artdiamondblog.com – Page 415 – Art Diamond's web log

“A Fairy Tale About a Lonely Candle that Wants to Be Lighted”

“A newly found manuscript of a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, which has been located in Odense, is pictured in the State Archives in Copenhagen, Denmark, Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012. The story of ‘The Tallow Candle’ might have been written about 1823, when he was 18 year old.” Source of caption and photo: http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/new-found-tale-of-a-lonely-candle-could-be-early-work-of-hc-andersen-1.1077533#ixzz2GmTQNcFvhttp://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.1077539!/

(p. C2) A fairy tale about a lonely candle that wants to be lighted had been languishing in a box in Denmark’s National Archives for many years. In October it was discovered by a retired historian, who now believes it is one of the first fairy tales ever written by Hans Christian Andersen.
. . .
The six-page manuscript, called “Tallow Candle,” is dedicated to a vicar’s widow named Bunkeflod who lived across the street from Andersen’s home. Ejnar Stig Askgaard, a Hans Christian Andersen expert, said the work was probably one of Andersen’s earliest.

For the full story, see:
CAROL VOGEL. “Discovery of Story Is Like a Fairy Tale.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., December 14, 2012): C2.
(Note: ellipsis and underline added; bold in original.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date December 13, 2012, and has the title “Like a Fairy Tale: Hans Christian Andersen Story Is Found in a Box.”)
(Note: the words underlined by me above, were in the online, but not the print, version of the article.)

“Think Profit”

(p. 339) At the January 1998 San Francisco Macworld, Jobs took the stage where Amelio had bombed a year earlier. He sported a full beard and a leather jacket as he touted the new product strategy. And for the first time he ended the presentation with a phrase that he would make his signature coda: “Oh, and one more thing . . .” This time the “one more thing” was “Think Profit.” When he said those words, the crowd erupted in applause. After two years of staggering losses, Apple had enjoyed a profitable quarter, making $45 million. For the full fiscal year of 1998, it would turn in a $309 million profit. Jobs was back, and so was Apple.

Source:
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)

Government Job Protection Regulations Reduce Youth Jobs

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A7) Socialist President François Hollande has come up with a plan to ease the problem: give €4,000 ($5,276) a year for three years to small companies that hire a young person on a permanent contract while committing to keep an employee age 57 or over.
. . .
The French government hopes as many as half a million youths will find permanent jobs over the next five years due to the measure, which could cost the government about €1 billion a year when it is in place.
Economists say the number of real new jobs is likely to be much lower because the government will be subsidizing jobs that would have been created anyway. Only around 100,000 new jobs will be created, according to OFCE, an economic-research think tank in Paris.
French companies say they are reluctant to hire young people on permanent contracts because it gives employees a level of protection the companies say they can’t afford to grant–even if they get the subsidy proposed by Mr. Hollande.
“It’s great to have €4,000, but if the new recruit isn’t good, we don’t know how long we’ll be stuck with them,” said Philippe Lehmann, who runs Lehmann Sarl, a mechanical-parts factory in Molsheim, eastern France that employs seven people.

For the full story, see:
WILLIAM HOROBIN. “France Pins Hopes on Youth Jobs Plan.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., December 24, 2012): A7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date December 23, 2012.)
(Note: the online version of the last two paragraphs quoted above contains a few extra words of elaboration at the end of each paragraph, as compared to the print version. I have underlined these words in the passages quoted above.)

How Chavez Punished Those Who Opposed Him

(p. 196) In 2004, the Hugo Chávez regime in Venezuela distributed the list of several million voters who had attempted to remove him from office throughout the government bureaucracy, allegedly to identify and punish these voters. We match the list of petition signers distributed by the government to household survey respondents to measure the economic effects of being identified as a Chávez political opponent. We find that voters who were identified as Chávez opponents experienced a 5 percent drop in earnings and a 1.3 percentage point drop in employment rates after the voter list was released.

Source:
Hsieh, Chang-Tai, Edward Miguel, Daniel Ortega, and Francisco Rodriguez. “The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela’s Maisanta.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3, no. 2 (2011): 196-214.

“People Said He Was a Fraud, But He Turned Out to Be Right”

“Willis Whitfield with a mobile clean room in the 1960s.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B16) Half a century ago, as a rapidly changing world sought increasingly smaller mechanical and electrical components and more sanitary hospital conditions, one of the biggest obstacles to progress was air, and the dust and germs it contains.
. . .
Then, in 1962, Willis Whitfield invented the clean room.
“People said he was a fraud,” recalled Gilbert V. Herrera, the director of microsystems science and technology at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. “But he turned out to be right.”
. . .
His clean rooms blew air in from the ceiling and sucked it out from the floor. Filters scrubbed the air before it entered the room. Gravity helped particles exit. It might not seem like a complicated concept, but no one had tried it before. The process could completely replace the air in the room 10 times a minute.
Particle detectors in Mr. Whitfield’s clean rooms started showing numbers so low — a thousand times lower than other methods — that some people did not believe the readings, or Mr. Whitfield. He was questioned so much that he began understating the efficiency of his method to keep from shocking people.
“I think Whitfield’s wrong,” a scientist from Bell Labs finally said at a conference where Mr. Whitfield spoke. “It’s actually 10 times better than he’s saying.”

For the full obituary, see:
WILLIAM YARDLEY. “W. Whitfield, 92, Dies; Built Clean Room.” The New York Times (Weds., December 5, 2012): B16.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date December 4, 2012, and has the title “Willis Whitfield, Inventor of Clean Room That Purges Tiny Particles, Dies at 92.”)

Jobs Laid Off 3,000 from Apple to Save It from Bankruptcy

(p. 339) In his first year back, Jobs laid off more than three thousand people, which salvaged the company’s balance sheet. For the fiscal year that ended when Jobs became interim CEO in September 1997, Apple lost $1.04 billion. “We were less than ninety days from being insolvent,” he recalled.

Source:
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Internet Allows Pricing Experiments

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A10) This year, researchers in Spain studied more than 200 online retailers and found a handful of examples of price differences–including at Staples within Massachusetts–that appeared to be based on location and other factors. Those findings suggest that Staples’ price adjustments have been present at least since this summer.

It is difficult for online shoppers to know why, or even if, they are being offered different deals from other people. Many sites switch prices at lightning speed in response to competitors’ offerings and other factors, a practice known as “dynamic pricing.” Other sites test different prices but do so without regard to the buyer’s characteristics.
To find differences that weren’t purely the result of dynamic pricing or randomized tests, the Journal conducted preliminary scans by simulating visits from different computers to a variety of e-commerce sites. If a website showed different prices or offers, the Journal then analyzed the site’s computer code and conducted follow-up testing.
The Journal’s tests, which were conducted in phases between August and December, indicated that some big-name retailers are experimenting with offering different prices and products to different users.
Some sites, for example, gave discounts based on whether or not a person was using a mobile device. A person searching for hotels from the Web browser of an iPhone or Android phone on travel sites Orbitz and CheapTickets would see discounts of as much as 50% off the list price, Orbitz said.
. . .
At home-improvement site Lowe’s Cos., . . . prices depend on location. For example, a refrigerator in the Journal’s tests cost $449 in Chicago, Los Angeles and Ashburn, Va., but $499 in seven other test cities. Lowe’s said online shoppers receive the lower of the online store price or the price at their local Lowe’s store as indicated by their ZIP Code.
Home Depot’s website offered price variations that appeared to be based on the nearest brick-and-mortar store as well. A 250-foot spool of electrical wiring fell into six pricing groups, including $70.80 in Ashtabula, Ohio; $72.45 in Erie, Pa.; $75.98 in Olean, N.Y and $77.87 in Monticello, N.Y.
. . .
The differences found on the Staples website presented a complex pricing scheme. The Journal simulated visits to Staples.com from all of the more than 42,000 U.S. ZIP Codes, testing the price of a Swingline stapler 20 times in each. In addition, the Journal tested more than 1,000 different products in 10 selected ZIP Codes, 10 times in each location.
The Journal saw as many as three different prices for individual items. How frequently a simulated visitor saw low and high prices appeared to be tied to the person’s ZIP Code. Testing suggested that Staples tries to deduce people’s ZIP Codes by looking at their computer’s IP address. This can be accurate, but isn’t foolproof.
In the Journal’s tests, ZIP Codes whose center was farther than 20 miles from a Staples competitor saw higher prices 67% of the time. By contrast, ZIP Codes within 20 miles of a rival saw the high price least often, only 12% of the time.

For the full story, see:
JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES, JEREMY SINGER-VINE and ASHKAN SOLTANI. “Websites Vary Prices, Deals Based on Users’ Information.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., December 24, 2012): A1 & A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Ancient Recipe Rights Protection

“The Sybarites,” Phylarchus [the 3rd cent. BCE historian] says, “having drifted into luxury wrote a law that women be invited to festivals and that those who make the call to the sacrifice issue their summons a year in advance; thus the women could prepare their dresses and other adornments in a manner befitting that time span before answering the summons. And if some cook or chef invented an extraordinary recipe of his own, no one but the inventor was entitled to use it for a year, in order that during this time the inventor should have the profit and others might labor to excel in such endeavors. Similarly, those who sold eels were not charged taxes, nor those who caught them. In the same manner they made those who worked with sea-purple dye and those who imported it exempt from taxes.”

Source:
Athenaeus. Deipnosophistae (the Scholars at Dinner), XII 521c2-d7.
(Note: as quoted on the back cover of Journal of Political Economy 118, no. 6 (December 2010).)

“The Arpanet Was Not an Internet”

“Xerox PARC headquarters.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A11) A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet.”
. . .
Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to fellow technologists in 2004 setting the record straight: “The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet. An Internet is a connection between two or more computer networks.”
If the government didn’t invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet’s backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.
But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.
According to a book about Xerox PARC, “Dealers of Lightning” (by Michael Hiltzik), its top researchers realized they couldn’t wait for the government to connect different networks, so would have to do it themselves. “We have a more immediate problem than they do,” Robert Metcalfe told his colleague John Shoch in 1973. “We have more networks than they do.” Mr. Shoch later recalled that ARPA staffers “were working under government funding and university contracts. They had contract administrators . . . and all that slow, lugubrious behavior to contend with.”

For the full commentary, see:
Gordon Crovitz. “INFORMATION AGE; Who Really Invented the Internet?” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., July 23, 2012): A11.
(Note: ellipsis between paragraphs was added; ellipsis internal to last paragraph was in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 22, 2012.)

I read the Hiltzik book several years ago, and my memory of it is not sharp, but I remember thinking that it was a useful book:
Hiltzik, Michael A. Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age. New York: HarperBusiness, 1999.

Debating Grammar: “Think Different” or “Think Differently”

(p. 329) They debated the grammatical issue: If “different” was supposed to modify the verb “think,” it should be an adverb, as in “think dif-(p. 330)ferently.” But Jobs insisted that he wanted “different” to be used as a noun, as in “think victory” or “think beauty.” Also, it echoed colloquial use, as in “think big.” Jobs later explained, “We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It’s grammatical, if you think about what we’re trying to say. It’s not think the same, it’s think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. ‘Think differently’ wouldn’t hit the meaning for me.”

Source:
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Chávez Supporters Feared Losing Government Jobs

“A Chávez supporter. The president runs a well-oiled patronage system, a Tammany Hall-like operation but on a national scale. Government workers are frequently required to attend pro-Chávez rallies, and they come under pressure to vote for him.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

After the story quoted below was published, Chávez (alas) was re-elected.

(p. A1) Many Venezuelans who are eager to send Mr. Chávez packing, fed up with the country’s lackluster economy and rampant crime, are nonetheless anxious that voting against the president could mean being fired from a government job, losing a government-built home or being cut off from social welfare benefits.

“I work for the government, and it scares me,” said Luisa Arismendi, 33, a schoolteacher who cheered on a recent morning as Mr. Chávez’s challenger, Henrique Capriles Radonski, drove by in this northeastern city, waving from the back of a pickup truck. Until this year, she always voted for Mr. Chávez, and she hesitated before giving her name, worried about what would happen if her supervisors found out she was switching sides. “If Chávez wins,” she said, “I could be fired.”
. . .
(p. A6) The fear has deep roots. Venezuelans bitterly recall how the names of millions of voters were made public after they signed a petition for an unsuccessful 2004 recall referendum to force Mr. Chávez out of office. Many government workers whose names were on the list lost their jobs.
Mr. Chávez runs a well-oiled patronage system, a Tammany Hall-like operation but on a national scale. Government workers are frequently required to attend pro-Chávez rallies, and they come under other pressures.
“They tell me that I have to vote for Chávez,” said Diodimar Salazar, 37, who works at a government-run day care center in a rural area southeast of Cumaná. “They always threaten you that you will get fired.”
Ms. Salazar said that her pro-Chávez co-workers insisted that the government would know how she voted. But experience has taught her otherwise. She simply casts her vote for the opposition and then tells her co-workers that she voted for Mr. Chávez.
“I’m not going to take the risk,” said Fabiana Osteicoechea, 22, a law student in Caracas who said she would vote for Mr. Chávez even though she was an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Capriles. She said she was certain that Mr. Chávez would win and was afraid that the government career she hoped to have as a prosecutor could be blocked if she voted the wrong way.
“After the election, he’s going to have more power than now, lots more, and I think he will have a way of knowing who voted for whom,” she said. “I want to get a job with the government so, obviously I have to vote for Chávez.”

For the full story, see:
WILLIAM NEUMAN. “Fear of Losing Benefits Affects Venezuela Vote.” The New York Times (Sat., October 6, 2012): A1 & A6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date October 5, 2012, and has the title “Fears Persist Among Venezuelan Voters Ahead of Election.”)