Live from Austin!

From a neat blog posting summarizing some research on sex and intelligence:

By the age of 19, 80% of US males and 75% of women have lost their virginity, and 87% of college students have had sex. But this number appears to be much lower at elite (i.e. more intelligent) colleges. According to the article, only 56% of Princeton undergraduates have had intercourse. At Harvard 59% of the undergraduates are non-virgins, and at MIT, only a slight majority, 51%, have had intercourse. Further, only 65% of MIT graduate students have had sex.

The bar chart of results from a Wellesley college survey is amusing, with the percentage of students who are virgins ranging from 0% for the Art students, up to 83% for the Mathematics students.

The only mystery is why the figure for Computer Science students is only half that for Mathematics. My guess is that it’s because Wellesley is a female-only college, and female computer scientists can basically get on the Internet and find any number of desperate male computer scientists to hook up with.

Also:

…another revealing finding from the Counterpoint survey was that while 95% of US men and 70% of women masturbate, this number is only 68% of men and 20% of women at MIT!

So the hypothesis is that smarter people have a lower sex drive. Obviously there are going to be exceptions, however.

What would you get if some neocons decided to create comic books to tell the truth about the liberal menace? You’d get something like this:

Extract from Liberality For All.

I’d like to think that the authors are actually writing it as a sophisticated parody of the right wing mindset, taking the lunacy heard on Fox News and imagining if it were true, and selling it to a gullible conservative audience. But I strongly suspect they’re serious.

They probably don’t see the hilariousness of casting G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North as super heroes either.

But you’ve gotta admit, that’s some damn fine crayon work.

Microsoft’s Xbox division has announced their results for Fiscal Year 2006. Highlights:

• Total loss of $1.2 billion.
• Operating losses up 183%.
• Revenues down 10% YTY in Q4 because of “decreased Xbox 360 console sales”; specifically…
• Sales dropped from 1.8 million units per quarter to just 700,000 units per quarter, YTY.
• Revenue from sales of games down 28%.

This is awesome news, making it six years of losses to date.

Microsoft say they expect to make a profit in the upcoming year. O RLY? They couldn’t make a profit during a year in which they basically had no competition, so how do they expect to do better now that the Wii is outselling their console by a factor of 3:1 or more and Wii games are already outselling Xbox games? Nintendo makes a profit on every Wii console, while Microsoft has apparently lost money on every Xbox 360 they’ve sold, even after you factor out the huge losses from replacing broken consoles under warranty.

Added to that, the PS3 is going to see its first “must have” games ship towards the end of this year. Grand Theft Auto IV looks incredible, but the Xbox 360 version is apparently in trouble because it’s hard to cram the game onto a DVD. Demos to date have been the Xbox version, but there’s a good chance the PS3 version is going to end up looking significantly better. Then there’s Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Heavenly Sword, the new Indiana Jones game, Killzone 2 (with its 2GB levels), LittleBigPlanet, Metal Gear Solid 4, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and so on.

Basically, Microsoft have already been squeezed out of the low end of the market by the Wii, and the hardcore gamers are likely to start getting more interested in the PS3 soon. I suspect Microsoft has much less chance of turning a profit next year than it did this last year.

An amazing article from the Chicago Reader describes a recent incident in which an out-of-uniform police officer who was late arriving to work, shot an unarmed man in the head at point blank range, in full view of security cameras.

The officer lied and said that at the time of the shooting he was surrounded by 4 or 5 men who had threatened his life. When police discovered that the video footage existed, the story was changed to say that the victim had raised a fist and attempted to disarm the officer, and that the cop had raised his arm and accidentally shot the victim through the head.

And it gets worse from there. I encourage you to watch the footage and listen to the narration.

Guy Kawasaki has summarized a bunch of things he thinks everyone should learn about the world of work. One of them leaped out at me:

Whether [you are] young or old, the point is that the optimal length of an email message is five sentences. All you should do is explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by.

Clearly he is a man after my own heart. At work I often reply with e-mails consisting of the word “Done.”

Whenever you’re writing an e-mail, you should go through what I call W5 analysis. You imagine that you’re the person who is receiving the e-mail, and answer the 5 or more questions that will run through their mind:

• Who are you?
• What’s happening?
• When is it going to happen?
• Where is it going to happen?
• Why should I care?

Those are the 5 Ws. (Note that for the purposes of this exercise, “How” is spelled with a silent ‘W’, though ‘How’ questions tend to be more specialized and less important than the others.)

Sometimes there are more than 5 Ws. For instance, if you’re asking someone to do something, you’ll want to go on and answer

• What do I need to do?
• When do I need to do it by?
• How do I do it?

Similarly, if you’re announcing a problem, you might want to add

• Why did this happen?

If you’re really lucky, you may be able to skip a question and let the reader work it out for themselves. For instance, if they know you already, you can usually skip the “Who are you?” However, if you can’t come up with at least 5 obvious W questions that the reader will want answers to, you’re probably missing something important. Try going through “Who”, “What”, “When”, “Where”, “Why” and see if they prod you to think of a question.

Once you’ve answered the W questions, those answers become the content of the e-mail. So it’s probably no coincidence that Kawasaki picks 5 sentences, and my rule of thumb is to pick the answers to 5 questions.

W5 analysis is also useful for web pages. If you’re setting up a business web site, you should definitely use W5 to decide what goes on the home page. When I go to a web site, I always want to know:

• Why does this web site exist?
• What does it contain?
• Why should I explore further?

and often

• Who owns the site?
• Where can I contact them?

It’s surprising how many sites fail to answer those questions.

In fact, once you start thinking this way, you see W5 everywhere. For instance, consider software project release announcements on SourceForge. As a user, off the top of your head, what are the 5 Ws you’d want answers to about any piece of software?

• What does it do?
• What does it cost (or what’s the license)?
• What do I need to run it?
• Who wrote it?
• Where is the documentation?

Now go through the release announcements and project pages and see how often people leave those questions unanswered. D’ohh!

Quote:

According to IRNA, the official Islamic Republic news agency, the national Police chief has implicitly verified the news about the confiscation of a number of squirrels, equipped with eavesdropping devices, on the Iranian borders. He has declined to give any more details, but, reportedly, when asked about the confiscation of 14 spy squirrels, he stated, “I have heard about it, but I do not have precise information”. IRNA adds, “These squirrels were equipped by foreign intelligence services, but were captured two weeks ago by the Police”.

Life imitates Flickr?

Psychology Today has an article listing and explaining 10 scientific truths about human nature that people just don’t want to admit.

Like the fact that most suicide bombers are Muslim, and that humans are naturally polygamous. Or that behavior many women interpret as “hostile” or “harrassing” is actually men treating women as equals.

After hearing me mention that we considered a Subaru Outback as plan B if we couldn’t get a Prius, a Subaru dealer tries to sell me a new car. I don’t seem to be buying it, so he takes me to a special Subaru dealership hidden away in the countryside.

The area is surrounded by trees and grass. The buildings are large and low, like aircraft hangars. We walk past lots filled with SUVs. I explain that I’m really not interested in SUVs.

He points at a sports car. I look at it. It’s a nice design, but it’s only about 2 meters long, so I’d never fit in it. I’m similarly unenthusiastic about the Subaru Clown Car. Then he shows me a car I could actually fit in, but it’s bright pink and looks like it was made by gluing together giant models of male and female genitals.

I start to suspect that these cars are deliberately unsellable, so he can push me towards an SUV. I say that I’m really not interested in buying anything. The salesman says I’ll change my mind once I’ve had The Subaru Experience.

We climb into an SUV and close the doors. Suddenly, a circular-saw-wielding maniac in a hockey mask attempts to cut through the door next to me. The door stands up pretty well to the attack. I’m obviously startled, but the salesman grins at me and says something about the ruggedness of Subaru SUVs. I can’t hear it above the whine of metal against metal. Then the attacker lunges the saw through the window, the blade touches my arm, and I discover it’s fake. The whole thing is fake, like a movie.

It turns out that this Subaru dealership is a converted movie studio where they stage elaborate scenarios intended to convince people to buy vehicles.

The second scenario is to experience how a Subaru Outback stands up to an attack by rabid wolves. The answer is: pretty well. Once the howling stops, we get out and head into a nearby building.

The salesman hands me some protective clothing. I put it on, but when I look in the mirror it turns out to be a waiter’s outfit. We walk through into a long room with tables laden with food along both sides. At the far end is some sort of car. We’re going to be experiencing how well a Subaru stands up to a custard pie fight.

I’ve had enough. I don’t want to get custard and whipped cream all over me. I run back out into the corridor. Alarms start sounding, alerting everyone to an escaping customer. I exit the corridor into a garage filled with assorted special-purpose Subaru vehicles. I’m delighted to find a Subaru customized for ram-raiding. I get in, hotwire it, drive out through the garage doors, and escape.

As the reality distortion field begins to fade, people are starting to wake up to the iPhone’s shortcomings. I’ve been assembling a list of issues I’ve seen mentioned:

• No SDK.
• No Flash.
• No Java.
• No Bluetooth file transfer.
• No DIY MP3 or AAC ringtones.
• Although the camera takes 2 megapixel photos, the only way to get them out is to e-mail them, which resizes them to 640×480.
• No Bluetooth keyboard support.
• Need a new battery? $80 and you have to mail the phone to Apple and wait 3 business days.
• Poor talk time.
• No instant messaging.
• No modem support for using it with your laptop.
• Recessed 3-pole headphone jack doesn’t work with regular headphone plugs.
• No video support from the camera.
• No MMS (multimedia SMS).
• Glass front invites disaster.
• No unread mark support in mail (IMAP).
• No filters in mail.
• No voice dial.
• Regular SIM cards don’t work, so you can’t get an overseas SIM and avoid roaming charges.

So yeah, definitely not buying one. But I bet iPhone 2.0 in a year or so will rock.

Unearthed via Google Groups: me ranting about phone design and pondering the development of a Mac phone with easy to understand graphical push-buttons. In 1991.

But no, no iPhone for me until it’s opened up and the price is dropped. If I wanted to blow $600 on a piece of overhyped locked-down electronics, I’d get a PlayStation 3.