How to get away with murder.

I often get frustrated at how we, in this society, tend to forgive an enormous amout of behavior that would be criminal if any object other than an automobile were used.  Crimes that would inspire public revulsion and a long maximum sentence are virtually ignored if the weapon is car.  It's not unusual for people who KILL pedestrians or cyclists to be given no sentence at all.  Sometimes you can kill multiple people and go scott free.

A couple of years ago a driver with MULTIPLE tickets killed a pedestrian in West Seattle.  The police did not ticket the driver.  Although he was speeding and ran a red light and the DA declined to press charges.  They said that since he was a father, a religious leader and a 'moral' man he should be forgiven.  He'd killed someone and there was a pattern of behavior that predicted it!!

Unfortunately for him, although he used the correct weapon for murder, he killed an important person, the aide to a city council member.  The council insisted that the county file charges.  He had a trial (he hit another person between the murder and the trial and got a speeding ticket DURING the trial!)  He was found guilty and given a suspended sentence. No jail time at all. A spree of violence and a cold blooded murder and no jail time.  Chilling?  What's worse is that this violent terror did not lose his driving privileges at all.

I think we've got to stop the special exceptions for assault, battery and murder that go easy on someone if a car is the weapon.  I've ranted about it for years.  I've been wanting to do a blog post on it for 15 years. I've never had the right words, calm enough but strong enough.  Insightful and clear enough to force the paridm shift away from the typical car-head perspective.

We had a terrible crime last year when a cyclist was killed and the driver drove off.  That driver was finally caught and confessed this week after yet another hit and run.  Unfortunately, the maximum sentence allowable for this murder is only 41 months.  The law is so lenient solely because of the weapon used. The prosecution is soliciting letters from the community to give to the judge to help with the sentencing.

I wrote something very quick.  While i don't think it's very good, at least it's to the point.

 Here's what i wrote:

This kind of crime makes people angry.  And it should. It makes me very very angry.

What i WANT is for this guy to be locked up forever and throw away the key.  But that doesn't help anyone or change anything.  That's emotion talking.  It's anger, it's revenge.  It doesn't help me, or him.  Nor does it help or society in general, which is, after all, the point.

What IS important is that he DOES NOT drive anymore.  That is what makes a difference; that is what is important to me, and for that matter that is what is important for society.   It's better for the city of Seattle that this person does not drive a car. And it's good for him too.

Personally, i think he should NEVER be allowed to drive a car again, and that would be my strong vote.  But again, putting emotion aside and trying to think logically, i would suggest a very long license suspension, 4 years at the very minimum, probably much more.  Suspend his driving privileges and give him an ORCA card.  Make his probation dependent on not driving a car. 

And then make it very public that this extremely dangerous driver will be prevented from driving.   That might work as a detergent for future murderers.  And if he IS ever allowed to drive again, he should have to undergo some sort of strong training in safe driving before his privileges are restored.

I don't think it's very well written, or expresses my thoughts well. Now i know it's odd to link to a COMMENT in a blog post,  (Normally all comments on the internet are a good argument for why the internet is idiotic.) but user merlin on Seattle Bike Blog posted their letter in the comments.   It's exceptionally well written.  This is it.  It is what i wish i had said:

We have a parallel case going to trial in Seattle soon:
A 20-year-old man was charged Friday with second-degree murder in the shooting of Justin Ferrari, a father who was driving with his family in the Central District when he was struck by a stray bullet. The suspect, Andrew J. Patterson of Federal Way, was arrested Thursday and booked into the King County Jail. He faces up to 23 years in prison if convicted.

Mr. Patterson did not intend to kill Justin Ferrari. He recklessly fired a shot across the street where Ferrari was driving. He fled the scene, and was eventually tracked down by the police. He is charged, appropriately, with second degree murder, with a possible sentence of 23 years in prison.

Mr. Garcia-Reyes did not intend to kill Michael Wang. He recklessly propelled a dangerous vehicle across the street where Wang was riding. He fled the scene, and was eventually tracked down by the police. He is charged with felony hit and run, with a maximum sentence of 41 months.

Mr. Garcia’s crime is just as serious as Mr. Patterson’s, although it is treated much less seriously by the law. He should receive the maximum sentence. Mr. Patterson, if convicted, will be prohibited from owning a gun. Mr. Garcia-Reyes should be prohibited from driving a car.

These punishments do not even begin to make good the harm caused by these men’s actions. In a just world, Mr. Garcia-Reyes would be required to spend the rest of his life riding a bicycle and teaching classes to automobile drivers about the awesome responsibility that comes with driving.

In addition, Mr. Garcia-Reyes should be required to provide restitution to Mr. Wang’s family in whatever form the family requests.

ORCA's Fin

A few years ago, a dozen or so bus (and ferry) systems around metropolitan Seattle, including King County Metro, switched from standard cash fares to a smartcard system.  This was timed with the long, long awaited opening of our first light rail line.

I was excited when the ORCA™ smartcard public transit payment system was rolled out.  I like the convenience of it -- especially the e-purse (a debit account for transit fare) since, as a full time bike commuter i do rely on the transit system, but i don't take it often enough to make a monthly pass worthwhile.  I was an early adopter and use mine frequently.  As a transit advocate i got about a dozen of them when they were still free so i could hand them out to my friends.

I like not having to think about carrying exact change and and i like that the transfers are all automatically calculated.  (Although i have noticed that the computer is not as friendly with allowing expiring transfers as the drivers were!).

Most of all i really like being able to pay my fare without having to open my wallet.  I just wave my wallet in front of the reader.  A couple of times i bumped my butt against the reader and it worked, the reader recorded my fare.  But the drivers didn't like that very much, they thought i was showing them up.  I didn't like that very much either; It really drove home to me that my transit information was broadcasting out the back of my pants all day long.

I'm fascinated with RFID, the method of communication that the smartcards use, i think it's a very interesting technology.  As a HAM radio operator i consider my ORCA™ to be just one more cool radio that i use.  I like the way it works, converting radio energy into electrical energy and back again; fitting four different electrical devices into a almost microscopic web of electrical wire. 

RFID cards have a mesh embedded throughout the entire card which acts as a receiving antenna.  When the card reader sends out a radio signal (asking 'Who are you?') that antenna receives the signal.  Here's the cool part: the mesh then converts the radio energy from the received signal into electrical energy to power a tiny computer.  And the computer? It's the mesh itself!  The mesh that makes the antenna is laid out so that it also can work as a microprocessor.

The converted electrical energy runs through the this mesh microprocessor, reading (and writing) data.  Then at the end of the run of wires, the electrical energy is converted back into radio energy and the mesh is used as a transmitting antenna to send the data back to the reader. 

There is of course loss of energy in all of this, the response signal from the card is much, much weaker than the original query signal from the card reader.  This is a benefit, not a problem since it means the card only works if you hold it close to the reader.

One day in March about a year and a half ago, i noticed my mobile phone sitting next to my wallet on the table.  I stared at them for a moment and it occurred to me that since the phone was radiating a signal (a pulse at least every 30 seconds alerting nearby cell towers to its presence) that the ORCA™ card in my wallet must be receiving and processing that signal!  Although the signal was on a different frequency than the one the card was expecting (1,200 Mhz, not 13.56 Mhz) the signal would still be received and the card must be transmitting its own weak signal, with garbage, not real data. 

The next day i was in a Mexican restaurant with a friend telling them about that epiphany.  While we were talking i had an idea.  I took the foil that had wrapped my burrito and wrapped a piece around a business card.  I stuck it in my wallet, outside of my ORCA™ card, but next to it, touching the card.  Aluminum foil can act as a weak faraday cage -- that is it can stop or at least scramble up radio signals.  My hope was that i could still wave the inside of my wallet (the part usually against my body) over the reader, but the outside would be blocked.  The foil doesn't have to stop the stronger incoming signal from the reader, it only has to stop the very weak outgoing signal response from the card.

A few days later i tried it on the bus.  The reader would not read my card at all.  Neither the front or the back of my wallet would work.  I had to remove the card.  Frustrating, but still, an interesting result! The foil touching the card disabled it.  That could be beneficial.

So after i sat down on the bus i moved the card in my wallet.  I moved it so that instead of actually touching the ORCA™ card, the foil was about 5 credit cards away from it -- still outside of it.  On the connecting bus i tried waving the outside of the wallet over the reader -- it would not read.  The driver was waiting for me, so i hurriedly flipped my wallet over and waved it and it did read from the inner side of the wallet!

Excellent!  This works.  If these results held true, i had something that could either:

1. block RFID transmission from the outside of the wallet (while my body blocked the inside.) or 
2. entirely disable a RFID while in the wallet.  

This would be useful! 

I liked the idea of using it, but it also seemed like an opportunity.  I figured i could make them pretty easily.  I came up with the name "The ORCA Fin" and designed some business card sized labels. I printed out the labels, cut some thin foil to the same size and took it to Kinkos and laminated it.  I now had a credit card size shield with a label and logo.  I made two of them -- a prototype with 1 sheet of thin foil plus one sheet of paper (with the info) and, just to be sure, another prototype with 2 sheets of foil in addition to the info card. 

On March 31st i checked the web and theorcafin.com was taken, but orcasfin.com was not; i bought the domain orcasfin.com. I created a ORCA's FIN site on my webserver and put a placeholder webpage up. 


I figure with PayPal and a simple form system i could take orders, charging $5 each, i pay domestic shipping.  I need to price printing, lamination and postage.  I think postage will be 80 cents, but that will depend on the final design.  The labels, 16 per page, are just a couple of cents.  I might buy a lamination machine rather than using Kinkos at $1.25 each time.  Then i need to re-write the instructions on the logo labels.  I'll need to write a little script on my website to run the order form.  I'm inclined to go paypal only, but maybe find a way to take credit cards.  Then i need to start talking about them, handing them out.  Send one to the Electronic Freedom foundation, maybe one to Boing Boing.  And then buy foil and start making them.


ORCA™ uses the MIFARE™ system.  A number of other transit systems around the world use this system and there are at least 3 other systems that use 13.56 Mhz credit card systems for fare paying or access (such as Zipcar).  And if this works for MIFARE™ it should work for all of them.  It occurred to me that i will need to think of a different name if i'm going to sell them outside of Seattle. I like the word play of ORCA's Fin.  I want a word that implies blocking.  I need to work on that:  Smartcard shield?, tinfoil hat?, card condom?, fare protector?, card cage?, wallet wall?   So far i think Wallet Wall is best.

So once i tested the laminated version, i was ready to go.  The next time i took the train i tested it.  It failed!  Neither prototype was able to block the signal at all!!!  Not touching, not spaced, not outside or inside.  I was a bit disappointed.  I tried again in mid April, the next time i took the train, with the same disappointing results. But this time i discovered that i can wave the card over the reader a second time to cancel my fare -- meaning that i don't have to ride the train to test the cards, i just have to go to the station.  Since i only ride the train once or twice a month and the bus less often, this was a very good discovery.

So i made two more prototypes using much thicker foil.  These were prototypes #3 & #4.  (If you count the raw foil one without lamination as #0.)  One had one layer of the thicker foil, the other had two layers.  These also each had two paper labels, one on each side, completely hiding the foil and giving me more room for instructions.  They looked pretty good.   I tested these prototypes repeatedly in mid April.  No luck.  I didn't test them touching the smartcard -- maybe i should have. 

Next i laminated two more prototypes -- the sixth and seventh prototypes, marked them #5 & #6 (still counting the non-laminated one as zero).  Prototype #5 has three layers of much thicker foil. Prototype #6 has SIX layers of much thicker foil.  In July i took them down to the light rail station to test them.   Neither seemed to work at all. 

This was frustrating, i put the whole thing aside for a while, but i may pull it out and work on it again.  I'm pretty disappointed at this juncture.  I'm not sure why they are not working, some ideas i've had:    

• Perhaps the shield is not quite as wide as the smartcard by a few millimeters on all four edges and maybe that's just enough for the outgoing signal to leak around.  That seems pretty unlikely to me.
• Perhaps the foil is still just not thick enough.  But the thin foil works without lamination.
• It doesn't make any sense, but maybe the lamination is preventing the foil from shielding.  I'm pretty certain the lamination is going to prevent the foil from completely disabling the card, i think it needs actual contact with metal for that to work.
• Maybe the first test didn't actually work and just foil isn't going to stop the signal at all.
• or maybe there is something obvious that i am missing.

I kept the ORCA's Fin in my wallet, in the outside location that i wish worked throughout the autumn.  Occasionally when i rode the bus i'd give it a try, but it never blocked anything.  In early December i walked downtown and duplicated the original test.

• My prototype #6 (laminated with 6 layers of foil and 2 of paper) has been living in my wallet for months, outside of my ORCA™ card, spaced.  I tried it. It failed to stop the signal in any way.  Damn. 
• I put the foil only prototype #0 (2 sheets of thin foil wrapped around a business card) in my wallet spaced away from the ORCA™ card. It worked!!  It stopped the card from working on that side of the wallet, it still worked from the other side.
• I moved the foil prototype to touching the ORCA™ card.  It disabled the card entirely.  Success!
• I tried a new thing -- i put the foil in, spaced away from the ORCA™ card and put the laminated (#6 with 6 layers of foil) Fin outside of it (so my visa card will slide in and out freely).  That worked.  I'm going to leave it that way, that will be my basic wallet configuration.  

(At the same time a friend tested his system where he vacuum sealed a strip of foil and put it in his wallet.  That blocked the signal completely, both sides, as he intended.)

Next time i will try with the laminated Fin inside of the foil prototype.  Perhaps that will show me something about the lamination. I can't understand why the raw foil prototype works and the laminated ones don't.  I can't see how lamination could nullify a faraday effect, besides there are several laminated cards between the ORCA and the foil in the working system.  I don't think the foil is really any wider than the foil in the lamination.  I don't get it.

 It doesn't look like i can sell them, but at least i get the functionality!!

Written In Stone

A friend and i went on a bike ride, which we started by riding light rail. One of the (many) great things about Seattle's light rail line is that it can extend the range of  bike rides.  I can do 30, 50, 60 mile rides in the south end that were just not reachable before.  I can reach towns and neighborhoods, roads and trails that i could never get to. I even managed to ride to the Carbon River ranger station at Mount Rainier in one day without taking a car.  Because of this system I can experience places that were not available to me before. And i can take people with a shorter cycling range to places that i've enjoyed.  It's great.

Another great thing about the light rail is the large amount of public artwork that graces the stations. On the recent ride in question, i got off the train at the Sea Tac airport station, and was face to face with an beautiful piece of artwork called Flying Sails. 

There are two large pieces, one at each end of the platform. Each is a collection of spinning, mirrored, rectangles making up one of the two eponymous "sails".  The individual panels can turn and twist in the wind, since the station is partially open to the elements.  Most of the shiny rectangles have a word carved into them. One of the sails, at the north end of the platform, contains mirrored panels that have Pacific Northwest Native American tribe names carved on them.
 

The mirror panels in the south sail have the names of various cities around the world carved into them.
I really like it!

Since i liked the artwork and it is about Salish tribes and about geography, i was drawn towards it like a moth to a flame.  I immediately noticed a few cities i have been in.  Regensburg, Rouen and Brno, caught my attention first; briefly the thought of their similar latitude in northern Europe went through my head.  I lined up the reflected photo of my bike at the top of this post for my friends outside of Karlsruhe, another city i have visited which i know the latitude of.

As i stood staring at it, i couldn't help but notice that there was a man hanging from a harness in the middle of the artwork.  He said he was the artist who created it, and he was cleaning it "because it was not intended to be outside".  He looked down at us and said, slyly, "Have you figured it out yet?"

Not willing to bite his hook, i just shrugged and told him i really liked it.

He told me the hidden secret was that they were all cities on the same longitude or latitude as Seattle.  I quickly asked him why Innsbruck was not there, since when i was in downtown Innsbruck in 1999 i noticed a monument with the latitude on it: 47.2°, which is Seattle's south suburbs (the location of the airport) -- you don't really get any closer than that.

But curiously he said, "no, Innsbruck is way too far south".

There were a lot of cities i recognized. I noticed that Budapest was not there. But Karlsruhe was.  I didn't say anything else, but i know that Karlsruhe is not on 47, nor is Brno, Regensburg, Wissembourg, Metz or Rouen.  It was kind of uncomfortable, especially for someone who suffers from perfectionism as badly as i do.  I was embarrassed for him!

Well, we took a bunch of photos of the artwork and pedaled off and had a great bike ride.  But when i got home, i couldn't stop the data geek in me -- i did some research and crunched some numbers.   First i took the latitude and longitude of every city on the sail and entered them into a spreadsheet.

The stated idea of the artwork is that the sail contains the names of cities either on the same latitude line or longitude line as Seattle.  There are not many cities in the world on 127 degrees West longitude.  Sacramento is, but south of there it's all open ocean, and a couple of small towns in northern Canada.  Those are on the sail. But my concern was with the latitude cities -- so i graphed only those cities.

As usual, a graph helps us process the data in a meaningful way; it allows us to visualize patterns we might not notice in just a list of numbers.  When looking at this graph, it becomes immediately clear that a couple of the American cities are on Seattle's 47.4 degrees North latitude (and a couple of the Asian cities get close to it). But then they start to trend northwards and then there are a bunch of European and Asian cities which are all clustered on 49° N!

So next i put Seattle (green circle) and Vancouver BC (blue triangle) on the graph.  I also put a dotted line of Seattle's metro area from north of Everett.to Olympia.   And i found a bunch of European & Asian cities that actually are on the same latitude as Seattle, about 47.4° N, i graphed those with a dark red dash.

The trend is very clear here.  Although the cities on the sail trend far north of Seattle, there are plenty of options of cities that do match Seattle's latitude.  Ulaan Baatar, Orléans, Zaporizhzhya, Gyor, Rosenheim, Novoselovo, Vama, Basel, Volgodonsk, Budapest, Starodubskoye, Zurich, Qiqihar, Innsbruck, Rostov on Don and Nantes to name but a few.  It's not for a lack of cities at 47.4 that they are missing from the artwork.

This graph showed me what really happened. The calculation for determining the cities in the artwork used the latitude of Vancouver BC (49.3° N), instead of Seattle's latitude!  He missed by well over a hundred miles.  The artist made an error which got literally chiseled into stone!

I imagine he just punched in 49 instead of 47 when he was searching for cities.  Easy error.  Terrifying to a perfectionist, but not really that big a deal. 

(It did occur to me that that perhaps the artwork was originally planned to be in Vancouver, but at the last minute it went to Seattle instead so he just changed 2 or 3 panels.  The "not supposed to be outdoors" comment suggests that there was a change in plans, but the tribes would also change And when he spoke to me he was really quite emphatic;  he seemed to believe it was accurate.  And he told me Innsbruck was too far south.  It's not, it's almost as exact as is possible.

The problem isn't that i can't see past the error to see the beauty -- i can, i quite enjoy it; i'm very glad it's there.  I'm capable of holding two ideas at the same time. I thrill at the beauty of the art and marvel at the accomplishment of creating it while being frustratingly aware of the error.  Too aware, i admit. The whole thing made me think a lot about my perfectionism.

One of the big problems with perfectionism is fear.  Fear that prevents accomplishment. This guy jumped in and made something amazing.  Yes, he made an error and that error is permanent.  But he didn't let worry stop him.  He avoided the Brain Crack of perfectionism.  And he created something great.

On the way home i managed to get a good photo of both of us reflected in this wonderful artwork.