Point Break

Cast and extras (teens living with cancer),
 and author, from the set of TFIOS

Break.  To swerve suddenly.  Sometimes hitting the brakes is a good thing.  It is the big thing not done badly.  It means that something does not separate into parts with suddenness or violence.  It can be all about reason properly beating adrenaline back into its corner.  Hitting the brakes, to soon, to hard can also be a sign of timidity, inertia; it is life lost in the panic. In the accolade winning nerdfighter novel 'The Fault in Our Stars' the young amputee Augustus has not re-learned how to brake and/or accelerate with his prosthetic right foot.  As the novel's heroine says: "his driving was so astonishingly poor that I could think of nothing else".  The ability to use the brakes properly may be the true test of driving ability, whether the brakes are made of steel and rubber or the soles of your feet.  We strive to teach stop buttons and brake usage (and for some brake un-use) in the young people we serve.  Brakes really matter, but what does data about braking really tell us?   Beep.

Break.  To cause to discontinue a habit. When I moved I had to get a new insurance policy.  The friendly agent on the phone offered me a possible future discount if I signed up for the 'Snapshot' program.  Perhaps you have seen the saccharine commercials for the little silver half capsule: you plug this into the computer port on your car and it tracks your driving.  The friendly agent told me that it would beep when the car starts up, and when you apply the brakes strongly.  What it is most keeping track of is the ratio of driving to hard brake moments.  I have to wonder, how is this new metric arrived at?  Applying the brakes can be caused by a multitude of occasions. Children chasing a ball.  Lost college freshman.  Poor road sign visibility.  Inebriated wine consumers unable to navigate a crosswalk.  Ducks, turkeys, cows, horses, squirrels and/or dogs in the road.  Beep.

Break.  To make tractable or submissive.  Insurance liability is certainly influenced by a multitude of factors that have nothing to do with the driver, with her skill or experience.  The ability of the drivers in her neighborhood, and certainly the general traffic goings on are important information to have if you are an insurance company.  These factors may not officially influence rates, but I can see how they could. What officially influences car insurance rates more closely resemble census statistics.  Age and education, gender and marital status.  Could this new information be adding to the matrix of rates?  Could the new albatross be the fact that I live in a semi-rural town with its interesting in town fauna, that I live in the midst of college students on foot and bicycle, and that this same hometown is sprinkled liberally with winery tourists?  Will this data increase the rates for everyone in my neighborhood because the tempestuous nature of driving in this shire has been revealed?  There is something nefarious lurking in this 'snapshot.'  Yet it may be something beyond the notion that this data may not be helpful or thrifty at all.  Is the boggart that my driving has become attentive to avoiding that hard brake beep?

Break. To achieve success in a striking way.   I know the device is there, and I do not want to hear it beep.   I can see how this could lead to safer driving. Yet I notice myself making more 'california stops' to avoid any hint of a hard brake beep, which isn't really safer at all.   It also reminds me of the BBC miniseries 'The Last Enemy.'  Set in a near-future Britain where every moment of every life is monitored in the name of freedom from terrorism.  Recently returned from abroad the reclusive Dr. Ezard (played by the Cumberbatch man himself) is late for a funeral.  He asks the taxi driver to speed up.  The driver says he cannot, because of 'monitored speed'.  Beep.  I find myself feeling more monitored than thrifty.  Have I been led down the primrose path?  Not in the name of safety, but in the name of saving pennies?  When it comes to the arguments about technology and surveillance I generally depart from many of my closest political allies with the selfish sentiment that 'I have nothing to hide.' A privileged woman of devotion and morality can say that more easily than many others.  Where is the forgiveness in this monitoring?  Where is the freewill?  That series was really frightening, and a little to close to home to be easily forgotten.  What are we willing to give up in the name of safety and savings? If he is for us then we are to be for all people, not just those with our blessings.  Is the albatross here plural?  Is it not only data but monitoring?

I was thinking about the word handle, and all the unholdable things that get handled. -Hazel (TfiOS)