From the category archives:
I’m five years too late, and McNeil PPC has beaten me to the name, but it struck me the other night[1] that iModium.com would have been the ideal name for an Internet/telecom/dotcom IPO in the late 1990s.
fn1. There was no medical reason for this thought, just a random neural connection
Maria’s “post about required statistics courses”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002676.html reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story. I _think_ it concerns one of the very early British social surveys of urban poverty by Charles Booth, or Mackintosh or one of those guys. The results were resisted by many for political reasons, and one strategy was to discredit the new-fangled methods they relied on. Thus, one critic in (I believe) the House of Commons asserted that he could not find the results credible because the report “only relied on a sample of the population — and a mere _random_ sample, at that.”
If anyone knows the source of this (doubtless mangled) story, let me know in the comments.
I just received an email from a journalism student from a school in Florida asking to interview me about the cultural implications of the Internet for an article in a campus publication. She sent the email to my Princeton email account and also mentioned that she’d left a voicemail message for me at my Princeton number. I have not received any correspondence from this person on my Northwestern email account or phone number. My pages are the first hit on Google for searches of either my first or last name (and the two together). My site gets similar rankings (except for some sponsored links) on other major search engines as well. My Web site clearly states my current affiliation right up front directly below my name. My site’s old location at Princeton redirects to the new location. My old blog on Princeton’s servers lists my Northwestern address. What, exactly, is being taught to journalism students nowadays if, given all that, this person still couldn’t figure out where I work??
I’ll let you guess whether I decided to grant the interview.
UPDATE: Since people seem to deduce from this message that I sent the person a rude reply I should clarify: I sent her a polite note saying that I was unavailable for the interview at this time and wished her luck.
Today my University is carrying out a “Disaster Preparedness Exercise”:http://www.arizona.edu/spotlight/2004/October112004.shtml, simulating “campus and community crisis responses” in the face, I think, of a series of imaginary industrial explosions. The “Physical and Atmospheric Sciences”:http://www.physics.arizona.edu/ building was evacuated, but so, unfortunately, was “Social Sciences”:http://www.cs.arizona.edu/camera/. They didn’t do that one on purpose, though. Industrial accidents, even imaginary ones, seem much more likely to happen in PAS. The only chemical present in dangerously high quantities in Social Sciences is caffeine. Nevertheless the building has been shut down since 8am, the power is off, police tape is everywhere, guards are posted and fake victims with fake injuries seem to be wandering around. At least, I think the guy with the bandaged leg was faking. Maybe I should have given him a kick to make sure. From talking to the cops and listening to the radio chatter, my theory at the moment is that the power failed in Social Sciences, possibly as an accidental byproduct of the fake disaster, and now not only can they not figure out how to turn it back on again, everyone is so busy tending to fake victims and cleaning up non-existent industrial waste that there are no staff available to fix the problem. So, in effect, the hypothetical crisis has managed to generate a real one.
It’s just as well that it’s only an exercise. I was out in the parking lot with everyone else for an hour, waiting in vain to be allowed back in. It’s bad enough that we were all allowed to hang around by the doors, breathing in putative anthrax or notional dirty bomb fallout. But then a flatbed truck carrying large flammable and quite real gas cylinders came up the driveway and parked behind the fire engine to make a delivery to the chemistry department. About ten minutes after that, two forty-foot tractor trailers pulled in to deliver props and stage equipment to the Centennial Hall theater. They might have been full of anything. If the Trojan Horse itself arrived at the main entrance to the University today, I swear a fat guy in a day-glo vest would have waved it through saying, “Just hurry it up there, we’re trying to co-ordinate an imaginary emergency here.”
A few noteworthy items as I catch up with other blogs.
Mayor Bloomberg had little sympathy yesterday for New Yorkers who find the new $20 admission to the Museum of Modern Art a bit steep.
“Some things people can afford, some things people can’t,” said Bloomberg, whose estimated personal fortune is $4.9 billion.
Over at Marginal Revolution, they’re quoting Jagdish Bhagwati:
“Once, Mrs Joan Robinson, my radical teacher at Cambridge University, and Professor Gus Ranis of Yale University, a ‘neo-liberal’ economist, were observed agreeing with each other that Korea had been a great success.
The paradox was resolved when it turned out that Mrs Robinson was talking about North Korea and Professor Ranis about South Korea!
(emphasis added)
Although “Mrs Joan Robinson” was indeed so called in 1956 (when she was teaching Bhagwati), by 1965, she was going by the name of “Professor Joan Robinson”. Gustav Ranis was made a full professor in 1964, according to his CV. So either this conversation took place in the second half of 1964 (or early in 1965), or Bhagwati is making a mistake that is, frankly, all too common when people discuss female academics. Val Dusek points out that Margaret Mead was a frequent victim of this accidental rudeness too.
Update. A number of our commenters appear to be making variants of the same joke about Joan Robinson being stupid for calling North Korea a success. Ahem.
“Like all the postwar Communist states, the DPRK undertook massive state investment in heavy industry, state infrastructure and military strength, neglecting the production of consumer goods. By paying the collectivized peasants low state-controlled prices for their product, and using the surplus thus extracted to pay for industrial development, the state carried out a series of three-year plans, which brought industry’s share of the economy from 47% in 1946 to 70% in 1959, depite the intervening devastation of the Korean War. There were huge increases in electricity production, steel production and machine building. The large output of tractors and other agricultural machinery achieved a great increase in agricultural productivity.
As a result of these revolutionary changes, there is no doubt that the population was better fed and, at least in urban areas, better housed than they had been before the war, and also better than were most people in the South in this period. Even hostile observers agree that standards of living rose rapidly in the DPRK in the later 1950s and into the 1960s, certainly more rapidly than in the South, where there had been no land reform and little industrial development. There was, however, a chronic shortage of consumer goods, and the urban population lived under a system of extreme labor discipline and constant demands for greater productivity.
In other words, between the Korean War and the oil crisis of the 1970s, the North Korean economy was not doing at all badly and it was entirely arguable that it was outperforming South Korea. (Professor) Joan Robinson retired in the early 1970s. Btw, Bhagwati explicitly did not make this mistake; his whole point in the original anecdote was to point out that subsequent events had shown that South Korean state-organised export promoting capitalism was a better system than North Korean state socialism.
Update update It’s just struck me that since JR was the wife of Professor Sir Austin Robinson, there’s probably a case to be made that at the very least, Bhagwati ought to have called her “Lady Joan Robinson”.
How many different (and distant) placenames can an institution fit into its name and address? “Miami University, Oxford, Ohio”:http://www.miami.muohio.edu/ is way out there in the lead, I think.
For various reasons we needed to locate some Kosher dairy products today, which proved to be more difficult on short notice than I imagined. However, if anyone wants to set up a shop selling such things, it’s obvious that it should be called “Jews for Cheeses.”
Bob Morris points out that Florida counties which voted for Bush in 2000 seem to have been “visited with calamities”:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/21/213652/820 in the past few weeks. I think He is trying to send a message. (Hat tip: “Erin Kelly”:http://www.soc.umn.edu/~elkelly/.)
I recently got a new cell phone after being out of the U.S. for a year, and now I routinely have a problem with telemarketers. The odd part, though, is that the people who call me, whoever they are,[1] seem to have fused the two most irritating aspects of dealing with companies on the phone. Telemarketers are annoying because they phone you up unannounced and try to sell you stuff. Customer service departments are annoying because when _you_ phone _them_ up you get put on hold right away. The guys bugging me at the moment call me up and, when I answer, immediately say “All of our agents are currently busy serving other customers” or “For quality purposes this call may be monitored.” I don’t know what they say next, because I hang up. Which marketing genius dreamed up this approach, I wonder? Is it a common phenomenon? Is it a ruse to get me to stay on the phone for some reason? And how can I make them stop?
fn1. Nine times out of ten they have strong Indian accents.
In the Fall of 2001 as I was coding and analyzing data for my dissertation on how people find content online, I realized that some Web sites had changed a few design elements after the events of 9/11. I put up a little Web page documenting some of these changes because I thought they were interesting and worth archiving. I wish I would have had time to find more.
There were some more direct links between 9/11 and my dissertation. One was logistical while the other brought it all up close and personal. I think about these issues sometimes, especially the latter, and thought today would be an appropriate day to share them.
“Best. Blog. Ever.”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_09_05_fafblog_archive.html#109473871601998017
Today we celebrate Arrival Day, the 350th anniversary of the first Jewish immigrants’ arrival in New Amsterdam (today’s New York City) on September 7, 1654. The Head Heeb has been preparing for this event for over a year. He explains:
Arrival Day is a holiday of the American Jewish people rather than the Jewish religion – a celebration of the Jewish community and its contributions to the United States. As such, non-Jews as well as Jews are welcome to join in the celebration. In the wise words of Ikram Saeed, everyone is Jewish today, just as everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.
A month ago I participated in a wonderful wedding that offers the perfect story for Arrival Day. I share with you the details of this wedding as a celebration of Jews from all over the world coming together in the United States.
Some contributors in the discussion thread “on crutches”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002445.html (if you see what I mean) bring up other ambulatory aids by-the-by, and Bad Jim says:
bq. Can anyone who remembers the 19th century think of canes as anything but a weapon?
The 19th century? What about the 1970s? I remember being caned at school. On the palm of the hand, though, rather than the backside. I think I was about six or seven. (This was in Ireland, by the way.) I also remember the news percolating down to us kids at some point[1] that such things would no longer be allowed in schools, and some of us telling the teachers “You can’t smack us anymore because capital punishment is abolished!”
fn1. Google informs me that corporal punishment was abolished Irish schools “in 1982”:http://www.corpun.com/ies00211.htm/, when I was nine.
Seeing as “Kevin”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004634.php is wondering whether M&Ms have gotten smaller since the last time he looked[1], my imponderable for the day is this: Why is it that in Europe (at least in my experience) patients with a sprained ankle or whatever are typically issued with “forearm crutches”:http://www.bentonmedical.com/forearm.html whereas in the U.S. you get “underarm crutches”:http://www.bentonmedical.com/underarm.html. It seems clear to me that the underarm kind is inferior in every important respect. So why does it survive in the U.S.?
Possible explanations:
* *Efficiency*. Already ruled out. Underarm crutches are inferior.
* *Revealed Preferences*. Underarm crutches _must_ be more efficient because otherwise people wouldn’t be buying them.
* *Path Dependence*. Some QWERTY-like event in the early 1900s locked American hospitals into the underarm regime.
* *Cultural*. De Tocqueville notes somewhere that American individualism thrives in the presence of underarm supports for gammy legs, while the _ancien regime_’s tendency to lean at the elbow meant that its collapse was both inevitable and unforseen.
* *Marxist*. The ruling crutches of any epoch are the crutches of the ruling class, etc.
* *Evolutionary Psychology*. On the Pleistocene Savannah, Underarm crutches provided a selective advantage to their users due to their greater length, enabling Underarm-using groups to hold off predators at a slightly greater distance and obtain marginally higher-hanging fruit than their Forearm-using competitors.
* *Political Economy*. A cartel of crutch producers in league with hospital crutch-wranglers and has cornered the market through aggressive undercutting of the competition and a complex system of kickbacks. _Standard Crutch (New Jersey)_ pioneered this technique in the 19th century, bringing it to such a pitch of perfection that it was impossible to buy a forearm model without also getting three underarm models delivered to you.
* *Libertarian*. Though technically inferior, underarm models are ultimately beneficial because they encourage a quicker return to standing on your own two feet.
Alternative explanations (perhaps even informative ones) are invited.
fn1. Perhaps they are simply further away than before?