More Musings

I'm thinking I need to get me one of them Nobel Peace Prizes.  You know they come with, like, a million dollars!  True, I haven't done much for the cause of world peace, but neither had President Obama when he won his.  Maybe if I stop capping on Canada.  It'll be hard, but I think I might be able to do it.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Coo

It's not every day that one sees a headline like "Code Found on Pigeon Baffles British Cryptographers"--at least, outside of "The Onion."  Just when I was deserately searching for something to write about, too.

A group of codebreakers at Britain's Government Communications Headquarters have declared themselves thoroughly stymied--or as I like to think the Brits would say, "Right-snoggered, Mate!"--by a coded message found tied to the leg of carrier-pigeon--or EX-carrier pigeon, as Monty Python might put it--in the chimney of a 17th-century home in the village of Bletchingley--like that's a real place:  "[P]igeon specialists"--apparently there are such things--"said they believed it may have been flying home from British units in France at around the time of the D-Day Normandy landings in 1944."

The cryptographers speculate the code may be based on a "onetime pad," which, as readers of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon know, is effectively unbreakable: The method calls for a random series of letter-substitutions that can be decoded only with a pad belonging to both the sender and recipient.  Once the message is transmitted, the pad is destroyed.

Considering that the message went awry nearly 70 years ago, and that the good-guys won World War II even without whatever bit of intelligence was to have been conveyed by our feathered friend, I guess the message probably couldn't have been TOO important.  But I think this whole incident teaches us something about the wisdom of entrusting important deliveries to things apt to get stuck in chimneys--just something to think about as you write those letters to Santa.

Alternatively, maybe someone's just screwing with a bunch of British cryptographers.

A Grim Roulette

On this, the most beloved of holidays, I would like to wish a happy Thanksgiving to those intrepid souls embodying those most American of American values: those people who have been camping out since at least yesterday afternoon in front of Best Buy.

I counted five tents yesterday.

Let's do some back-of-the-envelope math.  There are about 1,100 Best Buy stores in the US.  I live in a California Bay Area town about 20 miles north of Oakland--in other words, a well-populated area, but not a major Metropolis--so let's assume that "my" Best Buy represents an "average" store: This would mean that, across the country, some 5,000 people are celebrating Thanksgiving by bivouacking in parking lots.  And of course this considers only Best Buy.  Throw in all the Wal-Marts (nearly 4,000 US stores), Targets (1,700), and K-Marts (about 1,200), and assume similarly zealous consumers, and we can add another 35,000 folks sleeping out across the country.  Let's toss in another 10,000 people at various smaller venues, and we can not-unreasonably project that around 50,000 people are currently camped out, awaiting the start of spectacular "door-buster" sales.

50,000 people, OK?

Now, as a matter of probability, it is not unreasonable to assume that at least one of these 50,000 people will be dead within a week.  Understand, I am not wishing death on these folks: That would be redundant.  Nevertheless, assuming that at least one of these people will die, and even assuming that this one person began camping out "only" 24 hours before the start of sales, then this person will have willingly spent 24 of his or her final 168 hours on this planet waiting in line for the privilege of further enriching multi-millionaires.

So Happy Thanksgiving, stalwart consumers!  You're wasting your life.

Just Another Day at Solipsist Central

SOL: You know that feeling?  When, like, you're eating something?  Like a burrito, maybe, or a big piece of steak?  And you're in the middle of chewing a big piece of the steak or the burrito or, I don't know, the lamb chop?  And all of a sudden, you have to sneeze?  And so, you start chewing really really fast, because you need to swallow the food before the sneeze comes, otherwise you'll end up sneezing out your food?  And you can't just. . .JUST barely swallow it either, y'know?  You have to get the food all the way down your throat, because if you only get it just past your tongue, you end up sneezing out the chewed-up food--which, if you think about it, is much worse than just sneezing out the food you're still chewing.  You know that feeling?

WOS: No.

SOL: Oh. . . Me neither.

(Yawn)

Too tired to write.  Here's a video of kittens playing with ducklings:

News Notes

An article in today's Times reports that a substantial portion of the investor class is cashing out stocks earlier than they might otherwise have done because they worry what will happen when President Obama and congressional Republicans reach an agreement on increasing taxes.  (Yeah, I said that with a straight face.)  Large investors can reap millions in extra profits if they sell stock or other assets now, before higher rates kick in.

This behavior is, or course, eminently rational.  It may even redound to the benefit of the economy: True, the government will collect less revenue than if the assets were sold after taxes were raised; at the same time, though, there is no guarantee that taxes WILL be raised or that the assets would have been sold if they were subject to higher tax.  In other words, this mild market panic may result in a short-term windfall to the public coffers.

Two things struck me about the article.  First, a quote from John Moorin, an investor who recently sold approximately $650,000 worth of stock: "I love these companies [whose stock I'm selling], but I’m so scared that now all of the sudden I’m going to get taxed at such a rate with them that they won’t be worth anything."

The current capital gains tax rate is 15%.  Now, I'm no accountant, but I think that means--assuming the $650,000 was ALL profit (which is not, mathematically speaking, possible)--that Moorin would "net" a little over $550,000 after taxes.  Next year, under one proposed change to the tax code, the capital gains tax rate could increase to 20%, meaning Moorin would "only" net $520,000 after taxes.  Sure, $30,000 is nothing to sneeze at, but I think the fact that an apparently seasoned investor considers $520,000 to be "nothing" says something about warped values.

Another thing: Not once but tTwice the article referred to the fact that capital gains taxes may be raised to help pay for "President Obama's health care law" (emphasis added).

A note to the Times' editors: It is NOT "the President's" health care law: It is a law that was proposed by the President, and then debated, revised, and ultimately passed by Congress.  References to the Affordable Care Act as "the President's" law are the kind of thing I'd expect to hear on Fox News, where the editorial staff takes the position that President Obama is the dictatorial love-child of Vladimir Lenin and Hitler.  The New York Times should know better.

The Lazy Scholar's Friend (and I Don't Mean Wikipedia)

Writer Evgeny Morozov has a problem with autocomplete, the feature of Google and other sites that utilizes an algorithm to "guess" what you're looking for before you finish typing, and then fills in the rest of the word(s) for you.  In today's Times, Morozov specifically laments the "prudishness" of Google's algorithm, which refuses, for example, to autocomplete such potentially controversial terms as "Lolita" or "Swastika." (I must say though, I'm intrigued by the fact that the censoring mechanism apparently looks not only for pornography but also for intolerance.  Not sure whether this is good or bad, but it is intriguing.)

I, too, have a problem with autocomplete, not so much because of its selectivity as because of other shortcomings.  First, there are unintended consequences, such as the accidental e-mail (alluded to in today's column by Frank Bruni).  Fans of "The Newsroom" will recall MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer) e-mailing Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) about her intention to come clean about secrets from their past, only to discover that--thanks to autocomplete--she has accidentally sent this e-mail to approximately 100,000 people.  By the way, that's also EXACTLY how WOS discovered my secret crush on Janeane Garofalo. (But I SWEAR it's only because it's fun to say "Garofalo"!)

The other problem I have with autocomplete is that it encourages laziness.  Maybe it's just because I'm a fairly fast typist, but generally I can finish typing whatever word or words I want to search for in about the same amount of time as it takes autocomplete to make suggestions.  For example, say I want to Google the President.  Autocomplete fills in "Obama" as soon as one types the letters "Ob."  But by the time "Obama" appears in the pull-down list, I've already struck the "a" and am well on my way to "m."  And even if you're not that quick, how lazy do you have to be to consider typing three extra letters onerous?  If it's worth searching for, it's worth typing.  Let your fingers do the Googling!