Studio711.com – Ben Martens

I’ve been a Comcast customer for the last 13 years, and honestly I complain, but for the past few years, the internet and TV connections have been almost rock solid. That’s good. The price increases on the other hand, are not.

In December of 2013, we dropped to a lower TV package and we saved $40/month with no contract*. In the 20 months since then, our price went up 15% for exactly the same service. Give me a break.

I complained about it on Twitter and got a reply from the @ComcastCares service account. I’ve talked to them before without much luck, but this time it was great. They dropped our bill to ~$55/month without changing our service or requiring a contract. That’s awesome! I hate that their business model requires good customers to whine to get lower prices, but whatever.

* Why is no contract important to me? I feel like we’re at the tail end of having any TV package at all. We only record about a dozen series per year and they’re all available online either for free or for purchase. If I didn’t host football parties here, I think I would have already dropped cable TV. But when we have all those people over to watch a game, Comcast is still the most reliable way for me to display it. We can’t get over the air because of all the hills/trees, and the online streaming options aren’t stable enough yet.

You may have seen the news about Obama recently creating a new wilderness area in Idaho. Since I’m not a rancher in the area who would rather use the land for something else, I’m happy to see more land set aside. Coming from the eastern half of the US, it still amazes me how much of the Pacific Northwest is federal (or state) protected land. It sure creates a nice recreational area!

I try to avoid getting too political, but as we run up to a new presidential election, I think this is a good time to point out one silly point of this story. You’ve heard all the stories and read all the headlines. Who is responsible for making this area a protected wilderness? Most people would probably say Obama. And sure, he was the final guy to sign the bill, but what about all of the senators and representatives that voted for this. What about Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho who spent the last 15 years trying to get this to happen? And what about the nameless people down at the city and county level who have been fighting for this too. As I’ve said before, our president’s name gets attached to lots of stuff (both good and bad), but they are rarely to credit or blame for any of it. When you vote in November, you’re voting for the head of our public relations team. So don’t get too excited or too bent out of shape about who wins or loses. Focus that energy around your local city government which really has an impact on your life.

I had a crazy English professor in college. She started the semester off by telling us we were all getting A’s and that this class was about self-discovery. The liberal arts students mostly took it seriously. The rest of us science and engineering students pretty much blew the class off and spent time on our “real” classes. For example, one day a few of us walked in and the prof wasn’t there yet. Somebody walked up to the board and wrote “Class is cancelled” and then wrote the date and the prof’s name. We all left and future students saw the note, and, thinking it was legit, they left too. By the time the professor arrived, she had no choice to but to comply with the note that she didn’t write. We actually got out of two classes, but the second one was even worse than the normal classes. She spent the entire class talking about authority. It was painful enough that we never pulled the stunt again* so I guess she got her way, one way or another.

I think back on that regularly and chuckle, but that whole scenario is applicable to what we deal with on the internet every day. Some random person writes an article and bam, it’s fact. We all joke “It must be true, I saw it on the internet”, but then time and time again we get sucked into giving something way too much credit because it’s on a website that looks like it must be legit. Whether it’s diagnosing a disease, predicting earthquakes, or one of millions of other topics, the ability to understand how much authority or credibility the author has is so important. I don’t know how to teach this to my son, but it’s high on my list of things that I want him to learn. How do you pick up a piece of text and decide how much to believe it?

We used to base a lot of decisions and beliefs on common knowledge from our local circles, but now we have access to huge amounts of actual data on a huge range of topics. Seeking out that data is a good step, but you still have to be able to filter out the human interpretation of the data. It’s not like the old days where you had to be a published author to get read. Now any yahoo with a computer can write on the Internet and pretend they know what they are talking about …

* Well… we never pulled it again on her. Back then mail servers were much less secure/complex so somebody sent an email that appeared to be from one of our profs to the entire class saying class was canceled. They were careful to not include the prof on the email.

Earthquake preparedness kits are selling like hot cakes and it’s in the news. Seattle is going to be obliterated by an earthquake! The end is near! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

The other night I got curious as to why the impending earthquake is all of a sudden big news. Why is everybody freaking out about this all of a sudden? There are articles every year about this, so was there some new revelation or scientific discovery?

Nope. It can be traced back to a click-bait article in the New Yorker. This got picked up and went viral. News flash: There’s a fault line under Seattle. News flash: There are fault lines everywhere. Yes, any fault line could be the source of an earthquake, and yes, you should be prepared for the possibility, but seriously, settle down. You should also be prepared for a house fire, a car accident, a volcano eruption, measles outbreaks and missile attacks from North Korea.

Three local earthquake experts got together to do a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) and it’s a much better source of actual science related to the possibility of a Seattle earthquake. If you’re really concerned about this, note that three LOCAL experts wrote this. They study this stuff as a profession and yet they still happily live and work here.

So yes, it’s possible that we could have an earthquake tomorrow and yes, it might be devastating, but this possibility has existed for a very long time, and lots of data says that it’s not likely to happen for another couple hundred years. There are also threats of disasters. Do some basic preparations and get on with your life.

P.S. Luke 12:22-31

P.P.S. If you want to watch a good interview about this, check out episode 12 of The New Screensavers. That link will take you right to the start of the interview.