Got to be willing to be wrong

I don't know if it's going to last but the suns out! I'm ready to unthaw.

My first car was an Aquamarine 1968 Ford Falcon station wagon.



Above is a '69 and a much more pleasant color but you get the idea. The car was a gift from my Mom through my brother Dale. He gave her a different car and the wagon got passed on to me. I loved it. I was 16 and being a relatively good kid, could come and go as I pleased.

My friends and I took to calling it The Tank and it felt like one. It had a solid 289 engine and positraction rear wheel drive. The body was fairly straight and aside from the odd petrified French fry or chicken nugget, the interior was passable. My ride was huge with room for 6 teenagers and that was before we put people in the cargo area!

One of the strongest feelings that I carry with me from driving these older cars is a sense of safety. Cars prior to the 80's were, generally, made of solid steel and compared to today's cars seem indestructible. I can't count the number of times I've made a statement like "My current car vs. my first car? No contest, my Ford Falcon would crush one of these new plastic vehicles". The truth turns out to be something very different. The reality is our new technology beats the heck out of old solid construction.

In September 2009, for its 50^th anniversary the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety celebrated by performing their standard head on collision test between a 2009 Chevy Malibu and a 1959 Chevy Bel Air. The results were, well, startling. Here's the video (you may want to click on the video and watch it in a larger screen, some of the text gets cut off in the blog here).



With some thought it starts to make sense.  The technology put into the construction of the modern automobile is pretty amazing stuff.  Crumple zones, air bags, seatbelts, head rests are all things that contribute to why, as demonstrated in the video above, my 2010 Hyundai is so much safer than that old wagon of mine.

Why is it that we are so predisposed to believing that our modern way of living is so much less desirable than the recent past?  This way of thinking creeps into lots of places.  There's a huge push to return to natural food sources, stop using pesticides, and using hormones.  In this blog while questioning the "good" in technology I've encouraged people to tune out and have a look outside now and then.

Human's have an amazing ability to convince ourselves that if enough people say it then it must be true.  Hitler was unfortunately correct when he said "If you tell a lie long enough, loud enough, and often enough, the people will believe it."  It's good to have our assumptions challenged by things like the collision above. 

Here are a few thoughts about our recent past.  Life expectancy in Colonial America was under 25 years.  40% of children failed to reach adulthood.  In the early 20th century, that number increased to 45 years.  Today, thanks largely to advances in public health measures, and safer more abundant food sources, life expectancy is an average 67.2 years.

Before you start emailing me images of chickens in cages that are essentially two oversized breasts and a head, I'm not advocating injecting every grain of food produced with Methylethyldeath.  What I am saying is that we make frequent decisions, small and large, over things such as auto safety, food supply and climate.  Those decisions impact where trillions of dollars are spent and huge amounts of resources are applied.  With what's at stake I think it compels us to make sure that we are operating on a foundation of facts and doing our best to seek the truth.

As we go about choosing what products we buy and how we cast our votes perhaps it's worth the time to read up a little to make sure the truth matches the packaging. What does "all natural" or "organic" mean? Is there a single definition? What about carbon footprints and melting ice? If those questions just seem too daunting, here's one you might consider asking, "Who's profiting from what's being said?" It's amazing how often the answer to that question can be used as a measure of value in a statement.

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!