Why would you stand there, anyway?  Pray for the service to resume like the Indians danced for rain?  Or talk to other equally clueless passerbys to get some insights?  The New York-trained commuters are so used to seeing service disruptions that we’d turn around and start heading toward the next optimal means of transportation before we even think of complaining.  That’s what I did.  Oh, except that I was so new to San Francisco that I had no clue what other means of transportation there were.  I walked along the one and only line of BART in the direction of home.

I realized that something was up.  First there was a single file of about 20 armored and armed cops marching on Market Street.  Then there were some police motorcycles, and a whole bus that said “police service”.  Then I came across three guys wearing the kind of creepy clown masks that you typically see bank robbers with machine guns wear in the movies.  They had a protest sign, but I was too far to read it.

So I Googled the news.  Apparently there was a big protest going on that forced BART to shut down all of its stations in downtown San Francisco.  And I was walking toward the center of it.  Hmm.  Alright.  I stopped, and considered going all the way back to the office.  Then the station near me miraculously opened one entrance, so I got in, jumped on a train, and got home.  Nobody was on the platforms of the next few stations so I assumed they remained closed.  The one by my office also remained closed for at least 30 more minutes, because BART kept announcing it.  Guess I was lucky.

And what was the protest about?  Let me attempt to summarize:
(1) cop shot a homeless man with criminal records who was attacking people with a knife
(2) people protested (1) in BART stations, organizing disruptive and dangerous stunts via cell phone
(3) BART cut off cell phone service in its stations temporarily to deter (2)
(4) An organized effort led by Anonymous now protested (3)

WHAT THE FUCK?  Is my IQ not low enough to understand the logic here?  Thousands of hard-working commuters could not go home to their loved ones at the end of the day, because some teenage girl wasn’t able to txt her bff on the BART?  Complaining is one thing but making a front page-worthy protest out of this?  When was the last time a New Yorker protested not having cell phone service on the Subway?

San Francisco is surely holding strong onto its hippie reputation.  And my once-in-a-blue-moon chance to go home early was ruined.

Hong wasn’t so lucky.  Like the snow plowers, police, and emergency workers, hospitals were expected to stay open even if radioactive meteors were falling from the sky.  We went out late Sunday night to plow out our cars, in the middle of the blizzard, so she could have an easier time getting to work in the morning.  Fine crystals of snow never stopped falling into the parking lot, for the whole hour when we let winds up to 65 mph slice our faces open, but it was still fun to hop across knee-high piles and to see the artistic sand dunes on each car.

The greatest thing about not owning our place of residence was that some other poor men had to stay up all night to clean up the driveway.  All we had to do was digging our own cars out, which “only” took an hour at night and 30 more minutes in the morning.  Good thing we did the bulk of the work before anything melted or re-solidified, so our cars looked almost as clean as garaged, and our parking spots were the cleanest in the community.  Then it pissed us off that a black Chrysler SUV, who drove away in the morning leaving a foot of snow in its spot, decided to take one of ours in the afternoon.  So before Hong could get home from work, I had to shovel out another spot and secure it for her.  Inconsiderate bastard!

Balcony

Attempt to reach the gym

Bikes

I was barely able to open the gym door wide enough to squeeze myself in

Pool closed.  Okay.

After so many days of gaming, I didn’t mind returning to work on Tuesday.  I overestimated the cleanup progress, however, and was surprised by the amount of snow left on the busiest state highways.  This was my car’s first snow, and my personal first time having to commute by car in a post-storm mess.  The mentality and obstacles were quite different from the New York lifestyle – I was glad not having to jump over black slushy puddles any more, but the new challenges could be more life threatening.

The left lane on the Turnpike was like a Russian Roulette – the majority of it was clear, but a few scattered stretches were definitely not safe to drive on.  Picture this: I was traveling at 65 mph on the healthy looking asphalt pavement.  All the sudden there was a sheet of white stuff under my tires, and before I could react, the thin sheet became half inch of bumpy snow.  To make matters worse, a big van insisted on traveling alongside me so I couldn’t switch out of the left lane.  For the sake of physics education, I wondered what would happen if I stepped on the brakes.  But I wanted to live to write this down, and just let Vehicle Stability Assist do its wonders while watching its signal blink violently.  Thank goodness for these electronics.

When I made it to Newark alive, my dream to keep the car somewhat clean was completely broken.  Raymond Blvd, one of the most important roads in New Jersey’s biggest city, was in a worse condition than our apartment parking lot.  The small areas that resembled shoveled road surface were covered in black slushy mud, and the densely packed layer of snow at the sharp turn is almost guaranteed to become ice by tomorrow.

That was a hell of a u-turn

This was meant to be a three-lane road (note: 2-3 blocks long of trucks and cars were idle blinking lights on the right side, not sure why)

This was meant to be a three-lane road plus sidewalks

Do not kill the pedestrians buddy

This parking lot attendant hollered business while shoveling out an entrance for his customers.  Then he helped pushing the customer car into the lot.  What awesome service!

This was a lot of accumulation for a covered parking garage

The fact is, even if 100% of Porsche cars are defective, they won’t recall as many as Toyota did this year.  So the question intrigued me: which manufacturer makes the most reliable cars, measured by the least proportion recalled?  I did some homework, combining a comprehensive recall history database from the Department of Transportation, and a car market share report from Motor Intelligence (which is the basis of this WSJ report).  The results for 2001-2010 recalls are:

It works like this: Toyota has a 15.9% market share (combining cars and light trucks), and among all cars recalled in the past 10 years for defective critical safety components, Toyota only makes up 6.0%.  Therefore, they get a score of 6.0/15.9=0.38.  That is, if you drive a Toyota, the chances of it being bad is barely more than 1/3 of the chances for the average car on the road.  On the other hand, Chrysler has 9.4% market share but 20.0% of all critical recalls, so they get a score of 2.13 meaning it’s twice as likely to be bad as the average car.

The chart above shows two bars for each major manufacturer, with the solid bar indicating recalls of critical safety components (engine, brakes, power train, tires) and the striped bar indicating all components (from traction control systems and seat belts to seats and hitches).  Nissan/Infiniti, for example, have less than average total recalls but more than average critical recalls.  Volkswagon/Audi is the opposite.

Volvo, for some reason, is 4.5 times as likely to be recalled as everybody else.  But they deserve the benefit of doubt since given the tiny market share, their data is more prong to high volatility.  It’s important to keep in mind the credibility of each data point and assess the conclusion carefully.  The market share is graphed in blue, with GM at 19.4% and Toyota at 15.9%.  A more detailed table is at the bottom of this post.

Conclusions?  Although scare-driven bad publicity about Toyota is all over the news these days, hard data indicate that they are still one of the most reliable manufacturers out there.  Kia is better, and the big three from Detroit are still sucky.

Introducing: the correlation between McDonald’s historical growth and improvement in life expectancy.  Credible data sources suggest that before Americans had McDonald’s, they didn’t make it very far.

Keep this chart in mind the next time you buy your kids a Happy Meal.  Thank it.

Newark, the shitty town where I work, gets flooded easily.  You’d expect that of a port city, I suppose, but based on people’s gossip, it seems like the entire state is under water.  Coworkers stayed home for the day, switched to train, or specifically picked SUVs for the commute – made me feel rather naive and clueless about the hazards.

From the Turnpike to my office, I drove through a swamp and two rivers this morning.  There were only one each yesterday, and the hazard seemed cumulative as the storm went on all week.

The swamp was on the ramp off the Turnpike, under the overhead pass.  On a sunny day, it’s an unpleasant stretch to drive on because of the unevenly cracked pavement and the sewerage smell.  When there’s even a few drops of rain, this very section of the ramp accumulates water, and it’s always dark opaque like when your toilet needs Drano.

The Jungle Cruise at Disney World doesn’t get any more exciting than this.  So glad I don’t drive a Lamborghini.

A quarter mile down, there was a river orthogonal to the 4-lane, 1-way road.  Given the curvature on the pavement, everyone squeezed to drive down the middle where the water was only 1-2 inches shallow.  I felt good about the water splashes because it’d partially wash away the sewerage water on my car.  At least this river was somewhat clear.  A slight hydro-plant was part of the package.

The resistence driving in water felt quite funny.

A block down, an SUV was stalled in the middle of the road.  Reason unknown.  Beyond that, traffic merged again to cross a newly emerged and highly substantial river.

“Yay, another underbody car wash”

Audi soaking stalled in this river.  Uh… should I be concerned?  (I was)

BLINDED!

Some jerk decided that it’s okay to ram through the deep part of water in his big ass vehicle, with a lead foot on the gas.  The splash I saw in my peripheral vision was shocking like an action scene from Jaws.

I wonder how heavy a car has to be to safely splash up this much water without losing control.  Media reported a Grand Cherokee hydroplanted killing four people yesterday in North Carolina, so I doubt this jerk was beating traffic with much traction.

Coworker told me that the water level had somewhat reduced by the time I arrived.  It was supposedly so high that a Toyota Sequoia was stalled on the same road.

They say it’ll keep raining for another week

The District of Columbia needs to learn the spirit from the Big Apple: this city never sleeps, not even at 1AM in a freaking storm.  Armies of workers managed the streets with plows, blowers, and shovels of all sizes.  The fact that snow might’ve accumulated faster than they could clean did not discourage them… or maybe they just didn’t have a choice, like me working till 12:30AM with a pair of bad hands.

Cabbies also didn’t sleep, although they sure changed the rules a bit.  The first few that were neither occupied nor off duty asked for my destination before letting me open the door – and simply drove away once hearing Queens.  I didn’t blame them - if snow could accumulate up to 0.5″ around Times Square, it must be devastatingly trecherous outside Manhattan.  Licensed drivers wouldn’t want to risk their own lives… but those unlicensed town cars were a different story.  One of them willingly let me on to his car and offered to take me home – for an outrageous $100 in cash.  He explained that the ride would take at least 90-100 minutes due to the road condition.  At that point, I opened the door and got out.  A second unlicensed town car offered the same ride for $60.  What a bargain!  I didn’t take it.

Hungry for some Halal meat?  Look it’s open!

Back to Queens.  Thought this looked like sand dunes in a desert:

“Winter Wonderland”?

Still snowing 12 hours later:

Ice breaker:

Another army of snow busters.  I don’t know if these are, but a good majority of NYC’s labor workers are illegal immigrants.  We as a country are highly critical of the illegals… but without them, we’d be stuck!

Teacher asked class to draw something that “reminds them of Christmas”.  Second grade kid drew dead Jesus on the cross (and told teacher it was himself).  Teacher, concerned about the kid’s underlying violent tendencies, sent him for psychiatric evaluation.  Community got furious, labeling it as an antichrist execution of the separation of church and state.  Black dad pulls the racial card.  Everyone is blaming the teacher.

This story is controversial in many aspects, not even mentioning how some of the accused details were made up by the parents.  Judging from the Internet comments, people focus way more on the religious aspect than anything else, complaining about the lack of freedom to express religious beliefs in this country.  Well, if the teacher was seriously having issues with Christianity, how would she give a Christmas-themed assignment in the first place?

What I see is this: teacher suspects of a problem and takes an action, the suspected goes berserk, and the act of suspicion becomes labelled as the biggest crime known to men.  Now, let’s not forget what people say when a crazy kid actually gets violent in school – “oh he showed ‘obvious’ psycho signs but the ignorant teacher did nothing about it…”

It’s tough running a school nowadays.

Although the majority of our society isn’t about making sense, people should realize that our tax dollars are already used in tens of thousands of ways that we may not approve.  Don’t like to kill?  Too bad, we’re already paying for missle launchers abroad and don’t have any say in it.  Abortion in perspective is really not a big deal.  America won’t be a very honest land of the free if our people keep sticking their noses in their neighbors’ pregnancies.

The mammogram issue is funny in a whole different way.  All the testimonials go something like, “I had it, I think it worked, so it must work for everybody and I’m pissed off that doc might no longer recommend it.”

Bruce Schobel, arguably one of the most well-known and respected senior actuaries in the circle, had recently been removed as the president-elect from the American Academy of Actuaries, as a result of a felony he commited 30 years ago.

Bruce was a past president of the Society of Actuaries, and had highly engaged himself in public policy, professional promotion, and education reform for this profession.  At the same time, he’s constantly on online forums to provide information to actuaries and to help students study for exams.  To the junior exam takers and those without powerful top connections, he was somebody who really cared.  As the president of the SOA, he had signed and delivered over 1,000 FSA certificates, including mine: 

Now, it’s a shocker to hear about his ugly history, and it’s reasonable for a profession to expect high integrity in its members and leaders… but for a mistake taken place 30 years ago, are we really gonna lose one of the best individuals out there?  How much should a wrongdoing haunt down its doer long after the laws might have expunged it?

All I know is that somebody with a criminal record can still become the president or congressman of the United States.

And that’s not all… according to my forestry professors:

1. Farming chemicals (pesticides, etc) are very easy to wash off
2. You probably should wash your food anyway
3. Some plants without external pesticide protection can develop similar chemicals internally to fend off attackers (bugs, people); you can’t wash that off