Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Today’s New York Times carries an article that ties together the themes of women at MIT (see yesterday’s posting, below) and music sharing.  Make absolutely sure that you read through to the end.

The November 2003 Atlantic carries some interesting articles, many of which are available on the Web, on college admissions.  Of interest to aviation enthusiasts will be the article by William Langewiesche on the Columbia space shuttle investigation.  At the very least it will make you feel fortunate that you’re not working for a large bureaucracy.

Speaking of bureaucracies, the college admissions articles are collectively very revealing.

First, due to the dumbing down and rescaling of the SAT test it is very tough to predict who will get into top colleges.  Harvard, for example, receives about 500 applications every year from students with 1600 (perfect) on the SATs… and rejects more than half of them!  Paradoxically the dumbing down of the SATs seems to have had a pernicious effect on black high schoolers.  White kids go to SAT cram courses and get 100% of the easy questions right.   Black kids don’t necessarily do well on those questions that are easy to prep for but often do much better on questions that can only be answered by those who’ve hit the books.  ETS, the fantastically profitable non-profit (”non-taxpaying” would perhaps be more accurate) that runs the SAT, responded to research showing this racial bias by trying to figure out how their data had leaked rather than looking at the substance.

“Selective” colleges and those ranked high in reputation by U.S. News and World Report (which immediately causes a rush of applications and therefore a “selective” statistic) are swamped by applicants.  At the same time a National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) found that the actual quality of undergraduate experience was uncorrelated with the U.S. News top schools ranking (the results of this survey are kept secret from the public and the Ivy League schools have refused to participate but a handful of state schools make their results available).  Those pesky economists, who tend to reduce everything to dollars, make the case in a National Bureau of Economic Research report (link) that selective colleges are of no value.  Kids from rich families who go to Harvard end up being richer adults than immigrants who go to state schools, of course.  However, students who get into really selective colleges but decide to go to less selective ones end up having the same lifetime income than those who accepted their spot at the really selective school.

In terms of practical advice to young people and their parents anxious to game the system the magazine offers little.  The obvious technique of being born into the correct racial group is not covered.  In addition to practicing racial discrimination, however, it is important for Asian-Americans and non-Hispanic whites not to forget that college admissions departments also engage in sex discrimination.  Liberal arts colleges are hurting for male students so, for example, the chance of getting into Pomona College will rise from 20% to 27% if Jane Applicant decides to embark on a hormone and surgery program to turn herself into Joe Applicant.  A sex change operation is even more effective when applying to engineering and science schools.  Across the street from Pomona is Harvey Mudd College where Joe Applicant’s 29% acceptance rate can turn into 61% after a sex change.  The effect of an applicant’s sex is larger at MIT where males are admitted at the rate of 12% and females at 28%.

[If your kid doesn’t want to undergo surgery but you still want him or her to get into a school with a high reputation the message is “send Johnny to an airy-fairy liberal arts school and send Jane to Nerd Central”.]

Here are a few minor items from the November 2003 issue of the Atlantic:

• a study ranks the U.S. as one of the world’s most likely spots for a large-scale terrorist attack (already report in this Guardian story)
  
• economic sanctions against governments are increasingly common (50+ incidents in the 1990s versus 15 in the 1950s) but there is no evidence that they are effective
  
• single scientists, artists, writers, and criminals are vastly more productive into middle age than married men (the journal article is hidden behind a commercial publisher’s veil but this summary on nature.com is available)
  
• R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii (http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/) contribute a graph of “Statistics of Democide”, killing of people by their own governments.  These deaths dwarf the numbers killed in wars.  The largest mass killing since World War II was by Pakistan against its Bengali citizens around 1970 (background).  Partly this was an attempt by a Muslim government to kill as many Hindus as possible but it was intensified by the fact that some East Pakistanis were attempting to achieve independence and create an independent state of Bangladesh.

The chickens are coming home to roost, all around early December, which will necessitate a drastic reduction in posting here.  Here’s what I’m up to…

• co-teaching a software engineering lab course
  
• taking an atmospheric physics course (all Coriolis force, all the time)
  
• taking an evening drawing class
  
• trying to finish my Commercial airplane certificate (tough because a lot of the maneuvers need to be done close to the ground, which means unpleasant turbulence most days in New England (wind + hills = bumps))
  
• trying to finish my helicopter rating
  
• finishing a hardcopy edition of Internet Application Workbook (looks like MIT Press is willing to do a hardcopy version without attacking the Web version)
  
• planning some trips for the winter and spring

Check back around January 1, 2004 for new stuff.

I’m soliciting suggestions (in the comments area for this posting or via email if you prefer) for a round-the-world trip departing westbound from Boston around December 10.  Here are some constraints:

• want to be back in town after 5-6 weeks to catch up with friends, dog, etc.
  
• want a good amount of daily sunshine (Southern Hemisphere) but not extreme heat (35C/95F max; 26C/80F would be ideal for a daily high)
  
• prefer to avoid visa application hassles so want to visit places where U.S. citizens can just drop in (my passport has an Israeli stamp in it from a June 2003 visit to a university there so I wouldn’t be able to get a visa to most Muslim countries in any case)
  
• would like to get some in some cultural tourism but also do some snorkeling and bicycling
  
• my best languages are, in descending order of competence, English, French, Italian, and German

Here’s a tentative itinerary:

• Boston
  
• either
  
  
  
  • SF/LA, Maui (never been), South Pacific (Fiji?)
    
  • Argentina via Mexico City (art museums)
  
  
• Tasmania
  
• Perth (plus the coral reefs farther north on the coast of Western Australia or will it be too hot in Dec/Jan?)
  
• Chiang Mai, Thailand (never been) if I have to continue via Bangkok (visited before)
  
• Cape Town, South Africa (too hot?)
  
• London (dreary but maybe go to the theater for a night or two?)
  
• Boston

I might try to get a Star Alliance (United, Lufthansa, Singapore, Thai et al) round-the-world business class ticket (reasonably cheap and flexible, comfortable for those insanely long segments).  So it would be best to find places that are easy to get to on these airlines.

Just back from touring a couple of “cottages” in Newport, Rhode Island.  Built towards the end of the 19th Century, the larger houses there have ballrooms sufficient in size to secure entry into the “400 club”, for which one needed to have at least $3 million in ready cash (like $100 million today?) and a ballroom large enough to accomodate 400 people.  More or less every week there was an enormous party in every house.  This invites a comparison between Alva Vanderbilt and modern-day young people.  Ask a member of an engaged couple any time within one year of the wedding to take part in an activity.  “Oh no,” he or she will reply, “I am working on wedding planning.”  But a woman like Alva Vanderbilt could plan a 100-person party in a heartbeat then go back to her work on women’s suffrage.

The head of Malaysia complained that the world’s handful of Jews (estimated population 13 million) were keeping 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide in a state of ignorance, poverty, and illiteracy.  Leaders from Islamic states around the world gave him a standing ovation.  Most news coverage of the event have focussed on the Jew-hatred angle, which is hardly new.  What to me is remarkable is that these guys aren’t ashamed at having such wimpy enemies.  Muslims are at least 100 times more numerous than the world’s Jews and, thanks to some of the world’s highest growth rates, destined to be 200 times more numerous rather soon.  Muslims control vast territories underneath which are half of the world’s petroleum reserves.  By contrast the Jews have a resource-poor little territory the size of New Jersey.

Do we live in an age of wimpy enemies?  In place of Ronald Reagan’s terrifying Soviet Union, George W. has a huge military bristling with modern weapons to wield against… Osama and Saddam.

Today’s New York Times carries a story called “Seductive Electronic Gadgets Are Soon Forgotten” about how people generally are defeated by the complex user interface of the widgets that they purchase.  I spent about 15 hours over the weekend checking, repairing, and defragmenting the hard drives on desktop and laptop PCs (both about 1.5 years old and apparently overdue for some treatment).  What if there is a fixed percentage of human life that people are willing to devote to reading owner’s manuals, learning new interfaces, and remembering which button does what?  If true, that places a limit on the growth of the electronics industry.  Until there are natural speech interfaces to gadgets (”hey, this DVD is in 16:9 mode; compress the image please” to the TV; “turn on all the lights” to the house), how can people buy more?

A good example of this is navigation systems for cars.  You’d think that everyone would want a moving-map GPS in his or her car.  Certainly it would be nice to say “I’m going to Joel’s house” and have the navigation system pull his address from a cell phone or PDA and then provide voice and map guidance.  What if, however, it is a 10-minute trip and you’re pretty sure you know how to get there and you don’t have that natural speech interface?  Are you willing to spend 2 minutes programming today’s clumsy GPS units with Joel’s address?  Will you accept a 20% increase in your travel time to avoid the risk of getting lost?

Are we ready for another boom in Artificial Intelligence research, this time funded by car and gizmo companies?

Today’s New York Times carries a couple of stories about housing, illustrating the contrast between the Coasts.

Story 1:  a four-bedroom apartment in Manhattan now averages $5.7 million

Story 2:  for a paltry $3 million you can build an all-steel germ-free 11,000 square foot mansion in Simi Valley, California, right next to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Should you need to travel back and forth between these residences, another story on the booming luxury goods market talks about the private jets for sale in this year’s Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog.

[Apparently none of these home buyers read the August 11 blog entry here on Chinese-built prefab houses, to be sold at Walmart.]

In this CNN report of America’s most dangerous jobs it seems that computer programmer and other desk jobs don’t carry too much risk of death, even if you’re a hip modern coder practicing “Extreme Programming”.  Flying an aircraft is the third most dangerous job with 70 annual deaths per 100,000 workers.  This is a sobering statistic when one reflects on the huge number of pilots who fly jets for airlines, a remarkably safe endeavor.  Imagine how dangerous the non-airline flying jobs must be to result in such a terrible average.  Indeed the spokesman for the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) notes that “Alaskan pilots have a one in eight chance of dying during a 30-year career.”

Those crazy drivers who deliver Domino’s pizza?  They hold the 5th most dangerous job in America, dying in accidents at an annual rate of 38 per 100,000.