Say Cheese!
Went for a 75 mile ride today
10 mile bike ride on roads and trails
Farmers’ Market visit
Is this how my hair is looking?
This airport confuses me no end
The first time I ever landed in Kansas City airport, it was late at night. Maybe 15 years back. I remember taking the rental car and moment I drove out of the airport, I noticed something confusing with the road markers. It said I was on a Missouri state road. But I landed in Kansas, I thought.
It took me some more driving to realize that Kansas City airport is actually in Missouri state. In fact the city itself is half in Missouri and half in Kansas.
Today was my second confusion. I was driving after my meeting in the morning to the airport – which has a code MCI. I suddenly see directions for another airport called KCI. At first, I thought it must be a small airport. But there were too many big signs for it to be a small airport.
I asked Siri which airlines service KCI airport and it rattled off quite a few names. Including Delta! And I was like – Did I miss a nearer airport and have been driving unnecessarily for 40 minutes?
After reaching the airport, a bit of internet search solved the mystery. Apparently KCI is the same as MCI. The official IATA code is MCI but it is referred to by folks nearby as KCI!!
Well, one less confusion in my mind.
Did you know this?
Out and about in the lake
Book Review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
This is a near 400 page book that is a must read, in my opinion, for every person. Young or old. One of the better books which takes a stab at trying to make sense of what is going on in the world. Not that the conclusions are going to be any less scary. But it frames all the changes in the world going on in a thoughtful framework.
Of the various systems – fascism, communism and liberalism, only the last had survived. First one died after Second World War. Second died with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But liberalism is also dying now. Ecological collapse and technological disruption (that brought globalization) has out sped liberalism. We know the system is not working but we do not know what the new system will be. Across the whole world, we are seeing this struggle against liberalism. While different people/country are taking different approaches all are agreed on good international relations and are equally against immigration.
The scariest prediction the author makes is that technology will concentrate wealth and power into the hands of fewer and fewer that will create massive new “useless” class. This will lead to social and political upheavals the likes of which we have never seen before.
We are looking at an era where technology changes will need people to continuously retool themselves. In theory, it sounds good. In practice, that is impossible. The emotional cost of realizing one does not have a job and skills are useless and needs to start re-learning… over and over again will give rise to mental issues that is going to throw the society into turmoils it has not seen.
The author gets into another controversial topic. It starts with the theory that democracy is a superior system because it gives everybody a choice to rationally decide what is best for them. And then goes to prove that the “rational” part is overblown. We are not rational at all and certainly most of us are not knowledgeable enough to know what is best for us. Richard Dawkins – the famous evolutionist – when asked about Brexit had asked the interviewer a head scratcher – “why are you asking me to vote? I am not an economist. I am not an expert on this. I want experts to tell me what is good for me.”. In the end, the author says, we vote the way we “feel” not what we “know” to be best for us.
One observation I am personally very aligned with the author is the fallacy in believing in what the media says. I get into regular debates with the TikTok generation on this. Media, as the author points out is not about truth. It is about getting your attention. Getting your eyeballs is what makes them money. The data they gather on you when you are paying attention to what they are saying is what is then sold to advertisers and others. You would do the same if owned a media channel (or were an influencer or had your podcast) – provided you wanted to make money off it.
The big question about AI and super accelerated technology is this… who gets to own “Big Data”? The author suggests both Big Tech and Government are extremely bad choices. Government slightly more so.
And this only concludes the first part of the five part book. If this has intrigued you, you will love the rest of the book too.
You don’t see that sight these days much
As we spun around at the end of the runway, you could see a few cars and vans parked in the fields just outside the airport fence. There were kids and adults standing there. Presumably, the adults had brought the kids on this Sunday morning to show them the spectacle of a flight landing or taking off.
Flying has become so inexpensive and accessible to the masses that the thrill and excitement has almost completely gone away for the passengers. Gone are the nattily dressed passengers, the gourmet food, the free champagne and most sadly for me, those incredibly unique bag tags! That has been replaced with flight anxiety for some, exasperation when the WiFi does not work and low level tussle over dominance of the armrest in the middle.
As an industry, airlines must be one of the least appreciated by its customers. The incredible engineering to keep an aluminum tube filled with two hundred passengers about 35,000 feet above ground, the mind blowing backup to backup safety features to get it up there, keep it there and bring it back in a fully controlled fashion, all this at a speed where your flight time can match your drive time from home to the airport to begin with, flying above storm systems at times… and after all this, the customer is irate that the coffee served was lukewarm!
I remember we had to land in Budapest once due to a medical emergency while flying over Europe. There too, like what I just saw, there were kids watching planes land and take off. Excepting there, it was an organized tour. Tour buses had ferried school kids to the viewing area outside the airport fence. I remember one of the adults (perhaps teacher) watching our previous plane take off with the same amount of awe as the kids. And the kids were so excited, they kept waving at us. Caught up in the moment, I had waved back too.
I was nearly 6 years old when my dad had taken my sister and I to Dum Dum airport to see the one flight that day taking off. I remember being shocked by the size of the plane. Watching those things in the sky from the ground, I had figured it could not be more than the size of a bus. And the impressive, roaring sound it made. Numerous days were spent thereafter holding makeshift paper planes and roaring down the street in an attempt to take off!
Today, it somehow lifted by spirits up to see how planes still hold the sense of awe, adventure and imagination for some kids. Hope in some shape and fashion, this will always be the case.
Now, why isn’t this plane Wifi working still? I have a post to upload 🙂 🙂