Aftermath

It started with a light whirring noise in the engine compartment while on route 75. What goes through your mind? One, nuts, not another engine problem, and two, what is that? And now that our attention is pricked, we start to notice other things. The car doesn't seem to be moving as rapidly as normal (eyeball the speedometer, 65 mph, not the normal 75; depress the gas pedal and the engine doesn't respond as it normally would). Fortunately, my exit is coming up so I exit onto local two lane road through Weston. There's a light at the intersection for Indian Trace and the engine just doesn't sound right. I accelerate onto Indian Trace after the light turns green and the engine stalls. Night2night editorial voice: from whatever root cause precipitated the series of events for that night as I've described it so far, opportunities for meaningful risk mitigation sufficient to preserve the car, and in retrospect, me, are rapidly vanishing.

The inertia of the car's motion was enough to allow me to steer to the curb. I try to start the car, but the entire instrument panel is dark when I turn the key in the ignition. Light colored smoke is coming from the engine compartment, but I figure the radiator is busted (for whatever reason) and get out of the car to call J for pick-up (about 1 mile from home) and inform her I'll call Allstate Auto while I wait for her. I get back into the car, try the ignition again, the instrument panel lights up this time and engine starter cranks, but no engine ignition apparent. I exit car again and smell still light smoke from engine compartment and note it doesn't smell like antifreeze. Again, although opportunities are shrinking for possible responses, I'm unaware how close to the Volvo singularity I am.

I look under the car and some type of fluid is exiting the engine in a thin stream. Crap. It ignites.

Fire school training while at Shoreham with demo of car fire. Very short time until flames engulf the car.
Don't lose work. Grab laptop, car emergency kit and sunglasses.
911
Back off.
(Inane conversation with 911 operator, "What color is your car? (orange and yellow, soon to be ash black, my car is on fire)"; "What direction are you heading in? (intersection of 84 and Indian Trace Road, my car is on fire, get a blankin fire truck here lady!)" First Broward County Sheriff’s unit responding tells me when he stopped he saw some small flickering flames under the engine; three minutes later the car was engulfed in a fireball.

There's a rather rapid series of events following the start of my return home that evening (we left for Rochester at 4:30 the next morning for R's graduation from Nazareth College).  J shows up in rather wide eyed disbelief after seeing the spectators gathered to watch.  A flatbed tow truck shows up to remove the dripping wreck, and the spot where she burnt is marked by a set of brackets formed from the molten remains of the bumpers.

I get a couple of shots of the car's remains in the towing yard with Allstate's field investigator.  I'll probably start one of my infamous letter writing campaigns asking Volvo (Ford?) whether this usually happens with their cars.

Nothing was recoverable.  Time to look for another car before the boys go back to school.  I walked away and at least saved my work from the last few weeks (maybe I should consider backing up better to the corporate network).  Could it have been a worse outcome?  After I had a chance to think about it, yeah, I think it could have been worse.

Appropriately, this seems like a good place to complete this set of blog posts addressing liberty, risk, the need for both personal and public security, and those mechanisms available for addressing all of it.  I think we like to think things are more rational and predictable than they actually are.  We want all risk mitigated to the point of insignificance, but the reality is that's impossible.  And at those rare points, when we approach those singularities, when we stumble upon an ill-intentioned "black swan", sometimes we can only draw upon our gut instincts, beat the clock, and hope for the best.  Of course, in those situations, you best have your own estimation of acceptable risk, and some general plan for dealing with hostilities.  You can't always count on help arriving in time.

I suspect the occasional reader I have will look at this and say, "Ah, it's just some set-up for another crazy rant of his."  Well, maybe, but, our destinations are pretty uniform and I suspect most of the meaning to be had is in our conduct during the trip.  So here's to the guys and gals who recognize the threats out there, handle them as best they can, but understand risk is never negligible, not in this life. 

A big, black, gooey, mess.

I can't really adequately express how angry I am about the current Gulf oil spill. Mass media reporting (particularly in the beginning) seemed to show more ignorance of events than anything else and now serious voices are beginning to question how close the main body of the oil spill is to the Gulf Loop current.

Scientists watching where oil spill headed next - Yahoo! News

Of course once this mess gets sucked into the loop current it will flow through the Florida straits and then up the east coast (I've heard mixed opinions on how great an impact ocean currents and offshore winds will have on actual beach impact; at least as of yesterday, US Geological Survey seemed to feel Palm Beach and north was more likely). Of course one could get in extensive discussions on how this would best be mitigated and cleaned up (apparently beaches are easier than marshes). Still, the southern Florida ecosystem is a complicated, diverse wonder and I don't doubt the long term implications could be ghastly (both for the tourism business and the natural fauna and flora).

Although not very familiar with the particulars of deep sea drilling, it's pretty apparent the folks responsible for the operation of the Deepwater Horizon platform failed to meet minimum standards of due diligence with regard to both risk mitigation and verification of those systems necessary for the blowout preventer to function under the design conditions present at the wellhead location. I personally would like to see criminal charges levied against the organizations involved and their corporate officers.

What I'm interested at in this point of the situation (beyond limiting the negative environment impacts to the greatest extent possible) is understanding what can be done to preventing events like this from happening again. Instead what I see is the usual high level government investigations and threats of impending lawsuits for this event. In all of this I wait to see some claim of full corporate responsibility and admittance that individual employees pursued high risk activities which resulted in loss of life and property due to their lack of concern with proper process and reflecting a culture which devalued real ethical concerns if they impacted profit and loss. How do we fix stuff like that? Can a government regulator substitute for corporate responsibility? Can any individual acting in a professional capacity properly exercise his responsibility to the community he lives in if he thinks his job is just a paycheck and an opportunity for advancement?

We all want that cool, calculating professional next to us when the "black swan" event shows up, but I suspect there's more than standard operating procedures involved during those moments (particularly for the individuals at the scene). Anyway, here's hoping we can find "The Professional" when we need him.

The Black Swan

Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book "The Black Swan" explores the impact of highly improbable game changing events (the book was published at the start of the recent financial crash in 2007) and our tendency to undervalue statistical outliers in risk mitigation (like generals, we're always fighting the last war) and justify our approach in an overreliance on "normal" behavior (statistical and anecdotal). The term "black swan" is a reference to what we all know, swans are always white. The pertinent question for him is what happens when a black one shows up. Taleb postulates 3 prerequisites for "black swan" events. "First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable." The original NY Times excerpt from his book is worth reading:

‘The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable’ - New York Times

Which, in my way of reasoning, brings us back to a recent op-ed column by David Brooks in the NY Times. As the congressional wizards deliberate over the financial carnage of the last few years, they come up with a bill to remedy the misbehavior of the larger financial institutions. David (who often seems undervalued to me by "true believer" conservatives) makes an excellent point on the track record of expert panels with regard to preventive efforts. In almost all cases, no one recognizes the black swan.

The Goldman Drama - nytimes.com

My thoughts on the next financial Waterloo waiting for us. I think the impact of sovereign debt accumulated by a slew of developed western countries to provide all matter of goodies to its citizens has yet to fully impact us. I wonder where the legislature for that little misstep is.

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Travel, projects (personal and professional), and an unplanned disaster has compressed the time I had available for extracurriculars over the past month. Today I find myself back in Rochester, NY celebrating my daughter, R's graduation from Nazareth College (first of the offspring to complete their undergraduate studies, hoorah). Still with some time, some sleep, and a general predisposition to mulling over what germinated in my mind some weeks ago, I've decided to complete and publish these few entries (which sort of follow my recent thinking on the limits of federal government and the proper mitigation of public risk), just ex post facto.

Some weeks ago I came across an essay by Penn Jillette in the weekend interview in the Wall Street Journal which I think addresses an important, pragmatic essence of liberty. At its most basic, liberty is the freedom for an individual to pursue his or hers prerogative, even when the outcome is stupid. Of course for most of us, putting up with our fellow citizens stupidities (which are so much worse than our own) is the biggest trial of liberty. If only those other idiots could be more like us. If you can, follow the link and read the essay.

Penn Jillette's Homage to Hummer - WSJ.com

I worry our preoccupation with better outcomes (particularly the ones learned experts prefer), with maximizing the government planner's capability to forbid bad outcomes, and with our desire to control the free agents (out of either jealousy or a desire to control what is perceived as chaotic, and therefore, undesirable) will result in a loss of liberty, in a loss of those attributes of freedom which make so much possible in this land. Ironically, although some classical liberals (which Penn Jillette always seemed to me because of his contempt for all religions) and authors like Kurt Vonnegut (whose work I got to love in high school) do seem to recognize the threat to our liberty implicit in following these preoccupations to their logical ends. In light of that observation, one of Kurt Vonnegut's earlier short stories, "Harrison Bergeron", is probably worth reading as a chaser for the Penn Jillette essay.

Harrison Bergeron

What do I conclude? Hang on to your stupidity and the unfairness of life, if the alternative is the sacrifice of your liberty.