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…And So Much For All That

Gummint, Lies and Untruths, Technology

I remember people welcoming the advent of driverless cars with exclamations of: “I can take a nap!” or “I can catch up on my work!” or “I can play online games!” or “I can go out and get plastered and not worry about breathalyzers!”, all while being driven to the office / home / airport etc.

Sadly, as with so many things, it’s all bullshit because of Nanny Government:

Drivers of self-steering cars such as Teslas will be ordered not to take their hands off the wheel for more than a minute.
The new regulations from the UK government will target drivers who let go of the steering wheel thanks to lane steering, cruise control or emergency braking features.
Motorists who break the new rules will face points on their licence, a potential £1,000 fine and even prison.
It comes after legislation requiring cars manufacturers to install a feature to alert drivers when they have not touched the wheel for 15 seconds.

So the attraction of driverless cars is… what, exactly? Forgive me while I snort with derision.

Ahhhh, let’s forget about all that driverless crap and gaze upon a car which absolutely mandates self-driving, a 1957 Maserati 3500 GT:

None of that no-drive nonsense here: the 3500 line features a six-cylinder 3.5-liter engine driven with a four- or five-speed manual transmission, and it was in production for eight years (a long time for Maserati, in those days), attesting to its popularity. And if that pic wasn’t enough to persuade you, here’s the convertible version:

Those of you wanting one can form a line behind me.

Trifecta

Beauty, Gratuitous Chick Pics

I am often asked why I prefer movie stars of yore to today’s offerings. Allow me to explain, using but a single picture taken sometime in the 1950s:

That’s Jane Russell on the right, Debra Paget (I think) on the left, and I don’t know who’s in the middle.

None of that is important. As long as you’re prepared to overlook the hot dogs, that is.

Suits

Guy Stuff

Every man should have at least one. (I’ve spoken on this topic before, but it bears repeating.)

I can already hear the moans: “I never need to wear one! Why should I own a suit?” and “I hate them?!They’re uncomfortable!” and “I won’t work for a company which insists on men wearing a suit!” and so on, ad nauseam.

Don’t care. There’s something about wearing a decent suit which not only makes a man look good, but feel good — provided, of course, that you feel comfortable wearing one in the first place. (And if you don’t feel comfortable wearing a suit, you should become so, by wearing a decent suit until you do.)

“I never go anywhere that requires me to wear a suit!” Then it’s time you upgraded your choice of places to visit.

Here’s the thing: men look good in a well-tailored, stylish suit. It almost doesn’t matter if your body shape is not like a movie star’s, because if the suit is designed properly, it will hide your shortcomings better than any other type of clothing. (And if you don’t care what you look like, or subscribe to the idiot notion that looks shouldn’t matter, then you need to grow the fuck up — because appearance matters, and always has.)

Here’s another thing: women like a man in a suit. You only have to see the female reaction to Mad Men‘s Don Draper and Roger Sterling for proof. Another manifestation is when a women says, “Man! You sure clean up good!”, because believe me, that’s a statement of admiration despite the ungrammatical choice of words. (What it means, by the way, is that she’s looking at you with new eyes — and likes what she sees.) For better or worse, people will always take you more seriously when you’re well-dressed, and a good suit will always leave a favorable impression.

I won’t even go into the topic of the importance of wearing a suit when applying for a job, because that’s self-evident.

As for color, it’s simple: dark and muted, grey or blue (charcoal or navy-blue, for the uninitiated). And it should be fashionable. Men are blessed with the fact that suits’ fashions don’t change from year to year, but they do change from decade to decade, which is at least as often as you should buy a new one.

And lastly, there’s a very good reason to have at least one suit handy: there will come a time when you absolutely have to have one. It might be a funeral, a restaurant with a dress code (and spare me the gripe that you’ll never go to a place that has a dress code — once again, grow the fuck up), or maybe there’ll just be a time when you have to impress somebody.

Here’s a little scenario for you all to chew on. Imagine that you achieve something of importance: you saved someone’s life, you donated a large sum of money to a charity, you won a sporting competition, whatever. Let’s say that a consequence of this achievement is that you’re invited to the state capitol so that the Governor can shake your hand.

Let’s be clear about this: you can’t go in jeans and a fucking t-shirt, because that shows immense disrespect to the person who wants to honor you. You’ll need to wear a decent suit.

A suit is like a gun: you hardly ever need one, but when you do, you’ll need it really badly. So have that suit handy, and every so often, wear it out to dinner or some social event. You’ll be amazed at the reaction. The old truism still applies when it comes to going out:  men wear suits; boys wear casual clothes. (In an old Cary Grant movie, a flashback made the 40-year-old Grant look like a teenager just by dressing him in casual clothes; when coming back to the present day, he wore suits — and matured instantly.)

Oh, and one last thing: colored shirts, no matter what the fashion magazines say, are for pimps and parvenu yuppies. The proper shirt color is white, with maybe a tiny pinstripe if you’re adventurous. (I have a number of identical “dress” shirts, all with a red pinstripe, because I once saw a good deal at Marshall Field and snagged a dozen. Good, discreetly-tailored shirts never go out of fashion.) And have half a dozen decent ties — not from WalMart or Target — at your disposal; once again, discreet “rep” ties with diagonal stripes never go out of fashion, ditto monocolored silk ones. And FFS: get a decent pair of black lace-up shoes to go with your suit, and keep them polished.

Take a look at the pics below: there’s barely a woman alive who wouldn’t respond positively to a man dressed like that — and if she doesn’t, she probably isn’t worth bothering with.

And the Governor would be equally impressed.

Incoherent

Grammar Nazism

Sometimes, I could just spit. Most recently, when reading Kruiser’s comment on Trump’s surge in support among Black men (not “males” — another pet peeve), young Stephen made the following statement:

“Yes, the numbers are small, but doubling up is better than doubling down.”

…which makes no fucking sense at all, does it? I know why he said it that way, and it’s a cute juxtaposition, but Kruiser just comes  off as illiterate when he utters such mumbo-jumbo.

For the benefit of good grammar:  “doubling” by definition is growth — i.e. “up” — so “doubling up” is redundant. Next: “doubling down” is a gambling term — i.e. not appropriate in this context. What Kruiser meant to say was that in terms of Trump’s popularity among Kanyes, going up is better than going down, and the correct expression of which is quite simple:

“Doubling is better than halving.”

Sometimes I wonder why I bother…

Big Picture

Lies and Untruths

I’m always amazed that people can sometimes get hoodwinked by statistics, but then I spent probably half my life working with the damn things, so I’m more or less immune to the problem. Here’s one which could affect me personally:

More than 120 Uber and Lyft drivers have reportedly sexually assaulted their passengers, according to a report by CNN.
After analyzing police reports, federal court records and county court databases across the US, the cable news channel found that over the last four years, at least 103 Uber drivers and 18 Lyft drivers have allegedly raped, forcibly touched or kidnapped passengers, among other crimes.

Whoever wrote this scare story needs to get a kick in the ass. Here’s the first part: the appearance up front of the total number — which is alarming, I’ll admit.

I’ll ignore the Lyft number for the moment, because I’m an Uber driver.

Granted, the hundred-odd incidences (rounding down to a manageable number) involving Uber drivers is too high — hell, one is too many — but we’re dealing with human beings here, and any human activity is prone to abuse.

At least the number of years was disclosed — four — which averages about 25 per annum. Still too many, but not as scary as the magic 100. But the killer statistic is really the one which CNN buries much later in the “report”, which is, 100 out of how many total Uber trips or events over four years did these attacks take place.

That number is, according to Uber, is 2.4 billion. In other words, the chances of anyone getting molested by an Uber driver are 1 in 24 million.

Even allowing (let’s say) that only unaccompanied women are going to get molested, and they account for about half of all Uber trips — which is roughly my experience — that’s still only 1 in 12 million.

Now factor in geography — i.e. places where the Uber driver population is skewed towards men most likely to commit these crimes — and the stats, just looking at the last names of people who are accused of such crimes, tend to support the hypothesis that these criminals fall into the Middle-Eastern and African  demographic, and many, especially in large urban metropolises, are fairly-recent immigrants — and the picture becomes especially clear.

What’s disturbing about all this is that Uber does screen potential drivers before enlisting them, which begs the question as to whether their screening process — or at least the proficiency of the company that Uber uses to do the screening — should not be more comprehensive or thorough. And you can be sure that Uber will do just that — because they too say that even one such incidence is too many.

Still, ladies: it looks like you’re safer taking an Uber trip* than walking (or even driving) to your destination, especially in a strange locale.

That’s the conclusion to be taken from the CNN report, even if that’s not necessarily the one that CNN wanted you to.

*You’re even safer, of course, if you have me as your Uber driver — unless of course I forgot to take my “special” pill that morning… [exit, drooling]