Er, I know that mapping services are the New Big Thing, but this is ridiculous. The Register is reporting that Microsoft’s Virtual Earth satellite imagery shows no buildings at the address of Apple’s HQ in Cupertino. In contrast, Google Maps shows Chateau iPod in all its glory. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that Apple now has 4.5% of the personal computer market.
Daily Archives: July 26, 2005
Quote of the day
My feeling was (and is): You don’t adopt the mannerisms of big, successful companies when you’re small, because those mannerisms aren’t what made the companies successful.
They’re actually symptoms of what is killing the company, because it’s become too big. It’s like if you meet an really old, really rich guy covered in liver spots and breathing with an oxygen tank, and you say, “I want to be rich, too, so I’m going to start walking with a cane and I’m going to act crotchety and I’m going to get liver disease.”
Will Shipley, founder of Omni, quoted by Quentin.
Ambassador Lite
The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office is advertising a cushy job in this week’s Economist. It’s the post of HM Ambassador to the Holy See (aka the Vatican). “The Holy See”, says the blurb,
has the status of a csovereign state. It plays an important role on international issues of importance to HMG such as Africa, development and the fight against poverty. As Ambassador, you will act on instructions from the UK Government, report on the Holy See’s response, advance HMG’s overseas priorities, and represent the UK at official functions and ceremonial events (including religious ceremonies).
Hmmm… nice work if you can get it. Wonder if they are open to Muslim applicants. But wait — the salary is a pittance — in the range £42,640 – £60,405 pa, which seems a trifle mean for such an important post — even if it is “supplemented by a fully furnished residence, allowances, and an accountable entertainment allowance of up to £6,000 per annum”.
Er, could it be that HMG doesn’t really think that the Vatican is all that important? Answer, yes: a friend who knows about these things says that the Holy See post is really just a step up from a consulate. So this is really an ad for an Ambassador-Lite.
A rational response to suicide bombing
I do not live or work in London, but I go there often for meetings and sometimes for fun. Like millions of others who use the London tube system, I’ve been pondering what I should be doing in the wake of the bombings. My conclusion is that I should continue to use the tube because (a) the probability of being injured or killed is still vanishingly small, and (b) one should not be intimidated by terrorists. At first sight, (a) looks like a rational response, while (b) seems merely emotional or rhetorical. But the Economist pointed me to “Fear and the Response to Terrorism: An Economic Analysis”, a fascinating paper by Gary Becker (who is a Nobel laureate in economics) and Yona Rubinstein which has made me think that perhaps both are rational responses.
The society which has had the most experience of living with suicide bombing is Israel, and Becker and Rubinstein had the brilliant idea of examining how Israelis have responded to the threat. They looked at, for example, how bus bombings affect passenger behaviour. In the year November 2001 to November 2002, Israeli buses suffered an average of one suicide attack a month. This apparently had a profound effect on passengers — use of public buses went down by 30%.
But when they looked more closely at these figures, Becker and Rubinstein found significant differences between the responses of casual and regular bus users. Casual users (those who bought tickets on the day of travel) were much more likely to shy away (each attack cut their numbers by 40%). Regular users (who bought season tickets) seemed to have been largely undeterred.
Well, you say, maybe this is because season-ticket holders have no alternative. But Becker and Rubinstein found a similar pattern in patrons of cafes (also a target of suicide bombers). As the number of cafe-bombings increased, casual users stayed away, while habitues indulged their habit as usual. And nobody could really argue that one ‘has’ to use a cafe in the same sense that one may ‘have’ to use a bus to get to work.
The key to all this is the distinction between risk and fear. There is a non-linear relationship between the two which is what terrorism seeks to exploit: a small increase in risk leads to a disproportionate increase in fear. But, say Becker and Rubinstein,
Fear can be managed. Persons can handle their fears. They do so by accumulating the necessary skills. Like other investments in human capital, it is not a free-lunch and it does not pay back the same to anyone. Those who are more likely to benefit from the risky activity will invest and overcome their fears, while others will substitute the risky activity by other consumption or production plans.
So the rational response to the London bombings is business as usual. Bombers can nudge up the statistical risk a little. But only we can increase the fear.