Strangely, neither Apple nor Microsoft officials could be reached for comment. (This is most likely because it was nearly midnight when I wrote this, but also had to do with me not trying to reach anyone at those companies for a comment.) Reportedly though, laughter could be heard from near Cupertino.

While discussing Apple’s recommendation, Andrew pointed out the following:

Tim – I believe Vista has been gold code since November when (as I recall) it was made available to system builders and MSDN subscribers – not beta, but gold, ie. the same as you can now buy in the stores. Don’t try and tell me that Apple don’t have the odd MSDN subscription…

He’s right, of course. Unfortunately, his comment applies to Microsoft’s developer’s too. You’d think that working in the same company, they’d get a few perks.

Bluetooth headsets. They are extremely cool technology, and most of the time*, they work well, even for non-technical users.** It’s a bit “Star Trek-y.” Unfortunately, they are approaching iPods as the latest form of “technology masquerading as a fashion accessory.”

Blue Light Special
The flashing blue light. It used to be a sign that you were nearing a “special deal” at the local K-Mart. Now, it’s most likely a sign that you’re near someone who’s proudly displaying their geekishness by keeping their Bluetooth headset hooked on their ear.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I really like the fact that using a Bluetooth headset means I don’t have a wire attached to my ear for hands-free operation. It’s very convenient, and allows me to even connect the phone to the charging base while I’m talking. Bluetooth is a very cool thing from a usability standpoint.

Bluetooth is also nice from the standpoint of security and technology. Several former co-workers have gone to work for a company that does Bluetooth protocol stacks (the layer of software that handles communication for a Bluetooth device), and I’m starting to appreciate the technology from both a usable technology perspective (they’ve made partnering quite painless) and with regard to security (depending on your needs, you can configure a device to require a passphrase to establish a partnership).

Geek Chic or Geek Freak?
Lately, I’ve started to see more and more Bluetooth headsets “out in the wild.” The thing is, these headsets are so good at being “hands free” devices, it’s hard to tell if someone’s using one or not. In some cases, that’s probably the point, as I can be cruising around in my car, needing only to tap my ear to answer or hang up a call, adjust the volume, or redial the last call. (Supposedly, I can use it to voice dial as well, but I’ve not yet mastered that part of the user interface experience. I know. There goes what little “geek cred” that I may have established.)

On the other hand, I’ve been standing behind someone in line at Starbucks who’s chatting away, appearing for all the world to be talking to himself. I sat next to a buddy in an evening service at church and noted “Phil, the side of your head is blinking.” At work, I’ve sat next to a co-worker, unsure if he was talking to me, to himself, or to someone on his phone. At least when someone has a phone planted to the side of their head, I have a bit of a social cue as to whether or not they’re on the phone! Here, I have no clue.

The Official Bluetooth Headset Rules
To deal with this social problem, here are my official Rules of Bluetooth Headsets:

1. Before you hook the headset to your ear, ask “Do I really need hands-free operation right now?” (If the answer is “No,” turn it off and put the headset in your pocket.)
2. If you do need hands-free operation, be aware that if you’re a social context where other people might think you’re talking to them, the absence of a “I’m on the phone” sign on your forehead may cause them to speak to you and expect an answer. Turn your back, face a wall, or otherwise appear to be a lunatic. That will give them a hint to leave you alone, even though you’ve put yourself in a public place, possibly inviting something really weird like… you know… conversation.
3. Recognize that even if you’re too rude to acknowledge social interaction while you’re on the phone, the possibility of someone talking to you might interfere with your current conversation with President Bush, or whoever it is that absolutely has to talk right now. Noise reduction technology has come a long way, but using a Bluetooth headset in a Starbucks, with the barista foaming milk and (if they don’t have the new automatic espresso machines) emptying the filter handle, is likely to make it hard for the other party to hear what you’re saying anyway.
4. To elaborate on the previous rule, don’t try to carry on a conversation with someone standing next to you and with someone on your phone. It’s annoying to both of them, and especially to all of us around you, who have to listen to you arbitrating between the conversations.
5. Recognize that you look like a dork when you wear the headset in public, no matter how cool or chic you think it may be. Yes, lots of people do this. Yes, they all look like dorks. If you have hands, use them to hold the phone.***

Yes, I love technology. Yes, I’ve been known to use technology is silly and unnecessary ways. (I have been guilty of sending instant messages to my sons to tell them dinner is ready, and a few times, have chatted with them electronically when we were sitting in the same room.) However, I draw the line at using technology devices as a statement of fashion.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hop in the S2000, pop my H700 Bluetooth headset in my ear, pull my PPC-6700 out of the leather case on my belt to check for text messages, fire up my favorite playlist on my iPod, and head to the mall. I need to see if they’ve got those Nike+ shoes that go with the Nike + iPod Sport Kit. Running season’s almost here, and my current setup just isn’t cool anymore.

* My experience with the Motorola H700 (pictured above) partnering with my PPC-6700 is that it may disassociate itself from the phone, and then become almost impossible to reconnect. Turning the headset off and back on is generally no help in that situation, and one time, I had to completely delete the partnership (Bluetooth terminology), and “rediscover” the device. The method that currently seems to get things working again is to turn off Bluetooth networking at the phone, turn off the headset, re-enable Bluetooth, and then turn the headset back on. More than once I have considered chucking both of them out of the window as I drove down the road, frantically screaming for the person who’s saying “hello? hello?” down at the phone to hold on until I can pull off and answer without the headset.

*** PPC-6700 users can be excused for breaking this rule in noisy environments because the volume of the built-in earpiece is so low that using the Bluetooth headset makes it much easier to hear. You still look like a dork though, so violate this rule only then the call is crucial enough that you’re willing to tolerate the ridicule of total strangers.

However, that’s where the similarities end. Here, I’m going to recap some of the complaints that I’ve seen related to the iPhone, point out some things that are seriously wrong with the 6700, and then compare the lists.

The Complaints
After the initial “shock and awe” of the iPhone demo, Apple immediately began taking flak from various critics over the features of the iPhone. Among them were:

• Apple has come out stating that there will be “no 3rd-party apps” going into the iPhone, citing stability concerns as the primary reason
• The phone supports POP3/SMTP & IMAP mail servers, but not Exchange
• The most important feature of the included browser (Safari) seems to be that it zooms in and out, but many phones have browsers, so this is not a big deal
• Steve Jobs waxed philosophically about the iPhone not needing a stylus, in sharp contrast to virtually every other smartphone [Note: Click that link! It is hysterical!]
• The design places too much emphasis on the product as a phone, and not enough on PDA features (entering new contacts or appointments), iPod features (not enough memory), or data connectivity (EDGE instead of a true 3G network?)
• Unknown or unclear costs for hi-speed data connections
• An overly tight integration deal with Cingular, the provider

What’s Broken in the 6700?
Having now used the PPC-6700 for a couple of months of daily use, including some serious travel, I had already started to feel the familiar sting of an incomplete product. Unfortunately, this product has been on the market for close to a year, and the operating system is (supposedly) very mature. In spite of these things, I’ve already been frustrated with the following:

• The operating system has locked up several times, even with no 3rd party apps installed, and in spite of me updating the firmware image with the “latest updates” from Microsoft
• The phone syncs well with Microsoft Exchange Server, but only when you’re not using a security certificate (which is unlikely, because any company that wants you to connect using a device like this has most likely set up Exchange Web Access, which should not be set up without a security certificate)
• The included browser, Internet Explorer 4.0, is basically useless unless you’re visiting a site built with extremely narrow screens or mobile users in mind (no support for Java or scripting)
• The stylus comes out too easily (they ship it with two), and is therefore easy to lose (the last flew out as I was walking with the phone in my hand)
• When the operating system locks up, it doesn’t always behave the way you’d expect, since phone functions may work (I was in the middle of a call during the last lockup), but some features (my Bluetooth headset, the Today menu, and the hot buttons quit working) may not
• High costs for hi-speed data
• Very poor integration with Sprint (my service provider), particularly Picture Mail (which doesn’t work) and SMS-to-Email gateway behavior (which doesn’t work without embedding the e-mail address as the first line of the message, and sending to a specific “short number”)

Is the iPhone a Phone? iPod? PDA?
Currently, my biggest gripes with the 6700 are not with the PDA capabilities. It’s a great PDA. Given the storage capacity, it’s clear that it wasn’t intended to be used as a serious media device (you’re limited to whatever storage is available in the mini SD expansion card format), so I can’t really complain that it’s not a suitable replacement for my iPod. Lastly, after staring in shock at a $135 “data access” charge for the month of December (for regular, but not ridiculous Internet use), I’m wishing that this phone would either be dramatically better at Internet communication, or try harder at being a phone.

Unfortunately, the primary purpose of this device is to be a… phone. In that regard, it’s not a very good phone. Look back over the list of my complaints. I have ordered them intentionally. While reading the littany of complaints about the iPhone, I started to realize that every complaint corresponded to areas where the 6700 was going a different direction, and was broken. In some cases, it’s seriously broken.

To that end, if the iPhone is a mediocre PDA and only a so-so iPod, I could live with that. What I really need is what the iPhone seems to be designed for.

Mercedes is famous for describing its cars with the slogan: “Form follows function.” However, anyone who’s looked at any Mercedes for more than a moment would realize that these cars embody a certain style as well. Does this minimalist approach extend elsewhere? Is it ridiculous to expect style and substance to co-exist, or does the very presence of style suggest that there is no substance?

No Frills, All Thrills?
Before Windows, who was using computers? Those of us who are comfortable with plain, unvarnished technology. After the toaster-Mac and Windows 3.0 era began, we started to see more and more non-geeks sitting down to use computers. In part, this was the “user friendliness” of the technology, but I suspect it was also because the environment was something the user could modify into a style that was within their comfort zone.

Those of us who are tech-heads seem to have a no-frills, performance first bias. In contrast, as you look at the rest of the population, and sample the less and less geeky among us, you’ll find less interest about pure performance, and more and more interest about style.

What? Geeks Without Style?
Now, before anyone comes slamming down on me as an anti-Mac command-line snob, realize that I find myself in that portion of humanity that DOES care about style issues, and am generally not willing to go for pure performance at the expense of appearance. This doesn’t mean that seeing me walking down the street will suggest that I regularly read GQ. It simply means that there are times when I will sacrifice some performance for ease-of-use or style concerns.

For this reason, I have no interest in the Subaru WRX Sti, and prefer the Honda S2000 (style and performance over pure performance). On the other side of the coin, the S2000 is definitely a minimalist sports car, and obviously has made trade-offs of luxury in exchange for better performance.

What Price Beauty?
Now, some will argue that if there is no function beneath a form, then you have nothing more than a facade. Or, you might be concerned about the overhead of style, such as the increase in bandwidth for an HTML-format mail message instead of straight ASCII text. Here are some arguments that I’ve heard:

There has to be function before form, else you have just a facade. The arguments against HTML mail, are more than just aesthetics. It consumes time and bandwidth without adding much to the message. As for the list, why gussy something up that has the lifespan of a fruit fly? And of course the PC is for most of us hidden “out of sight, out of mind. Besides computers are headed toward pervasiveness, and subsequently becoming invisible.

Why then, does art exist? If, in Mercedes Benz fashion, I always suggest that “form follows function,” that’s a perfectly valid view. That doesn’t suggest that form has to be completely utilitarian to still be functional.

I know many people that make nice, bulleted to-do lists in word. Nobody else sees it. I have no idea why they do this, any more than why they insist on storing their grocery list on a PDA instead of writing it on a scrap of paper.

As for the arguments against HTML mail, the person using the pretty fonts and formatting is more concerned with the presentation of the information than you are! To them, it’s worth the expenditure of the extra CPU cycles and message length to create a different impression. There are reasons for using something other than Courier in your resume! I would posit that when the cost of cosmetic improvement falls to a low enough point, all of us will make adjustments for appearance. The difference being that this point lies at different levels for each of us, so one man’s frill is another’s necessity.

For those who remember our pre-windows history, computers were used by both geeks, and businesses that needed a tool to get the job done. Businesses have never really been about “pretty”, preferring function, for “pretty” has never been perceived as adding to the bottom line. The same however can not be said for those goods and services that were directed toward the consumer.

This is somewhat true. The business users of computers were few and far between, and generally relied on data processing centers rather than interacting with the systems themselves. Only with the advent of Lotus 123 and Visicalc did non-techies really get with it, and then, they used the computers in very restricted specific ways.

I agree, business has never been focused on pretty. However, as your company’s dress code probably attests, businesses also frequently care about the appearance of things that just don’t make a difference. My company’s “business casual” policy requires that I wear socks. Why do they care? Nobody knows, but my boss points it out whenever I wear deck shoes to the office.

Go figure.

There is one aspect of HTML e-mail that I will admit is a huge issue: security. Unfortunately, someone can send you an HTML that embeds some nasty stuff in it. Whether it’s a tiny GIF (like the smiley face that you’ll see on every WordPress page) to track the number of page hits, or something more sinister and privacy invading, HTML e-mail allows the sender to do things that most of us are not going to be comfortable with. (Fortunately, most modern e-mail apps can block graphics embedded in a message, but still allow you to read the content and decide if you want to then view the graphics.)

Love Your Reader, As Yourself
Years ago, I learned that for a writer, there is no substitute for “caring about the reader,” but unfortunately, most technical people don’t have the time (or want to expend the time) to learn how to explain themselves to a non-technical audience. More specifically, we (techies) don’t feel that the audience is worth this expenditure of time.

As a project manager, one of the most valuable skills I learned was to communicate effectively with the technical people (TP) on my team, and then turn around and explain to the non-technical people (NTP) in our organization what the heck the TP were talking about, and why it’s important. I learned to do this, in large part, because I have respect for people on both sides of the equation, and take the time to understand what they’re saying, and communicate in their terms.

Unfortunately, there is traditionally very little respect from either of these camps, going either way. As long as we TP assume that we’re talking to PHB’s, Boneheads, and Golden Parachute Weenies(tm), it’s going to show in the way we write. If instead, we presume NTP to be intelligent, but with a different (but still valuable) skillset, and keep that mindset at the forefront, our consideration for their intelligence will come through and so will our message.

Testing: Lotus 123
Here’s a test. Take your last technical proposal, and consider how you would structure and word it for (insert name of close, non-technical relative such as Mom, Dad, etc.). Then, write it that way, but without the analogies to Mom’s wonderful cooking, or Dad’s “Viagra incident.” I guarantee that if you respect the audience, and don’t talk down to them, you will improve your writing and communication.

Oh, sure. I know an “approximate” value: 3.1415926535. I know that from memory. But I have to confess that I don’t know the exact value.

Relative Knowledge
In science, most things are exact. I suppose this is why Pi sets on edge, the teeth of any serious student of math at one point or another in their careers.

I suppose the most frustrating thing about Pi is, you can get pretty close, without a lot of education. My oldest son, when he was in pre-school, once guessed “pi” when the teacher asked how many jelly beans were in the jar. The other kids laughed and said “That’s not a number!”

My 5 year-old son quickly responded “Yes it is. It’s more than three but not four.” (An exasperated teacher was then left the interesting chore of teaching fractional numbers to a handful of confused preschoolers.) My son was wrong about the number of jelly beans (it was several hundred), but he had already developed a basic understanding of Pi.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know the true value of Pi, and he still doesn’t. Have I failed him as a father because I don’t know it either?

Pi, Any Way You Slice It
Most children are introduced to Pi as “3.14.” In school, I determined to get a bit more exact, and learn it to ten decimal places. Unfortunately, in the black and white of math, neither of those answers are strictly correct.

At the tender age of 5, my son was able to wrap his brain around the notion of fractional values. (My example was “You have three apples, and then I give you part of another. Do you have four apples yet? Do you have more than three?”). Now a freshman in college, he has a much deeper understanding of numbers and math, but he still has much to learn. When I look at research that documents thousands of digits of this confounding number, I realize that I have much to learn too.

Interestingly, there are people who have devoted their careers to studying Pi. They develop exotic proofs, study and learn ways to understand more and more clearly exactly what Pi is. There are countless web sites devoted to the search for the exact value of Pi, but as far as I can determine, none of them have it… yet.

Clearly, the simple logic of geometry suggests that there is, in fact, one and only one “true” value of Pi. We can pretend that it’s 3.14 or 3.1415926535, but we will be wrong. We can claim the moral high ground of our value being “true for me,” but that doesn’t make it true in all cases, everywhere, for everyone.

Only the true value of Pi (the value that, to this day, remains unknown), is always true, everywhere. To suggest otherwise is to be ridiculous.

Knowing the Unknowable
However, until the actual value is known and proven, people of various educational levels can engage in debates over this, sometimes expending huge amounts of energy in the process, and frequently accomplishing very little. Such is the case with subjects that we “split hairs” over.

At this stage, some scientists have abandoned their personal search for the “true” value of Pi, and are left to deal with the unsatisfying sense of there being a truth, out in the distance somewhere, that they cannot yet grasp or know or understand. How incredibly frustrating.

Interesting isn’t it, how closely this parallels the search for theological truth? The endless frustration of feeling that you’ve almost got it, and then finding out that you’re nowhere near knowing everything that there is to know, and that the “mind of God” seems to extend on to several more decimal places than you imagined. It seems so simple at first, and then you realize that what you “knew” and what you understood as “the truth” is merely an approximation, and that God has an infinitely rich and non-repeating pattern out there for you to discover.

Someday (though not, scripture says, in this life), I will see face to face, and know as I am known. Someday (though not, scientists say, anytime soon), I may see the exact value of Pi, and not just an approximation. Until then, I’ll just have to learn to live with the unknown, tell people the “best approximation” of the truth that my brain is currently able to comprehend, and hope for the day of complete understanding.

Why the huge difference? Why are my co-workers and friends swimming in the stuff, and I go through the day relatively spam-free? Here are the three things that I do. What differentiates me from my co-workers and friends, is that they do only one or two of these things. The key is to do all three.

1. Protect Your Address
When I first started using the Internet, my e-mail was through CompuServe. At first, I could only send messages to other CompuServe users, but eventually, they opened up a gateway, and I could (with some difficulty) send messages to AOL users, and eventually, to every other major messaging provider.

Back then, I published my e-mail address everywhere. I wanted people to send me messages because it was so… well, geeky and cool. I could see, within minutes, messages from across the country. As I moved into a role that required me to have more communication with the general public, and my e-mail address (at that point, no longer CompuServe, but hosted by a regular Internet Service Provider, or ISP) became more broadly known, and I started getting a lot of e-mail, but virtually all of it was generated by humans that just wanted to communicate with me.

That was then. This is now. At the present time, publishing an e-mail address on any web page in the canonical form of address@provider.com is just a bad idea. Automated programs crawl the web, constantly searching for any potentially valid e-mail address, throw those addresses into a list, and sell the list to people who want to engage in mass mailings. (I’ll skip the part where these people are sentenced to Hell in the afterlife, where they are required to respond, individually, to every copy of every e-mail they ever sent, or had sent by a proxy.)

As of this writing, none of these automated programs have ever discovered my primary work e-mail address. I never, ever, ever publish that address in any public place. If I am asked for an e-mail address, I give another address (more on that in a second). Interestingly, they’ve never discovered my primary home e-mail address either, for the same reason.

“What?” you may ask, “You have two e-mail addresses?”

Well, no. Actually, I have (I had to stop here and count them) seven. Why? That’s strategy number two.

Before I get to the details of that, I can imagine you’re saying, “But Tim, that won’t work for me. I have to put my e-mail address on my company’s web page so customers can contact me.”

Really? Is it absolutely necessary? If for some reason the answer is “yes,” then you can deal the automated “mail sniffers” by making your address readable to a human, but very difficult for a machine. For example, I could put:

Bob Smith
Director of Intergalactic Sales
(555) 555-5555 Cell Number
(555) 555-1212 Information Number
(666) 666-6666 Number of the Beast
bob.smith at bigcompany dot com

(replace “at” with “@” and “dot” with “.”)

As you can imagine, there are lots of variations of this. If you can’t use this approach, then you can either resign yourself to dealing with a huge amount of spam, or you can move to strategy number two.

2. Use Different Addresses
As noted above, I have seven different e-mail addresses. Why seven?

The first is my home e-mail, where I communicate with friends and family. I may share this with a bank or other institution, but only if I have a high degree of confidence that their privacy policy is solid (you do read those, don’t you?) and that they can be trusted with that type of information. In general, I don’t give my home e-mail address to anyone I wouldn’t trust with my social security number. (And based on news stories of laptops being stolen and lost with thousands of S.S. numbers, the number of people I trust with this data is going down quickly.) This address contains my real name, which is one of the reasons that I don’t publish my last name on this site. (The other is the plausible deniability that it gives to my sons when I tell stories about them.)

Before I go on, I should point out that I get nasty when people CC me on “please send this on to everyone on your list” e-mails. It doesn’t matter to me what the cause is, how heart-wrenching the plea, or how noble the theology, I won’t send chain letters. They do nothing to glorify God, waste bandwith, and waste my time. Even more annoying, these messages are almost always rooted in urban legends. Lastly, there’s no telling where my e-mail address goes when someone tosses it into a CC list along with “dozens of their closest friends.”

The second address is my work e-mail, where I communicate with business associates. I protect this address using the techniques as stated above. Recently, we changed the hosting of my company’s e-mail. Suddenly, everyone else started getting spam. Well, everyone but me. My inbox remained completely spam-free. Zero. Nada. My co-workers were seeing spam that had previously been blocked by our ISP. With the change in hosting, we lost the previous filtering, and viola’, spam returneth.

Recently, the flood of spam stopped hitting my co-workers inboxes. I’m testing, but I believe we have put a “validated senders only” filter in place. This is a solution, of course, but a draconian one. If a new customer tries to contact us, their e-mail will hopefully bounce. (I said “hopefully” because it remains to be seen if we will bounce them back a “You are not an authenticated sender” message, but that runs the risk of validating the address to a spam-sending program, which will likely result in even more mail hitting this address, making the flood even bigger than before.)

The third and fourth e-mail addresses are my all-purpose, send-it-anywhere, don’t-care-who-sees-it, don’t-care-if-its-on-the-web address. These addresses are hosted by Yahoo. This is related to strategy number three.

Address number five is hosted by my home ISP, is not my real name (it’s a nickname), and uses the same prefix as one of my Yahoo addresses. It’s not hard to guess what this nickname is.

This fifth address is what I use when I want to allow someone to contact me, or need to validate who I am, but don’t yet trust the other party. For example, if I want to download a trial version of an application, I’ll use this address. As with my home e-mail, number five is not published anywhere. Interestingly, I get almost no spam to this address either, in spite of me submitting it in various forms, use it with Ticketmaster, and other online services.

Address number six and seven are tied to my cell phone. If you think I’m paranoid about my home e-mail address, you should try to get one of my cell phone e-mail addresses. I protect this the same way I protect my cell phone number, which is to say that I very rarely give this out. Work contacts may receive my number via e-mail, but they are definitely not going to get this by looking it up on a web page. Fortunately, only one of the e-mail addresses (the one for text messaging) is easy to discern from knowing my number. The other, is kind of munged from parts of my name. Regardless, I don’t want spam on my phone, so I protect them

3. Let Someone Else Deal with It
Yahoo spends lots of time figuring out how to filter spam. It’s important to their business. Their business is, in part, e-mail hosting and communication services. They are going to be pretty good at this, arguably much better at it than I could hope to be. (One of the reasons my company e-mail didn’t see much in the way of spam before is that we used Yahoo’s business services to host our e-mail, and interfaced to it via POP3 and SMTP. We moved away from this for various reasons, but I was not part of that decision.)

By now, you’ve probably figured out how to send the message to my Yahoo address. That’s ok. That’s not my problem… it’s Yahoo’s. By using a Yahoo-hosted account, I have handed off responsibility for dealing with spam to someone who is much better at it, has more resources to deal with it, and has the capacity to get hit with massive floods of e-mails that would cripple a small or medium-sized ISP. (I don’t want to even think about self-hosted e-mail accounts having to deal with what is effectively a denial-of-service attack when a barrage of spam hits one or more accounts.)

Using Yahoo (or MSN, or GMail) is an effective way to balance the need for having a public e-mail address, but not having to deal with the spam problem that goes along with it. Used in concert with the previous strategies, you too can remain spam-free.

By the Way…
One last thing. If you absolutely have to host POP3 and SMTP servers at your business, consider filtering out (as far upstream as possible) all HTML-formatted e-mail. There is a strong correlation between HTML e-mail and spam, for a number of geeky technical reasons. Suffice it to say that most of the time, HTML e-mail is superfulous, and asking your friends and co-workers to send plain text e-mail isn’t that much of an inconvenience. (Steve Gibson of GRC, filters his e-mail accounts this way, and bounces back a “please use plain text” message as an auto-response.)

Oh, and one more thing. I lied. I’ve got a GMail address too.

Let me rephrase. Being “red-green pastel color-blind,” along with roughly 10% of the male population, in a world where color vision is assumed, really sucks.

To elaborate further, what really sucks is that so many of the components of everyday life in the United States demand usable color vision. It’s not just a matter of convenience, it’s a matter of safety.

Seeing Red
Tonight, I was on my way home from the grocery. We’ve had some bad storms roll through, so it wasn’t surprising that a couple of the traffic lights were without power, and therefore flashing.

Normally, when I’m travelling in unfamiliar territory at night, I make it clear to any front-seat passenger that they have the responsibility to call out to me if a flashing light up ahead is flashing red or yellow. (To my eyes, the red and yellow lights of a normal traffic light are almost indistinguishable.) Fortunately, a flashing red light is almost always accompanied by a stop sign or other indication, so getting the “FLASHING RED” alert from the passenger is hopefully redundant, but always appreciated.

However, when a standard traffic light goes into “battery backup mode,” it defaults to flashing either red or yellow for the two intersecting streets, depending on the pre-programmed configuration. Typically, this is based on the nature of the road, and will either be flashing-red for one set of paths and flashing-yellow for the other, or flashing-red for both streets.

In the daytime, this isn’t an issue for me, as I can easily determine the light color by position. Regardless of the jurisdictions preference for horizontal or vertical traffic lights, the middle light is always yellow, and the red and green are on either side (or top & bottom). At night, it gets a bit more challenging.

Red Light District
So here I was, cruising along a four-lane road, and come up on a flashing traffic light. I can’t tell if it’s red or yellow, so I’m trying to analyze what I might be. There is a subdivision on one side of the intersection, and a strip-mall on the other. Logically, it should be a yellow light. Ooops! It’s red, and I slam on the brakes instead of cruising through it cautiously.

Less than a mile later, on the same street, another flashing light up ahead. Yellow, or red? Well, this time, it’s a 3-way intersection, but the third leg of the intersection is a two lane road–not just the entrance to an intersection, but a road that literally goes across the county. Naturally, I assume this flashing light to be red… but no. I realize at the last minute that it’s yellow.

Much Ado about Nothing?
Fortunately, none of the situations tonight posed a huge threat to my safety. Neither of the interesections was busy, and there wasn’t traffic behind me that could have been put in danger by a sudden decision to stop.

Even so, it frustrates and annoys me that so many of the things we deal with on a day-to-day basis presume that I can see colors the way the rest of the world can. I can’t, and short of custom contact lenses (which have some annoying side effects), there’s nothing I can do about it.

Note: If you’re not sure about your color vision, here is an online version of the “Ishihara Test” to determine if you suffer from red-green color blindness.

• Why is it that so many of us who are Christians… demand that the world is 6000-8000 years old, and come up with any number of bizarre explanations for how this is possible, but we’re perfectly willing to accept scientific explanations for how our Sony HD TV brings Billy Graham into our homes in such wonderful detail, and how the latest technology gadgetry works (thereby allowing us to spend less and less time with our children)?
• Why is it that we read parable after parable, proclaiming that we really do get it, and that some man didn’t actually have a beam in his eye when he was trying to remove the speck from another’s, but we can’t accept the possibility that one or more fragments from Genesis are “dumbed down” explanations of what happened?
• Why is it that even though Pat Robertson demonstrates his marginal sanity on virtually a daily basis, hundreds of thousands of Christians continue to listen to him?
• Why aren’t more Christians distancing themselves from Rush Limbaugh and his hate-mongering?
• Why aren’t we as upset about President Bush’s foul mouth as were (appropriately) about President Clinton’s inability to keep his pants zipped?
• Why is it that Christians aren’t just as upset about rampant materialism as we are about gay marriage?
• Why aren’t we as upset about the millions dying of malnutrition or AIDS as we are about the millions of abortions?
• Why aren’t we willing to stand up and say, “the intolerance of other faiths that we have demonstrated for so many years is not much different from the intolerance that we see in extremist groups engaged in terror bombings”?
• Why aren’t we just as concerned about the Lebanese child crying in the bombed-out apartment as we are for the Israeli pilot dropping the bombs?
• Why is it that we are perfectly willing to make our children more and more ignorant (of science, literature, social sciences), and call it “protecting them” or “nurturing them”?
• Why do we hive our children off in “Christian” schools instead of getting involved in the local public school, and making it a better institution?
• Why aren’t more of us called to be teachers in public schools, and teach our moral values to an entire generation by the way we live day-to-day (and not just by the scripture we quote on Sunday morning)?
• Why are we willing to build social silos… pockets of Christian relationships (businesses, clubs, sports organizations, and so on)… and then complain that “the world” doesn’t seem to want to knock on the door of our churches?
• Why do we say “worship is not about me, it’s about God,” and then complain that the music isn’t what we like, that the praise choruses aren’t familiar, and that the preacher seems to talk too long?

I must be too dumb to understand. Maybe Pat or Rush can explain it to me.

Any number of people have posted raves about this cartoon, which was ostensibly for kids, so I won’t add more verbiage than is absolutely necessary. In my opinion, this cartoon, possibly even more than the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, wrote at multiple levels.

For example, where else would you find a scene in which stealing a submarine would be hindered by the steering wheel having “The Club” on it, but it’s referred to as “the Sub Club”? In that same episode, the right-hand-turns-only route describes a Nautilus shape, which The Brain correctly identifies as being representative of “the Golden Mean.” In this episode alone (titled “Das Mouse,” a clear reference to the movie “Das Boot”), there are pages of movie spoofs, accurate science lingo, and pop culture references.

If you were unlucky enough to miss “Pinky and The Brain” when it originally aired, you can pick up the DVD and enjoy those laughs all over. However, this is one DVD that the kids may swipe, so keep it under lock and key.