natasha's corner

The Boston Herald: Saturday, November 23, 1963

When my parents bought their house, we found a box in the attic full of newspapers and magazines from 1963 and 1964, all about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. All the newspapers are local to the Hartford area, with a few exceptions like The Boston Herald. For me, it’s like a gold mine – you have this snapshot of American history all in one nice package.

Manchester Evening Herald: Friday, November 22, 1963
Daily News: Monday, November 25, 1963
The Hartford Courant: Saturday Morning, November 23, 1963
The Boston Herald: Saturday, November 23, 1963
The Hartford Times: Friday, November 22, 1963

The most interesting thing about such a collection are the visuals. You see photos that are so famous now – like the shot that killed Lee Harvey Oswald, Jackie and the kids watching the funeral procession, John Jr. saluting his father. At the time, these visuals were new and stunning. Now they are still stunning because of their historical significance. Seeing them the way people saw them in 1963 is just amazing.

LIFE magazine: December 3, 1963

Of course the other great thing about this collection are the ads. When I get my hands on a scanner, I will post some of the more amusing ones I’ve found. Maybe eventually I will go through all the newspapers and magazines to pick out the most interesting bits of history and document them somewhere. But that’s a big job, so it’ll have to wait for the time being.

… leaves turn brown and decompose if you leave them on the ground,
but stay pretty and fresh-looking if you press them in a book?

An interesting observation came up today at the UI13 lunch: you can tell a lot about a person based on the combination of their ringtone and choice of start page for their browser.

I had never made the connection before, but I always go without a ringtone (either silent or vibrate) and my start page is blank. I think what this reveals is that I prefer simplicity and starting with a blank slate. I like my tools to be unobtrusive until I need them.

A couple other interesting combinations from the table: default ringtone + Google start page and vibrate + Facebook start page. Just from having that information I bet you can start to form a fairly accurate picture of the people I met without actually meeting them.

Here’s your thought for the day: what does your choice of ringtone and start page reveal about you?

I observed an interesting pattern at the train stop this morning.

A message came up on the LED message board saying that the next inbound train to Boston would be arriving on the outbound track this morning. A few people noticed this and you could see the inner dialogs in their heads about whether they should trust the message and go over to the other side of the tracks. One person decided to tentatively trust it and went to the outbound track. Then a couple more people, myself included, went over as well. The gist of the small-talk overheard was “Sure, it says ‘outbound track’, but how often are these messages ever true?”

Now that there were a handful of people waiting on the outbound track, other brave souls started coming over too. Not long after, all the new people that arrived at the inbound track went directly to the outbound one without hesitating.

One can only conclude that seeing a large enough group of fellow passengers that decided to trust the message somehow gave it more validity. But the interesting thing is, the orginal few “leaders” had very strong doubts about going over. They didn’t know any better than the rest of the people, they just made a choice and went with it.

I think there are two lessons to be learned here:

1. If you want people to trust you, be consistently accurate in the messages you send out (unlike the MBTA).
2. Don’t blindly follow the crowd because, chances are, its leaders didn’t have any more of a clue than you do. Trust your own common sense.

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, writes:

This summer I found myself wishing someone would give voters useful and unbiased information about which candidate has the best plans for the economy.

Then I realized that I am someone, which is both inconvenient and expensive. So for once I asked not what my country could do for me.

Today he finally released the results of his survey of 500 economists regarding which presidential candidate would be better overall for the economy. You can read his commentary on CNN here: Dilbert guy’s economic poll on McCain, Obama (or see the detailed survey data or read his blog post).

I’ve been looking forward to these results for some time now. I’m a little surprised at the factors that the economists were polled on, though. When I think “economy,” I think “money.” And when I think “What are economists qualified to give advice on?” the answer is “economic issues.” The survey, however, looked at issues like education, environmental policy, energy, and health care. I guess these all have an impact on the economy, but my understanding of the term was always more along the lines of how Wikipedia defines it:

An economy is the realized social system of production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of a country or other area.

So, based on that definition, let’s look at the questions that were asked by Adams’ survey where an economists’ opinion would be most valuable.

International trade

• Obama: 26%
• McCain: 51%
• No Difference: 23%

Mortgage/housing crisis

• Obama: 41%
• McCain: 18%
• No Difference: 41%

Reducing the deficit

• Obama: 37%
• McCain: 29%
• No Difference: 33%

Increasing taxes on wealthy

• Obama: 79%
• McCain: 14%
• No Difference: 7%

Overall, on average, that’s:

• Obama: 46%
• McCain: 28%
• No Difference: 26%

However, it’s questionable whether increasing taxes on the wealthy is a positive thing, so taking that out, we get:

• Obama: 35%
• McCain: 33%
• No Difference: 32%

Unfortunately, that seems too close to call. I guess I was hoping to have a more definitive answer regarding the economy from economists. This is pretty disappointing.

I’ve been on Facebook for a long time – pretty much since it first started – and it’s been interesting to observe the evolution of my “friends” list.

The first wave were people I met in college because that’s who Facebook was originally available to.

Then they opened it up to high schools, but that didn’t affect me since I no longer knew anyone in high school at that point. However, around the same time came the second wave, which were people I met in school, mostly high school.

Not too long after, Facebook was opened up to everyone. This created the third wave of people I met at or through work.

Now, I am seeing the fourth wave of Facebook friends – family. I’m not sure what caused this particular wave, but it’s probably just a snowball effect. One person adds some family members, those family members add others based on the friends list of the person who added them, and it continues expanding until every family member is connected to every other one.

It makes me wonder what, if anything, the fifth wave will be. It seems like all groups of people I know have been covered, but then, if you asked me a year ago, I’d tell you that Facebook was just for college and school friends. I would never have thought that my boss, his boss, and his boss’s boss would be my Facebook friends or that my cousin in Israel would get in touch through Facebook after not having seen her for 10 years.

I look forward to seeing how this evolves or devolves in the future.

What is the worst place to leave your car key when you go to work? Not at home, not in the office. Nope, the worst place is inside your unlocked car.

I misplaced my keys a couple days ago and while waiting to somehow stumble upon them, I’ve been using Nick’s keys. This morning, I did finally stumble upon them – in the car’s cup holder. The car which I left unlocked in the parking lot yesterday and was about to leave unlocked again.

Yeah, ok, so maybe I need to find a better place to keep my keys.

… it’s more comfortable to sit with my computer bag in my lap than it is without it?

I take recommendations seriously. If I’m going to recommend something to someone, I have to be willing to accept the consequences if they end up not liking what I recommended. I usually worry that if someone doesn’t like what I recommend it means either a) I have bad taste, or b) I really don’t know that person as well as I thought I did. Neither of those is a very appealing thing to have to admit.

Some people, though, don’t overthink recommendations quite as much as I do.

I went to Borders today to look for a new book to read, since I haven’t been able to finish the last 3 that I’ve started. Some kind of iPhone-induced mental block, I guess. As I was browsing the “Buy 1, Get 1 50% Off” table, a man glanced at the books I was holding for consideration and said to me:

“Excuse me. May I recommend this book [pointing at Water for Elephants]?”

“Actually, I’ve already read it.”

“What did you think?”

“It was great!”

He smiled and walked away to go pay for the books he was holding. This isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed this kind of spontaneous recommendation. Several months ago, I was at the same table, browsing for books, when a man recommended I read 1491 based on the books I was holding. I did end up buying it and I really enjoyed reading it, even though it’s probably not something I’d have picked out on my own.

The great thing about these types of recommendations is that you know the people must feel really passionately about the book they recommend. Otherwise, why would they bother mentioning it to a stranger?

The other great thing is that in my case, both of the recommendations were spot-on with very little information to go on. This really exemplifies the difference between people and computers. Consider the Netflix recommendation engine, for instance. It looks at all the movies and genres you’ve rated, compares them with other members’ ratings, and recommends movies that people with similar tastes to yours have enjoyed but that you have not yet rated.* Compare that with the book recommendations from strangers where all they had to go on were a couple books in my hand and their own previous experience. There is no algorithm. People just make the connection instantaneously, based on their own instincts. That’s something a computer will never be able to do.

–
* At least that’s how I imagine it works. I think that’s pretty close to reality, though.

I had a dream that I was on vacation with my parents and grandparents. We were staying by a lake and I wanted to go night kayaking. As we were walking to the lake, I went to a hair salon instead.

The hair dresser had fun with my hair and was excited to show me the final product. When I looked in the mirror, I saw she had cut my hair short with lots of choppy layers and added red and purple highlights.

It looked really cool, but it brought back visions of my previous experience last year when I got red highlights done. They looked awesome (I think), but were incredibly hard and expensive to maintain, requiring almost bi-weekly trips to the salon. It took me a long time to grow them out and to grow my hair to its current length.

So as I looked at myself in the mirror, with the awesome yet terrifying purple highlights, I wanted nothing more than to have my previous hair back. I desperately wished that this was all a dream, that I didn’t just ruin a year of hair efforts. “Please let this be a dream…”

And then a part of my mind realized that it was a dream and I woke up.