⌂ Josh Leitzel’s Weblog

The New York Times recently ran a story about changes in the airline industry in recent years. A few highlights:

But most have begun putting Wi-Fi and individual televisions aboard their planes, installing more comfortable seats for business passengers and investing in mobile technology that gives passengers more control over their travel plans.

[…]

Delta also spent $140 million over two years to develop a new Web site, which it unveiled last year. The site allows the airline to sell more services to passengers, including upgrades to premium seats, or booking hotel rooms or cars. At a conference last year, one executive compared the company’s aims to something Amazon has on its Web site — the ability to bundle offers or suggest products based on a passenger’s history and preferences.

I recently flew from Seattle to Chicago on United on a Boeing 737-800, which has 126 standard coach seats. Every one of those seats was equipped with a display hooked up to DirecTV. Only a couple people, from what I saw, took advantage of the programming and watched something during the 5-hour flight. What most people did was ignore their display without turning it off, leaving it to loop endlessly over the 5-minute DirecTV marketing pitch.

I have no figures, but how much might it cost an airline to install and maintain these individual displays? Add on the costs to get the content, plus the cheap headphones most airlines give passengers these days, and you’re wasting a bunch of money on something that barely anyone wants. I, like everyone else, travel with my phone, which has all my music on it, and my headphones. And, like many people, I travel with my iPad. It seems to me that having good Wi-Fi on the plane is orders of magnitude better than having a personal display, because I can simply load Netflix on my iPad. (Even assuming a lack of Netflix-capable WiFi, I’d rather watch a downloaded movie on my retina-display iPad than the low-quality airline display.)

Everything the Times article cites as progress—WiFi, site redesigns, better mobile apps—are good things. Except the seat displays. As tech has become more personalized, especially with the popularity of tablets, we’re getting more accustomed to carrying our entertainment around with us. In that world, the airlines would be better off ditching the seat displays, the awful headphones, and the content deals. Instead, they should invest in power outlets and Wi-Fi.

Today, President Obama unveiled Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies:

Today at the White House, President Obama unveiled the “BRAIN” Initiative—a bold new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury.

A few things:

1. This is fantastic.
2. Contrived acronyms like this and countless others in D.C.—PATRIOT, etc.—are nauseating and senseless.
3. If the name were BRAIN Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, it would almost be redeemable, because then it would be a recursive acronym. Since recursion—self-reference—is so incredibly central to the idea of consciousness, I think it might provide some value and undo the stupendous ridiculousness of the acronym.

I was recently reminded of Brooks’s Law—that “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later”—and it led me to Wikipedia’s full list of eponymous laws.

Besides the classic Asimov robotics laws and Clarke’s laws, a few of my favorites:

Benford’s Law: In any collection of statistics, a given statistic has roughly a 30% chance of starting with the digit 1.

Betteridge’s Law: Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with a “no”.

Conway’s Law: Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of the organization.

Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Kerckhoff’s Principle: A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge.

Linus’s Law: Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

Mooers’s Law: An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it.

Niven’s Law of Time Travel: If the universe of discourse permits the possibility of time travel and of changing the past, then no time machine will be invented in that universe.

Peter Principle: Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.

Now I’m off to inspect the even-longer Wikipedia list of paradoxes.

Over the weekend I finally got around to watching How to Survive a Plague (available on Netflix), a wonderful documentary about the AIDS activism group ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). The film makes heavy use of archival footage from the ’80s and ’90s. One particular moment that I found illuminating was a clip from Crossfire featuring an exchange between Peter Staley, a prominent ACT UP activist, and Pat Buchanan. The first half of the segment is available on YouTube, but I haven’t been able to find the full clip. However, you can see it in the film at the 30-minute mark. Here’s a transcript of the segment:

Tom Braden: Peter Staley, you have the AIDS virus, and I am sorry. But, don’t you think that the Federal Drug Administration [sic] has a responsibility not to let people such as you have quacks that could cause even more harm than you already have?

Peter Staley: The problem is, is that the FDA is using the same process to test a nasal spray as it is to test AIDS drugs. And it’s a 7-10 year process.

Braden: You have the FDA giving you a drug. So far you’ve got AZT. Why would—

Staley: Which I can’t take because it’s far too toxic, and over half the people that have HIV can’t take it.

Braden: OK, but the FDA says there is nothing else that is worth anything.

Pat Buchanan: Mr. Staley, this is gonna astonish you, but I agree with you a hundred percent. I think if someone’s got AIDS and someone wants to take a drug, it’s their life, and if it gives ’em hope, you oughta be able to take it. What I wanna ask you is whether you know of anything that you think might be some kind of miraculous cure that you think they’re sittin’ on at FDA.

Staley: There are over one hundred and forty drugs out there that the FDA has identified as possibilities, and are in some stage of being looked at right now.

Buchanan: Why are they holding back—

Staley: Among that one hundred and forty, there’s gotta be one or a combination thereof that can slow down this virus or halt it in its tracks.

Buchanan: You’re just simply carrying the virus, is that correct?

Staley: I have a few very minor symptoms, and my immune system is virtually shot.

Buchanan: What would you like to take?

Staley: I would like to be able to take dextran sulfate, legally. I’m taking it on the underground right now.

Buchanan: Well why not, Mr. Braden?

Braden: Because for—I don’t know anything about dextran sulfate, and neither do you–

Staley: Well I’ll tell you this: it’s an over-the-counter drug in Japan, and has been for twenty years.

Braden: But—

Staley: Over the counter.

Buchanan: Over the counter in Japan?

Staley: Yes.

Braden: But if the FDA says—

Buchanan: Mr. Staley–

Staley: I’m only asking that they be released after there’s a minimal amount of efficacy, not a one hundred percent test.

Buchanan: Well, a final question to you. Let me get something here. You’ve got the pink triangle on your shirt.

Staley: Yes.

Buchanan: I gather that means you’re a homosexual.

Staley: Yes.

Buchanan: Lookin’ in the camera, what would you tell some kid—say you had a younger brother, twenty-one years old, who also might have homosexual tendencies—What would you tell him if you wanted him to live a long life?

Staley: Use a condom. And also to use a lubricant by the way that has a medicine that can—

Buchanan: But aren’t you, this is Russian roulette.

Staley: It is not Russian roulette. It is Russian roulette to not give people this information when human nature dictates that they’re gonna go out there and they’re gonna have sex.

Buchanan: You mean celibacy is impossible?

Staley: It’s just not gonna work. People aren’t gonna do it and lots of people are gonna die. Now would you rather have a lot of people cheating under celibacy with thousands of people dying or would you rather save those lives and let them have sex?

Buchanan: Well I think that uh, well. Thank you very much Peter Staley, thanks for being in our studio, Mr. Braden and I’ll be back in a minute.

Some things never change.

Hello, world!

Hopefully more interesting things are to come.