Llewellyn King: Be scared of whom you kiss, and other big changes in 2017

"The Mistletoe Seller,'' by Adrien Barrère

Some years are indelibly etched into history, like 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; 1964, with the Civil Rights Act; and 1968, with the anti-war demonstrations.

Such a year may be 2017, not only because of Donald Trump’s presidency but also because of revolutionary changes in the way we live and work that aren’t directly produced or ratified by politics.

Here are some of the takeaways:

The uprising of women against men in power who have harassed them, assaulted them and sometimes raped them. Nothing quite like this has happened since women got the vote. The victims have already wrought massive changes in cinema, journalism and Congress: Great men have fallen, and fallen hard. Can the titans of Wall Street and the ogres of the C-Suite be far behind?

This Christmas, more people will buy online than ever before. Delivery systems will be stretched, from the U.S. Postal Service to FedEx, which is why Amazon and others are looking at new ways of getting stuff to you. There will be bottlenecks: Goods don’t come by wire, yet. The old way is not geared for the new.

The sedan car — the basic automobile that has been with us since an engine was bolted in a carriage — is in retreat. Incredibly, the great top-end manufacturers, from Porsche to Rolls Royce and even Lamborghini, are offering SUVs. They win for rugged feel, headroom and, with all-wheel drive, they’ll plow through snow and mud. In the West, luxury pickups are claiming more drivers every year for the same reasons.

No longer are electric vehicles going to be for the gung-ho few environmentalists. Even as the big automakers are gearing up for more SUV production, they’re tooling up for electrification on a grand scale, although the pace of that is uncertain. Stung by the success of Tesla, the all-electric play, General Motors is hoping to get out in front: It is building on its all-electric Volt. Volvo is going all-electric and others want to hedge the SUV bet. The impediments: the speed of battery development and new user-friendly charging.

The money we have known may not be the money we are going to know going forward. In currency circles, there is revolution going on about a technology called “blockchain.” Its advocates, like Perianne Boring, founder and president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, believe it will usher in a new kind of currency that is safe and transparent. A few are making fortunes out of bitcoin, which has risen 1,000 percent in value this year so far. A fistful of new currencies are offered — and even bankrupt Venezuela is trying to change its luck with cryptocurrency. For those in the know, blockchain is the new gold. Will it glitter?

The proposed merger between CVS, a drugstore chain, and Aetna, an insurance giant, may be one of the few mergers that might really benefit the consumer as well as the stockholders and managers. It will lower drug prices because both the drug retailer and the paymaster will be at the same counter. Expect this new kind of health provider to drive hospital charges toward standardization.

This holiday season, consider the changes in the way you live now. Watch out for whom and how you kiss under the mistletoe, and for how Internet purchases get to you. If a new car is in store for you in 2018, a difficult choice may be to venture electric, go SUV or stay with a sleek sedan. And will you pay for it with the old currency or the new-fangled cryptocurrency?

Happy holidays!

On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King (llewellynking1) is executive producer and host ofWhite House Chronicle,  on PBS.

The Tesla Model 3 first deliveries event took place on July 28, 2017.

William Morgan: A plea for snow tires

 

If we Rhode Islanders are the nation's worst drivers, then it figures that a snowstorm makes matters worse. Given the Little Rhody driver's reputation for aggressiveness, failure to acknowledge such basic guideposts as  traffic lights, stop signs, or courtesy, winter conditions will only greatly magnify the legalized game of chicken that is driving in the Ocean State.

Given the attitude with which Rhode Islanders fling their cars around, it seems unlikely that we might consider serious drivers training, one that would include time on a skid pad. Scandinavian countries, for example, prudently require an extensive road test in snow and on ice.

Even if drivers in such places as Sweden and Finland are better trained to deal with winter, the Nordic countries require all cars to be shod with snow tires. You might think there are a lot of four-wheel-drive vehicles just south of the Arctic Circle, yet Oslo and Stockholm have mostly regular cars, including a lot of rear-wheel-drive ones, that get about fine with snow treads at all four corners.

Snow tires may seem like a quaint relic of the past. But if you look in old photo albums of Christmases past, you may see your parents and grandparents standing by cars with those knobby tires that actually got them places. Or take a look at Yankee Magazine, say, which often features nostalgic photos of New England villages in the snow where the cars don't seem to be spinning wildly out of control or blocking school buses filled with children. (Our forebears also had other advantages, such as standard transmissions, less powerful machines, and perhaps a more realistic understanding of a car's limitations.)

In the past quarter century all-season tires replaced snow tires. These are actually only three-season tires, despite manufacturers' putative claims. The argument was that snow tires were noisy on the highway, and besides, who wanted the inconvenience of swapping tires twice a year—sort of like changing those cumbersome old wooden storm windows. The result has been a dangerously false sense of confidence in year-round tires, which simply do not get you through snow as well as tires specifically designed for the job.

The other problem with modern tires is their width. Look again at those images of Grandfather driving the Ford Woody up College Hill, in Providence, or at cars competing in winter rallies in Canada or the Pyrenees: They  are riding on relatively narrow tires. A fat wide tire may look cool, and it is perfect for peeling out of the Dairy Queen parking lot on a hot summer's night, but it performs poorly in rain, snow, or ice. Like a cross-country ski or an ice skate, a tire needs be skinny and offer as little resistance as possible.

Which brings us to the irony of the all-wheel-drive car or the SUV. Macho looking but fat tires offset the additional traction provided by four-wheel drive. Worse, buyers of SUVs have an over-inflated belief about their vehicles' bad weather driving abilities: Big-soled shoes and the application of far too much horsepower are likely to increase skids and lessen surefootedness.

The modern car may have seat belts, air bags and sophisticated navigational equipment, but the most important safety device is still a good driver. Use the excuse of coming global warming to put off buying snow tires, if you must. Yet there are still a few tips—dare not call them rules        --that might help us get about if more snow comes.

Driving a Range Rover, a Cadillac Escalade, or a Porsche Cayenne may stroke your Indiana Jones fantasies, but it does not make you a better driver.

Setting out in any kind of car without first cleaning all the windows makes you a dumb driver.

Keep your gas tank full. Abandoning your car on the interstate because you forgot to top up is both needless and very dumb.

A light touch on the accelerator is always best. A powerful engine may fuel your testosterone level, but on snow and ice more power means less control.

From a practical point, fewer spinouts and fender-benders may keep winter traffic flowing a bit more smoothly. So, if we cannot put our in-your-face driving manners on hold for the winter, perhaps we can replace the metaphor of the driver as bruising defensive lineman with that of a graceful cross-country skier.

William Morgan is a Providence-based author and architectural historian. A version of this piece appeared in The Providence Journal in January  2008