More Information Than You Desire

As I write this, I'm on a train, a transport mode which I often prefer and use when practical.  It's running on time, which isn't unusual though is hardly universal.  In a prior era, I'd have had a quiet morning, just arriving comfortably ahead of departure.  Now that we're in the web era, though, I'm able to check information about this train ahead of time. And, about other trains that might affect it. And, since I'm able to check, I feel that I should.  And, since I did, I found that trains a couple of hundred miles away on the line had been disrupted earlier.  And, earlier, it wasn't apparent whether or when this would be resolved.  Gasp!  I might not reach my destination as intended.  Time to purchase an alternate itinerary, only partly refundable.  Check again.  Still no web information confirming departure.  Arrive at station.  Normal departure, the agent tells me. Received with welcome surprise but still some skepticism. Board train, cancel alternate itinerary wirelessly.  I'm smoothly on my way just as I would have been if I hadn't checked online, only with more preliminary angst.  Online access sometimes brings more data, and sometimes offers more useful control, but can also lead to innovative goose chases that wouldn't have arisen otherwise.  A mixed blessing.

Do they, now?

I see this AP headline on the NYT and wonder how long it'll be before it's revised:
"NW has Too Much Dam Power, Plans Wind Power Halt".  (At least for now, at this link.)  Yes, it's about hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River, but it's so easy to infer a fourth letter...

Another bird for the blog

A wood duck.  Bright color contrasts can be good for disguise, as long as you select the right places to show them.

Ah, those were the Times...

Having a fascination for obscure history, as demonstrated below, I was delighted to see a Slate article reference leading, in turn, to David Friedman's annotated selection of century-old New York Times magazine articles.  Mooing cows as music?  Growing giants at will?  Incapacity for leisure?  Who knew? 

Radiation in graphic context

Randall Munroe, esteemed keeper of xkcd, has posted an illuminating graphic placing the radiation doses that result from different events and activities (across many orders of magnitude, including banana ingestion and reactor core meltdown) into context.

Strolling by Cogniac Street

I recently read a fascinating account of some little-known history, Stephen Mihm's "A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States" (Harvard University Press, 2007, paperback 2009.)  Before the Civil War, paper money was issued and circulated on behalf of numerous banks, whose quality varied from sound to weak to wholly fictional.  Absent national uniformity and rapid communications, it was very hard to determine whether a particular bill was legitimate or valid, opening up opportunities for many fraudulent activities, whether copying, modifying, or fabricating currency.  (The Cogniac Street of this post's title, e.g., refers to a road across the Canadian border, in a then-remote area of Quebec, on which most inhabitants were alleged to be involved with counterfeiting enterprises.)  In an environment where banks often failed, there wasn't uniform consensus that banks' notes should be respected and accepted, or that a counterfeiter's creation of money was necessarily less valid than a bank officer's action in doing so.

In response to the chaotic situation, a number of subscription "detector" services developed, providing information to be used to detect false bills in reaction to observed counterfeits.  There's an analogy to the lists that were once printed and distributed (are they still?) to list invalid credit card numbers, but many of the detector criteria were more subtle or ambiguous than the presence or absence of a number on a list.  Further, the detectors' quality was itself compromised by conflicts of interest; for example, publishers were sometimes engaged in brokering the redemption of notes from distant banks, so could benefit by lowering the ratings of sound bills in order to obtain them at discounts.  In any case, the detector business depended on continuing uncertainty as to whether a new and unfamiliar bill should be trusted, and sought to reassure its subscribers with periodic updates providing a form of independent validation.  In a sense, it acted as an anti-malware service in the context of early 19th century financial networks.

PS: I see now that Mihm's book is currently #586,833 on the Amazon.com Bestsellers Rank list.  Long live the Long Tail!

On being surveyed

Increasingly, I find merchants (both physical and on-line) and services actively asking to survey me about my reaction to their offerings.  I respect the motivation to tailor and improve what's presented to customers, and appreciate that the data has to come from somewhere, but it sometimes can become irritating and unproductive.  Is it really likely, for example, that I'd be able or enthused to submit a review of something like a printer ink cartridge?  Was it unique, the best one I've ever had the opportunity to use, yielding those special black tones that made my resume stand out from others and opening new doors of personal opportunity?  It seems unlikely, or even that many other purchasers would have much that's special to report about a fairly generic item.  (Disclosure: I haven't checked for purchaser reviews of ink cartridges before writing this.  Maybe there are many.  Maybe even an active forum of ink cartridge connoisseurs.)  Seriously, it's hard to see the motivation and value of soliciting comments on topics where there's unlikely to be much to say.