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.  

And, the most important item is...

It was unusually cold a few days ago, and a local media source was advising the public about how they should prepare before going out in their cars.  They referred to traditional items like ice scrapers and windshield washer fluid, but I was interested to note their stress on one particular piece of equipment as more important than others: a charged cell phone. This makes a lot of sense, so as to be able to summon emergency assistance. On the other hand, it doesn't say much if your goal is self-sufficiency in an emergency.  I don't think most cell phones would work effectively to clear windshields, though they could be useful to obtain weather forecasts. 

Two years of books

Two years of completed books, 2009-2010. I've been keeping these logs
for some time now, and have often found it interesting to review them to
see what I've read and to recall some of my motivations and reactions.  It's another view on a personal empire of interests, a mix of highbrow, lowbrow, sidebrow, and nobrow, and maybe a challenge case for a "you liked this, so you might also like that" algorithm. I count 48 books over 24 months, but my average consumption rate has a high standard deviation and is probably trending downwards given competition from other media and activities.  Still, finishing a book represents a form of completed commitment and offers a metric to observe.  If any readers here would like to comment about books cited here or to provide "if this, try that" suggestions, please do.

Decline and Fall of the British Empire, Brendon.
The Wrecking Crew, Frank.
Thames, The Biography, Ackroyd. (More mystical in parts than I'd prefer.)
The Forgotten Man, Shlaes.
House of Cards, Cohan. (Bear Stearns crash and history. Good, but
sometimes technically obscure.)
The Man Who Smiles, Mankell. (Good mystery.)
The Media Relations Dept. of Hizbollah Wishes You A Happy Birthday,
MacFarquhar. Engaging and insightful, and one of the more fascinating
titles that I can recall.
Before The Frost, Mankell.
Origins of the Specious, O'Conner.
The Toothpick, Petroski.
The Dogs of Riga, Mankell.
Julie and Julia, Powell.
The Aggressive Conservative Investor, Whitman & Shubik. Some interest,
but also appeared somewhat dated. Deprecates total return investment.
Return of the Dancing Master, Mankell. Very good.
Spoken Here, Abley. Well-done travels among endangered languages.
Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Kindleberger. Classic and authoritative.
The Man who Loved China, Winchester.
The First Tycoon (Vanderbilt), Stiles.
The Devil's Picnic, Grescoe.
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, de Botton. Thoughtful and witty.
The Lost Art of Walking, Nicholson.
Rogues' Gallery (Metropolitan Museum, NYC), Gross. The discussion of later years seemed more focused on society gossip than on the museum itself.
A Splintered History of Wood, Carlsen.
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, Kohnstamm.
The Ground Truth (9/11), Farmer.
An Arctic Voyage, Carter.
The Last of His Kind (Bradford Washburn), Roberts.
Traitor to His Class (FDR), Brands. VG.
The Match King (Kreuger), Partnoy.
The Technical Culture of Ham Radio, Haring. A sociological remainder.
Italian Shoes, Mankell. Sometimes odd, but moving novel.
Inventing Niagara, Strand. Intriguing.
Birds of Concord, Griscom, Fascinating changes over decades. I picked up a
well-annotated copy in a used bookstore some time ago, and this is one
of the few cases where I've appreciated comments added to a book other
than by the author.
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux. Worth savoring.
Panic!, Lewis. Good collection.
Too Big to Fail, Sorkin. Long, informative, and engrossing.
Brush Cat, McEnany.
To Hellholes and Back, Thompson.
The Big Short, Lewis. Riveting and insightful.
The Last Fish Tale, Kurlansky.
Red House, Messer. Engrossing.
Grounded, Stevenson, Fun, short.
Idiot America, Pierce. Good.
Brilliant, Brox. (very good, history of light)
To Rule The Waves, Herman.
Dark Genius of Wall Street (Jay Gould), Renehan.
Enemies of The People, Marton.
At Home, Bryson. (Engaging. More quotable points than maybe I've seen assembled in any one book.)