Eric Bergen

Referring to a shell command that uses awk in a creative way. As in, “That shell command was awksome!”.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about. Wikipedia can fill you in on the power of awk.

During my life I have seen the level of fear in our society rise almost out of control. We have really lost the ability to assess risk. I’m going to attempt to realign the fears in our society back on a logical course. One of the many things that I think we should be afraid of that we currently aren’t is cellphones.

Sure people are worried about cellphones causing cancer. For the most part this doesn’t cause much stir because it’s out of sight out of mind (except the cancer in your brain). I’m not worried about my cellphone or the cancer it may be causing. I’m not worried about my cellphone at all. I’m worried about other people’s cellphones and when they use them.

I’ve been commuting in the bay area for a little over 2 years now. Part of that time my commute was about 5 miles of highway and the rest was about 20 miles of highway. It wasn’t a long commute but it was long enough for me to gather enough data to prove a point.

Most people cannot drive and talk on the phone at the same time. Every time I say this someone pipes up and says “I drive just fine while on my phone!”. Fine then, you aren’t in the ‘most’. Even though I bet at least half of the people that say they drive just fine really don’t they just think they do because they’re paying too much attention to their phone to realize they’re running people off the road.

These days parents are paranoid about their kids safety when riding bikes. Kids ride around these days wearing more padding and armor than our soldiers in WWII. Yet parents are perfectly ok with inattentive driving caused by talking on a cellphone. They happily yak away while driving putting their kids lives at risk. What’s worse parents, your kid hitting a fire hydrant at 4mph with no pads or you slamming into a semi at 80 because you couldn’t hang up the phone?

Nine out of ten times when I see someone swerving or looking like they are having difficulty driving and I pass them it’s because they’re on the phone. We have been paranoid about drunk driving and click-it or ticket for years. Let’s get some legislation out there for cell phones. It should work like this. The first time you get pulled over for inattentive driving from being on a cellphone the cop takes away your phone. You get it mailed back to you a few days later. The second time you get caught you get your phone taken away until you get a special device installed in your car. That device would require that you plug your phone into it in order to operate your car and your phone won’t be operable while in the device.

We managed to function as a society for years without the need for phones while driving. Most people that have phones can wait 20 minutes to return a call instead of answering it while driving. If you can’t then you should really take a look at your life. Your phone owns you.

[Update: 10/15/07 I forgot to add that when commuting to work a few months ago a guy in front of me ran into a construction road cone which flipped it up into the air causing me and the car behind me to swerve. The guy was swerving really bad so I passed him as soon as I could. What was he doing? Looking down at a cellphone texting people. Yes, texting in a construction zone. That guy should have his phone taken away]