Los Angeles in a Ford Escort

Don’t be misled by my green-ish reflections on garbage. The truth is that being in California has not helped my own relationship with the planet. There were two incidents this week of which I guess I should be ashamed.

The first was with my Rent A Wreck car. I realise that I have become Californian in one sense at least: I cant envisage getting anywhere (even to shop a few blocks away) except behind the wheel. So when the Wreck wouldn’t start when I left for work the other morning, all I could think to do was to call up and get an immediate replacement. I mean, how could I live without a car?

Actually, there had been a starting problem for some weeks, but Dave at Rent A Wreck had been up-beat in his suggestion that turning the key a bit more often should do the trick (typical advice of a man to a woman with a starting problem I later decided…would he ever have said that to a bloke?). But on Wednesday I decided that half an hour of turning the key was long enough and rang for help.

The man was here within minutes, and happily couldn’t start it either (I was relieved to discover, because that’s always the humiliating bit – like when the Computer Officer answers your SOS, rushes downstairs and just switches the machine on at the mains). So now instead of an aged baby blue Toyota Corolla, I’m cruising round in a very slightly less aged brown Ford Escort (both of them red cadillacs in my head of course).

The second piece of environmental violence was a bit more surprising.

I needed to get a CD from Brussels, fast. It had burnt onto it the details of 60 research grant applications that I am to evaluate by today…and I wanted a good week at it, to do anything like a fair job. So the lady in Brussels said she would DHL it.

I have to say at the outset that DHL was truly wonderful. Not only did they get it to me pretty quickly, but they also have a website with a clever tracking device, so that you can see how far along the route from Brussels to Los Angeles your treasured package has got.

This is where the surprise came in. I naively supposed that if you were sending something from Brussels to LA, then it would go to Brussels airport and fly to LAX (probably in the hold of some passenger jumbo. . . ). I couldn’t have been more wrong. It did go to Brussels airport, but -- far from speeding across the Atlantic -- it made straight for the East Midlands airport near Derby. At this point (so my tracking log records) it had a seven hour wait in “the Facility”, presumably because it wasn’t actually on the “overnight super-fast service”, so it had to lose time somewhere. Then it did make its move to America, but not to California. It touched down in Wilmington, Ohio – before three hours later taking off again, at last, for Burbank CA (I think it should have gone to Santa Monica airport, but I had mis-typed the zipcode, so they routed it to Burbank) . . . and then on, in a van, to me.

Of course, I was hugely pleased to see it. But if this is the way all couriered packages make their way around the world, then they each must have the carbon footprint of an ox.

I’m now going to try sending one to Australia and see how that wends its way.

Comments

[Escort]

Nice one!

[Dave]

I agree with the above post that trading a toyata for a ford is definatly a step backwards. Here Toyota is king and ford...well we all know about them!

[Tony Francis]

There is a nice website at "Travelling Salesman Problem". Apparently, there is still no solution to this problem. I was wrong: once the number of "places to visit" gets over 3000, even computers don't deal with it very well. It has applications in DNA sequencing, satellite imaging of stars, sequences in semi-conductors, routing of phone calls and electronic grids, among others. The problem was initially investigated by Sir Hamilton. He invented the "Hamiltonian Operator" which is used in Hilbert Space for quantum mechanics. Hamilton invented "quaternions" which he thought would solve the quantum problem. They didn't. So, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, et al switched to Hamiltonian linear operators, since the math was all worked out, not because it was an inherently good mathematical system. Quarternions still have some uses. This problem is closely related to the P = NP problem in computer science. It is a kind of first cousin to the n- body problem, previously mentioned. NOTE: If you can solve the travelling salesman problem, or the P = NP problem, you can win $1,000,000, so the website alleged.

[Tony Francis]

AJ's comment reminded me of something I read in "Scientific American" back in the 1960's or 1970's. It concerned the "travelling salesman" problem. If a travelling salesman had 10 destinations to go to, in any order, there was no good way to figure out what the shortest route would be. It proved quite difiicult to come up with an algorithm which would work. Now with computers, they can solve this with "brute force", just figuring all the possible routes in sequence. One can't imagine all the things that get sent by DHL, UPS, Fed Ex, etc. It is whole plane loads, everyday.

[AJ]

Fedex and the like have highly optimized networks and many mathematicians constantly tuning said networks.Briefly, the travel of a package from one node to another may not individually be the most optimal ( as your example states); but the network is designed for all combinations and overall is the most efficient. You can bet that Fedex is not spending a cent more than it has to on fuel and so on.

[Robert]

Trading a Toyota for a Ford might be progress in the UK (where the Ford Fiesta, for example, seems to be a kind of perpetual motion machine) but over here, our Fords are notoriously poorly made. Hopefully your Wreck is an exception. But consider yourself warned - you may be walking yet.

[anthony alcock]

Have the contents of the CD emailed next time.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

About the zip code (obviously, post code in England): if you give the correct zip code but neglect to put down the name of your town the letter or package will probably still reach you directly. But the wrong code may well result in delayed delivery, as in your case. Scanning machines are at work.

[Max]

If everything from any point X to any point Y was flown directly, the total carbon footprint would be far worse ...

[emanuel appel]

a letter from LA

Dear Mary,

I'm here temporarily in LA from San Francisco for the next 60 days.

I can strut because I'm Greener than thou. I'm using a Metro bus pass to get around and find the process a great excercise in map reading.

You are what you drive.

To get the ultimate respect around here, you drive a Bentley convertible with the steering wheel on the wrong side ( the right ) or a restored car from the late 1950's.

[Irene Hahn]

These things are called "hubs."

I've been told that if you have a FedEx package mailed, say from New York City to Stamford, Connecticut, it goes there via Memphis, Tennessee . . .

I have to say though that I did get a package the other day from Princeton (about 3 hours away on the road) within 24 hours, whichever way it was shipped.

[Resolute Reader]

I know this is a geeky response.... but couldn't you have got someone to take a image of the file, and send it to you over the internet.... zero carbon footprint, near instantaneous travel.