#216 Weather or Not

So anyways, I‘ve been watching the weather quite a bit lately. I mean if forty days and forty nights wasn’t a real prospect I’m didn’t want to start rounding up wildebeests or anything. So while I’m watching the weather I noticed something. Q-13 was bragging that they now have double Doppler weather. Oh my god, I thought, the weather arms race is on again. Every time there’s a new computerized breakthrough, all the local stations rush it to the airwaves like Jimmy Olsen with a scoop to the Daily Planet. First, it was satellite images, then satellite image loops, then computer graphics rendering the clouds in three dimensions, then they projected the graphic storm track across the state. Then it was Doppler, for information on the ground.
We all know from recent political speeches that on-the-ground decision-making is what it’s all about. And it is important. On the ground decision-making is the right turn on a red light stuff that you can only decide when you’re actually in traffic. Still, it’s not that bad an idea to have eye-in-the-sky helicopters to tell me to head over to the valley freeway to avoid that gridlock quagmire fifteen miles ahead. Sometimes you need to see the trees for the forest but sometimes you need to see the forest for the trees. If you only focus on cutting ‘em down one at a time you have no idea how many are left. What I’m trying to say is, long-term thinking is like buying life insurance or investing in your retirement. Short-term thinking is throwing up a tarp over your head when it starts to rain.
Speaking of rain, did I mention I’ve been watching the weather a lot lately. A guy can learn a lot from watching the weather—and the traffic. I thought it was funny cause Q-13 was also advertising “up to the minute 3-d color graphics on traffic problems.” Hyping it because it had qualities that are more engaging. More eye appeal than the boring static Department of Transportation cameras fixed at different spots on the commute. The astute among you will notice that at some point our culture has noun-ized the word commute. We are no longer commuting, we are engaged in “the commute.”
In any event, watching 3-d color animated color graphics of the commute, while engaging, in a Grand Theft Auto sort of way, does me little good if it’s back playing on my TV while I’m in fact stuck, on the ground, in that traffic. So, I don’t know, hows about using the radio. By the way, if you’re listening to this, traffic is probably thicker ahead of you. If it’s thinner behind you, who the heck cares?
But it does get tiring keeping up with all the innovations. It’s worse than going into a coffee bar. 3-D weather and traffic, real time acu-doppler, and now double Doppler. Yeah, I’ll have a double Doppler please, with whip...
America, ya gotta love it.