frozen yogurt would be good right about now.

i heard this story on npr about how folks are following their gps devices into death valley, getting misguided, wandering about, and in the tragic case of one 8-year-old boy who went camping with his mum, dying. so, i was all set to compose a rant about how we're too dependent on technology and we need to get back in touch with the real world, but the netbook battery was konked so i couldn't do it.

[*crickets*]

anyhoo, this woman and her boy. what the hell is she doing taking a child alone into the wilderness? sure, yes, she could have a boatload of experience, but c'mon, do people with boatloads of experience head into the wilderness armed with only an electronic directional locator? no. no, they do not. they carry a good old fashioned map and compass. not to say your arm won't get trapped under a fallen rock and 27 hours later you'll have amputated it to survive, but still. map and compass. and, flare gun.

we've all been duped by the disneylandification of every hard and real experience. we imagine butterflies and rainbows and happy endings. or, worse than merely imagining, we expect them with sturdy expectation, in the same way we expect the sun to rise each morning. so we do something risky like take an 8-year-old camping in the wilderness, and it doesn't even register as a risk.

this npr story had all these interviews where these dopes would explain how, "it looked like a dirt track or really like nothing was there at all, but the gps said to turn left, so i turned left." C'MON PEOPLE USE YOUR NOGGINS. does the gps have eyes? can it see that 'road' it just pointed you down is less than a tow path? no. no, it cannot. you are the one with the eyes. use them! gather input, process it in your brain, formulate a solution. could it be... the gps is wrong?


the sherriff used his noggin and checked all the maps that the gps's were using and i know you can fill in the punchline here. yes, the maps were woefully outdated. like, gold rush days outdated. that's right, the maps being used to feed into your pretty little modern-day toy were created before the invention of electricity, by some gold-seeking goombah with three teeth and a mule named sally.

each time someone takes one of these 'roads' and the coordinates are flashed back to the satellite, and the gps system validates it. This Is A Road, says gps, and there you all go toddling down it, unwittingly leading each other astray.

so the sherriff took the maps and his expertise and went to tom-tom, and the tom-tom folks fixed their maps. now he is working with google earth and navteq, and if those two companies know what is good for them, they will get on board before someone else dies of idiocy because you don't need a map to find that lawsuit.