It’s been a busy week and the chum has accumulated. Here’s a collection of lunchtime reading: articles on your past on the web, relationships and health, what makes a hero, flight data recorders, rude travellers, outrageous banks, using charity labels, ant farms, and changes.
- From the “The Web is an Elephant” Department: The NY Times has an interesting piece on how the web never forgets, and the effect that has on society. In the “old days”, one could escape one’s past: get away from the drunken debauchery of your youth, leaving it all behind to have a new beginning. You can still supposedly do this financially with bankruptcy, but there is no bankruptcy from your Facebook past. Posts we all made when we were young and stupid on Usenet are still out there; and you can be assured that the embarassing drunken photo of you will be tagged on Facebook. You can also be assured your potential employer will find it, and there’s no way to erase it. So how do we deal with this problem? How do we deal with our youthful discretions that we would like to forget, but the web won’t let us. (I’ll note: this is why I’m always careful what I write, and why my posts are public—for I view them as being public eventually anyway).
- From the “Miss Adelaide Was Right” Department: Remember in Guys and Dolls, when Miss Adelaide sang “The average unmarried female / Basically insecure / Due to some long frustration may react / With psychosomatic symptoms / Difficult to endure / Affecting the upper resperatory tract. / In other words, just from waiting around for that plain little band of gold / A person can develop a cold.”. She was right. Researchers have found that being in an insecure relationship can put your health at risk—perhaps not for a cold, but for cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure.
- From the “I Need a Hero” Department: An interesting opinion piece in the LA Times posits the heretical notion that simply being in the armed forces doesn’t make one a hero. This is not saying that we shouldn’t be greatful for the service of our warfighters, but that heroism is more than simply serving your tour of duty. As the article puts it: “A hero is someone who behaves selflessly, usually at considerable personal risk and sacrifice, to comfort or empower others and to make the world a better place.” Calling all warfighters heros simultaneous wipes aside the degrading aspects of warfighting, cheapens the valour of those who actually take heroic actions, and fails to recognize the heroism that occurs off the battlefield. Again, quoting the article: “When we create a legion of heroes in our minds, we blind ourselves to evidence of destructive, sometimes atrocious, behavior. Heroes, after all, don’t commit atrocities. They don’t, for instance, dig bullets out of pregnant women’s bodies in an attempt to cover up deadly mistakes, as the Times of London recently reported may have happened in Gardez, Afghanistan. Such atrocities, so common to war’s brutal chaos, produce cognitive dissonance in the minds of many Americans, who simply can’t imagine their “heroes” killing innocents and then covering up the evidence. How much easier it is to see the acts of violence of our troops as necessary, admirable, even noble.” This article caught my eye due to the highway work I do: we are naming segments of highways after warfighters or police officers or other public servants, and then trying to come up with naming resolutions that capture the “heroism”. If we are going to honor our heros, let’s ensure they truly are heros.
- From the “Strictly On The Record” Department: The NY Times has an interesting article on Air France Flight 447 and the discussion it started on flight data recorders (“black boxes”). This is the flight that crashed over the Atlantic, and no record has ever been found of the flight. In particular, the article asks: why don’t we stream flight data and capture it in real time? ‘tis an interesting question (and one that relates to the satellite world as well). The problem boils down to one of bandwidth, and in particular, the cost of that bandwidth. We have the technology to transmit the data, but not the speed to do it nor the economies of scale that would make this good idea viable.
- From the “Why, Oh Why, Do The Wrong People Travel?” Department: Of course, travelling itself is no longer as fun as it used to be. USA Today has a nice article on how the flying public has gotten increasingly ruder. Quoting from the article: “Long gone are the days when air travel was an elegant experience. Many road warriors say that courtesy, at the airport or on the plane, is becoming about as rare as a free, hot in-flight meal. They grouse that inconsiderate, or downright rude, behavior is more common and that it’s spurred by an increasing discomfort with all aspects of flying, from security rules to bare-bones service, that put travelers on edge.” I would have to agree with this. Civility in society is gone.
- From the “Getting It In The End” Department: The signing of the financial reform act is yet another demonstration that the we can’t trust the financial industry to care about their customers—they care instead about their stockholders and profits. Just like a “whack a mole”: when you knock down fees in one area, they pop up somewhere else. So, as credit card issuers have gotten rid of deadbeat cardholders and reduced penalty fees, they have raised the fees on well-behaved cardholders. To quote the card issuers: “The only true deadbeat customer is someone who has a card and never uses it”. Account fees are good cardholders are rising: annual fees, fees for paper statements, fees for any form of service from the bank. The median annual fee for the 12 largest banks’ cards rose 18% to $59 over the past year. The cost of cash advances and balance transfers also rose to 4%. The cards also have fewer perks. The problem, as I see it, is the “Las Vegas Problem”. Vegas, in the 1950s and 1960s, was successful because they looked at the big picture: cheap rooms and cheap food were offset by the gambling profits. As each portion of the hotel had to cover costs in its area, hotel and food costs rose. Banks are doing the same things. Whereas they use to encourage saving because it gave them assets; whereas they used to encourage stable home loans because it gave them steady income on the assets of savers, now each service needs to make a profit on its own. Be very scared of the banking industry.
- From the “Guilt By Association” Department: An interesting piece in Slate asks the question: Should you feel guilty when you use those return address labels a charity sends you without donating? We all do it. It turns out that the charities don’t mind: it is still publicity for them. It also turns out there’s a hell of a lot of research behind those labels: even the graphics are designed to get you to contribute. Never mind, of course, whether the cause is worthy…
- From the “Pink Panter (that is, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant)” Department: The LA Times has a nice article on “Uncle Miltie’s Ant Farm” and how it is adapting to the modern era. The farm is a scientific game, and in 2009, sales of scientific toys rose 4.6% to $128 million from $101 million in 2008. Many things about the farm are unchanged from the 1950s, such as the procedure for ordering ants: A customer must fill out a coupon, include a check and then mail it. A team at corporate headquarters then opens the mail, processes the check and rekeys that data into a computer. Orders are then sent to the ant fulfillment center. They aren’t changing the farm, but coming up with new toys and streamlining operations: The big crowd pleasers this year are expected to be sound-activated tarantulas and a light saber night light — both new toys.
- From the “Do You Want Change With That?” Department: Lastly, some things change, and some things don’t. Baskin Robbins is retiring five flavors, including French Vanilla. That last one is particularly galling; French Vanilla has been around since 1945. The other flavors going are Caramel Praline Cheesecake, Campfire S’mores, Apple Pie a La Mode and Superfudge Truffle. On the non-changing side, IBM is introducing a new mainframe series. Alas, the System/360 and variants names disappeared a long time ago (after the 390); this is just another Z series. I have fond memories of working on the 360/91 at UCLA.
