Art of Inference
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| Volume 21 #1 - March 2003 |
| Anomaly - Volume 21 | |
| 01 March 2003 | |
Anomalies Used in the Inference Process
Reports - Volume 29 (2002) #15 Gay Tolerance and Creativity
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The New York Times in August announced that it would commence publishing reports of same-sex commitment ceremonies in the Weddings pages of its Sunday Styles section. |
Reports - Volume 29 (2002) #12 The Consumer
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Almost two out of three people would not start worrying about debt until the situation had spiraled out of control, research shows. |
Reports - Volume 29 (2002) #18 Bond Binge
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On October 4, as the U.S. stock market dropped 200 points and showed no sign of recovery, the long-term U.S. Treasury bond market was also in a decline. This is the first break in the multiyear profile of this market, which has been rising in tandem with every significant stock market sell-off. |
Reports - Volume 29 (2002) #19 Reaction to Economic Stress
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Sociologists and psychiatrists have long considered denial to be essential to the human survival instinct. Katie Long, director of publicity for Hyperion Books, said her survival instinct, like that of her friends, was focused on financial concerns. "I made a vow at lunch not to look at my 401(k) statement for two years. No way." |
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Intuition In a fluid environment, the best decisions come from intuition.This is being bolstered by recent research. What has been called instinct is now recognized as pattern recognition taking place at a subconscious level. In an experiment at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, subjects were given four decks of cards. They were asked to flip the cards, picking from any deck. Two decks were rigged to produce an overall loss and two to produce a gain. At intervals, the participants were asked what they thought was going on in the game. And they were hooked up to sensors to measure skin conductance responses, or SCRs (which are also measured by lie-detector machines). By the time they had turned about 10 cards, subjects began showing SCRs when they reached for a losing deck - that is, they showed a physical reaction. But not until they had turned, on average, 50 cards could they verbalize their 'hunch' that two decks were riskier. It took 30 more cards before they could explain why their hunch was right. Intuition is a leading indicator. Jim Williams |
In 2002, the U.S. was forecast to produce the smallest winter wheat crop in 24 years on the fewest harvested acres since 1971. (CSM, 7/10/02)
The average bushel of corn sells for $2 today; it costs farmers more than $3 to grow it. (NYT, 7/19/02)
Sales of SUVs are growing faster in Europe than any other make of car. (WSJ, 8/7/02)
Mercedes-Benz has stumbled in recent studies of customer satisfaction and quality. Not a single 2003 model made it to the Consumer Reports recommended list. (WSJ, 11/12/02)
Matsushita and Sony have agreed to jointly develop Linux operating system software for digital consumer electronic products, in “highly unusual cooperative deal between two of the fiercest rivals in the industry.” (FT, 12/19/02)
Banks in China are offering car loans for the first time. Private citizens have overtaken the government as the biggest buyers of cars. (WSJ, 12/13/02)
The rapid growth in the passenger car market caught GM by surprise. “We have achieved in five years what a lot of people, a lot of very smart people, thought would take 10 to 15 years,” said Phil Murtaugh, chairman of GM in China. (FT, 12/2/02)
China has passed the U.S. as the world’s largest importer of steel. (WSJ, 11/25/02)
Despite the high cost of shipping heavy stone, a Chinese gravestone company, Sinostone Inc., is underselling gravestone makers in the U.S. (WSJ, 7/23/02)
People in Japan have nearly nine times the purchasing power of their neighbors in China, yet they score lower in surveys of life satisfaction. (Newsweek, 9/16/02)
China quietly surpassed the U.S. as the No. 1 exporter to Japan in the first nine months of 2002. (USA Today, 11/21/02)
People who use eBay are getting together for parties across the country to introduce newcomers to the auction site, to buy and sell or trade tips about buying and selling and to have fun. EBay will send party hosts favors — hats, mugs, tote bags — with the eBay logo. (USA Today, 12/6/02)
Per capita consumption of food increased about 8% from 1990 to 2000 in the U.S. — about 140 extra pounds of food a year. (NYT, 7/7/02)
Adult diapers are one of the fastest-growing sales items in supermarkets and drugstores. About 25 million adults have transient or chronic incontinence, including about 50% of those over age 70. (USA Today, 9/20/02)
Over the last decade, only one moviegoing group has not shrunk or stagnated: moviegoers older than 50. (Star.com, 9/27/02)
More than forty percent of chino and jeans sales on the Land’s End Web site are now custom orders. (NYT, 9/30/02)
Celebrity’s first adult-only cruise set sail last Sept. 23rd. Eight out of 10 people surveyed said the trip was better than cruises with children aboard. More than 90% said they would recommend it to friends and family. (Wash Times, 11/16/02)
In Massachusetts in 2001, 82% of the bank robberies were carried out by people who simply passed a note to the teller demanding cash. (NYT, 7/9/02)
Fifteen million dollars was looted from the Municipal Credit Union in NYC by its own members when a computer failure caused by the collapse of the World Trade Center allowed virtually unlimited access to money in ATMs. (NYT, 8/6/02)
The Internet is helping cities use “the shame factor” as a weapon against crime and civil misbehavior. Denver posts the pictures of “johns,” men convicted of hiring prostitutes. Orlando posts the pictures of anyone arrested on prostitution or drug charges. (USA Today, 9/30/02)
The rate of serious crime in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Utah is as much as 50% higher than in the state of New York. Towns of 10,000 and 25,000 people are now the most likely places to experience a bank robbery. Drug-related homicides fell by 50% in urban areas, but they tripled in the last decade in rural areas. (NYT, 12/8/02)
According to UN forecasts, within two generations four out of five of the world’s women will be having two children or fewer. Today, more than 60 countries have fertility rates below replacement levels. (New Scientist, 7/20/02)
Nearly a dozen colleges and universities have built or are building retirement facilities on or near their campuses; 37 more are doing feasibility studies. (Modern Maturity, Oct 2002)
An assertion made in 1999 that computer equipment tied to the Internet was using 8% of the total supply of electricity in the U.S. has been refuted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Their study concludes that computers in all forms — not just those tied to the Internet — used closer to 3% of all electricity in 1999. (WSJ, 12/5/02)
In Takoma Park, MD., 10 families joined together to buy a 25-foot-tall grain silo that holds nearly 21 tons of shelled field corn that will be burned in their corn-burning stoves. (Balt Sun, 11/18/02)
A Toronto-based company has unveiled an at-home fueling pump called Phill. FuelMaker said it will be the first firm to market a system that connects to a home’s natural-gas line. (AP, 10/15/02)
New D-Theater digital videocassettes, which look like ordinary VHS tapes, hold up to 50 gigabytes of data — an entire movie in high-definition format, about twice the resolution of DVDs. (USA Today, 8/28/02)
Retail sales of DVD discs in the U.S. last year jumped from $6 billion to $11 billion. “We are finding new audiences all over again for old movies,” says one studio official. “It’s the Disney thing.” (FT, 11/17/02)
Family sitcoms are making a comeback, from 3 of the top 30 prime-time shows in 2001 to 9 of the top 30 in 2002. (NYT, 10/15/02)
Scientists from the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research have perfected a technique to clean up oil-contaminated soil using naturally occurring microbes. The process also yields a surprising benefit. When the microbes break down the oil, they leave a residue of hydrocarbons that act like fertilizers, making the reclaimed soil especially rich. (CSM, 7/11/02)
Deer kill more people in the U.S. than do all commercial airlines, train and bus accidents combined in a typical year. (WSJ, 8/1/02)
In Orange County, Calif., a $600 million sewage-purification system to be completed over the next 20 years will be the largest of its kind in the world. The new system will bring waste water up to drinking-water standards. (WSJ, 8/15/02)
Africa’s desert’s are in retreat. Vegetation has increased significantly in the past 15 years with major regrowth in southern Mauritania, northern Burkina Faso, Niger, central Chad and much of Sudan. (New Scientist, 9/21/02)
For every new home built in Santa Fe, builders must agree to first install, free of charge, 8 to 12 new high-efficiency toilets in existing homes, hotels and shops. (NYT, 11/3/02)
Household net worth in the U.S. continues to decline. “Prior to 2000, there had never been a year-on-year decline in household net worth in the postwar period. It happened in 2000 and 2001 and now in 2002,” says Paul Kasriel, director of economic research at Northern Trust in Chicago. (NYT, 12/8/02)
Celpay, the world’s first mobile-phone-based payment system, has been launched in Africa by MSI Cellular Holdings. The Amsterdam-based group controls Celtel mobile operators in 14 African countries with a total of about one million customers. (WSJ, 12/2/02)
“Unborn children” now qualify for government health benefits under a new federal rule — the first time any federal policy has defined childhood as beginning at conception. (Wash Post, 9/28/02)
Tanzania is abandoning decades of failed socialist policies. The East African country is in the midst of privatizing 400 state-owned companies — everything from agribusinesses to electric utilities to telecommunications to railroads. (Balt Sun, 11/18/02)
In a region of Spain called Extremadura, the government has launched an unorthodox campaign to convert all the area’s computer systems, in government offices, businesses and homes, from the Windows operating system to Linux, a free, open-source operating system available on the Internet. (Wash Post, 11/3/02)
In November, the FDA approved the first defibrillator specifically designed for home use. (AP, 11/13/02)
Medical researchers are finding that while medical spending is higher in locations with a surplus of doctors, they are not finding any corresponding improvement in the health of the affected populations. Life expectancy, for example, is no greater in regions that have more intensive medical care. (NYT, 7/21/02)
Oxford University have developed the first vaccine to target the malaria parasite inside human cells. Previous vaccines against the disease have been unusable, in great part because they have only been able to attack the parasite before it enters the cell. (Wash Times, 8/27/02)
In Great Britain, the number of people killed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria is rising rapidly but was not known until recently because there was no code for deaths caused by them. The number of deaths due to resistant Staphylococus aureus bacteria rose from 47 in 1993 to 398 in 1998. (FT, 12/13/02)
Drug companies are getting into the water business. Baxter International is selling Pulse, a line of waters enhanced with lycopene and soy isoflavones, a plant hormone that is said to have some estrogen-like properties. (NYT, 8/3/02)
For the first time, cancer has been treated by removing an organ from the body, giving it radiotherapy and then re-implanting it. Doctors in Italy used the technique to treat a 48-year-old man with multiple tumours in his liver. One year after the procedure, the man is alive and well. (New Scientist, 12/18/02)
Contrary to all expectations, Japan experienced a boom in housing loans in 2002. In theory, there should be no supply of loans because bank capital is tied up. “Something may be stirring,” said a strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. (FT, 7/3/02)
Toyota had set up a peat business in China’s Sichuan province to export the material to use on top of buildings in Tokyo. The Tokyo government has ruled that part of every new building has to be covered in vegetation to help combat the effects of heat retained by high-rises. (FT, 7/7/02)
Six months after its launch in 1997, customers were buying $500,000 of computer equipment a day on Dell Computer’s Web site in Japan. Today, Dell books 80% of its consumer sales in Japan online — the highest rate of any country in which it operates. (NYT, 12/8/02)
Last fall, a “salaryman” scientist won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. His method for viewing molecules has led to the creation of new medicines, winning him Japan’s 12th Nobel Prize. He is the first recipient of the chemistry prize to have no more than a bachelor’s degree. (CSM, 11/4/02)
Los Angeles County prints ballots in seven languages — English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese — and is preparing to add Cambodian. (Insight, 10/28/02)
Homeowners in Ruby Ranch, Colo., have set up the first subscriber-owned DSL co-op in the country. The initial subscribers paid $60 in monthly fees but the rates will drop as more people sign up. (Business 2.0, Aug 2002)
Although it is mostly used in urban areas, Wi-Fi can be transmitted over long distances. A group in the Canary Islands recently sent a signal across 70.5 km of ocean separating the islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria. (FT, 10/27/02)
Con Edison and at least half a dozen other utilities are testing equipment that would deliver the Internet over the power grid. In Europe, several utilities already sell powerline Internet to thousands of customers. (USN&WR, 8/12/02)
In November, Italy’s national telecommunications company, Telecom Italia, began using the Internet to transport all calls between Rome and Milan. (Balt Sun, 12/8/02)
The total number of business and residential telephone lines declined in 2001 for the first time since the Depression. “It’s a behavioral shift from the last 100 years in which we called a geographical place and got a person. We’re now moving to a model of calling a person — regardless of geography. The consequences of such a change could be profound,” says telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan. (NYT, 8/29/02)
A new instant messaging program allows users of AOL Instant Messenger and Microsoft’s MSN Messenger to add moving pictures to chats. With no advertising and only a few press reports, some 60,000 users signed up for the free Logitech software in just over three weeks. (USA Today, 8/19/02)
“In their candid moments everybody at the F.C.C. will tell you they are being pressured quite severely by various forces that are quite concerned about Wi-Fi. They’re worried that it is really a trenching machine that will uproot the entrenched forces,” said Reed E. Hundt, a former chairman of the F.C.C. (NYT, 11/18/02)
Clotheslines are suddenly appearing in even the most exclusive zip codes. Butts Manufacturing says demand has increased as much as 40%, and Stacksandstacks, an Internet retailer, reports that sales of air-drying devices are up by 60-80% a month. (WSJ, 7/5/02)
The pregnant belly, once hidden under oversize shirts and muumuus, is out in the open. “Now the belly is something to be proud of,” said the editor of Pregnancy magazine. “You can be pregnant and still feel like a hip mama.” (Wash Post, 8/1/02)
In the U.S., notes Hope College psychologist David Meyers, real income has doubled since 1960. We’re twice as likely to own cars, air conditioners and clothes dryers, twice as likely to eat out on any given night. Yet our divorce rate has doubled, teen suicide has tripled and depression has increased tenfold. (Newsweek, 9/16/02)
By some estimates, the U.S. witch population has increased tenfold in the past decade, to 500,000. (FT, 10/3/02)
Last summer, a 40-foot trawler Nordhavn completed a 172-day trip around the world — believed to be the fastest circumnavigation ever by a production motorboat and also the smallest powerboat to have completed such a journey. (NYT, 7/14/02)
Compared to previous generations, today’s Americans are starting work later in life, spending less time on chores at home, and living longer after retirement. All told, 70% of a typical American’s waking life-time hours are available for leisure, up from 55% in 1950. (Reason, Aug 2002)
Drive-In movie theaters are making a small comeback. In the 1990’s, 15 new drive-ins were built, and 39 old ones were reopened. A total of 430 drive-ins are operating across 47 states. (NYT, 9/20/02)
Thirty-four Asda stores, Britain's food and clothing superstore, now have volunteer in-store chaplains. “The chaplains have a very low-key presence and are there to chat or listen to our customers and colleagues, whatever their faith,” said a store spokesman. (Christianity Today, 8/5/02)
ParishPay, a firm that allows people to make church donations by credit or debit card, reached agreements with the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Diocese of San Diego, representing some 1,000 churches with almost 3 million parishioners. (Knight Ridder, 9/14/02)
Religion is the most popular category in the Idiot’s Guides, accounting for 4 of the top ten sellers in 2001 among more than 450 titles. (NYT, 11/2/02)
Some denominations are moving away from rigid, wooden pews. Chairs with cup holders, and plenty of padding are finding their way into churches. (AP, 11/16/02)
More than 6,000 Russian Mary Kay consultants attended their annual convention last September — at the Kremlin. They took classes and competed for sales prizes of silver BMWs in rooms that once housed Soviet bureaucrats. (Wash Post, 9/22/02)
Russia is introducing Orthodox religious education in schools for the first time since the czars. (Daily Telegraph, 11/20/02)
A handful of grocery stores in the U.S. are testing fingerprint imaging machines that allow shoppers to pay for their purchases simply by putting a finger to an electronic pad. “The feedback from our seniors is: ‘We love it. It makes it totally secure,’” said a manager for the Kroger chain. (NYT, 7/25/02)
A cryptography expert in Japan fools fingerprint readers with Gummi Bears. Tsutomu Matsumoto uses candy gelatin to make a fake finger, which he finds passes fingerprint detectors four times out of five. (Reason, Aug 2002)
A movement called Open Spectrum argues that modern technology allows us to build “smart” transmitters that wouldn’t interfere with each other, thus eliminating the bandwidth scarcity problem. To measure the entire usable radio spectrum on the same scale as a car AM radio would require a radio display 20 miles wide. (WSJ, 9/30/02)
A recent paper in the journal Physical Review Letters announced a discovery with startling implications: For brief periods, tiny particles can suck up entropy, converting heat from their surroundings into useful work, violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (WSJ, 8/2/02)
A camera that can see through clothes, skin and even walls without X-rays has been developed by scientists in Oxfordshire. The “terahertz” camera detects a form of ultra-high-frequency, or terahertz, energy waves naturally emitted by all objects. “It’s a completely new window into the human body,” said Prof. Laurie Hall, an authority on medical imaging. (Sunday Telegraph, 10/6/02)
Associated Anomalies
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Anomaly
Inference Update
Quarterly Reviews
Anomalies
Themes
Thinking About Thinking
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