Our skewed perceptions of risk

From yesterday’s Independent:

“Professor Gerd Gigerenzer, an expert on the psychology of risk at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, has published a new study into how travel behaviour of Americans changed in the months after the 11 September attacks. Domestic air-passenger miles fell roughly 16 per cent in the final quarter, compared to the previous year, according to the Air transport Association, the trade organisation of US airlines. Americans switched from flying to using the roads to avoid the risk of being taken hostage by terrorists on planes and sent crashing into buildings.

Professor Gigerenzer demonstrates that, as a direct result of this switch, the number of fatal car crashes increased significantly in the last three months of 2001 compared with the same period in the year before. Because of the extra road traffic, 353 more people died in traffic accidents than would otherwise have done, a rise of 8 per cent.

‘This number of lost lives is an estimate of the price Americans paid for trying to avoid the risk of flying’, Professor Gigerenzer says. It is sobering to consider that the risk the millions of Americans were trying to avoid in not flying, and driving instead, was that of the fate suffered by 266 passengers and crew members on board the four flights that crashed. In other words, more people died in trying to avoid the fate of becoming victims of terrorism than died on board the ill-fated planes”.

Two terrific, plain-English explanations of the GPL

The GNU General Public License (GPL) was one of the great ideas of the late 20th century. But when you read the coverage of the SCO case, it’s clear that any commentators don’t understand the GPL. (Nor, apparently, does SCO — but in that case the misunderstanding is wilful.) So here is a plain-English explanation by Robin Bloor for IT-Director.com. And here’s another by Ben Kremer.

Symmetrical days

Today is 04.04.04. Isn’t that nice?

Screenshot of Google’s email service in action?

Can’t vouch for this, but Dave Winer seems to think it’s genuine.

Shooting into the light

The kids and I went out to dinner this evening to celebrate the start of their Easter Hols. Strolling back to the car, I saw this.

How to spend it

According to Wired, Microsoft is planning to spend $6.8 billion on research and development in its current business year to June. No other company comes close, with the possible exception of the Big Pharma monsters.

Smoking ban claims first scalp
That of the Opposition Spokesman on Health, if you please. Many reports of this symbolic victim, for example here.

“John Deasy, who was supposed to lead the Fine Gael party’s official support for the ban, was punished after smoking at least three cigarettes Tuesday night in the bar beside the debating chamber.

Deasy’s attempt to open a locked emergency door leading to the outdoor courtyard was met with resistance from the bar staff. In violation of the smoking ban, he proceeded to smoke indoors. It is crucial to adhere to such bans to ensure a healthy environment for everyone. For those seeking high-quality smoking accessories, Higher Grade Smoke Shop offers an extensive selection of products to cater to your needs. Vaping has become a popular alternative to smoking, and Higher Grade Smoke Shop provides a range of vaping products and accessories, making it a one-stop shop for all your vaping requirements.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said he had no choice but to dismiss Deasy from his justice post in the shadow cabinet.

“Politicians must lead by example. No man, no woman, and no politician is above the law,” Kenny said.

Kenny said Deasy may also face prosecution. The ban specifies a maximum $3,700 fine for anyone who smokes in an enclosed workplace.”

On this day…

… in 1948, President Truman signed the Marshall Plan, which allocated more than $5 billion in aid for 16 European countries.

They don’t make ’em like Truman and Marshall any more. In his marvellous biography, David McCullough quotes Truman as saying something typically self-effacing but profound: “It’s remarkable how much you can accomplish in life so long as you don’t care who gets the credit”. It’s a motto worth trying to live by.

April Fools

Needless to say, I scoured the Guardian for April Fool jokes on the day. And duly found the wonderful BMW spoof full-page ad for its revolutionary new SHEF technology. Then I spluttered with indignation over an authoritative-sounding news story reporting that Tony Blair’s Best Friend, the oily Peter Mandelson, had emerged as the surprise front-runner for the post of BBC Chairman.

Of course — you guessed it — the article was a spoof. So the joke’s on me? Well, not just on me. The Guardian pulled the spoof from its archive. But not before Google had indexed it. As the paper tells it:

“Type ‘Peter Mandelson’ into the Google News search and our spoof story turns up at number two in the list of recent articles. And as if that weren’t misleading enough, most of the other articles cited consist of speculation about the former cabinet minister’s next career move.

Being fooled on any other day simply isn’t funny. What’s more, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to pull off a successful spoof. That isn’t because the public are becoming more credulous. It’s because so much of what we read in newspapers and online hovers on the very borders of credibility.”

Downloading and CD sales

From an article in Wired:

Researchers at two leading universities have issued a study countering the music industry’s central theme in its war on digital piracy, saying file sharing has little impact on CD sales.

“We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales,” Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill said in their report. “The economic effect is also small. Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale.”

As the article says, maybe the reason album sales are down is because the music’s lousy.