A few months ago I posted a FriendFeed item about how deceptions of scale can be used to make misleading charts.

Earlier this month, Wired argued in an article that “the web is dead” and tried to prove their point with a rather curious chart: A stacked area chart with the changing percentage of the Web’s share of total Internet traffic between 1990 and 2010.

Peer-to-peer and video take up a large share of total traffic in 2010 — naturally, because these files are huge, and web pages are relatively modest in size. A more honest chart would look at total volume of use (eyeballs/visits). If you read a tweet on twitter.com and then watch a video on Netflix, it’s not at all fair to assume the video was 3,571,429 times more important to you than the tweet.

But even setting aside the stupidity of conflating the importance of contents with its file size, a stacked percentage area chart is a visual deception. There are many ways to lie with charts, and stacking is one of the most frequent.

Here’s a simple example. Suppose your company sells three products, Wobjects, Dooders, and Flozzels. You have sales data for a year. It turns out that Wobjects are growing fast, and Flozzels are selling pretty well, but Dooders are sucking wind with sales volume decreasing. If you want to hide how poorly Dooders are doing, just use a stacked chart.

First, the pretend data:

The most deceptive chart first:

A stacked bar chart serves to obscure individual trends

Certainly if you know what you’re looking for you can eyeball the decrease in sales from Dooders. But for most people only the overall growth would jump out.

Almost as deceptive is a stacked area chart:

A stacked area chart is almost as good as a bar chart for obscuring individual trends

This is slightly less deceptive because the eye is slightly better able to see that the middle area is decreasing in size over time.

To be more straightforward, use a line chart with a total:

A line chart is not very deceptive for individual trends. Including the total makes the scale larger, hiding the amount of increase/decrease for individual series, but is valid if the overall total is the most important detail to convey.

The least deceptive approach would be a simple line chart with no totals:

The most honest approach for showing the performance of individual product lines is a straightforward line chart.

And to make a total mess of things, use a stacked percentage area chart, with gratuitous 3-D:

Stacked percentage charts are usually disastrous, because the relative share of three product lines is often totally irrelevant compared to the actual change in value. And 3-D is just a distortion.

I was at a playground earlier today. Yawn.

Facebook Places competes with Foursquare, Brightkite, Gowalla, Whrrl, and several other location-based social networking services that I’ve never used previously. (I’ve dabbled with Loopt and Google Latitude on the iPhone, and used Yelp but only for writing and reading reviews, not for its check-in features.) While some users abstain from all of these location services due to privacy concerns, my main reluctance to use these services previously was because:

1. There’s a chicken-and-egg problem. Most of my friends don’t use these services, which decreases their utility.
2. I’m boring. I’ve got two kids, so most of my check-ins would be to home and work.
3. Dubious utility. If I’m out, it’s probably with a group for a planned event. Would I want random other friends to crash that? And on the other side, how often would I be going out by myself and wanting to know where random friends are so that I could crash what they’re doing? Absent joining up with friends, what other purpose is there for me to tell people I’m at a car wash or a movie theater or a playground?
4. Cheaters. Most of these services are easily fooled; I have one local friend who checks into Alaska regularly.

With Facebook entering the picture, and launching their feature switched on by default, immediately you’d think that the first problem is solved, since all of your friends can use the service easily from day one without having to sign up for anything. Alas, not so. The feature only works if you have an iPhone or other smart phone that can use geolocation services on Facebook’s mobile site. So that eliminates most of my friends from ever using it. And furthermore you have to remember to pull out your phone when you arrive, launch the Facebook app or web page, head to the Places feature, find the listing for the place that you want to check in to, and check in. It’s too many steps, and it’s a pain, so most people would never bother. And that seems to be the case: Of the half dozen or so places I’ve checked into, including a popular bar and cinema, most have had zero previous check-ins. It’s still the first week, but it’s clear most users are not immediately jumping on board with this feature.

Facebook’s implementation doesn’t make me more interesting, and if there’s more utility I haven’t found it yet. And I doubt it’s any more cheat-resistant than the competition. So the other problems still apply.

Facebook also has made some questionable choices about how their Places feature works. First of all, you can check in other people without their permission (unless they change the default setting). I cannot imagine any scenario where people would want you to do that for them without approving. Seriously. Maybe on Venus. But not on Earth. You could ask them (as Gawker suggests), but that seems witless:

“Hey, Joe, I’m checking into the restaurant on Facebook Places. Should I check you in also?”

“…”

The second problem is that check-ins appear on your wall or news feed or whatever it’s called now. The stories show up for all to see. This is incredibly stupid. Half of my friends don’t live in the same state as me. I don’t want their feeds cluttered up with the junk news of me checking into a car wash or a bar or any restaurant. It’s stupid. It’s dull. They don’t care. It’s just noise. I want my feed to be signal, not noise. You should be able to change the settings for Places so that it cannot post to your Wall. You can go back after the fact to remove the postings manually, but that’s a pain (and may not remove it from their copy of your feed anyway, depending on when you remove versus when they check their news feed).

Compounding that second problem is that you can’t add pictures. You can go back after the fact and comment, or put a brief comment at the moment of check-in. Pictures would serve to make the check-in a bit more interesting — I would feel like the wall entry wasn’t so dull and pointless if I could add a cute picture of my kids or something.

The biggest problem is number three: As I alluded to at the beginning, you can check in, but there’s no check out. If the point of checking in is to tell your friends where you are, you absolutely need to tell your friends when you leave the place, so they don’t come looking for after you’ve taken off.

Friday night I noted that two friends of mine, who I will call “Steve and Howard” (because those are their names) checked into Tide House. I rarely get a Friday night to myself — it’s usually date night for my wife and me. But Kimi wasn’t feeling well, and the baby sitter was paid for, so I was free to do whatever I liked. I checked into Molly McGees and played liar’s dice with my friend Matt before heading out to a movie, but I happened to notice Steve and Howard being right around the corner and I had a few minutes before the 8:10 showtime. So I walked into Tide House and looked around. No sign — they must have left. Facebook only gives you an approximation of when the check-in occurred (“two hours ago” becomes “three hours ago” eventually, but the period of time where it says “two hours ago” could be exactly 2 hours or it could be 2 hours and 59 minutes, or anywhere in between). So as a tool for meeting up with friends, that’s useless. You don’t actually know where your friends are at all. No check-outs, no certainty.

Dave Zatz checked into Your Mom's House. Not my mom's, fortunately.

None of the locations have any useful info, like phone number, street address, menu, etc. Businesses can “claim” them somehow but few have done that.

Some of the competing services have game-like features where you earn points, badges, titles, mayorships, discounts, coupons or other random crap. Facebook has none of that (yet?).

Finally, the privacy concerns. By default, the Places feature is on, but you have to take manual steps to use it. So far so good. But then they made two privacy mistakes: First, friends should not be able to check you in by default without your permission. That’s irresponsible. Second, even if your settings are so that Places info is viewable to “friends only” across the board (as mine are), when you check in, anyone else at that location sees your name and face, regardless of your privacy settings. Um, what?

So. How pointless is it? Pretty much totally pointless. I’d call it half-baked but I really think like it’s about a tenth baked. Facebook can and should do much better. I feel like the design is, in a word, stupid. I’ll keep experimenting for a little while to see if there’s something I’ve missed, but until they add features, fix bugs, and redesign it almost completely from the ground up to be both more automatic, more accurate, and more respectful of privacy, I can’t see myself using this long-term, and I don’t think many others will either.

With blogging being dead, it’s critical to not maintain the long form development of thoughts and issues in this medium. But I screwed up. I am posting. Again: Sorry.

There’s been a lot to not write about, which is why it’s been difficult to not blog, but up until now I’ve managed.

I can only hope that no one reads this any longer, and not promise to post in the future.

Picture is unrelated.

We had Corn Pops for breakfast. The American ones are smaller, less tasty, and completely unnatural in color. Well done, Canada. No one needs to eat phosphorescent yellow cereal.

What’s with milk in a bag, though?

Whereas, there is widespread debate about the definition of irony;

Whereas, there are at least three entirely separate types of irony;

Whereas, much time has been wasted and will continue to be wasted debating what constitutes irony; and,

Whereas, the Alanis song is still awesome even if some of the examples aren’t really very ironic;

Therefore be it resolved, that the world begin using the neologism “ironee” to incorporate all types of irony PLUS all of the things that people call irony but purists reject. Furthermore, let one additional properly of ironee be that if someone calls something ironeek, it automatically becomes ironeek if anyone debates them on whether or not it’s an example of ironee.

Here, I have a useful illustration of ironee for you:

All in favor?

Passed unanimously. Proceed!

With the recent passing of Art Linkletter, Gary Coleman, and Dennis Hopper, this superstition has again resurfaced.

I feel my previous arguments have already been quite persuasive, but now let’s add a statistical debunking.

To analyze the superstition, we need to define it. That includes two tasks:

1. Who is and isn’t a celebrity
2. The timeframe for the deaths to occur

I extracted the data of all 1,422 celebrity deaths that have occurred between January 1, 1995 and May 31, 2010 from a site called stiffs.com, which is the location of a death pool contest. (The contest has entrants predict which celebrities will die in the upcoming year and assigns points for correct guesses. Last year’s winner took away over $3,000.)

This addresses the first question, who’s a celebrity. At stiffs.com they have a panel of judges determine whether or not a person who passes away is famous, based on simply whether or not five or more members of the panel have heard of the person. They then create a list of celebrities ahead of time, and then monitor that list to see who has passed away.

You may well disagree with the fame assessments of stiffs.com. Certainly the data included plenty of people I personally had never heard of. But it’s a list that exists independently of the superstition, and is pre-existing, so it doesn’t suffer from the selection bias that arises when you assess whether or not a person is famous only after they have died.

As for the timeline, I decided to analyze it with as much leeway as possible. One day between each death? Up to two days? Three? Five? Seven? Who knows. I analyzed with a number of tolerance days all the way up to 10.

Before we get into the numerical analysis, let’s visualize the data.

(Click to enlarge; depending on your browser, you may need to click again to view at 100% and then scroll from left to right)

As you scroll back and forth in the listing of deaths from 2004 through today, your mind can certainly pick out groups of three. But is it ALL groups of three? Is it even MOSTLY groups of three? Your eyes already tell you the truth, that of course it’s not.

The numbers back up that visual refutation.

There are quite a few ways to analyze the data, and I tried to be comprehensive. Here are the approaches I took:

1. Rolling timeline: This is probably the best method. (It was suggested by Patri.) When a death occurs, I start a counter. The counter lasts up to x days. (I analyzed with x from 1 to 10.) I keep track of how many celebrity deaths occur within that period. The counter resets after x days, and starts again whenever the next death occurs. With x at 7, for example, it’s basically an analysis of how many deaths a week, using rolling weeks.
2. Continuous grouping: When a death occurs, start a count. Look at the next death. Is it within x days? If so, increment the counter. If not, start over at 1. Again, I analyzed with x ranged from 1 to 10.
3. Separate tests: For each death, I calculate if it’s part of a group by looking at the date of death of the first member of the group, and see if it’s within x days of the last death. For the first death, it should be more than x days. For the subsequent deaths, it should be within x days. I then judge “pass” or “fail” for each death. I applied this analysis to groups of 1, groups of 2, groups of 3, groups of 4, groups of 5, and groups of 6. I also let it “roll” by varying where I started the counter. This analysis also looked at x ranging from 1 to 10.

So, what are the results?

For rolling timeline, we see the following results:

No matter how many days of leeway you give, groups of three never actually best explain the data. If you give a lot of leeway, such as 10 days, larger groups occur. If you give only a little leeway, most deaths happen alone or in pairs.

The best performance for groups of three is when you allow a leeway of 7 days, but even then the superstition fits for just 25% of the deaths. (Groups of two deaths are not far behind, at 23%.) A superstition that’s only right one time out of four — and does no better than several of variants of the superstition — well, that’s not a useful superstition.

So, for this methodology, groups of three never really succeeds. With 7 or more days of leeway, three is the average and median for groups of deaths, but only with a 23% success rate. No interpretation of this data with this method would lead one to agree that celebrity deaths come in threes.

For the second method, continuous grouping, the results are similar. You can get some pretty big groups with this method — using three tolerance days, the largest group turns out to be a group of 21 celebrity deaths. And with 10 tolerance days, the largest group is of 243 deaths!

However, no matter how many tolerance days you allow, groups of three never amount to more than 14.3% of all groups. So at best, groups of three explains about 1 death in 7 with this method.

The third method I used was separate tests. To be honest, this is a pretty stupid method, since if, say, two deaths in a group of three fit the pattern but one doesn’t, it still scores as two out of three when really the entire group should fail. And the groups are highly dependent on previous groups, so if there’s a missing celebrity or a person included who isn’t really a celebrity, it throws off the entire test.

Under this method, groups of three still score very poorly. No matter how many tolerance days you allow, from 1 to 10, it always turns out that some other grouping (such as groups of 2 or groups of 6) beat out groups of 3. Groups of 3 performed best with 10 days of tolerance, but with that high a tolerance, groups of 4, 5, or 6 fit even better. At most, 64% of celebrity deaths would pass a group of three test but at the same time 72% fit a group of 4.

The data, analysis, and chart are all available for you to examine (Google docs share, 6.6 megs, Excel format).

If you asked me, the best method is the rolling timeline method, and the most reasonable number of days of tolerance is three. Going with that, we find that, on average, the group size is 1.7.

But “Celebrity deaths come in 1.7s” doesn’t have a winning ring to it.

First, a note on terminology. Let’s not call it a “spill.”

A “spill” is when my son knocks over his glass of milk. A “spill” is when you slip on some ice and graze your knee. A “spill” is what you do to the beans, as in someone accidentally letting slip the date of a surprise party.

BP’s CEO Tony Hayward is happy to call this a “spill,” because that word fits his position that this is only a “relatively tiny” event.

The truth is, of course, that it’s already been over a month, and this is now the world’s second worst oil disaster ever (probably) — and it’s not over.

BP’s original estimate of the flow rate was between 1,000 to 5,000 barrels per day. Current estimates suggest it was actually 95,000 barrels per day. So far, up to 491,000 tonnes of oil may have been released. In comparison, Exxon Valdez was 37,000 tonnes, and we’re still seeing the effects of that 20 years later. The current disaster is already more than 13 Valdezes.

So I reject “spill.” I use “disaster” and am considering “catastrophe.”

Second, there is a sliver of a silver lining. That formulation is this:

Three Mile Island is to nuclear power
as
Deepwater Horizon is to offshore drilling

Now for the record, I support nuclear power. I believe today’s nuclear power plants are safe and efficient. (France, the world’s leader, generates more than 75% of their power via nuclear plants.) Just 300 new nuclear power plants would end our dependence on fossil fuels for powering our cities — eliminating the need for coal mining, ending mining disasters. But because Three Mile Island happened, almost no politician will ever risk their career by advocating more nuclear power plants. That one accident, which killed no one, slowed our adoption of nuclear power dramatically.

In contrast, I oppose off-shore drilling, mostly due to spills and environmental factors. Because of Deepwater Horizon and the public outcry, it’s likely now that moratoriums and state-by-state bans will be enacted that last many decades. I’m glad of that, at least.

Finally, let’s do a quick comparison. Oil company profits are obscene. BP earned $6.1 billion in profit for Q1, which ended 20 days before the disaster began. As of May 24, they estimated they had spent $760 million on the recovery. However, it appears that about a third of that is the lost profit of $6 million per day because Deepwater Horizon isn’t operating. Separately, they also pledged $500 million for research into the environmental impact of the disaster.

So they’ve managed to find it in their hearts to spend a mere 17.3% of their Q1 profit on the disaster.

That’s insulting.

Type a letter in the Google search box. Immediately after just one letter, the auto-search populates, and you can see the most popular search term for that letter. (It’s not case sensitive.)

Here’s an example with the letter a:

It’s important to note that the results appear to be regionally specific. Here in the Bay Area, when I type “b,” I see “bart” (for Bay Area Rapid Transit) third. My brother, in Canada, sees “bmo” (Bank of Montreal) third at google.ca, or “bed bath and beyond” third at google.com (whereas for me “bed bath and beyond” is listed sixth).

Even the first place is regional, since x for me is xkcd, but for my brother it’s xm radio.

Nonetheless, owning the first result is definitely an indication of local mindshare. I find the results very interesting and in some cases very surprising.

Now, before you look at the list below (after the break), you can play the Google Alphabet Guessing Game! Just choose a letter and predict what will appear on top. Did you guess correctly?

Numbers and a handful of punctuation characters also work.

I didn’t try any extended ASCII or other unusual characters, but these last three were the only non-alphanumeric characters that had auto-search results.

The Prize: A pair of AMC movie tickets.

How To Enter: Leave a comment here or on FriendFeed with your prediction for these four questions.

1. Which of the below 33 films will have the biggest U.S. box office opening weekend as determined by The Numbers?
2. Which of the below 33 films will have the biggest worldwide box office take as of Labor Day, as determined by The Numbers? (Note that movies released later in the summer will be at a disadvantage.)
3. Which of the below 33 films will have the highest Rotten Tomatoes score?
4. Tiebreaker: How much money will the correct answer to question 1 take in on its opening weekend in the U.S.?

Deadline to Enter: Monday, May 3, midnight Pacific.

The List of Movies

Here’s the list you can pick from, ordered by date of release:

1. Iron Man 2 (Robert Downey Jr., dir Jon Favreau) — May 7
2. Babies — May 7
3. Robin Hood (Russell Crowe, dir Ridley Scott) — May 14
4. Shrek Forever After (Mike Meyers) — May 21
5. MacGruber (Will Forte, Val Kilmer) — May 21
6. Sex and the City 2 (Sarah Jessica Parker) — May 27
7. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Jake Gyllenhaal) — May 28
8. Killers (Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl) — June 4
9. Marmaduke (Owen Wilson) — June 4
10. Splice (Adrien Brody) — June 4
11. The A-Team (Liam Neeson) — June 11
12. The Karate Kid (Jackie Chan) — June 11
13. Toy Story 3 (Tom Hanks, Tim Allen) — June 18
14. Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich) — June 18
15. Grown Ups (Adam Sandler) — June 25
16. Knight and Day (Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz) — June 25
17. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (Kristen Stewart) — July 2
18. The Last Airbender (dir M. Night Shymalan) — July 2
19. Despicable Me (Steve Carell) — July 9
20. Predators (Predator sequel: Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne) — July 9
21. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Disney: Nicolas Cage) — July 16
22. Inception (Leonardo DiCaprio, dir Christopher Nolan) — July 16
23. Salt (Angelina Jolie) — July 23
24. The Adjustment Bureau (Matt Damon) — July 30
25. The Other Guys (Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg) — August 6
26. Eat Pray Love (Julia Roberts) — August 13
27. The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li) — August 13
28. Takers (Matt Dillon) — August 20
29. Nanny McPhee Returns (Emma Thompson) — August 20
30. The Switch (Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman) — August 20
31. Piranha 3-D (Elisabeth Shue, Richard Dreyfuss) — August 27
32. The American (George Clooney) — September 1
33. Machete (Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, dir Robert Rodriguez) — September 3

It’s a much more crowded field this year than last year, packed with the predictable assortment of sequels and remakes. Some curiosities: Two SF films with Adrien Brody within a few weeks of each other? A-Team vs. Karate Kid on the same weekend? Such a crowded field means there are probably going to be a lot more money-losers this year.

Just as before, I’m leaving off a lot of films that are coming out this summer. And some of those not on the list will probably do better than some of the 33 I’ve listed above. But to keep things simple, let’s just consider these 33.

Gory Details: I will pull all data from the appropriate web sites on Labor Day, 2010. Each entrant will score one point for each correct answer to the first three questions, with a maximum of three points possible. Highest point total wins. In the event of a tie for highest point total, I will use the answer to question 4 as a tiebreaker. Closest to correct wins.

Thanks for entering!

The results surprised me: Strong reactions to wheat, rice, corn, sesame, shrimp, cats, grass, and one of the tree groups.

On the doctor’s advice, we started an elimination diet, and for 11 days Sammy focused on avoiding the foods on the list, which meant he ate a lot of meat and potatoes and vegetables but not a lot of starch. (Breakfast was the hardest.)

Thing was, he was still breaking out. Kimi took him in today for a follow-up test, and the allergist suggested his reaction to these foods was mild. She suggested the most likely cause for his eczema flare-ups and midnight itch attacks was the cat.

Stormy is 9 years old and a beloved part of the family. But if it’s her or Sammy, there’s no choice. She has to go.

She’s soft, clean, sweet and patient, affectionate but independent, and (in my opinion) very beautiful. She loves being an indoor-outdoor cat but could probably adjust to one or the other. She used to have a brother, Mourny, who she would fight with a bit, so she’s probably happiest as a single cat. She’s also a bit of a genius: When she wants to come in, she rings the doorbell. (Video to follow.)

It breaks my heart to kick her out, but maybe we can find a home for her nearby. Anyone want a doorbell-ringing cat?

This is the video she made. (And this best copy I found on YouTube; very grainy, sorry.)

Did you spot Hugh Laurie and Dawn French?

Unbelievably by today’s standards, this video was considered too “adult” to be shown on British television when it was made.

My friend X and I were leaving a night class at Stanford University. We had been learning about “how to raise balanced children in a fast-paced world.” We were discussing some of these ideas as we left class. I had parked off campus because we had carpooled to class. As we turned out of the parking lot and drove down Palm Drive toward El Camino, her Audi’s headlights swung out onto a body lying in the road. The body’s arms and legs were splayed out in a terrible, unnatural pose. At that moment, every cell in my body was perked. I tried to attach thoughts to my observations. “This can’t be real,” my mind told me.

My friend slowed her car down, and I tried to get out. She said sternly, “Wait!” and then “OK, now you can get out.” She parked her car and turned on the hazard lights. She started to wave the cars behind her away from the scene.

I leaped out of the car and could not believe what I saw and heard. I walked past an SUV parked on the side of the road and noticed another car parked in front of it. I think it was a white BMW. I never saw the driver inside. After I noted the body’s odd position again, I saw a man in blue scrubs. He had dark brown hair and wore glasses. He was on his cell phone, intensely describing the body to someone, “Male, about 30 years old…yes, I think he is seizing.” The top of the man’s head was facing me. As I walked around to face him, the breath was knocked out of me. His head was swollen to 2-3 times its normal size. His eyes were swollen shut. The top-right corner of his forehead near the temple was a matted clump of blood-soaked hair. There was a huge dent in the forehead, where his skull was smashed. “A person’s brain should not be outside of their head,” I told myself. His arm was turned away from him, and he did seem to be having some kind of seizure. He was moaning, gasping mightily, and sputtering with each breath; his chest rose and fell heavily, and eruptions of blood and phlegm shot straight up like a geyser.

I wanted so badly to clear his mouth and turn his head to the side. I reached my arms out toward him. “Don’t touch him! He might have a spinal injury!” the man barked.

I mumbled something about his ability to breathe.

“See those bubbles? That means he’s breathing,” he snapped.

“Mean,” I thought. I forgave him instantly.

He explained to the 911 dispatcher, “I am a fourth-year medical student.” He shot a glance at me, as if to see that I heard.

I grabbed the man’s left hand instead. He had thick fingers, and his skin was rough. “It’s going to be all right,” I said soothingly. I glanced at the dark, wet hole in his head and pushed my doubt aside. “Help is on the way.”

Then something clicked. I let go of the man’s hand for a few moments, and I picked up his bicycle from the opposite lane. The thick metal handlebars were crumpled, and I couldn’t wheel it. I had to pick it up. I noticed that it was black and did not have lights on it. I dumped it on the side of the road. Then I saw his backpack. It was heavy, black, and quite far from where the bike and body were. In fact, all three items made a large triangle. I understood why his head was so damaged. The car must have hit the front of the bike and sent the man and his backpack flying. He landed on his head where a helmet should have been; he should have had a cracked helmet and not a cracked skull. I tried to ignore these disturbing thoughts as I moved intently. I had to shoo away another intrusive thought: “This is Stanford! This shouldn’t be happening at Stanford!” I flung the backpack near the mangled bike.

Then the medical student had orders. “There should be a box of rubber gloves in the back seat of my car. Get them.”

“Lucky, someone who carries around medical gloves in his car,” I thought. I retrieved the purple gloves and concentrated on the task. There was only room for one thought in my head at a time. “Get the gloves,” I recited to myself as a mantra. I returned to the scene with the box in hand. We both put them on.

A blond woman yelled to us, “Do you need help? Should I call 911?”

“Someone already called 911,” I yelled back.

“Should I help direct traffic?” I finally noticed the cacophony of honks and yelling from the cars stopped behind us.

“Yes!” I responded, and then I turned back to the body on the ground. I spoke to him once more, “The ambulance is coming. Everything is going to be all right. They are going to help you. Don’t worry.”

At that point, the medical student thrust his cell phone at me. “Here, take this!” he said. I held the man’s hand in mine as I spoke to a dispatcher on the phone.

“Where are you?” she asked.

I said, “About halfway between the Oval and El Camino.”

“Is anyone there yet?” she asked.

I told her that no one was on the scene yet except for us. She told me help would be there soon. Moments passed like hours, and then I heard the sweetest sound in the world: sirens. I told her, and she said, “OK, hang up and flag them down. They are not exactly sure of your location. Good luck.”

I hung up the phone and looked for the flashing lights. “Do you hear those sirens?” I told the man. “The ambulance is coming, and they will help you! Hold on!” Then I stood up and waved my arms at the sound and flurry emanating from police cars in different directions. The police immediately blocked traffic from both ways with their cars, and they were filled with questions. The medical student answered them curtly. I was holding the man’s hand tightly. He was struggling harder than ever to breathe.

Moments later, we heard the ambulance pull up. “The ambulance is here!” I screamed at the man. You could almost see the relief wash over the small group then, as if we were done with our leg of the race and were passing the baton to a teammate. But this relief affected the man on the ground differently. At the exact moment that I announced the ambulance’s arrival, the man stopped breathing.

The medical student and a policeman reached out for his wrists. “Does he have a pulse?” someone asked. Instinctively, I started screaming a stream of questions at the man’s face, “HEY! What is your NAME? How OLD are you? WHAT IS YOUR NAME? HEY!!! WHAT IS YOUR NAME?!!!”

The man suddenly took in a huge breath and exhaled with a giant splutter. We all sighed with relief. Then the paramedics approached with their equipment. We all took a step back to give them room. The paramedics moved with a kind of relaxed calm. They put a cervical collar on him, turned his head to the side, and put a suction tube in his mouth. It was attached to a little vacuum. Someone put a long board next to him, a sort of gurney. Then, inexplicably, they started cutting off his clothes with a large pair of scissors. He lay in his underwear, but his limbs weren’t strangely positioned anymore.

I became aware of the medical student’s cell phone in my hand. I forced myself to walk to his SUV and place his cell phone in the cup holder. “I put your phone in your car,” I told him. He looked in my eyes and thanked me. We really saw each other for the first time.

As I wandered to the side of the road, I noticed a thick puddle of blood from the man’s head that stretched several feet beside him. I placed the man’s black backpack near the paramedics and told them it was his. They accepted it. Then, my friend X was standing next to me. We both stared at the blood. Then, a policeman asked if we saw what happened. The medical student said, “I saw it happen. I am a witness.”

Then the cop turned to us and said, “You can go now.”

I was completely torn. On one hand, the man was a vision of horror — human roadkill twitching on the asphalt. On the other hand, he was a human being: a son, a student, and maybe a husband or father. I wanted to be sure he would survive, but I couldn’t bear to ask if he would be OK. In fact, because of the smooth calm of the paramedics, I was worried that there wasn’t much they could do and that they knew something I didn’t about the possibility of his survival. So my friend and I walked back to her car, and she drove us away in the opposite direction of the man. I had to let go of my concern as abruptly as I had been moved by it. I felt shock, sadness, and anger. I was angry that the driver of the car hadn’t even stepped out to see if the man was OK. My friend explained to me that the driver was probably in shock and facing the prospect of being responsible for someone’s death. The anger subsided. Then, I noticed his blood on my hands. I started to panic. My friend gave me some baby wipes, and I cleaned off the blood. I was left with a queasy feeling in my stomach, which lasted for a week, and a wish for hope and strength among all the strangers.

Afterward, my friend and I searched the web for weeks. We even sent a detailed e-mail to the campus police. We never got a response. I searched for information about the survival rate of bicyclists who do not wear helmets, the chances of recovering from brain injury, and news stories of accidents. At first, I thought no news was good news because the newspapers would be all over a story that involved death. But then I talked to several people, and a friend whose opinion I respect simply shook his head and hugged me when I told him about the experience. I knew he didn’t think the man had survived. So I started to think about the possibility that the man did not survive. Then, two weeks later, my friend X e-mailed a news link to me. The Stanford web site had a story about a visiting researcher from China who had been hit by a car while bicycling. X’s e-mail was titled, “This is our guy!” And it was him! His name was Yichao Wang. I thought he was half black and half white, but he was Chinese! He came from the same town that my friend X’s mom was from. The story had a link to a photo of him in a coma and a request for donations to cover his medical care. I was excited to discover that he had survived the accident. I donated to his recovery fund through the Chinese Mutual Aid Society. However, the day that I donated, he died.

Now, I think about his wife and parents who must miss him terribly. They are probably in shock. He was 25 years old, married for three years, and on a promising path as a research scientist. Now, he is gone.

I feel sad, but I also feel angry. Stanford Hospital has charged one million dollars for the brain surgery that kept him alive but in a coma from which he never woke. It seems like it was an unnecessary surgery. Certainly, asking two retired Chinese parents who just lost their son to pay one million dollars seems ridiculous and cruel.

I wish that Yichao wore a helmet that day, had blinking head and tail lights on his bike, wore bright clothes with reflective stripes, or left his lab during daylight hours. I wish the driver had been more aware and careful. You have to be a defensive driver at all times in this area. I wish Stanford had a no-car zone around the campus and shuttled people in. I wish that this man was living, loving, and discovering. I wish he died after his parents and not before. But, again, he is gone.

He will not have died in vain if we learn this lesson: YOUR HELMET IS PART OF YOUR BIKE. IF YOU RIDE A BIKE, ALWAYS WEAR YOUR HELMET.

My feed in Google Buzz

If you use Gmail, you’re likely aware of Google’s new social networking service, Google Buzz, which launched this week.

It’s only the the third day of Buzz’s public existence, and I only received access yesterday, so my experience is very preliminary.

In contrast, I’ve been using FriendFeed since January of 2008, so with two years’ experience under my belt, FriendFeed feels very familiar to me, and naturally my bias is towards what I know.

As I wrap my head around Buzz, I want to like it and have it succeed, but there are quite a few aspects of the service I can’t help but find lacking. Here are the features that FriendFeed has that I miss the most in Buzz:

1. Pause. Both FriendFeed and Buzz present a feed that updates in real-time. With FriendFeed, the play button (or q key) pauses/unpauses updates. With Buzz (on a browser, not on mobile), items I’m reading suddenly getting scrolled away and I can’t figure out how to stop that.
2. Custom lists of users. With FriendFeed, I can create my own lists (“Co-workers” and “Relatives” and “Favorites”) and automatically filter their updates. That way, posts from my relatives and close personal friends don’t get lost in the noise. With Buzz, either I’m going to have not follow so many people or figure out some other strategy for not losing updates that are important to me. Most likely I’m going to have to unfollow a lot of people who followed me.
3. “My discussions.” In FriendFeed, there’s an easy link for me to keep track of items I’ve liked or commented on. With Buzz, some of the items I’ve liked or participated in appear in my regular inbox, but not consistently and not in a simple list.
4. Smart collapsing of long posts and comments. FriendFeed’s layout for keeping items compact until I click “more” or “more comments” is ingenious. Buzz wastes a lot of screen real estate by comparison. Especially on the mobile version.
5. Smart, flexible hiding, including hiding by service. FriendFeed allows very smart ways to hide updates I’m not interested in. For example, I never care about anyone’s Foursquare updates. In FriendFeed I can hide an entire service, or many types of updates from a particular noisy user. Buzz offers no such automatic filters yet.
6. Hiding duplicates. Buzz seems to have some bugs right now where an individual post by a user is displayed twice (or even more) in my feed in two separate places. It could be the user posted the item twice by accident. But also several people could post the same item (a news item, for example). FriendFeed automatically collapses duplicate items into a single line (“1 related entry from so-and-so”). Buzz desperately needs this.
7. Bookmarklet for easy sharing. The FriendFeed bookmarklet is ingenious and easy to use, a button that appears on your browser’s toolbar that lets you easily share web content, including excerpts and images. Buzz lets you share a URL but doesn’t (yet?) intelligently create an excerpt of the page. (See screenshot.)
8. Reposting to other services, such as Twitter. The absence of this one is flabbergasting to me. FriendFeed lets you bring in services and also “exports” your posts to other services, including Facebook (via an application) and Twitter. Buzz is a one-way street right now: It can bring in your items from multiple connections, but once inside Buzz, there it stays. It can’t become your Facebook status or a tweet.
9. Groups and “Imaginary Friends.” Not everyone will join FriendFeed, so you can create a placeholder account on them that brings in their public content into the FriendFeed interface. Similarly, not everyone will join Buzz, so it’d be nice to be able to get someone’s chat content into the same UI. But that feature doesn’t seem to be available. On FriendFeed you can use this to create a “group” or “room” built from whatever content you like, such as the USGS earthquake feed or the Amazon MP3 deal of the day Twitter account.
10. Plethora of supported services. Buzz currently seems to support somewhere around a dozen “connections” that can create items in buzz whenever you use the service: GChat status, Facebook updates, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, FriendFeed, Picasa, blog content, Google Reader, and probably others. But FriendFeed supports 58 services, including Amazon wishlists, Reddit and lots more.
    

    Screenshot of my feed in FriendFeed

11. Customized profile page. Not a deal-breaker, but users today expect their profile page to have some customization. Maybe not to the extent that MySpace allows, but both Twitter and FriendFeed let you pick your background image and color scheme. Buzz relies on your Google Profile, which doesn’t allow you to customize the layout or color scheme or background at all. (Buzz inherits your Gmail theme, so you can control how things look on your screen, but that doesn’t display for anyone else. Thus everyone’s feed looks the same.)
12. Posting of text and photos simultaneously via e-mail. From my mobile phone I can take a picture, and e-mail it to share@friendfeed.com. The subject line of the e-mail becomes the subject of the posted item. Up to three pictures can be posted. Any text in the body of the e-mail become included with the item, as the first comment in FriendFeed. Buzz allows you to send a picture to buzz@gmail.com, but any text outside of the subject is ignored.
13. Friend of a friend discovery. In FriendFeed, if I follow my friend Georgia, and she “likes” an item from her friend Lani, then I automatically see that item from Lani and can then choose to follow Lani as well. In this manner you can expand your social network and meet new people with shared interests. With Buzz, I don’t have any option to see items that Georgia liked, unless I already follow the person who posted the item. (Note that FriendFeed is flexible and lets you hide friend-of-friend updates if you prefer.)
14. Flexible notification channels. Depending on my preferences, I can have FriendFeed notify me in several ways whenever a particular person posts, or if an item I posted gets comments. I can get an IM, a desktop popup via a standalone application, or an e-mail, either in real-time or at the end of the day.

So what does Buzz do better? Its mobile version is location-aware, and there’s a very interesting implementation with Google maps for following local updates. I was able to see someone post about a special offer at a restaurant near where I pick up my kids from their preschool, for example. Location awareness could be a tremendous change to how I interact with social media. Buzz also makes it very easy to e-mail an item to someone. Notification of new followers is handled real-time on screen, and it’s very easy to reciprocate. (FriendFeed notifies you of new followers via e-mail, so following back is less real-time and a tiny bit more of an effort.) Buzz has better keyboard controls than FriendFeed’s keyboard controls, having inherited the excellent Gmail keyboard implementation. I’m sure there’s more. But I can’t think of anything else yet.

In any consumer space, first-mover advantage is of course critical, because it builds mindshare and market share quickly via the head-start on the competition. But the competition gets a huge advantage also, because they don’t have to create the market, they don’t have to educate users on the category, and they can copy-and-paste the feature set while offering refinements and new features.

But if the competition only copies SOME of what the original offers, they can only succeed either by excellent marketing, an improved implementation on the core feature set, or because of a built-in audience from the brand name or related product. Google has copied some of what FriendFeed offered two years ago. But they really copied only a small subset, and as far as I can see even the core functionality of Buzz needs a lot of work: Counters are buggy, the layout is ugly and hard to follow, and the integration with Gmail feels intrusive and clumsy.

But it’s from Google, and by bolting it onto Gmail (which I use heavily and find to be the best web-based e-mail solution in existence), Buzz has instantly catapulted into a dominant position in the social media space, because they can make all 150 million Gmail users aware of it and even force them to try it.

The Energy to get a kid into the bath is equal to get a kid out of the bath, which is greater than the Energy to power 10,000 homes.

While Daybreakers comes off feeling a little low-budget and B-movie in parts, and there are a few plot holes that don’t withstand scrutiny, it’s thoughtful, stylish, gory, engaging, and well-acted (possibly excepting Willem DaFoe, whose character, named Elvis, vamps [hah!] his southern accent a bit too too much).

Star Ethan Hawke’s character has the first name of “Edward.” The movie was made originally in 2007, long before the current Twilight craze, so it wasn’t an intentional reference. But it’s very unfortunate and distracting, even when some characters refer to him as Ed.

I woke up this morning with a $50 million dollar idea that I’m giving away here, because I couldn’t live with myself if I did this. Here’s what you do:

1. Hook up with a nutritionist and come up with a vitamin cocktail formulated specifically to make up for chronic Vitamin D deficiency.
2. Frappé it, add sugar water and a whole ton of caffeine, and add your (fictional) secret ingredient, “tauro-hemine,” which you say is synthesized from cow blood.
3. Bite your tongue and a bullet and license Twilight. See if you can get away with only 20% of the gross.
4. Slap Edward’s brooding mug on an ankh-shaped can.
5. Call it “Twilight Red Thirst” and set up your distribution channel for every goth club and vintage clothing store in the land.
6. Sure you’re splitting your gross with Charlaine Harris, but after a couple of promotional campaigns and with a catchy slogan, soon you’ll be laughing all the way to the blood bank.

You pull out your iPhone and start having them play around with different apps, of course. If you’re exceptionally fortunate, you may even be prepared in advance by having an iPhone for each of them. (Both iPhones in Airplane mode, of course.)

There are a range of apps my kids like, including apps related to bubbles and apps related to noise making, but their favorites (that is, the most distracting) are the different sketch apps that let them draw.

Today, we’ll be reviewing one free sketch app, Doodle Buddy, which as far as my kids are concerned is the best thing about daddy’s phone. (That opinion will probably last another week. When it changes, I’ll post another app review.)

I could talk about Doodle Buddy’s ability to let two users collaborate on drawings (which I’ve never tried), or how it has basic sketching options (in 24 colors, with variable width, plus a smudge tool and eraser), multi-level undo, lets you take a photo or use an existing photo for a background, and has several other background choices, and — its key feature — has 24 stamps (smileys, a couple of animals, and some basic symbols) that make sounds when you put them on your drawing. I could mention it lacks basic shape drawing — no circles or lines or squares. I could talk about all that. But let’s instead let my kids review this app.

Sophie (age 2): “Doodle buddy! Doodle buddy! Doodle buddy!”

I take a photo of her as the background, have her draw over it in various colors, then have her use the eraser tool to reveal her picture.

Sophie: “There’s Sophie! There’s my NOSE!”

With the multi-level undo, you can undo the erasing, letting her play peek-a-boo with her picture again. For a two-year-old, repetition is the soul of amusement.

Sophie: “There’s Sophie!”

Me: “Sophie, do you like Doodle Buddy? Is it good?”

Sophie: “Um. Yes. Um. It’s good. Doodle Buddy. Doodle Buddy!”

Me: “What’s your favorite feature?”

Sophie: (quietly doodles)

My son Sammy, age 4, has a more sophisticated review.

Sammy: “Well, it’s a game that you play with drawing. It has yellow. And there’s blue. And more colors. So that’s pretty good. It has snow and fire. And a basketball. It does NOT have dinosaurs.”

He was reluctant to make more observations because he was busy drawing something that looked just as good to me as your average Jackson Pollack masterpiece.

Demerits that I could see: The shake-to-clear feature is sometimes a misfeature, and can’t be switched off, and you can’t undo it. As a free app it has some ads, which is fine, but if you touch them it will naturally take you out of the app. So the kids will do that from time to time, and then you’ll need to close the Safari window and go back to the app. The app should be smart enough to know if it’s in Airplane mode and that the ads won’t work.

All in all this app is worth about 20 minutes of blissful silence per child on an airplane ride, so its worth is approximately $25. At the price of free, it’s a total steal.

Doodle Buddy, by Pinger, Inc. App Store Link
Also available with a holiday theme for $0.99

I will never write another check again.

Any company or service provider who needs to be paid anything regularly can be set up for automatic billing through my bank or through their billing system. My bank will write the check for me, if need be — whether it’s for my gardener or the daycare my kids go to or what-have-you.

Anyone else who needs money can take cash or paypal or a bank transfer.

Checks had a good run (2100 years or so, if this article is to be believed), but I will no longer be a part of perpetuating this dead end of financial technology.

Why? My handwriting sucks. I hate having to wait for them to clear. I hate having to manually classify them in financial programs. I don’t want to have to carry around a checkbook. And who wants to pay other people?

I will still accept them. Begrudgingly. For now.

There’s another rule of thumb engineers talk about also: “Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two.” (Meaning you can’t have everything — there’s always a compromise that has to be made with either the schedule, the budget, or the quality.)

Well, the Sky City restaurant rotates at the top of the Space Needle in Seattle, where we ate this evening. It seems to defy both rules: The view is truly magnificent yet the food was good too. I had the clam chowder followed by Dungeness crab mac and cheese, and it was sublime. The other entrees chosen by our group (my wife and my sister-in-law, plus my two kids) all seemed delicious as well, if not especially gourmet. Kimi’s crab cakes were perfect, and Tomi’s French toast with espresso creme was wonderful.

As for that second maxim: The food was good, but it wasn’t fast or cheap. The speed didn’t bother us — more time to enjoy the view. We were planning on riding up to the top of the needle regardless, and since no restaurants were open nearby on New Year’s Day, it seemed prudent to eat there.

The maxim I will pass onto my kids is this: “The better the view, the more you’ll pay for it.”

Great treat to start the new year, though! Happy New Year, Zeigen.com readers. (Both of you.)

Look, I want our flights to be safe just like everyone, and I know the TSA is just doing its job, but having to check all clothing and personal items is a genuine hardship when traveling with kids. First of all, we had picked up the kid-sized robes for them from Long’s, and at first Sammy and Sophie seemed to like wearing the paper, but it was pretty cold at SJC and even colder in Washington. The cardboard slippers are really flimsy and didn’t stay on. Both kids really complained and were shivering. I swear Sophie’s knees were actually knocking. Meanwhile, Kimi and I showed up starkers as required, with just the transparent lanyard for my ID, and the modesty towels that we had to ditch in the bin upon boarding. (It was a tough juggling act to wheel two suitcases through the checkin area while keeping the towel on.) The security line cavity search was fine, finished in about three hours, but then at the gate, the new rules require you go through that cube to put on the TSA-supplied pasties. Well the cube is waaaay too small, and we were all being rushed to board. Then, afterwards, I was pretty self-conscious about having to wear basically a thong. They say they wash them between flights, but honestly it didn’t seem that sanitary to me.

Second, even for a short flight like the two hours from San Jose to Seatac, having to sit so still with no reading material or gadgets is honestly a hardship. The kids were bored after about ten minutes, and I wasn’t much better. The least they could do is put some reading material back on the planes. I know the last attempted terrorist attack involved paper cuts, but I don’t think it was really very dangerous for the flight crew. Maybe they could compromise and put on some magazines printed on tissue paper or something? At least they were playing holiday tunes. We passed the time by telling stories and by about the second hour I got used to not trying to turn my neck to look at my family while talking. And the restraint cuffs weren’t really that bad, although one ankle was a bit chafed by the end.

If you’d asked me three years ago if I thought we’d be required to sit literally stock still in an airplane with 300 other random naked people in order to get anywhere, I’d have told you you were crazy. But these are the times we live in. And to object seems like such pre-2011 thinking.

But next time, we’re just driving, I swear.

I believe in my kids.

• I believe that people should be treated with respect, no matter what beliefs they hold. I may disagree with certain beliefs, and even try to convince another person to change a belief, but I will always try to respect the individual, no matter how much I disagree with their beliefs. (There is an exception for believers in hatred or violence; I find it very difficult to respect holders of those beliefs.)
• I believe in following a moral code, based on one’s understanding of right and wrong, and I believe in treating others as I would wish to be treated.
• I believe in the scientific method, that theories and claims should be tested, and that beliefs should be based on testable and reproducible evidence. I believe there are no immutable truths and that everything should be up for debate.
• I believe “faith” is defined as having a certain belief despite there being no evidence for that belief. Because of my skeptical world view and my requirement for evidence to support my beliefs, I believe that “faith” has little place in my life.
• I believe that I am completely open to believing in the existence of God (or gods). If I were to find any proof that God exists, I would believe in God. I believe that the burden of proof of God’s existence should be on those who believe in God, not on those who don’t. By some definitions, this makes me an agnostic, but I don’t really believe in labels.
• I believe that the more extraordinary the claim, the more rigorous should be the proof. Belief in a benevolent creator as a conscious entity who watches over us and influences events for us is an extraordinary claim, or so I believe.
• There are several arguments for creator belief that I do not find persuasive.
1. I am not persuaded by arguments along the lines that all things have a creator, therefore our universe was created. Who, then, created the creator? The same argument that others make to me that our universe must have had some “prime cause” I would return to them, and ask what was the prime cause for that prime cause.
2. I am not persuaded by the extraordinary unlikelihood of life forming on our planet as proof that there was a creator of that life. Deal out a deck of cards. The odds of that particular hand being dealt were tiny. But it happened, and after it happened, the odds were 100%. Deal enough hands and you increase the likelihood of that hand being dealt to the point where it becomes likely. Well, I believe there are a lot of planets in our universe, and I believe that we happen to live on one where life happened to form.
3. I am not persuaded by words in a book put down by human hands as any kind of absolute proof of anything in particular, especially when the book in question has had multiple authors and revisions and a long history of mistranslations. (If you are insulted by this, please don’t be. Maybe I’m not talking about YOUR holy book, maybe I’m talking about someone else’s.)
4. I do not find persuasive any third party descriptions of impossible events or miracles, especially if they happened long ago, unless they have been credibly witnessed or recorded or reproduced.
5. Because I have never seen a credible study proving that prayer has benefits (and I have seen many that disprove any benefits), I do not believe in the power of prayer. How does God choose which prayers to answer? If one person prays for one event to happen, while another person prays for that same event to not happen, how is that resolved?
• I tend not to believe in absolutes or extremes, but instead look at life as a full spectrum of possibilities.
• I believe our brains and perceptions are often deeply flawed, and we have unbelievable power to fool ourselves.
• I believe that every individual is different, and do not expect my own beliefs to influence others or be persuasive. Other individuals have different beliefs based on their different values and world views, and I believe that that’s what makes life interesting. The world’s religions and varied cultural history hold enormous value and beauty.
• I believe that a refusal to be tolerant of other people’s different beliefs is problematic. I respect people for strong-held beliefs, but some belief systems are incompatible with my world view, and I may choose to not have such people in my life, and I believe that some people with extreme beliefs should not hold positions of power or authority over others.
• I fully believe in the separation of church and state.
• I am by nature suspicious of most organizations, and that applies to organized religious organizations as well. I believe in “live and let live” and therefore do not care for extreme proselytizing, or dogma that dismisses or attacks other groups.
• I do believe in groups that support each other and their community with acts of charity, whether those groups are religious or not.
• I believe that I should try hard not to be a hypocrite. But I believe that I am a flawed individual, and that my actions may not always be consistent with my beliefs. But I believe I should always try to be consistent and try to improve myself.
• I believe in kind actions and kind words. I believe in not taking oneself too seriously. I believe in love. I believe it’s time to eat.

Vvvv vvv vv, V vvvvv, vvv vvvv vvvvvv vv’vv vvvv vv vvv vv “v.”

(Click to enlarge)

In the collage, roughly from left to right:

1. Supermodel Anne V (Sports Illustrated photo), wearing a v-neck bathing suit, from her 5-year SI run.
2. Actress Morena Baccarin as Anna in the new “V” series on ABC.
3. The energy drink V.
4. XKCD illustrating Valentine’s Day (V Day). (Notice that the bottom half of a heart forms a V.)
5. The band Live’s album V.
6. V logos for Virgin brands as well as the TV series “V” look similar.
7. The annual music festival in the UK.
8. The victory gesture with 2 fingers; Churchill (his arm, at least) and Nixon are demonstrating here. Nixon is really demonstrating three Vs.
9. The graphic novel V for Vendetta, written by Alan Moore, drawn by David Lloyd, which later became a movie.
10. In the HBO series “True Blood,” adapted from the Charlaine Harris novels, vampires are known as “Vs,” and their blood is a drug known as “V” (reminiscent of “X” for ecstasy).
11. Visitors, visitors, everywhere. In addition to the current “V” series (where the Visitors are called “Vs”), there was the original two-part 1983 miniseries, a three-part 1984 miniseries, a short-lived 1984 TV series, and various novels and comics.
12. Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, V.
13. The V subway train, familiar in orange to residents of New York.
14. The Gibson Flying V, made famous by Lonnie Mack and Jimi Hendrix.
15. V Day (or V-J Day), and the world’s most famous photograph of a kiss in Times Square.

And there are probably a dozen more I could have included if I had thought of them.

Previously, Catan fans had to settle for a knock-off called Kolonists (currently not available from the iPhone App Store — pulled due to being too close to Catan without a license, perhaps?). Kolonists dressed the game in a Roman theme and did away with the random dice roll element of resource gathering, replacing the roll with a workable-but-inferior mechanic of having a single worker per settlement (and two per city) that provided guaranteed resources each turn, and a bit of jostling for position with your neighbors. It made the game faster but less interesting. So it was refreshing to go back to the original mechanic. (Other limitations of the Kolonists app are that it’s single player only, and there’s no ability to trade resources with the computer players, only the bank.)

This is a preliminary review of Catan, having just three-and-a-half games under my belt, but that’s enough experience to offer the following points. First, the good:

• It’s Catan. The rules are implemented faithfully, the terrain and icons are familiar, and the gameplay is smooth. If you’re a Catan fan, you can stop reading here and just go get it now.
• The music is excellent, and the sounds are good (but I could see them becoming annoying over time). There are options to switch off either or both.

And the bad:

• This is just basic Settlers. No expansions, no 5- or 6- player options. You do have a few options when creating a game, however. These options are: fixed or variable setup, random vs. stacked dice, optional friendly robber (no attacking players who haven’t earned any points yet), changing the victory requirement from the default 10 points to either 8, 9, 11 or 12, an optional catch-up “resource bonus” to players who haven’t earned any resources in five turns, or starting with a settlement and city instead of two settlements.
• Even switching the option for “quick animation” on is not quick enough. You get bogged down in transitions and long dice roll animations and the resource assignment animation. Kolonists had a faster pace.
• I don’t like the UI. All the commands (building, trading, etc.) are hidden in a slide-out menu to the right, guaranteeing that even a simple “end turn” is two gestures. Building a settlement is needlessly complex: Slide out menu, tap build, slide left in the build menu to choose to build a settlement, tap a checkmark to confirm, tap on screen where you want to build the settlement, tap a second checkmark to confirm. A better option would have been to dedicate some of the screen real estate to action buttons.
• No undo.
• While there is a good in-game statistics section (keeping track of dice rolls and other interesting data), it doesn’t keep track of your overall win-loss record. Kolonists offered a campaign mode, awarding points for each game that earned you new (cosmetic) titles. Catan would have done well to offer something similar.
• The AI does not seem great. I’m 3-0 so far (but might have lost another game that crashed). You can choose either random computer opponents or select different characters, which are rated by skill. I’ve seen even the best-rated AIs make some questionable moves. And they all trade too much in the end-game.
• You can only save one game at a time. If you save a game and then start a new game, it doesn’t warn you that your previously saved game is lost.
• It’s a bit buggy. For example, I chose to switch off the insipid comments that the AIs make when building items, but sometimes they still make comments anyway. And one game had to be abandoned when it was a computer player’s turn but it took no actions, with no options to continue or skip.
• Multi-player is only done via pass-the-phone (hot-potato style) — no networking support.
• Picky: The random setup of ports isn’t in accordance with the rules, randomly putting ports closer together than the official random setup rules allow. (Unless something has changed in the fourth edition that I’m unaware of.)

Despite the limitations, I recommend this anyway. I’m hopeful that all of the above problems will be fixed over time.

For players not familiar with the board game of Catan, they offer extensive tutorials and help. I didn’t go through them all but they seemed exhaustive, which should help a bit with the learning curve.

I’ll give it 3.5 stars for now.

But they’d be far less terrified if they sped up and used the next lane over — that way, they would avoid all the people merging onto and off the freeway.

Of course, there’s no chance they’re going to read this and change their habits. But the solution is easy to see, from the outside.

There’s some kind of life lesson trapped in there, somewhere.