified on some sort of spectrum, but my experience tells me there are only two types of people -- really competitive and "so noncompetitive that I wish we could all stop competing and just sing kumbaya".

I've always been in the first camp, though I'm happy to say that, my extended family's opinion notwithstanding ("A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home"), with each passing year I invest less emotion in winning.  I think this process must have begun my senior year in high school, when, despite being one of the most competitive dudes on the planet, I inexplicably chose "You can't win 'em all" to accompany my photo in the yearbook.

[In case anyone's wondering, my low point in this area came in college when I shouted at a Catch Phrase teammate, "You're incompetent!".  Like I said, low point.]

Still, there remains in me a desire to be the best.  The problem is, as we all learn and accept to varying degrees, there's always someone out there who's better than you at whatever your skill is.  [Except in those rare, rare cases in which you are somehow literally the best person in the world at something (for a time, until the new best person emerges).]

My most recent strive for perfection came in the form of the popular iPhone app Scramble with Friends.

Scramble with Enemies
At best, frenemies

I played many, many games of Scramble before I lost one.  To celebrate my streak, I've compiled some of the funny comments my opponents have sent me during our matches:

Gary:

- I couldn’t beat these scores if I had two extra minutes per round.

- I cheated that time and you still beat me.

Amber:

- I heard you get like a thousand points per round.

- You get like a thousand points per round.

Ryan:

- So the legends about you are true.

Brad (the first of two people to beat me so far):

- Getting a Scramble challenge from Jon Mathieu is like Derek Jeter asking you to play baseball.  Cool to play with a legend, but bound to lose.

- U are not human

Jaime (Brad's wife and the other person who has beaten me):

- JON MATHIEU YOU ARE SO STINKING GOOD AT THIS GAME!!

- I beat every person I play except for you- You are so stinking good at this game!!

- You always pull off a win… I am so determined to beat you JUST ONCE!!

Congrats to Brad and Jaime for their perseverence and skills.  As for me, it was good to finally lose.  I now play with much less pressure and was reminded that I'm a finite, sinful creature whose very existence depends at all times on the continuous and ongoing power and work of Jesus.

Please comment.

I'm going to give you a bunch of questions.  You can just pick one if you want and take like 8 seconds to answer.

Are you super-competitive or not at all? Or am I missing some middle categories?

What has been your most recent or epic attempt at being the best?

Which iPhone app are you obsessed with?

What's your favorite word game?

Jon

The Windshield Wiper Enigma

Friends,

Happy Easter!  I hope you've had a great weekend with friends or family and have taken the opportunity to ponder the mystery of resurrection and the passionate love that would cause the God of the universe to sacrificially die in your place.

Unfortunately, along with these profound spiritual mysteries, I also pondered something else this weekend.  I came to absolutely no solid conclusion on the matter, and so I turn to you, O readers, for some answers.


The Enigma

Like almost every weekend, at some point in the past couple days I was driving.  Like almost every weekend in Pittsburgh, there was a great deal of rain falling from the sky.  And so, like most weekends, at some point this weekend I was using my windshield wipers. 

Thus, like over half my weekends, at some point in the last 36 hours, I frowned and thought, "Why are the speed settings for my windshield wipers so pathetically inadequate?!"  Seriously, almost every instance of rain I've come across (with a few torrential exceptions) has been too much for my slow setting but not enough for my fast one.

But, unlike any weekend I've ever had before, this time I decided to measure the time intervals of my windshield wiper settings to prove how terrible they are.  So now I present to you the three windshield wiper settings for "my" Honda CR-V:

Setting      Similar animal              Period of wiping       Useful for...
1              Snail                           6.89 seconds            Someone spitting on car
2              Cheetah                      1.89 seconds            Extremely hard rain
3              None; lightning bolt      1.29 seconds             Driving on ocean floor


Help me understand

I need serious help understanding this.  Why in the world is there such a huge gap between settings 1 and 2??  How could someone designing a car think that the appropriate wiper intervals are 7s, 2s, and 1.3s?  Am I the only one who sees how close 1.3 and 1.9 are?  And how far apart 2 and 7 are!?

Where are the settings that would have my wipers swooshing every 3, 4, or 5 seconds?!  These are clearly the settings I would always use, since setting 1 is too slow and setting 2 is too fast.  Setting 3 is like a joke that you only feel comfortable telling when you're driving through a hurricane.

If you have the answers to any of these questions, please enlighten me.

Also, let me know of any other automobile frustrations you have.

Jon

Cell phone pet peeves

Of all the technology we've grown used to, perhaps the one we take the most for granted is the cell phone.  It's with us everywhere, it's always on, and for personal calls, it has more or less replaced land line phones.  I sometimes find myself wondering, "What in the world would we do without cell phones??" 

But when I ask myself this (usually when my cell phone has bailed me out of a car that won't start or prevented me from driving 2 hours in the wrong direction), for some reason I forget that I only have to remember my adolescent years.  I'm pretty sure I got my first cell phone -- an awesome hand-me-down flip-phone from my mom -- my senior year of high school.  So for about 17 years, I lived in this almost unimagineable horror show scenario of life without a cell.

At any rate, by the grace of God this technology has abounded among all the peoples of the country.  We all have one.  We all use it every day.  But for some reason, there's no universal set of rules for this ubiquitous device.  Since we've already set out to make rules for facebook use, and since my friend Scot suggested this topic, let's declare (un)acceptable cell phone use.

Rules for your mobile (as they're often called "outside the States")

[Did you ever notice that if you want to sound like an awesomely pretentious world traveler, you just have to refer to the US as "the States"?  Try it.  It always works.]


1. We don't all have text conversation mode.  So don't "machine gun text" me.

Yes, iPhones, smartphones, and almost every phone other than mine have the wonderful ability to combine all your texts with one person into one long text conversation.  Mine doesn't.  So while your phone says:

Jon: Hey, you want to hang out this weekend?
Other person: No.
Sorry.
I've got stuff going on.
But maybe some other time.
No, wait.
Nevermind.
I remembered, I don't like you.

Mine says, "You have 7 new text messages."  And I have to read each one separately.  In the reverse order that they appear in my inbox.  Also, in a short timespan my phone has vibrated 14 times.  So yeah... just condense that into one or two texts.


2. When I'm with you in person, keep your texting to a minimum.

Nothing says "I don't want to be here hanging out with you" more than a continual string of texts that takes precedence over what's actually happening in real life.


3. Don't text and drive.

This is becoming a law in most states, I think, so it should obviously make the list.


4. Feel free to talk on your phone while you drive.

Unless your state has outlawed this.  It's good to obey laws, for your sake and for the coherence of society.  But if your local legislators allow it, Tangent Space(s) isn't going to stop you: I do some of my best phone-talking while I'm behind the wheel.


5. Have your phone in an accessible place so that it doesn't ring 20 times.

It always baffles me when someone's phone goes off at an inopportune time/place (movie theater, church service, etc.) and it just... keeps... ringing.  Are people keeping their phones in little secret pockets that are buttoned closed somewhere inside their coats or purses?


Help me standardize our nation's cell phone use

Obviously, what I'm actually asking you to do is have fun with me and share your cell phone pet peeves and opinions.

What controversial cell phone tactics would you outlaw or approve?


Jon

Twitter Wars: Rob Bell edition

Technology is funny.  Some examples:

• I sometimes forget my current car (I'm driving my friends' car while they're overseas) has seat warmers.  Occasionally, about 5 minutes into a drive, I'm suddenly very alarmed that my butt is on fire.
• When my mom's email inbox is empty, she will usually say, "Someone's blocking my emails again."
• I specifically chose a Samsung phone because I'd save money on all the chargers, since I have them from my previous Samsung phone.  Despite the fact that the charger input apertures look identical on both phones, they're different, rendering my old chargers useless and nullifying my entire phone choice.  Ok, this one's not funny.
• When you're fast-forwarding on a DVR and then hit play, it jumps back a little bit from the most recently viewed frame.  This allows for honing one's skills and being able to yell "Now!" when someone else has the remote.
• I took part in an evangelical twitter war the other day without even realizing it.

This last one will serve as the springboard, framework, and any other building/design jargon for today's tangent.

Rob Bell, John Piper, and a bunch of other people

Rob Bell has a new book coming out soon.  It is called Love Wins, and it asks us to examine what we believe about hell.  To generate momentum for the book's release, the publishers gave the public a summary of the book and a video of Rob Bell discussing its contents (both appear on the website linked above).

The summary and video both imply that Bell will suggest in his book that the traditional evangelical view of hell is all wrong and, as far as I can tell, that the only people who will be in hell will be those who eternally demand it even after death.  Obviously this is just speculation based on one paragraph and a 5 minute video.  But obviously a book that will be a best-seller and tells people to not worry because our loved ones will all be with us in heaven (again, I don't know if this book says that) would be very important.

Enter Justin Taylor.  He's a blogger for a group called The Gospel Coalition, and apparently his blog is pretty popular in certain Christian circles.  He writes a blog post warning people about Bell's upcoming book.  His post quotes the publishers' summary and shows Bell's video, and concludes that this book may be the point at which Rob Bell officially departs from "biblical Christianity" and takes on the label of "false teacher."

Enter John Piper.  If you're a Christian, you've probably heard a couple of his more famous quotations.  If you're a reformed Christian, you've probably listened to a bunch of his sermons.  He's the pastor of a church in Minneapolis.  Anyway, he tweets the words "Farewell Rob Bell," followed by a link to Taylor's blog.

Enter yours truly.  I log onto twitter and see that my friend Chris has retweeted Piper's tweet.  So I click on the link and read Taylor's blog post.  I find it incredibly thought-provoking.  It makes me wonder about hell, God's love, public criticism of seemingly dangerous teaching, false teachers, etc. 

(I honestly didn't find the blog entry judgmental at all; Taylor admitted he hadn't read the entire book and that he was merely speculating.)

So, because I had benefited so from the blog entry, I also retweet Piper's tweet.  Only later do I realize this was the equivalent of throwing a theology grenade.

Enter Matthew Turner, some dude who apparently writes a "Christian left" blog.  Later on twitter I see a retweet of something said by this guy.  For some reason this guy has tons of followers.  He says this: "For a moment I was afraid Rob Bell had died. But then I realized that it was just a few Calvinists hating him into a trending topic."

I'll try to piece this together a little for you, if you're not twitter-savvy.  When Matthew Turner logged onto twitter, he saw Rob Bell listed as one of twitter's "trending topics".  These are the topics being tweeted about the most currently.  He then saw a bunch of people on twitter (and he follows 38,000 peeps, so he probably saw a lot) retweeting the "Farewell Rob Bell" tweet.  Thus the remark about how he thought Bell had died.

But Turner then concluded it was "just a few Calvinists hating [Bell] into a trending topic."  Ok, I have so many problems with which.  First, mathematically that's just not sound.  If only "a few" people tweet something, it's not going to become a trending topic.  Second, he assumes for some reason that anyone who retweets John Piper is a Calvinist.  Third -- and obviously this is his most wretched mistake -- he takes the tweets to be expressions of hatred??

I'm searching my heart, and I find no hatred for Rob Bell.  I retweeted Piper's tweet because it linked to an article I had found to be profoundly thought-provoking.

Enter Mark Batterson.  This is another really famous pastor.  He has read Bell's entire book, and claims that Taylor's blog post is way off the mark in terms of Bell's perspective on hell.  But in the process of defending Bell, he decides to call John Piper's fans "a legion of minions."  Thanks Mr. Batterson.  I am indeed a minion and a proud member of a legion, and it's nice to finally be recognized as such.
***
As the dust cleared, I realized a couple things.  On a specific level, I should have just made my own tweet with a link to Taylor's blog.  Apparently I join a demonic horde by associating with John Piper.  But also, reflecting on Piper's tweet, the "farewell" thing was presumptuous and unfair.  As for more general lessons:


More general lessons

1. The issue of hell will, I think, become increasingly important because of how polarizing it is.  If there are two issues that will drive a wedge further between Christians and non-Christians in the years to come, one of them will be our doctrine of hell.
2. For some reason, Christians think that it's ok to be publicly mean in the name of "truth", "holding a pastor accountable", "defending a pastor against false accusations", etc.  Just because you enter a twitter war doesn't mean you should start throwing around words like "hatred," "minion," or "false teacher."  For the most part, this isn't ok.  Shouldn't our discourse, even over strong disagreements, be characterized by love?
3. We are way too quick to adamantly pretend we have all the answers.  We don't.  I'm not calling into question the authority of the Bible right now or anything, but even that wonderful, beautiful book is subject to flawed, sinful, and sometimes stupid people's interpretations and teaching.  And I don't mean other people.  You and I are flawed, sinful, and sometimes stupid.

As for the actual topic of hell, I think I'll give it its own entry.  But I might wait a month for Love Wins to come out so I can incorporate Bell's thoughts into the discussion.


Twitter and warfare

If you're on twitter and we don't follow each other, let me know.

Have you taken part in any online arguments?

Any thoughts about any of the above "Christian celebrities", the Rob Bell twitter war, or funny incidents with technology?

Love wins.
Jon

Facebook Pet Peeves

We can be honest here, right?  I hope so.  Because honestly, sometimes I feel like I live on facebook.  My life wasn't always like this, and I trust it won't always be.  But right now, as I work from home and some days have about 12 minutes of work to do, "home" and "facebook" can start to blur together.

I bring that up because A. as I just clarified, this is a place of honesty, and B. when you're home, you expect people to behave the way you want them to.  So the more that facebook feels like home to me, the lower my tolerance becomes for people who violate my internal set of facebook rules.

But I can't complain, because I've never explicitly told anyone what these rules are... until now.


Facebook Rules*^


1. You better use your last name. 

I've never really understood this.  For some reason, some girls (and only girls) feel compelled to be known on facebook only by their first and middle names.  I can only assume this has something to do with privacy, but with all the privacy settings available (including the ability to be invisible to any non-friend), I don't understand how there can be any real threat of stalking.

The reason this matters is because WHO ARE YOU??  When you come up on my newsfeed as Elizabeth Joy, Shannon Kristen, or Anna Lisa, I have no idea who you are.  The time it takes to visit your profile and use my detective skills to figure out who you are is time I could have been... um... I don't know, doing something better.


2. Can you change that wedding profile pic after, say, 6 months?

I'm sure your wedding day was the most wonderful day of your life.  And that's awesome.  But when you've been married for a year and you still have the same black and white picture of jumping down the aisle that you put up the day after the honeymoon...

Look, I know it's probably just the cynical, doesn't-like-weddings part of me talking.  But like I said, it's my home, so could you maybe change the picture after we've all lost our short-term memories of your big day?

Not to mention, haven't you done anything else fun this past year?


3. You can either invite a million people to an event or repeatedly send a message to all invitees, but not both.

Having a small get-together and need to send out 8 last-minute messages?  No problem.  But if you have, via your friends' friends' friends, invited 13,000 people to some charity barbeque, how dare you spam them all with message after message?  If I were willing to devote more time to this, I could probably make some equation that relates the number of invitees to the number of permissible mass messages.  But alas, even I have other things to do.

The real issue here is that the little red talk-bubble icon up in the corner is exciting.  When I log on and see that I have a new message, I'm happy.  But, seconds later, when I see it's some change in plans for the car wash I was never even considering attending, that happiness is instantly transformed to annoyance.

What's that?  You say it's all my fault for putting too much emotional stock in getting messages?  It's my home.  Get out.


*This is a list of rules for facebook, not simply a statement that "Facebook rules!!", though that is also true.
^These are rules for my guests, i.e. those people still on my newsfeed.  There are many, many more general facebook rules (e.g. no Farmville), but since violators of these rules are instantly and eternally banned from my home, i.e. removed from my newsfeed, such rules have been left for another discussion.



It's your home, too (or at least pretend it is)

What are your biggest facebook pet peeves??

Jon

P.S. If you didn't notice yet, check out the new pages at the top of the site under the Tangent Space(s) banner.  They're not only for you, they're about you!

Life in the Year 20X6

Sometimes it's fun to visualize the future.  Usually when we do this, I think, it's about our individual lives -- living in a certain city, doing a certain job, coaching a certain Little League team.  Or we might imagine the future fruitfulness of some cause we support -- a citywide spiritual revival, universal healthcare, peace in the Middle East, etc.

In the spirit of these fun daydreams about worlds that might be, let's wonder what technology might be like in the future.  I feel kind of stupid saying this, but I'm pretty sure the best place to look to catch glimpses of future technology is science fiction books and movies.  As nerdy as sci-fi might be, I bet it forecasted many of our major advances in technology -- flying machines, space exploration, the internet, etc.

What's next?  What will the next 10, 30, 50, 200 years see?  Here are some of my thoughts:


Coming soon(ish)

Really good talk-to-text software.  It seems like this should already be here.  As someone who never really got the whole "typing" thing, I've been waiting for this to arrive and be cheap for years.  I don't know how important this technology will be, but it would certainly be convenient for those of us who type awkwardly and like the sound of our own voice.  Looking further ahead, I think this will be integrated into everything, so that we will be able to speak our emails, text messages, facebook statuses, school papers... you get the idea.  Everything we now type.

I can't think of anything else right now for this category.  Help me.


Things that will happen, but I've resigned to not seeing them in my lifetime

Hoverboards.  My heart breaks when I watch Back to the Future Part 2 and have to live with the reality that hoverboards don't exist.  It's one of those inventions that just seems like it should work.  You can easily picture a board that cruises along quickly about 2-3 feet above the ground.  The tricky part, of course, would be for the board to take you along with it instead of just leaving you on your butt.  But with the technology in Segways that allows them to adjust to your shifts in weight without letting you fall, this seems like it could eventually happen.  I don't actually necessarily think this will come after my lifetime, but I've had to brace myself for that possibility.  Otherwise the crushed hopes of each new hoverless year might destroy me.

A bunch of technologies that respond to your thoughts.  I think the day will come when we understand the human brain a lot more than we do now.  It seems conceivable that we could find a way to "sync up" certain machines with our brain to allow for them to respond to thought commands.  The possibilities with this seem endless.


Sci-fi Fail (things that will never happen)

Time machines.  I love dreaming about time travel, and puzzling out the paradoxes that it would present.  In other words, I'm the biggest nerd you've ever met.  And yet, I'm pretty sure there are certain things we can dream up that will never happen.  The biggest evidence for time travel's not happening is perhaps the fact that we're not constantly (or ever) bombarded by curious time-travelers from the future (or from the past?).  But there are real scientists doing real research on the possibility of sending light back in time or something.

Teleportation devices.  I don't think there will ever be a guy named Scottie beaming people up.  The only "real" reason I can give for this is that I think teleportation (along with time travel) would require movement faster than the speed of light, and I'm accepting physicists' theories that this isn't possible for any kind of particle.

All right, what new inventions, gadgets, or showdowns with centuries-old foes are you waiting for?

Jon