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From the Times: Average Scores on SAT Show Significant Decline:

Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, pointed out that the decline in test scores represented less than one half of a test question in reading and one-fifth of one test question in math. Still officials had concerns about the overall performance of American students. “The data does suggest that as a nation, critical reading and writing are lagging behind the progress we are making in math,” Mr. Camara said. The SAT score declines contrasted with the increase in scores on the ACT exam, the other primary college admissions test, reported earlier this month. ACT scores registered their biggest increase in 20 years and reached their highest level since 1991. ACT also has a writing section of the test but it is optional.

The Ghost Map's first review

Publisher's Weekly has generally given me nice reviews over the years, but the review they've just published for The Ghost Map is the best yet -- one of those reviews that hits on all the themes that are important to you as an author. It's also my first "starred" review in PW, so I've got that going for me too:

On August 28, 1854, working-class Londoner Sarah Lewis tossed a bucket of soiled water into the cesspool of her squalid apartment building and triggered the deadliest outbreak of cholera in the city's history. In this tightly written page-turner, Johnson (Everything Bad Is Good for You) uses his considerable skill to craft a story of suffering, perseverance and redemption that echoes to the present day. Describing a city and culture experiencing explosive growth, with its attendant promise and difficulty, Johnson builds the story around physician John Snow. In the face of a horrifying epidemic, Snow (pioneering developer of surgical anesthesia) posited the then radical theory that cholera was spread through contaminated water rather than through miasma, or smells in the air. Against considerable resistance from the medical and bureaucratic establishment, Snow persisted and, with hard work and groundbreaking research, helped to bring about a fundamental change in our understanding of disease and its spread. Johnson weaves in overlapping ideas about the growth of civilization, the organization of cities, and evolution to thrilling effect. From Snow's discovery of patient zero to Johnson's compelling argument for and celebration of cities, this makes for an illuminating and satisfying read.

Woo-hoo!

Is There An iTV In Our Future?

I've been on vacation for the past few days, but a quick link to a new piece in Slate, on the whole question of an Apple home AV device, which voices a few complaints about the sorry state of home AV that will be familiar to readers of this blog:

There's one big problem here: An iTV would need to play well with others. Most people aren't just going to chuck their entire system to buy Apple's home theater alternative. Look at me: I'm obviously a believer in Apple's ability to fix this problem. Still, I'd much prefer not to sell my new LCD TV on Craigslist, and Time Warner is forcing me to use their cable box for HD DVR features. So for me, the ideal Apple home AV product is one that somehow makes my existing system work but without forcing me to start over from scratch.The beauty of the iPod was that it was a supplement to your existing music gear, not a replacement. Part of the reason that it quickly became a mass success is that it didn't have the "switching costs" that were traditionally involved in moving from Windows to the Mac. If Apple's going to introduce a supplementary product without prohibitive switching costs—something closer to a universal remote than an all-in-one system—it's going to have to deal with dumb components out there that not only lack Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but can't even agree on the infrared signal for "play." Steve Jobs is famously a perfectionist when it comes to interface design. Could he live with a device that can't reliably turn on a television?

Should the Gatorade bomb plot help the Democrats? George Will seems to think so:

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror." In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

In Which The Blogger Has A Mild Freakout On The Delta Shuttle

I've probably flown more miles in the past two years than I did in the previous ten, but for all the annoyances of that travel, my trips over that period have been entirely free of the post-9/11 airplane anxiety that I experienced for the first year or so after the attacks. But this Sunday, flying down to DC on the shuttle, I had a classic relapse, no doubt triggered by the Gatorade bomb plot. Here's what happened: I'm sitting two rows behind one of the emergency exit rows, and about two minutes before the door is going to be shut, a woman with a British passport sitting in the exit row suddenly gets up and says something to the flight attendant -- I vaguely hear something about missing her friend -- and then grabs her bag and walks off the plane, after conferring briefly with the attendants at the very front of the aircraft.

This alone is pretty weird; I think to myself: are people allowed to leave the plane after they've boarded? And then I notice that none of the flight attendants comes to check her seat to see if she's left anything suspicious behind. But still, I'm not really worried, until a guy sitting in another row -- who also has a British passport (for some reason they were both still holding their passports visibly) -- gets up from his seat across the aisle, and sits down in the seat that the woman had left.

It's not much, I know, but it was enough to set off a mild panic attack, which reached almost comical heights when I peered over the top of the seats, and saw that the guy was reading a USA Today story about the new ban on liquids and gels.

The maddening thing about the whole experience was the internal debate that unfolded over the next few minutes. My natural inclination in any slightly awkward public situation is to not say anything and just let whatever is bothering me slide. But then I thought: if I have a second of consciousness between the explosion and my death, the second is going to be filled with one incredibly annoying thought: I can't believe I'm going to die and leave my wife and kids alone for the rest of their lives because I was too bashful to press the flight attendant button.

I decided to keep mum nevertheless. I started to feel a little better a few minutes into the flight when I noticed that the guy had fallen asleep against the window. I know these terrorists are committed to martyrdom, but somehow a pre-detonation nap seemed a little unlikely.

And I'm happy to report that the plane did not in fact explode. So I guess I was right to keep my suspicions to myself.

Why The London Plot Helps The Democrats (Or At Least, Why It Should Help Them)

I hope the Democrats (or at least the anti-Iraq-war Democrats) are smart enough to recognize the Gatorade bombing plot actually supports their position on the war on terror. (Or, to put it less kindly, gives them an opportunity to actually formulate a coherent position, at last.) They should be saying something along these lines:

This plot demonstrates the seriousness of the threat posed against us, and, if all the early indications prove to be right, the continuing existence of the Al Qaeda network. It also demonstrates that top-notch law enforcement work, coupled with international collaboration -- and, yes, some wire-tapping -- can truly make us safer. If we had been in charge after 9/11, we would have devoted our military and law enforcement resources exclusively to tracking down Islamic terror networks, with the highest priority given to hunting down Osama Bin Laden. We wouldn't have introduced the huge distraction of Iraq, which has both been a terrible drain on resources and lives, and made us many new enemies in regions where we need more friends. If you elect us this fall, we promise a renewed focus on the enemies that actually threaten us directly. While we can't immediately withdraw from Iraq, we propose a steady re-allocation of manpower and money from Iraq to the immediate threats on American lives. We believe in the war on terror just as firmly as the Republicans do. We just think it should concentrate on capturing terrorists, not rebuilding the electrical grid in Bagdhad.

The Risk

Let's be clear about one thing: the way to win the war on terror is to not be terrified. Part of not being terrified comes from breaking up bomb plots. But it's just as important to do the math.

...it would seem to be reasonable for those in
charge of our safety to inform the public about how many
airliners would have to crash before flying becomes as dan-
gerous as driving the same distance in an automobile. It turns
out that someone has made that calculation: University of
Michigan transportation researchers Michael Sivak and
Michael Flannagan, in an article last year in American Scien-
tist, wrote that they determined there would have to be one
set of September 11 crashes a month for the risks to balance
out. More generally, they calculate that an American’s chance
of being killed in one nonstop airline flight is about one in
13 million (even taking the September 11 crashes into
account). To reach that same level of risk when driving on
America’s safest roads — rural interstate highways — one
would have to travel a mere 11.2 miles.

Looking at all these images of endless security lines at the airports today, thanks to this foiled bombing plot, it occurs to me that the ideal solution would be the complete separation of passengers and their luggage. In other words, if the passengers boarded one plane and their luggage flew separately in another plane with only two pilots on board. (Perhaps the luggage plane could fly just a little bit faster, so your bags were waiting for you when you arrive.) Blowing up a plane full of luggage -- with a body count of two -- wouldn't have the same PR value for the terrorists, and passengers would be able to fly entirely secure (though without their laptops and lattes.) I realize, of course, that doubling the number of planes in the sky is not feasible, but still, if you were designing the system to be terrorism proof from scratch...

I'm going to be talking a little about power law distributions at this talk I'm giving on Monday at Adaptive Path's User Experience Week in DC, and it occured to me that it would be interesting to look at a comparison between the links directed to the top 100 blogs on Technorati, and album sales for the Billboard top 100. I think it would be interesting to see which medium has more dominant hits -- is BoingBoing more powerful than, say, Mariah Carey? Has anyone seen that comparison done somewhere? If not, does anyone have the sales data for the Billboard chart handy? I can get the rankings online but not the albums sales...

Leopard First Impressions: The Time Machine

I've only had a few minutes to digest the Leopard preview from today's WWDC conference, but here's one quick observation that jumped out at me. Check out the animation that accompanies the Time Machine's time-based browser:

With Time Machine, you can restore your whole system from any past backups and peruse the past with ease. Can’t find a file you want? Enter Time Machine’s time-based browser to see a snapshot of how your entire system looked on any given day — file by file. When you find the file you want, just select it and restore it.

As far as I know, this is the first mainstream OS to adopt David Gelernter's "lifestreams" metaphor for representing changes in data over time. Essentially, it deals with time the way the physicists did: it makes time a new dimension, extending out "behind" the screen. The normal 2D representation of, say, the contents of a given folder represent its "live," real-time state. When you want to go back in time -- to, say, retrieve a deleted file -- past versions of the folder appear as cards stacked behind the current version that you flip through.

So my first thought was: cool. That's bold. I wonder if Gelernter was involved in some way. I've never been sold on the Lifestreams metaphor as a basic file management metaphor, but for something like Time Machine it seems inspired.

And then my second thought was: what's up with the goofy space image in the background? They can't be serious about that, can they?

I Pay You To Read Blogs

I'm looking for one or two people to help me with a project I'm working on. The pay's not great, but the work's easy: you sit around at home, in your pajamas if you choose, and read blogs, taking a few simple notes as you surf. I think it's about 40 hours of work total, and I can pay $11/hour. Drop me a line if you're interested and I'll explain the details. I pretty much need to start right away...

Again, this is not a full-time gig, just a quick burst of research that I need. But there might be possibilities for other comparable gigs down the line.

UPDATED, later that day: Hey, what do you know? If you make an offer on your blog to pay other people to read blogs, you get a lot of takers. Thanks for the support -- I'll try to get back to most of you. But for any new arrivals, consider the job filled.