Thursday, July 28, 2016

True Detective



On this July day of 2016
The future uncertain,
The summer wind
Blows across my apartment
As the mysterious Lera Lynn
Permeates the airwaves
With her melancholy Nashville drawl
Southern voice and strummed guitar
Lend company to a tired soul
At the fag end of a long day.

Lera Lynn, of True Detective fame
Croons - "This is my least favourite life
The one where I'm out of my mind
The one where you're just out of reach,
The one where I stay and you fly."

35 years on this planet,
Perestroika and Glasnost,
I was around when Reagan exclaimed,
"Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down that wall,"
A future of hope, 
Obama - "Yes We Can!"
We walked away from MAD,
Mutually Assured Destruction
Only to have Osama bin Laden,
Declare his war on the west.
I was awake at 2 am
Aged 20, working on an assignment
At the University of Melbourne,
When, precision strikes
On twin towers
Made Islamic terrorism
The defining headline of the decade.

Defying international law,
Invasions were made
Radar-defeating F-117 Nighthawks 
Flew over Baghdad
And destroyed non-existant
Weapons of mass destruction.
Osama is dead,
The Middle East is a mess,
Saudi Mullahs 
Continue to preach
An abhorrent ideology.
Syria burns, Assad lives
The Land of the Free and 
The Home of the Brave
Manhattan skyline of my youth,
Glistening in the dawn of 
That day on September the 11th
Can do nothing right.

On Capitol Hill,
My beloved Obama, 
Defeated, his hair grey,
Lame-ducks his last few months 
As cretin and presidential nominee
Donald J. Trump
Seeks to build up that wall
To insulate and segregate America
From the rest of the world.
On this side of the Atlantic,
Demagogues and Trump's choirboys,
Brexit and ISIS sing his refrain,
"Make America Great Again."
As airports and subways explode,
They appear to fulfill a prophecy foretold
By Samuel P. Huntington
And his thesis,
A Clash of Civilizations.

Meanwhile, I take refuge in fiction;
Flickering on my apartment wall -
Rust Cohle intones in
A scene from the True Detective ..
"Human consciousness
Is a tragic misstep in evolution,"
As he drives across 
The vast Louisiana floodplain.

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Test-driving the Tesla Rocket-Ship

I'm buckled into the rear seat of a sleek black sedan with 3 of my fellow-travellers from the Expat Club as our host presses a virtual button to engage "Ludicrous Mode" on the massive, 17-inch touch screen on the centre console. Ready, he screams over the soundtrack - ACDC's Highway to Hell blasts through the car's entertainment system, also controlled through the ipad-on-the-centre-console. I take a deep breath as the rocket-ship - excuse me - car takes off. Standing still to 100 kmph in a Ferrari-beating 3.2 seconds. My heart has exited my chest cavity, bulletted through the rear of the car, and is lying on the scorched asphalt, still beating. Ludicrous!
Tesla factory in Tilburg, Netherlands
I got a chance this last week, to visit Tesla's only European factory in Tilburg, the Netherlands, and test-drive their P90D, the most powerful car in their S-series line-up. The factory is highly automated - the cars arrive in three pieces from California and move around the factory floor on robotic vehicles. There, the chassis of the car is mated to the battery - a platform of Li-ion cells in a thin, flat package that makes up the car's floor, and the rear-axle, that contains the motor and the gearbox. The 800 kg slab of batteries so low down in the car's centre of gravity gives it superb handling characteristics (no under or over steer through corners), and the absence of an engine block means that the whole front of the car is a crumple zone - making it the safest car ever built. A battery of tests are performed on the car, including driving it at highway speeds in the largest indoor test track in the world.
Tesla model S sedans on the factory floor
As impressive as the factory is, with all its automation, even more impressive is Tesla's Master plan of ridding the world of polluting and green-house-gas-emitting vehicles with internal-combustion engines. Tesla superchargers, capable of giving the car a 400-something km range in 40 minutes (for free) are available throughout North America and Europe and the car's navigation system allows you to plot a route through those two continents so that you're always within spitting distance of a supercharger. Tesla also sells solar panels and a battery pack for home, that allow you to get off the grid completely - and, as Elon likes to joke - survive the next zombie apocalypse. The car I drove was also equipped with an auto-pilot. I took my hands off the wheel as the car steered, braked, accelerated and changed lanes (when asked to, by a gentle press on the indicator stalk) using its computer brain and a combination of radar, sonar and visual sensing. When not on auto-pilot, I was able to pedal-to-the-metal standing still to 130 in a flash, leaving other cars on the road behind till they were mere specks in the rear-view mirror. I know now what it feels like to drive a McLaren F1, and save the world at the same time.
Post heart-attack-inducing test-drive in the Tesla rocket-ship (Model S P90D).
The Model 3, which comes out in 2018, will offer all this for an affordable price of about $35k US. But, I don't think I will be buying, because I buy into Elon's vision of a world with a completely changed model of car-ownership, or lack thereof. Non-polluting, autonomous electric vehicles that no individual will have to own, available round-the-clock, summoned with an app on your phone. Till then, I'm content with my trusty bicycle - pedal power is still the most sustainable mode of transport there is.