Houston Traffic

Presented by Andy Paultanis on August 1, 2013
Advanced Communication Series: Humorously Speaking

Project 4: Keep Them Laughing 

Time: Five to Seven Minutes

 

Houston…we have a problem.  It’s the auto traffic.  Houston is in the top five of the worst cities in the United States to drive in.
 

I am from Michigan so Houston traffic is a cultural shock.  I really don’t understand traffic road design in Houston.

For example, I going to go out on a limb and predict the population around Katy will greatly expand within the next five years to ten years.  Why is new Highway 99 only two lanes? Why not three? Why not four?

I believe the new bridge at I-10 and Highway 99, will be inadequate to handle the huge future traffic flow.  I tell my kids, this intersection will become known as the Malfunction Junction.

Houston suffers from arteriosclerosis roaditis, the clogging of roads.  Where I lived we had higher population density than Katy but half the traffic congestion.  There is no fluid traffic flow or few road alternatives in Houston.

Did you ever heard of bridges to nowhere, how about roads to nowhere.  There are few roads in Houston that go really anywhere for any distance.  Just look my home area.  West Little York dead ends, Keith Harlow dead ends, Clay Road dead ends, Morton Road dead ends, Barker Cypress dead ends, Greenhouse dead ends, West Green dead ends, Fry Road dead ends. Kingsland dead ends.  It seems the majority of  roads go for a short distance only to dead end into a Venus flytrap of humanity, the Houston subdivision.

 

People have been known to drive into a Houston subdivison, never to to be seen again. 

There’s no going around the block in Houston.  Either you know where you’re going or you don’t.  If a road doesn’t dead end it changes direction.  On some Houston roads, you can travel for eighty three miles and end exactly where you started. Consider the Beltway 8 Loop.  It seems we drive in circles in Houston.

 

There is only one viable road from Katy to downtown, I-10.  No wonder it’s clogged and congested all the time.

One of the biggest issues with Houston traffic are the Yes, No, Maybe, I don’t know, left turn lanes.  In Michigan, when a person is in the left turn lane, there is a 99.999% chance they will turn left.  In Houston, there is a 95% chance they will turn left.  I’ve constantly see drivers veer right at the last second crossing two or three lanes to do a right turn.  A few days ago someone cut me off, without signaling or looking, veering right out of a left turn lane.

In Livonia, most left turn lanes also serve as fire lanes.  An emergency vehicle in Livonia could drive a hundred miles an hour down a fire lane because we don’t plant trees in middle of the left turn zones. The boulevards are beautiful but they result in very short left turn lanes which clog rush hour traffic. The boulevards are a public safety hazard.  

Not too long ago, on West Little York,  I watched as an ambulance could  not go with the flow of traffic so he climbed the curb, drove down the middle boulevard, then stopped at the trees. Then he drove off the boulevard into flow of on-coming traffic because it there was much less traffic than the direction he intended to follow.  It was like watching a Hollywood action movie.

The irony of Houston is that there are great medical centers here but don't have an emergency during rush hours.  If the disease doesn’t kill you, the traffic will.

When I first moved to Houston three years ago, I was amazed there were almost no adult traffic signals. An adult traffic signal is where you have the option to turn left on a flashing red turn arrow. You make an adult decision, if traffic is clear then you can make a safe turn.  After seeing how people drive in Houston, I understand why there are no adult traffic signals.  I’ve been driving for over forty years and I’ve never seen driving as in Houston anywhere in the United States

 

Another reason for traffic congestions is that people in Houston are the slowest drivers in the United States that I’ve seen.  I can’t believe how slow people drive in Houston.

Maybe one reason why people drive so slow is that Houston is home to a diverse population of many people who have immigrated, legally or illegally, or come from other planets to the city.  Sometimes I think that there are Klingons driving in front me they are so slow.  I’m no different in a strange city, I drive slow and cautious.  Maybe it’s the southern culture of taking life slow and easy. 

"What… [I receive a cell phone call].  I am in the middle of a speech, this better be very important. This is so embarrassing. It’s one of my  sons. You’re only to call me if it’s an emergency.  Got it.  Six plain chicken sandwiches, no pickle, no butter and two eight piece chicken nuggets, two large waffle fries, a large Coke and Sprite."

"Oh, I’m in the middle of a Toastmaster speech. They don’t care because they know I am multi-tasking.  I can talk on the phone and give a speech at the same time just as I can drive and text at the same time. It’s not like I am going to kill anybody in Toastmasters if I become too distracted."

One of the first times I saw someone on a cell phone multitasking was in the 1990s when a woman went multi-tasking through a red light then t-boned another car.  Had the other car had a passenger, that passenger would have been killed instantly. It only takes a second to make a fatal mistake.

Probably the biggest reason there is so much traffic congestion is that too many people are using electronic devices who don't devote their full attention to driving.  People who drive the speed limit or below the speed limit scare me.  The vast majority are talking or texting who just happen to be driving. They may be driving slow but they aren’t driving safely.   

 

Talking and texting to me is no different than as alcoholic consumption. Some people handle it better than others but in the interest of public safety we ban and discriminate against drinking and driving.  I am as guilty as the next person. 

I believe if we banned electronic devices, traffic flow in Houston would improve 25%. 

 

This is no joke, please drive safely and minimize your use of electronic devices. It takes only a second of being distracted to destroy your life.

Tale of the Big Bang

 
Presented by Andy Paultanis on June 6, 2013
Advanced Communication Series: Storytelling
Project 1: The Folk Tale
Time: Seven to Nine Minutes

 

Bam….[Andy gets to slam unto a table top the “Cosmos” picture book by Carl Sagan to get everyone’s attention.].

The earth was created….According to the 17^th Century  Bishop James Ussher in the year 4004, BC, October 23rd,  at exactly 9 a.m.

Almost every human culture has their “tale” on the creation of the universe.

I think most people in this room believe in the  “The hypothesis of the primeval atom.”  Most people know it as the “Big Bang Theory.” 

The Big Bang Theory is one of the best known scientific theories of our time.  Just to do a survey, how many people here know the name of the scientist who is the  father of The Big Bang Theory?

If you don’t know, don’t feel bad.  You’re not supposed to know.  When he created the second most watched PBS Series of all time, Cosmos, in the 1980’s, Carl Sagan was extremely careful not to talk about the father of the Big Bang.

His name was George Lemaitre who as a young man served with the Allies in the Belgian army as an artillery officer in World War I.  He was awarded the equivalent medal to the United States Silver Star for bravery.

After the war, Lemaitre earned a doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Louvain in Belgium.  He went on to graduate study in astronomy at Cambridge University in England.  After Cambridge, he spent a year of study at the Harvard College Observatory. In 1927 he earned a PhD in Physics from MIT.  

George Lemaitre was also a Roman Catholic Priest. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century,  actually beginning with Aristotle, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein all believed the universe was stable and an eternal universe.  Einstein used a “cosmological constant” to plug his various equations to maintain an eternal view of the universe.      

Lemaitre was intrigued with Einstein’s theories.  The first thing Lemaitre did was to toss out Einstein’s cosmological constant. Then he worked Einstein’s equations backwards.  In 1927, Lemaitre was the first person to publish a paper asserting  the universe was expanding. Lemaitre calculated the rate of expansion of the universe from observations of faint nebulae. This calculation today is known as Hubble’s Law?

 

Einstein didn’t believe the universe could expand and Einstein was not happy with Lemaitre.  In late 1927 when Einstein met Lemaitre at a scientific conference, he told Lemaitre to his face, “Your mathematical computations are correct but your physics is atrocious.”   

In 1929, Edmund Hubble published a paper identical to Lemaitre with additional observational evidence of new galaxies in an expanding universe.

In the early 1930’s,  Lemaitre learned Einstein was going to visit Edmund Hubble and flew to California. According to Stephen Hawking, it was in this meeting of these three great minds, Einstein, Hubble and Lemaitre,  modern Cosmology was born. 

 

Personally, I believe Hubble and Lemaitre slapped Einstein around, knocked some sense into the man, who came out of the meeting convinced the universe was expanding.  Einstein admitted his use of the cosmological constant was “the greatest blunder of his career.”

In 1931, Lemaitre published his paper on the “Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom”. Lemaitre calculated the universe began from a very tiny point where time, space and matter was created.  An event so violent  it would echo background microwave radiation throughout the universe.  As with Albert Einstein, it took a great deal of courage to challenge the existing scientific establishment.

Because Lemaitre was a Roman Catholic priest, many people thought he was trying to prove the story of biblical creation.  Not true.  Lemaitre was an accomplished scientist who had a firewall between his scientific beliefs and his religious beliefs.  Lemaitre became very upset with the Catholic Pope who wanted to use his theory as proof of biblical creation.    

In 1949, Fred Hoyle, a brilliant British scientist was so upset with this obscure theory, went on BBC Radio to argue with the general public against it. Hoyle coined the phrase the “Big Bang Theory.”

When I hear the phrase, “Big Bang Theory”, I hear little children taunting  naa, naa, naa big bang theory. Ha..Ha..Ha!

The term Big Bang was intended to be a put-down and an insult. Fred Hoyle was mocking and tying to make fun of Lemaitre.

In 1964, two radio astronomers by the name of Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson  accidentally and I mean accidentally, because they were never taught as students about the Big Bang, discovered the background microwave radiation of the Big Bang.  This was the smoking gun proving the theory. 

They were given use of a radio telescope just outside New York City and as they were trying to calibrate it, kept hearing a buzzing noise no matter where they pointed the feed horn of the telescope.  They reached a point where they thought the noise was from pigeon droppings on the feed horn.

 

Being nice guys, they trapped the pigeons and set they free a hundred miles away. Soon, the pigeons were back, they were homing pigeons.  In the early 1960’s they did what many American men would do, they took out shotguns and solved the pigeon problem.  It didn’t solve the buzzing noise.

They eventually realized they had discovered the echo of the Big Bang.  They should have won a Noble Prize for cleaning pigeon droppings but instead in 1978 won the Noble Prize in Astronomy. 

Everyone in this room has heard the echo of the Big Bang.  If you ever tuned a radio or television and heard some static, one percent of that noise is from the Big Bang echo.  

In 1966, as George Lemaitre lay dying is a hospital, they told him, “George, they found the background radiation  of the Big Bang.  Your hypothesis of the Primeval Atom is now irrefutable scientific fact."

A few days later George Lemaitre died

[Special Thanks to Jim Harrington for video taping this speech.]