And then, as also sometimes happens, current events provided the frame for my story. So, let’s begin with The Grape:

When I was about five years old, my mom brought me and my sister on a routine trip to the local supermarket. As we entered the produce aisle we found to our delight that grapes were in season again. Immediately my mom plucked a grape from a bunch on the shelf and popped it in her mouth. She gave one to my sister, who did the same. She gave one to me and I stared at it, aghast. “I can’t eat this,” I told her. “We didn’t pay for it!” My mom patiently explained that it’s OK if people take one or two grapes as they walk by. “But that’s stealing!” I protested. “If everyone did that, there’d be none left!” Other shoppers turned to see the little boy making accusatory sounds at his mom. “We’re going to buy some anyway,” my mom said, still holding out a grape to me, “so it’s OK if you have one.” No, I insisted — we had to wait until they were paid for. Losing her patience, my mom uttered through gritted teeth the punchline of one of my family’s most-retold stories about me: “Eat. The. Grape.” I flatly refused, and she pointedly fed more grapes to my sister. We went home sore at each other, and for the rest of her life, I would express dismay at her occasional willingness to commit (very) petty larceny, such as taking home a hotel towel or an interesting salt shaker from a restaurant; and she would come back with, “Eat the grape,” which became her shorthand for my irksome excess of honesty.

A few decades later, on a visit to Tucson for a wedding, I decided to find an airplane rental club and spend a morning exploring the local airspace. I tried to persuade my friend Bruce, also visiting Tucson, to come along for the ride, since he’d expressed an interest in learning to fly and had tried it once or twice. In the conversation that ensued, he told me his interest had flagged: “I just want to fly. I got bored with all the rules and procedures you have to follow.” “Are you kidding?” I returned. “That’s the best part!”

The words sounded strange coming out of my mouth — what a bizarre thing to admit enjoying — but it was true, I enjoyed the arcane radio protocol, I enjoyed filling out navigation logs and filing flight plans, I enjoyed checklists and weight-and-balance computations…

In fact, I enjoyed flying (it occurred to me) for the same reasons that I enjoyed road rallies. In Pittsburgh in the late 80’s and early 90’s, my friend Steve and I participated in several amateur road rallies of the “time-speed-distance” variety, where the goal is not to run the course in the shortest possible time but to follow the route — mostly picturesque rural roads — as accurately as possible, armed with a sometimes deliberately misleading set of “route instructions” devised by a more or less devious rallymaster, and a complex set of regulations for how to understand them. (To this day, one of the top Google hits for “road rally” is a document that I helped to write long ago.) The pretty scenery, for me, was secondary to the intellectual exercise of driving in a rally — just as I considered the rules and procedures to be “the best part” about flying. (True to his nature, the one time Bruce tried a road rally, he grew impatient with the route instructions, tossed them into the backseat, and struck off at random into the rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania — with the enthusiastic support of his equally bored rally partner, Andrea. “And today that woman is my wife.”)

Rules — I love ’em. I love the way simple ones gives rise to complex behavior, whether it’s a game of Go or the orderly society that emerges from (for instance) people paying for their produce before eating it. It’s no wonder I was drawn to a life of writing computer software, where rules per se achieve their purest realization. A computer program is nothing but rules, after all, and with some care and some artistry it can be made elegant and simple and still create a very rich set of behaviors.

Obviously not everyone is as enamored of rules as I am. So what’s the attraction? It must have something to do with a need to impose order on a bewildering and uncertain world — bewilderment and uncertainty that comes from the irrational behavior of other people. This is a common bit of pop psychology. Being unable to fathom irrational behavior, and withdrawing from even trying, explains, for example, the popularity of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock (who, interestingly, is a hero especially among computer programmers).

My son Jonah seems to be like this. He is always keenly aware of the rules in any situation, and alert to anyone not following them, or to any other source of unfairness, and quick to call it out. Most of his friends are not so preoccupied about fairness, but he does have one or two who are paralyzed by fits of red-faced outrage whenever anything doesn’t go according to the rules.

Having witnessed a couple of those fits, and thinking back over my own life, I’ve lately come to think that those who love rules are at a disadvantage to those who can abide their neglect, who can tolerate ambiguity better. Mr. Spock was only the first officer aboard the Enterprise, after all; it took the greater resiliency of James T. Kirk to be the captain. And while one of Jonah’s friends is pitching a fit, the others are still running around and having a great time, completely unfazed.

This is what brings us around to current events. This week the U.S. Senate will debate the so-called FISA bill that, among other things, gives retroactive legal immunity to the Bush administration and to various large corporations for illegal warrantless wiretapping activities dating back to before 9/11, and prohibits any details of those illegal activities from ever coming to light. You could have been the subject of illegal surveillance, and if this bill passes, as it is expected to do, you would have no legal recourse for finding out about it, ever. Does this sound fair? Of course not, and those who love playing by the rules have been up in arms about it — red in the face and all but paralyzed, like Jonah’s friend Ethan. As DailyKos’ Hunter writes:

So, why have activists spent so much effort opposing retroactive corporate immunity as part of new FISA legislation, when there are so many other things in the world to be outraged about? [...] It demonstrates a complete lack of regard for the law

and

We were never told why it was so all-fired important [...] the only rationale available seems to be the most cynical one — it is merely doing the bidding of companies that provide substantive campaign contributions.

So we citizens can believe all we like that everyone’s equal before the law, but in fact if you’ve got pockets deep enough, you can buy whatever kind of law best suits you. Very likely this has always been the reality in America (as it has throughout human history), but all past attempts to tilt the playing field in favor of the powerful and the well-connected at least pretended to be for the common good. This bill does not, and that’s what’s so jaw-droppingly wrong with it: it says that the vaunted “rule of law,” the very bedrock of the Enlightenment and the principle that has always guided America no matter how far she’s strayed from it, is now officially just a fairy tale, and only fools will henceforth strive toward that ideal. If you’re wealthy, go ahead and break whatever laws you like; your pals in Congress will patch things up later.

How many generations will it take for America to recover from abandoning even the pretense of fairness? How much civil unrest? How much political violence?

This is another reason people like me love rules — we can see what life would be without them. But if the rule of law is just a fantasy and always has been, then laying it bare like this might be just the thing we need. Give everyone else a chance to see what life is like without rules. In the end, I predict, though the cost may be high, everyone will love them like I do.

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I was at first surprised to see that hits for “James Bond villains” outnumbers hits for “vampire lesbian girl scouts” (etc.) and “sex” (etc.) combined, but then realized: the percentages are a function both of the popularity of that search and of the ranking of my site in the search results. In other words, if you’re looking for anything about vampires or lesbians or sex I regret to say there are a lot of likelier websites for you to visit before mine.

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At my previous layover in Detroit (yes, this one is a three-legged trip), there are CNN news monitors all over the terminal. The recorded security announcements about keeping your belongings with you begin with a woman’s voice stating, almost apologetically, “Due to heightened security restrictions…” And in the bookstore under “Fiction” there was a whole shelf filled with Kurt Vonnegut novels. Having finished and enjoyed Jailbird recently, I was eager to start on his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five. The bookstore had many Vonnegut titles but not that one.

Here in the Twin Cities, it’s not CNN that appears throughout the airport but Fox News, which operates the magazine and candy concessions. The security announcements begin with a booming man’s voice declaring importantly, “The Security Level as established by the Department of Homeland Security is Orange.” And the bookstore contains no trace of Kurt Vonnegut, a favorite nemesis of conservatives.

I’m just sayin’.

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And once again, my connection appears to have required about the longest walk between gates that it’s possible to have at this sprawling facility. I’m not complaining — it was a nice walk, and I can certainly use the exercise. But how is it possible that that happens every time I fly?

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In 1995, when my primary flight training was complete, it was time for my checkride to see whether I’d become a licensed pilot or not. For the checkride I had to fly from my home airport, Petaluma, to the FAA examiner’s airport, Santa Rosa (er, the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport — yes, that Charles Schulz). That flight was uneventful. When I arrived I shut down and secured the plane as usual, then went in to talk to the examiner for a while before we began the “practical” (flying) portion of the examination.

Unlike Petaluma, Santa Rosa has a control tower, which means you must radio for permission to taxi. So after preflighting the plane, climbing aboard, strapping in, putting on my headset, starting the engine, and performing the pre-taxi checklist, I radioed the tower. “Santa Rosa ground, Cessna 24498 on the main ramp, taxi to the active with Foxtrot.” The tower did not respond, which is not too unusual as control towers sometimes get busy and taxi clearances get low priority. So after a few seconds I radioed again. “Santa Rosa ground, Cessna 24498 on the main ramp, taxi to the active with Foxtrot.” Still nothing. I double-checked the frequency to which the radio was tuned, waited a few seconds and tried again. Then again. Finally after several long minutes, with the instructor waiting patiently beside me (and was that a bemused smile on his face the whole time?), I noticed that I’d forgotten to plug the headsets into the radio stack! The instructor and I were able to talk to each other but not to the tower.

Flustered, I explained to the instructor that this was my first time using a two-person intercom with the radio stack. (In small planes, very often the intercom is a separate little box that the pilot owns. Two headsets plug into it, then the box — which usually ends up wedged between the front seats or knocking around loose on the floor of the cabin — plugs into the radio. Before the checkride, I flew solo with no need for an intercom — my headset plugged right into the radio — and before flying solo, my instructor would always set up his intercom for us to use.) The examiner put me at ease, saying, “Anyone could have forgotten to plug in the intercom. It’s not on the checklist. A poor student would have given up and started taxiing without clearance. You did what you were supposed to do, even if it took a little longer.”

About an hour later I was a licensed pilot.

Moral of the story: if it takes a little longer to do things right because you haven’t thought of everything, it’s still better than the alternative.

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The VSI does not need a power source. It doesn’t need to be wound or filled or set. There are no tubes, wires, gears, levers, or lines of any kind leading to or from it. It just sits there, bolted into the instrument panel, requiring nothing but some clear space around it for air to flow freely. How can it possibly work?

The altimeter, another standard instrument, is much easier to understand. It registers the airplane’s height above sea level by measuring the ambient air pressure. (Interesting fact: the ambient air pressure runs to the altimeter through a tube originating at a tiny hole in the skin of the plane called the “static port.” An airplane in flight affects the pressure of the air all around it; the static port is strategically placed where the effect on the surrounding air pressure is neutral.) Air pressure decreases at a pretty constant rate the higher you go, so if you know the pressure at sea level (a setting that changes from place to place and from hour to hour — pilots periodically get the setting from a radio broadcast and adjust a knob on the altimeter), and you know the air pressure, then you know your altitude. The altimeter is nothing but a funny-looking barometer calibrated in feet above sea level.

Even the airspeed indicator, which is a bit cleverer, is easy to understand. It uses two sources of air pressure: the “static” air pressure (from the aforementioned static port), and the “ram” air pressure, which is the pressure of the oncoming air as measured by a tube (the “pitot” tube, rhymes with Frito) pointing forward. Via some simple plumbing, the static pressure is subtracted from the ram pressure and the result is shown on the airspeed dial, calibrated in knots or in miles per hour.

The design of the VSI is a whole ’nother level of cleverness. For a long time I tried to puzzle it out myself before I finally relented and looked up the answer. Can you figure it out?

Inside the VSI there are two empty chambers. The chambers are separated from each other by a thin, flexible membrane. Separately, both chambers also have holes through which air can flow in and out.

One chamber’s hole is big. When the airplane climbs and the surrounding air gets thinner, some of the air in that chamber exits through the big hole very quickly to equalize the pressure.

The other chamber’s hole is tiny. When the airplane climbs, some of the air in that chamber exits through the tiny hole very slowly. Thus, for a brief time (until the second chamber equalizes), the pressure in the two chambers is different, forcing the membrane to flex, bulging into the first chamber. The faster the plane climbs, the greater is the difference in pressure between the two chambers, and the more the membrane flexes.

When the airplane descends, the first chamber fills with additional air faster than the second chamber and the membrane flexes the other way.

The needle of the VSI is connected to the flexible membrane, directly registering the rate of climb or descent. Eventually, when the plane returns to level flight and the air pressure stops changing, the membrane returns to its normal shape and the needle points to 0.

Brilliant.

If it had been up to me to design a VSI it would be electrical. It would involve a timer circuit or some sort of clockwork mechanism so that altitude readings could be taken at regular intervals. The difference between successive readings would be displayed on the dial. It would be vulnerable to electrical failure and mechanical breakdown.

I am in awe of the simple design of the real VSI.

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My life has always been noisy. I grew up in an apartment in Queens right under an approach route for LaGuardia Airport. Most days of the week I spend two or more hours commuting in a poorly soundproofed economy car. And of course I am almost continuously sitting at high-powered computers and the constant drone of their cooling fans.

One day I decided to try to find a quiet spot. A really quiet spot, where I could hear no trucks rumbling by, no gas station air compressors, no high school football team; no crashing surf or gurgling brook; preferably not even any wind, or the rush of my own blood in my ears (as when they’re underwater or stuffed with earplugs). I didn’t want to not hear anything; I wanted to hear nothing. I wanted to listen to silence. Obviously no place in or near the Bay Area would suffice, so I located Pine Mountain Lake airport on the San Francisco sectional chart. Of all the places within easy flying distance, Pine Mountain Lake appeared to be the most remote and the most likely to be quiet (once I shut down the Cessna’s engine). My friend Steve came along for the trip. We crammed our bikes into the back of the plane just in case we had to put a little distance between us and the airport in order to find silence. But even on the mountainous roads of Pine Mountain Lake, the whoosh of cars and clatter of trucks are inescapable.

If I were more intrepid and more persistent in this quest I’m sure I would eventually have found something to satisfy me — in the desert, perhaps, or out on a calm sea. But this goal languishes way, way down my priority list. I was glad to see recently that others are more dedicated to the cause, and have been more successful, to wit: One Square Inch of Silence.

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The Story of the Two Things

A few years ago, I was chatting with a stranger in a bar. When I told him I was an economist, he said, “Ah. So — what are the Two Things about economics?”

“Huh?” I cleverly replied.

“You know, the Two Things. For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay, here are the Two Things about economics. One: Incentives matter. Two: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Ever since that evening, I’ve been playing the Two Things game. Whenever I meet someone who belongs to a different profession (i.e., a profession I haven’t played this game with), or who knows something about a subject I’m unfamiliar with, I pose the Two Things question.

The site also helpfully lists the Two Things about “The Two Things”:

1. People love to play the Two Things game, but they rarely agree about what the Two Things are.
2. That goes double for anyone who works with computers.

I replied with these sets of Two Things:

Software engineering (and engineering in general)

1. Fast, cheap, good: choose two.
2. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

Flying

1. It’s better to be down here wishing you were up there than up there wishing you were down here.
2. There are two kinds of pilots: those who have landed gear up, and those who will. [applies to other dumb mistakes too]

Parenthood

1. Everything is just a phase.
2. The sooner you accept that your most beloved possessions will be destroyed, the happier you’ll be.

Dog ownership

1. If you don’t have the time for a proper walk now, you’d better have the time to clean up a smelly mess later.
2. You can’t fool your dog.

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