What's wrong with Heroes

WARNING: SPOILER!! Stop reading here if you're not current on Heroes!

I know the world really doesn't need another blog post analyzing what's up on Heroes, but I'm in a ranting mood. I'm kind of a sci-fi geek (I've been to the Star Trek exhibit at the Arizona Science Center), so I'll probably keep watching Heroes regardless, but I gotta admit, they've gone astray.

Heroes was supposed to be about the characters. It started off promising to look at what happens to ordinary people who have discovered they had extraordinary abilities. This laid a good foundation for a character-driven show which mostly focuses on the characters internal struggles and interpersonal relationships. Somewhere along the way, the writers got way to fascinated with the sci-fi geekery of hero abilities. They forgot that the characters matter and that they need to be consistent and believable.

The bottom line: Heroes needs to quit being written by sci-fi and comic book fanboys, and needs to be written by the staff from Lost.

Valley growth pattern screws us

I was reading this article in The Arizona Republic about how the Valley's standard growth pattern helped push the state into recession. Basically, the pattern was for builders to whip up a shiny new neighborhood on the edge of the Valley, sell the homes cheap and then let retail and schools follow the new homeowners as they moved in and filled up the development.

Apparently no one noticed that this was not even remotely sustainable, and the article does a good job of filling in the details of the mess which has followed the collapse of the housing market. I can't imagine that this comes as a surprise to anyone involved. It's like home buyers and builders were all playing a game of chicken with the economy. Everyone knew that when the growth stopped, developments which weren't complete would be screwed. But, when you bought your new house for a good price way out on the edge of the Valley, you figured it wouldn't happen to you. Your neighborhood would fill up, all of the retail outlets would be built, all of the roads would be widened and the guy who bought the house a few miles further out might get f*$%ed, but you'd be fine.

The cities seemed to be thinking the same thing. They hoped all of the land they had sitting around would get built up and provide a nice tax base for them before all of the fun stopped. Then it would be the next further out city that would be left holding the bag. This seemed to work out well for cities like Chandler and Gilbert on the east side and Avondale and Goodyear on the west. But, take a look at Queen Creek, Maricopa, Buckeye and Tonopah.

So lots of people and cities are screwed. I think it is obvious that the low density sprawl we have now is not good. People on the Valley's edge are stuck in half-finished neighborhoods whose buildout has completely stalled, commutes suck and public transit is very difficult to implement in such low density areas, even if there was public money to do so.

Now what do we do about all this? That's a really good question and I certainly don't have any magic answers. I think higher density but responsible growth is a good goal to strive for in the future, but that doesn't help a lot of homeowners now.

So is Phoenix's glory days of growth over? Are we going to soon languish into the place that people move away from, instead of to? I really hope not, but we need some intelligent local leadership to start figuring this out.

A new definition of prosperity?

I was listening to this story on NPR's Morning Edition about author Matt Miller and his new book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas. His basic premise is that there are six social, political and economic paradigms which are outdated and need to be changed in America. His first dead idea is summed up as "Our children will earn more than we do" and this got me thinking. In particular, I started thinking about how we measure success and prosperity.

Everyone wants their children to have a "better" life than they do. This is largely driven by the American dream of being able to make your life whatever you want through determination and hard work, regardless of where you start. But, in our consumer-driven society, "better" has often been interpreted as meaning "having more material possessions" in the form of money, home and personal items (flat-panel TV, Blu-Ray, iPhone, SUV, etc).

Miller's problem with this idea, which I think is becoming ever more obvious, is that today's kids will NOT make more money and be able to buy as much stuff as Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. But does that mean that the next generation won't have a better life than today's adults? Yes, unless we rethink our what better means.

At this point, many Americans want for nothing. Granted, many people still want for some things (flat-panel TV, Blu-Ray, iPhone, SUV, etc), but are these things really necessary for life? Also, many Americans are still living with few possessions, small paychecks and no health insurance, but by and large, Americans have every basic need met with virtually no effort.

Food is so easy to come by that we've turned the basic equation upside down. Meat and other foods which are expensive and resource-intensive are now the cheapest way to eat (McDonald's $1 menu, anyone?) and things like decent vegetables are expensive. Up until last year, anyone who wanted to a house could easily buy one and have a roof over their heads with heating, air conditioning, clean water, indoor plumbing, etc.

Even things which were once considered luxury items are now nearly staples in every house...big SUV's with GPS systems, entertainment systems with surroud sound and cell phones that keep us connected to everything, all the time. In order for today's kids to grow up and have more stuff than we do now, they'd all have to live like Donald Trump. I'm no economist, but I'm pretty sure that would be impossible, even if America remained far and away the largest economic powerhouse on the planet.

So, if the growth of personal wealth and possessions has stopped, or at least will be taking a long vacation, does that mean that the next generation is doomed to a worse life than we've enjoyed? Not if we use something else as the measurement of what is "better."

I suggest we consider the quality and richness of one's relationships and one's satisfaction with life as the new yardstick. We could spend less time trying to make lots of money and buying lots of stuff, and instead spend time building personal relationships. We can spend time doing things that cost less and count more.

OK, I know that this sounds like idealistic crap, but I think that we would move in this direction, even if we don't entirely get there. The huge growth of social networking points to an evolution in the way interpersonal relationships are built and maintained. Not all online relationships are deep and meaningful, but sites like Facebook certainly make it much easier to form and nurture relationships which may become meaningful offline friendships.

This is starting to sound like the concept of Whuffie from the novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. We probably won't get to that point, but I think it might be good to measure ourselves in terms of who we are, instead of what we have.

Sully is to Obama as apples are to oranges

I was reading this article at Politico which compared US Airways flight 1549 to the current economic crisis. In particular, it attempted to extract some lessons from Capt. Sullenberger's handling of the situation and suggest actions Obama should take to deal with the economy. Does this strike anyone as ridiculous? Because it sure does to me.

A jet airliner with no thrust at 3,200 feet in the sky is WAY different than the economy and the president's ability to affect anything is not even close to the direct control a pilot has over his plane. In fact, I'm fairly certain that our government is constructed in the manner it is precisely to avoid having one person with that much power.

I say, nice attempt at trying to capitalize on the flight 1549 hype, but it just doesn't work.