Cheating in education

A mercenary academic writes essays for students. It's an interesting story, though since the author is essentially a con man I don't have a lot of confidence in the details.

I was impressed by how much the students pay for their essays. For many of these people that's a lot of money.

I was also impressed by the blackmail potential. These students are putting a lot of trust in a shady character. "Ed Dante" knows their names, and has proof of services delivered. If I were paying him, I'd use a pseudonym.

Otherwise, it doesn't seem like a terribly worrisome problem, there are many other ways to evaluate students that are less amenable to fraud. If teachers don't use them, it may be that the fraud works for them too.

Healthcare quality 101

There are superb French (and other) pastries all around the island of Montreal, but Minneapolis St. Paul pastries peak at mediocre. The Twin Cities are richer than Montreal, but money can't buy everything. In health care terms we'd call this a kind of variability.

The pastry variation is cultural. Minnesotans don't love the chocolate, flour and licquer pastries I grew up with, so there's no competitive market in my favorite food.

There's cultural variation in health care quality too. The best description of the causes of this variation, better than any prior academic publication, appeared in a 2009 New Yorker essay by Atul Gawande.

There's a different kind of variation that Gawande doesn't talk about. It's the difference between "Cicely" Alasaka and Rochester Minnesota.

Rochester is the home of the Mayo Clinic. It's the champion of conventional health care delivery.  The combination of a small city and an international service business generates enough revenue to support a full range of health care technologies and care givers. There's a culture of process monitoring and improvement that kicks it up a level above most referral centers.

Cicely is a mythical rural community. It's the archetype for communities with small populations that can only support a limited range of local health care delivery. At its best this will involve a reasonable number of family physicians, PAs and nurses and a smaller number of specialists. There may be only 1-2 pediatricians,  maybe some hospitalists, 1 orthopedic surgeon, 2-3 general surgeons, and so on. There's unlikely to be a colorectal surgeon. There's probably 1-2 obstetricians, but obstetrical epidural anesthesia may be hard to get.

Care in this mythical Cicely, the care experienced by 17% of Americans, is different from care in Rochester.

In some ways Cicely is better. Primary care physicians are experienced. Care communication is much better than in large centers. Reputations are known, and they matter. Patients don't get missed or lost as easily. Most of us don't want to die, but we particularly don't want to die miserably. If I'm ready to die, I'd rather be in Cicely than at the Mayo.

In other ways Rochester is better. Cicely is probably not the best place for a child with Cystic Fibrosis. When there's only 1-2 specialists in a community that needs at least one, choice may be limited. Many procedures aren't available, or shouldn't be available, outside of specialty centers. Health care will often involve travel to a place like Mayo (back in the day I liked Marshfield Clinic -- almost as good as Mayo, and a lot closer).

It's good to understand that there are different kinds of health care variability. The pastry-kind of variation is fixable. The Mayo model, or a cheaper variant that's 80% as good, could be applied elsewhere (it's not the water). Other kinds of variability are much more persistent; they're driven by local market size more than culture. Cicely will never be a good place to have a glioma removed; though it's the place I'd want for care of an untreatable glioma.

XMind: Software made in China for OS X and Windows

I am a niche market; I need software that few people care about.

For example, I need software to dynamically manage concepts (ex: “ideas”), concept properties (“attributes”) and relationships. These products are usually marketed as “mind map” or “outliner” or (less often) concept mapping tools.

Even though this is a niche market where good software goes to die, geek developers cannot resist it. So they create beautiful products with relatively short lifespans. Past examples include Symantec’s MORE 3.1 (my all-time favorite), Ecco Professional, Lotus Agenda, Symantec’s GrandView, and Inspiration [1] (Mac, Windows, Palm!). There are many other examples.

Current examples include MindManager ($$$), FreeMind, Freeplane and OmniOutliner (OS X, outliner only). There are many others, the Freemind wiki has two pages describing Freemind’s alternatives.

One of those alternatives is XMind. There’s something special about XMind. XMind has been made in Shenzhen China since 2006. It’s currently available for Windows and OS X. It is the only multinational consumer-oriented Windows  productivity software I’ve come across that is made in China; I don’t know of any OS X productivity software made in China.

This is an intriguing, even historic, development. [2]

[1] Didn’t exactly die, went to a school-only market.
[2] I don’t recommend the software though. The churn in this market and the costs of data lock mean I wouldn’t consider any product that used a proprietary file format. The XMind file format is proprietary. Even with open source products you need to evaluate the data store strategy.

Celebrating the war for the preservation of slavery

It’s been 150 years since the war for the preservation of slavery began …

Secession Defended on Civil War Anniversary - NYTimes.com

… James W. Loewen … put it: “The North did not go to war to end slavery, it went to war to hold the country together and only gradually did it become anti-slavery — but slavery is why the South seceded.”…

Of course millions in the South were anti-slavery too. Unfortunately, they were slaves.

Some wish to celebrate the event …

… events include a “secession ball” in the former slave port of Charleston (“a joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink,” says the invitation), which will be replicated on a smaller scale in other cities. A parade is being planned in Montgomery, Ala., along with a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.

In addition, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and some of its local chapters are preparing various television commercials that they hope to show next year. “All we wanted was to be left alone to govern ourselves,” says one ad from the group’s Georgia Division…

“Govern ourselves”. Uh huh.

Who’s betting on China’s bubble blowout?

China will be the third great bubble blowout in a bit over ten years, following the .com and leverage bubbles. The world, of course, will go back into yet another great recession (YAGR).

What a way to start a millenium!

When will China’s bubble blow? I’m guessing within the next 12 months, but since I usually guess early a more likely answer is 18 months from now.

That much is obvious. What I want to know is how the Lords of Finance are placing their bets. I assume the big money will be in currency shifts.

When China’s bubble collapses the remninbi will drop compared to the US dollar. So I’m assuming those with money will bet using a convoluted and indirect equivalent of buying the right to exchange renminbi for dollars in 2012 at today’s exchange rates. Since it’s widely assumed that the renminbi will rise over the next few years those contracts may discounted.

So here’s the assignment for an ambitious journalist. Figure out how the bet will be made, then look for evidence that billions of dollars are already on the sidelines.

I suspect Soros has something on the line …

wikileaks: An unstable China

Reuters' hit list of this week's top WikiLeaks was remarkably uninteresting except for this one ...

Factbox: WikiLeaks cables offer inside peek at global crises | Reuters

... China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the U.S. Embassy in January, as part of a computer sabotage campaign carried out by government operatives, private experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into U.S. government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said."...

This confirmation is relatively newsworthy; it's consistent with China's rare earth embargo and China's support for North Korea's shelling of a South Korean island. China is less stable than most imagine.

Update 12/1/10: Subsequent leaks portray China's leadership much more favorably. In particular, they are portrayed as more sane about North Korea and Iran than I expected.

Destination Cross country resort-class trails within five hours of Minneapolis St. Paul (MSP)

Nordic skiing (cross-country for Americans) has been in decline since the 1970s. Too warm.

Last winter, though, was pretty good in MSP. The temperatures were above 20th century means, but unusually moist air made up for that. Even better, my Machiavellian schemes worked and we got the kids to join us.

We're trying again, including planning our Feb (President's Day) family trip. The now defunct Telemark Lodge was the near-perfect spot for our gang, so now I'm looking for alternatives I can cobble together. I'll probably have to combine something like an AmericInn with not-too-distant trails.

It's oddly hard to assemble a list of reasonable candidates, but I've got a few. Since I've done the work, here's a short list for the three other humans with similar interests. All of these places are listed on Adelsman's Cross-Country Ski Page. I prefer single track to today's skateways, but unless otherwise noted these trails are very wide. Most of these places have no WiFi and some have limited cell service.

All distances are from St. Paul, Minnesota. I've bolded a few I'm focusing on ...

Zone 1: 2-3 hours from MSP

• Timberland Hills WI: 24K trails, Cumberland is nearest town with Hotels.
• Brainerd, MN: multiple regional trails, Brainerd lodging. Maintained by Brainderd Nordic Ski Club. Bull Lake, Grand View Lodge.
• Blue Hills Wisconsin: lesser known trails - something of a cult secret. AmericInn nearby. See map.

Zone 2: 3-4 hours

• Mogasheen Resort:
• 23380 Missionary Point Drive, Cable, WI 54821. Cabins with a pool/game room building. Small local trail, extensive trail systems about 20-30 minute drive. Small swimming pool, food in cabin or local restaurants (20-30 min). Mostly snowmobile but significant cross-country. Dogs welcome but not, I think, on trails.

Zone 3: 4+ hours

• Maplelag Resort Callaway MN 4.5 hours NW. Very remote - cabin residences, shared dining hall. Beautiful trails. Not for our kids, but I'd love to go myself. You need to book a LONG way ahead to get a weekend room.
• Minocqua Winter Park WI: 4.5 hours NE: Excellent trails including a skijoring trail but no on site lodging. About 30 min from Minocqua's AmericInn and resort hotels such as
• Black's Cliff Resort,
• The Waters of Minocqua (small indoor waterpark),
• The Pointe Hotel
• and
• The Beacons
. (Facebook group.)
• ABR Trails - Ironwood MI: 4.5 hours NE, there is limited on-site lodging and they have skijoring trails (3). Offsite lodging is more limited than at Minocqua.
• Gunflint Trail and Grand Marais MN region: @ 5 hours N: Pincushion B&B, Bearskin Lodge (no TV!), Old Northwoods Lodge, Gunflint Lodge.

I've generally linked to business web sites, but in several cases there are more interesting and useful associated Facebook pages. The remaining lodges seem effectively adult only; I don't think our team would be a good fit (Emily and I would love them however!).

Only Mogasheen is both Nordic Ski and kid friendly, though in winter they don't get that many kids. The distance is good.

Minocqua, ABR Trails and Brainerd would mean staying at a Hotel and driving 15-30 min to trails. The Minocqua and ABR Trails sites are considerably further than Brainerd from MSP, but the trails are better and it's much more of a focal nordic scene (great description in 1994 Stride and Glide: A Guide to Wisconsin's Best Cross-Country Trails).

Update Dec 2021

I was delighted to find this long forgotten post in my archives. Since 2010, as we expected, snow coverage has declined. These days we typically make two sets of reservations that can be canceled and choose one based on snow conditions. We may pick one west of Lake Superior and one South of Superior. Most resorts don't allow short-term cancellations so we have to do hotel reservations and resorts at the last minute.

As our children have grown wifi is more of an issue. My wife and I would love rustic cabins with limited mobile service, but it's a deal killer for our young adult children. Many of the best XC ski resorts won't work for them.

One day Emily and I might make it to Stokely Creek. There might be snow there.

Snow Depth and Condition Maps

• MN DNR main map, Weekly reports
• NOAA snow analysis and weather.gov version of this
• USDA Forest Service map -- always defaults to Sierras but easy to go to MN. My favorite.
• Skinny Ski Trail Reports (not a map, but similar information)

Price Discrimination and Black Friday

My family doesn't normally shop on Black Friday -- the savings aren't worth the pain. Today, though, I took the boys to a local nordic ski shop. The timing was right, and I figured a specialty shop like Finn Sisu wouldn't get a lot of sales traffic.

Wrong. We walked in, looked around, and walked out.

Which made me wonder - why is Black Friday such a mess?

It's the same reason that clipping coupons is a tedious chore. Coupon clipping and Black Friday sales enable price discrimination. Black Friday wait times eliminate people who will pay full price, while pulling in people who won't pay full price.

(PS. I figured out the price discrimination angle myself, but instead of writing a long and ill-informed post I found someone who'd written a good explanation. See also: Price discrimination - Wikipedia.)

Perhaps man was not meant to fly after all

Most things do not end the way I once imagined. The buildings don’t collapse because the foundation is gone. They sag. They fade. For a long while nothing seems all that different. One day we realize they’re really gone.

I thought fax machines would be gone by 1990. This morning I explained to Emily how our never used Brother MFC fax function could be, in theory, receive a fax sent to our home number.

After the anthrax attack I though letters would go away; that PDF would replace both paper mail and, incidentally, fax. I still get letters.

I don’t get many letters though, and I don’t get many faxes. Postal stations are closing. Kinkos, where we used to send and receive faxes, is going away. Faxes, letters, pay phones, printers – they’re joining slide rules, typewriters and carbon paper.

In November of 2001 I thought the era of mass air travel would end. It seemed too expensive to secure planes given the psychology of fear and the limitations of human risk assessment. Havoc was simply too inexpensive, too easy. I thought the teleprescence market would take off. I didn’t expect Al Qaeda to spend 9 years being stupid. Alas, they seem to have gotten smarter lately.

Now, 9 years later, air travel is much more expensive and uncomfortable than it used to be. Now the poor sods doing TSA work are mocked and scorned. Now my employer rarely flies any worker bees anywhere. Now Apple markets FaceTime (though nobody actually uses it).

Popular aviation is looking rusty, and the Great-Recession-deferred 2011 $5/gallon gasoline I predicted in 2007 is still coming, albeit two years late. As gas prices rise, so will the price of aviation fuel.

Faxes may be gone by 2020. I think so will the air travel we once knew. The world is going to get much bigger.

See also:

Others

• 'Like a Full-Body Massage' Thinking About the TSA - James Fallows - National - The Atlantic
• 'Securo-crats' terrorizing travellers - Gwynne Dyer - Winnipeg Free Press
• The Safety Question, Pt.2 | Talking Points Memo
• Hi. I am now going to touch your junk - Morford
• Why Cavity Bombs Would Make the TSA Irrelevant - Jeffrey Goldberg - The Atlantic
• Where I draw the line - Roger Ebert's Journal

Mine

• Gordon's Notes- 2011- The year American life changes (7/18/2007 – I was off by two years)
• Gordon's Notes- Unintended consequences- DVRs & the death of broadcast tv, HDTV and massive hard: Perils of prognostication. In 2004 I thought DVRs would be disruptive, just as I once thought CDs would be disruptive. In both cases it all went to the net.
• Gordon's Notes- Pay phones join tape reels and broadcast TV (12/2007 – technology transition. Slide rules too.)

Speculation: The corporate ecosystem and American stasis

To speculate is to "form a theory or conjecture about a subject without firm evidence" [1]. My speculation tagged posts are things I suspect are true - even though I know I lack evidence. This is one of them.

For some years [2] I have been playing with a speculation that large publicly traded corporations [1], independent of their managers, are self-sustaining super-organisms of commerce-space that, like biological organisms, can change their (legal, regulatory and cultural ecosystem) to their peculiar tastes. I call this entity AmoebaCorp; I imagine it oozing and absorbing in an abstract "space" where individual humans are invisible atoms.

Over the last two hundred years of American history corporate power and influence has waxed and waned. Within the past year the corporate entity reversed a small transient setback and completed a dramatic transformation of its political ecosystem. The power of AmoebaCorp is higher than average, perhaps as high as it has ever been. The power of individuals, both the few that are strong and the many that are weak, has been commensurately reduced.

I wonder what that means for us. Corporations, after all, are not (yet) enemies of individual humans. They need us the way software needs hardware and memes need brains. They certainly need the rule of law; most AmoebaCorp hate war [3]. We individuals, CEOs and peons alike, are frenemies of AmoebaCorp .

On the other hand, I don't think AmoebaCorp can get its mind around what we need to do for global climate change. Its timescape is even shorter than ours. With CT2 (Carbon Tax and Tariff) AmoebaCorp would be our friend, without CT2 it will be our enemy.

In the near term, I fear that AmoebaCorp is and will be an enemy of true invention, and without invention and innovation humanity will be in a world of hurt. AmoebaCorp cannot like disruptive technology, it may be happiest in the periods of stasis common in human history. I think we may be seeing the effects of that stasis in the IP (patent troll) wars, and in the recent history of small startup companies ...

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » No Life Insurance for Bull Riders - Cringely on technology

... Exchange Traded Funds are forcing more and more good tech companies to abandon the idea of ever going public. We saw this trend on this summer’s Startup Tour where not one of more than 30 companies we visited saw an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in its future. Every company saw itself eventually being acquired. But there’s a problem with being acquired, which is that it greatly limits the upside for entrepreneurs...

Cringely misses the point. There's a bigger problem here that fewer billionaires. The problem is that the innovations of those startups will die. They are often acquired to prevent disruption, rather than to enable disruption.

Stasis isn't the worst thing in human history, but we live in a world of 8 billion people. We are exhausting that world. Stasis is not a desirable option. The AmoebaCorp may now be more enemy than friend.

[1] Oxford American Dictionary.

See also:

• Why do companies exist? (10/2/1010 - many links to past posts)
• The Corporation - what next? (8/22/2010)
• Understanding the elections - what's really changed (11/4/2010)
• Slouching towards Skynet (12/9/2007)
• Self sustaining entities: corporations and the Spanish Inquisition (6/2006)

[1] Private, and effectively private, corporations like 2010 Apple and 1893 J.P. Morgan and Company are much more idiosyncratic. [2] Charles Stross has been well ahead of me on this. Marx, of course, had similar intuitions, which did not lend themselves to good history. [3] Some companies sell weapons or invest in security theater of course, so it's a bit of a mixed bag.

Update 12/1/10: The next step.

The obvious is shouted, the interesting is whispered

Perhaps it was always this way, and it is only with time that I see it.

Or perhaps our media is less interesting, more controlled, than it once was.

The obvious is shouted a thousand times an hour. The interesting is whispered in closed doors.

This morning, for example, I wrote ...

Gordon's Notes: The iPhone iAd framework and parental controls

... iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) come with parental controls. Android OS, interestingly, does not ...

...  iOS comes with FairPlay DRM (digital rights management), Android OS lacks a DRM standard. Even Gruber, a giant of fan blogs, does not seem to get this. FairPlay is worth billions to the iOS App market...

This is a small thing, in a technical domain, but it is not hard to discover. It is not a matter of opinion. Any reasonable person who thinks about it for a moment will agree - yes, the way FairPlay DRM manages iOS apps is extraordinarily important to Apple's revenue stream.

Yet this goes unspoken. Unspoken, that is, in the media. I am sure it is discussed at Google and Apple.

I've written before about dogs that don't bark in the night. These silences speak volumes. In my blog I now tag them as unspoken.

Why are some important and obvious things unspoken?

Sometimes it is because people with power understand, often wisely, that the less said the better. China's rare earth embargo is an example.

Sometimes it is because some things aren't obvious until they are spoken. Not just spoken in an eccentric blog with an unusual readership, but spoken in a bigger platform. These silences end in time.

Most often though, I think it is because most struggles are bipolar, and neither of the two parties wants to introduce a meme that might disturb both. Perhaps, as happens in American politics, there is something both parties agree should happen, but one party wishes to maintain an illusion of total opposition. Perhaps the unspoken fact might introduce a disruptive third position, and both parties prefer the enemy they know.

These days, when I write in this blog, I try to write about things are not spoken. My Reader Share, and its secondary (inferior) twitter stream, are for interesting things that are shouted.

The iPhone iAd framework and parental controls

iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) come with parental controls. Android OS, interestingly, does not. This is rarely discussed [1].

Parental controls should be important to parents with children who, by age or disability, are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and injury. They are, of course, also important for cultural reasons.

Even though Apple's iOS includes parental controls, they are very weak. Disabling Safari does not disable embedded browsers, and many, many applications embed WebKit browsers. It is not hard, for example, to navigate from the NYT's iPhone App to Google's image search.

The worst offenders use Google's AdMob/AdSense/Mobile Ads platform. That platform, unsurprisingly, uses WebKit. A product that uses Google's Ad Platform breaks iOS Parental Controls.

Apple has an ad platform too. It's called iAd. It's not based on WebKit, it's an Objective C (Cocoa) framework. This morning I viewed the Tron iAd featured on the New York Times iPhone app. The Ad was ... impressive.

Clearly Apple's iAds have a high barrier to entry. Perhaps not as high as a television or major print advertisement, but much higher than traditional web advertising. The one I saw was essentially an application. iAds will need to scope their material to the parental control rating of the container application.

The Tron Ad did not have an obvious WebKit escape. Whether one exists or not, it is clear that iAds can achieve their goals within a fully constrained environment. Apple's iAds are Parental Control friendly, Google's Mobile Ads are not. If Apple were to enable a Parental Controls block for embedded browsers, they'd break Google's Ad Platform on iOS devices. Children are an important advertising target. This should be interesting.

[1] Another unmentionable is that iOS comes with FairPlay DRM (digital rights management), Android OS lacks a DRM standard. Even Gruber, a giant of fan blogs, does not seem to get this. FairPlay is worth billions to the iOS App market.

Climate Change 2010: Plan B

It was always a long shot, but 2010 was when we knew that plan A for greenhouse gas management had failed.

Plan A was Europe, China and the US agreeing to limit CO2 emissions and then extending that agreement to India and every other country that mattered.

Plan A might be known as Plan Gore, because Al Gore was a leading exponent. His personal life went down in flames around the time Plan A died. Plan A was always a longshot, but it was stone dead when the ailing US economy flatlined at the end of the Bush II. The Great Recession killed Plan A, but it also dramatically reduced world greenhouse gas emissions. So maybe it was a bit of a wash.

So what's next? Plan A isn't coming back any time soon. Europe's economy is on the ropes. China is fragile and facing history's greatest economic bubble. The US economy is tottering along, but the GOP thinks a dead America is better than America cheatin' with Obama.

Yes, it does seem a bit bleak. On the other hand, even if Gore had won in 2000 it would have been hard to equal the greenhouse gas decreases of the past three years of economic misery. I can even imagine, if the GOP won it all, that Plan A might return. Only Nixon could go to China, and in the US only the Crazy Party can manage the fear filled right.

In the meantime, there's Plan B.

How could Plan B work?

Well, we know where we need to go. We need a worldwide Carbon Tax and a Carbon Tariff (CT2). The Carbon Tax is obvious. The Carbon Tariff is how nations manage cheaters -- other nations that don't play along.

With CT2 everything else plays out. We get investments in energy conservation technologies, we get energy conservation directly, and we get investments in every conceivable form of low carbon energy production technology. CT2 also brings in a boat load of revenue, which each nation may use as it sees fit. Some may offset other consumption taxes (ex: VAT), others may subsidize transit or invest in energy research.

We know where we need to go to CT2, but how do we get there? Most of all, how do we break the WTO rules that would block Carbon Tariffs?

What if a small nation, like the Maldives for example, started by introducing CT2 locally -- with rates that seem right for a global regime? Then the Scandinavians sign on. The big one next one is the EU. After that it gets harder. Canada, Australia, the US and China are all going to hold out. I'm guessing the next big ones would be India, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.

The US, Canada and Australia go next.

China goes last.

That's Plan B.

See also:

• Gordon's Notes: Global Warming: We're scr***d. 8/18/2006

Wetware routers and intermittent consciousness

Today's Carl Zimmer article gives new insight into the nature of consciousness. Even in neurotypical brains decision tasks create a psychic bottleneck, which is also a sort of perceptual blindspot. Our consciousness goes "offline", very briefly, when we make choices (emphases mine) ...

The Brain: The "Router" in Your Head—a Bottleneck of Processing | Carl Zimmer | DISCOVER Magazine:

... The brain is, in the words of neuroscientist Floyd Bloom, “the most complex [jg: known] structure that exists in the universe.” Its trillions of connections let it carry out all sorts of sophisticated computations in very little time. You can scan a crowded lobby and pick out a familiar face in a fraction of a second, a task that pushes even today’s best computers to their limit. Yet multiplying 357 by 289, a task that demands a puny amount of processing, leaves most of us struggling.

... The fact that we struggle with certain simple tasks speaks volumes about how we are wired. It turns out the evolution of our complex brain has come at a price: Sometimes we end up with a mental traffic jam in there...

... If we don’t have enough time between two tasks, we slow down on the second one—a lag known as the “psychological refractory period.”...

... Psychologists have long been puzzled by the psychological refractory period because it doesn’t fit with other things we know about how the brain works. We are very good at doing many things at once... Yet there are simple jobs—like math problems—that our brains can handle only one at a time. It is as if signals were flying down a 20-lane superhighway, and then the road narrowed to a single lane...

Each time we perform a task we perform it in three steps. Step 1: Take in information from the senses. Step 2: Figure out what to do in response. Step 3: Carry out that plan by moving muscles...

...  scientists varied one of the three steps of the thought process to see if they could change the length of the psychological refractory period. Only when they tinkered with step 2—figuring out what response to make—could they produce a change...

... when we have any two simple decisions to make, we must wait for the first task to move through a bottleneck before taking on the second. That is what makes mental multiplication so hard. Instead of carrying out many steps simultaneously, we have to do them one at a time.

... In 2008 the scientists reported that during the psychological refractory period, a network of brain regions are consistently active, some near the front of the brain and some near the back...

... these regions appear to be part of a network that is important for our awareness of our own experiences. This helps explain why we are oblivious to our mental traffic jams.

.. The brain began measuring how long a task took only after the previous task moved out of the bottleneck. Whenever a perception of a sound or a letter got stuck in the mental traffic jam, the subjects were not aware of it...

... The neurons that take in sensory information send it to a neural network that he and his colleagues call the "router." Like the router in a computer network, the brain’s version can be reconfigured to send signals to different locations. Depending on the task at hand, it can direct signals to the parts of the brain that produce speech, for instance, or to the parts that can make a foot push down on a brake pedal. Each time the router switches to a new configuration, however, it experiences a slight delay...

The "router" theory is very much an unproven model. If something like it holds up, however, we will find variations in router performance. There may be advantages and costs to different router algorithms. There will be articles on router performance in autism and schizophrenia and in disorders of consciousness (coma, etc). Perhaps we will discover ways  to train and retrain our internal routers for different settings.

It wasn't the primary emphasis of the article, but I'm struck again by the contingent and intermittent nature of our consciousness. Continuity of consciousness is very much an illusion. We are offline, briefly, thousands of times a day.

Rajini Vaidyanathan, Gordon Brown and me - strange loops in 2010

I'm killing time at DC's Union Station, waiting for my train to BWI and home, when I'm accosted by a young woman with a note pad. She tells me she's from the BBC, and she wants to know what I think of an engagement.

Even I couldn't escape that news. I knew someone named Kate was marrying an English aristocrat. I had nowhere to go that minute, and she seemed to be in pain, so I tried to come up with something quotable. She told me to look to the BBC site ...

BBC News - Rajini Vaidyanathan - Royal wedding: American reaction to the Prince's engagement

... But even those who won't be across every dress, table arrangement and invite, are celebrating the news.

"It's fun," says John Faughnan of Minnesota. "It beats reading about the great recession."

Mr Faughnan said he had only learned Kate Middleton's name this morning, and the future Queen's profile here in the US is still relatively low.,,,

My Manchester born mother was thrilled, and it was a funny enough story to share on Facebook. Then it got more interesting.

On Facebook a friend pointed out that Rajini Vaidyanathan is a bit of a comer, as can be seen in her YouTube interview with Gordon Brown. She's not always stuck with boring reaction interviews on a painfully boring topic.

The lady has a trajectory, and I met her near the start.

A strange loop.