“Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.”
-Dr. Lee DeForest, “Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television.”
“The Atomic bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.”
-Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project
“There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.”
-Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
-Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers .”
-Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.”
-The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
Category: Culture
Shattering the Bell Cure: The Power Law Rules
Life isn’t fair. Many of the most coveted spoils–wealth, fame, links on the Web–are concentrated among the few. If such a distribution doesn’t sound like the familiar bell-shaped curve, you’re right.
Along the hilly slopes of the bell curve, most values–the data points that track whatever is being measured–are clustered around the middle. The average value is also the most common value. The points along the far extremes of the curve contribute very little statistically. If 100 random people gather in a room and the world’s tallest man walks in, the average height doesn’t change much. But if Bill Gates walks in, the average net worth rises dramatically. Height follows the bell curve in its distribution. Wealth does not: It follows an asymmetric, L-shaped pattern known as a “power law,” where most values are below average and a few far above. In the realm of the power law, rare and extreme events dominate the action.
For Nassim Taleb, irrepressible quant-jock and the author of “Fooled by Randomness” (2001), the contrast between the two distributions is not an amusing statistical exercise but something more profound: It highlights the fundamental difference between life as we imagine it and life as it really is. In “The Black Swan”–a kind of cri de coeur–Mr. Taleb struggles to free us from our misguided allegiance to the bell-curve mindset and awaken us to the dominance of the power law.
Farmers Market on a Beautiful Saturday Morning
The Dane County Farmer’s Market is gathering steam this spring. Loads of spinach, some asparagus, boxes of tomatoes and many flowers were on offer early this morning. 
Many more Farmer’s Market photos can be found here.
From the other side of the world, Hoi An market.
Madison 2007
The scene: 6:00a.m., Dane County Regional Airport. Bleary eyed traveller is amazed that Madison now has a fashionable Range Rover SUV on display (floor advertising via Fields Auto) at the airport. We’ve crossed some sort of threshold, not sure what to call it…. It seems a long way from the Mayor’s trolleys, however.
Comical Cingular (AT&T)
Where to begin?
Prior to a recent Asia trip, I needed to obtain a SIM Card for my old Cingular (AT&T) phone that would work while on travel. (I now use a Verizon phone due to our experience with Cingular’s poor network coverage – dropped calls on John Nolen Drive, for example).
I called Cingular and explained my requirements: a prepaid SIM Card that would work for 30 days while on travel overseas. The telesales representative explained their different services, including data, worldwide calling and various monthly minute plans.
I provided my credit to close the transaction and a few days later, the Cingular SIM card arrived. I also requested the codes to “unlock” my old phone. Unfortunately, despite our prior long term Cingular arrangement, they insisted that I had to use the phone for 90 days before they would provide the unlock keys. This would prove to be a problem when I found that the SIM card Cingular sold me did not, in fact, work internationally.
Fortunately, a friend let me use an old phone, which would accept any SIM Card – easily purchased in most countries.
I called Cingular upon my return to express my disappointment. Farrah in Halifax was as helpful as could be expected, given their organization. She phoned their “sales” department to see if I could obtain a refund. The “sales” person told her that they “don’t sell SIM Cards”! I mentioned that while I’m unhappy with Cingular, I’m glad she had that experience with sales, particularly while I was on the line.
Bottom line: If you are looking for a world phone, look elsewhere. I’ve heard good things about T-mobile, though your mileage may vary.
Hanoi Scene – March 2007
Kurt Vonnegut Dead at 84
Pearls Before Breakfast
Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?
On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?
The musician did not play popular tunes whose familiarity alone might have drawn interest. That was not the test. These were masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls.
Finger Lickin Funny
Rich Markey writing in the UW-Madison Alumni Magazine [pdf]:
Kentucky Fried Theater took root on campus in the early seventies, and then went on to produce hit movies such as Airplane! and The Naked Gun series. Who could have predicted that this zany Wisconsin brand of humor would have a major influence on comedy ranging from Saturday Night Live to South Park and Dumb and Dumber?
“My National Security Letter Gag Order”
The Justice Department’s inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue “national security letters.” It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision — demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval — to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.