Stylized Facts

« January 2002 | Main | March 2002 »

February 22, 2002

crimewatch

Last year, Britain's violent crime rates actually increased by 4.3
percent, even though the cameras continued to proliferate. But CCTV
cameras have a mysterious knack for justifying themselves regardless
of what happens to crime. When crime goes up the cameras get the
credit for detecting it, and when crime goes down, they get the credit
for pring it.

-- Jeffery Rosen

Posted by dc at 10:42 PM | Comments (1)

New phone

A handset can dial your extension automatically when it detects
sudden room sounds — the world's coolest baby monitor. And,
you can program the ringer to ring more or less loudly after hours.

Siemens Gigaset 4215.

Posted by dc at 07:17 PM | Comments (4)

Survey says

Filling out a web-based survey on a single page is good.
Too many surveys have multiple pages and one page in
sequence fails to load, and the whole survey is lost.

I can't be bothered to re-type my comments if lost due to
a web page not loading, or lost when i go back.

Posted by dc at 05:57 PM | Comments (3)

Paramount

Is the Paramount Theatre Oakland, CA's greatest eyesore landmark ?

United obviously thinks so, and they're not alone.

Posted by dc at 01:18 AM | Comments (3)

pathway

Many parking lots offer no obvious path for pedestrians
to get through, so passengers and drivers squeeze betwen the
parked cars. A better design provides for a walking path.

Above is the Livermore, CA ACERail station.

Posted by dc at 01:06 AM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2002

squeak

An interesting history of the smalltalk computer language
and longer paper Alan Kay, "The Early History of Smalltalk"[.PDF].

[Thanks to Marcel Weiher for this pointer.]

Posted by dc at 10:47 PM | Comments (4)

Flooding

The VTA (a transit agency in Santa Clara, CA) builds light rail stations with high platforms, then cuts the platforms to make them more accessible to wheelchairs and wheeled luggage. But when it rains, these cuts are flodded.

Posted by dc at 10:30 PM | Comments (4)

must know 2002

The must know list for 2002:

Web services are based on a series of industry-standard protocols —

XML, SOAP, WDSL and UDDI — for describing, identifying and
communicating data over the Web.

Posted by dc at 01:57 PM | Comments (3)

Ari

Ari Fleischer is a great evasive bore. Fleischer speaks a sort of
imperial court English, in which any question, no matter how specific, is parried with
general assurances that the emperor is keenly aware and deeply
concerned and firmly resolved and infallibly right and the people are
fully supportive and further information should be sought elsewhere.

-- Michael Kinsley.

Posted by dc at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

messy mail

whitespace (a blank line or two) between each of the five matches ?
That would make it so much easier to read.

Generate URLs < 72 char long, eg

http://job.monster.com/u=$userID&j=$jobID

that would be so much nicer.
And plainext mail would be nicer too, but please don't robotically destroy
URLs by converting

http://job.monster.com/u=$userID&j=$jobID
into
[click here]

Zoom in on this:

Posted by dc at 03:22 AM | Comments (18)

SAS

SAS Institute has developed software that it says can sift through
e-mails and other electronic text to discern falsehoods.

"The patterns in people's language change when they are uncertain or lying,"
says Peter Dorrington, business solutions manager at SAS. "We can compare
basic patterns in words and grammatical structures versus benchmarks to detect
likely lies." For instance, over-use of the word "or" and too many adjectives can
be giveaways, according to Aldert Vrij's book, "Detecting Lies and
Deceit."

SAS says its software can also be used to detect inaccuracies in resumes and
job applications.
[Financial Times, 2002 Jan 20; NewsScan Daily, 2002 Jan 21].

Posted by dc at 02:29 AM | Comments (4)

February 20, 2002

Mr. T

Which is the commonest misspelling ?

Search for morgage to find mor t gage [google]

Posted by dc at 01:36 PM | Comments (3)

pay the toll

William Vickrey, the Columbia University professor who solved the problem of traffic jams a half century ago. He proposed that drivers pay more to use popular roads at peak times. Shortly before his death, in 1996, he won the Nobel Prize in economics, and today his theory of road pricing is conventional wisdom among traffic experts. The only problem is convincing politicians and drivers who like to believe there's such a thing as a free bridge. To make Vickrey's idea sound more palatable, today's traffic engineers have changed the term from congestion pricing to value pricing, the idea being that rivers are paying to get something of value. -- JOHN TIERNEY.[NYT]

Posted by dc at 12:53 AM | Comments (3)

February 18, 2002

blockblockblock

657891587586

or

657 891 587 586

Which is easier to read ?

Posted by dc at 08:27 PM | Comments (0)

ORD

It is a long walk from gate C1 to gate B20.
O'Hare needs a hyperspace tunnel peoplemover.

Posted by dc at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

my.omor.com

Personalized web sites should also customize their layout:

Once a user has established an account, remove the
join, sign up, here's how.

Once a user has signed in, change
login to Welcome, dc : logout

Posted by dc at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)

STL, again

Autoworkers for gas guzzlers:

[St. Louis Business Journal].

Posted by dc at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2002

Drive-thru coffee: St. Louis, part 1 of many

From the West County section of the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

SUV drivers, Part 1: SUV drivers are are proud of themselves in middle America.

SUV drivers, part 2: Coffeehouses without community in another city that thought it could be Silicon Valley.

Posted by dc at 05:34 PM | Comments (3)

I can read

Another e-mail I received today:

My prescription was labeled with Avoid prolonged exposure to sunlight.

It was a year -- and several skin rashes -- before I realized that these instructions applied to me, not to the medication.

Posted by dc at 12:22 PM | Comments (2)

e-mail interruptus

From an e-mail I received today:

Sorry, hit [TAB] to start a new paragraph and instead it moved my cursor to the [Send] button in Hotmail and when I hit [SPACE] it friggin sent the message.


Posted by dc at 10:22 AM | Comments (28)

February 12, 2002

Bad hair day

In the end, it was Andy Houston's experience -- both driving and promotional -- that endeared him to Excedrin. When he started looking for a new ride after his McDonald's deal fell apart last July, the Excedrin team had already been looking for a new driver for months. In May, it rented out a North Carolina track and invited nine drivers, all of them from small-time circuits, to audition.
Tony Liberati, the Excedrin team's crew chief, evaluated the drivers as they took a car around the track; then Kristen Helsel looked on as the drivers stood in front of a camera and answered a host of mock media-interview questions. ''We needed to make sure we didn't have somebody who was just absolutely brain dead in front of the camera,'' Liberati says. The results weren't particularly satisfactory. One driver shuffled his feet and looked at the ground; another spoke in a Southern accent so thick he was hard to understand; one driver just had the wrong hair. ''There was no way I could run him anywhere with his hair in different colors,'' Helsel says. So in July when Liberati found out that Houston might be interested in driving for Excedrin in the Busch Series next season, Liberati and Helsel asked to see him right away. They rented a track in Kentucky and had Houston drive a car for them there. There was no need, they decided, for Houston to do a mock interview. ''If he was good enough for McDonald's, I think there's the assumption he knows what he's doing,'' Helsel says. The audition went smoothly, and Helsel and Liberati recommended Houston to Excedrin. After some Bristol-Myers Squibb executives met Houston at a race in Tennessee in August, they concurred. Houston was Excedrin's new driver. Driving the Company Car, By JASON ZENGERLE [NYT].

Posted by dc at 12:21 PM | Comments (18)

Speech

The words of Giuliani: 30 paragraphs about 35 observations [NYT].

Posted by dc at 11:13 AM | Comments (4)

February 11, 2002

Markets for ideas, NYC life

Market power

Using markets to predict and measure expectations and tastes [NYT].

"Manhattanites arrive [in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Boorklyn] every weekend like tourists in Tijuana. They're easy to spot because they look like they're ready for adventure and they get really drunk."

--Jon Weiss [NYT].

Posted by dc at 01:07 PM | Comments (3)

February 09, 2002

tops

Top posting makes its bid for respectability.

If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure
readers understand when they start to read your response. Since
NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the postings
from one host to another, it is possible to see a response to a
message before seeing the original. Giving context helps everyone.

But do not include the entire original! -- rfc1855.

Posted by dc at 11:29 AM | Comments (2)

February 06, 2002

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me

Meme du jour:
Excess self esteem [NYT].

What is the risk if one over-estimates ones self worth and has
too much self-esteem ? Smugness.

Posted by dc at 04:08 PM | Comments (3)

February 05, 2002

ghost town

The number of still-on-line but devoid-of-content portals and
skeletons of message forums grouped by physical community
is astounding.

Jump to St. Louis
Sidewalk CitySearch
etc.

Posted by dc at 05:46 PM | Comments (0)

February 04, 2002

streaming music

Update 2002 Nov 30: SOMA FM is back on air.

Squid radio		Soma FM's CliqHop

Posted by dc at 03:44 PM | Comments (3)

Chattering classes, UK

"There's a new political divide," said Richard Sambrook, director of BBC News. "It's no longer `left and right.' It's now `us and them.' With `them' being politicians, the establishment and the broadcasters and media. Our research says they see politicians as dull people more interested in careers than constituents. And they see broadcasters and journalists colluding with them." -- [NYT]

Posted by dc at 01:25 PM | Comments (19)

Truth in advertizing

As advertized		Reality
From Realtor.com's O'Fallon, MO listings

Posted by dc at 12:04 AM | Comments (10)

February 03, 2002

Gone to the dogs

The Transportation Security Administration is also taking over other jobs formerly handled by local police departments, like using dogs to search for explosives. There are now 175 dogs at 39 airports, but by next year the government wants 300 dogs at 80 airports. The agency needs so many dogs because they can only work for about an hour at a time before becoming ineffective. Secretary Mineta said at a recent conference on aviation security in Washington that the dogs had established a comfortable work schedule for themselves even without unionizing. The dogs begin with a 14-week training course and, like human security agents, are frequently retrained. Like people, dogs lose focus if they are faced with repetitive tasks, experts say. It costs about $40,000 a year per dog, including training. Source NYT.

Posted by dc at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2002

Easy listening

The fcc published the lyrics and their evaluation of Nuyorican Poetess
Sarah Jones's [flash] Your Revolution.

Posted by dc at 07:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

show me the money

Corporate spin aside, executives do not always prosper most by making
their companies great. They can often profit more from creating
unrealistic expectations than from delivering consistently impressive results.

"You're providing C.E.O.'s with a perverse incentive," said Nell Minow,
the editor of the Corporate Library, a research firm in Washington.
"You're rewarding them for a goal that is not in the interest of
long-term shareholders."

When an economic system richly rewards certain behavior, no one
should be surprised when that behavior becomes the norm. If you
want to change it, you have to change the incentives. The Enron
mess has the potential to focus people's attention on the
complicated task of doing precisely that.

DAVID LEONHARDT, writing in the NYT.

Posted by dc at 07:19 PM | Comments (9)