Common Sense Rules

In complete disregard to rule number 6, time for a current benchmark score. The links are often to the "exceptions that prove the rules".

1. Frequency. 9/10. Well actually it's 146 out of 159, but marks out of ten.

2. Topicality. 6/10. I still think the majority of posts start from new events, but only just. This is relatively a weak area.

3. Length. 8/10. Including labels and titles, so far we have 29168 words in 146 posts, average less than 200 words per day. As even the shortest post is about 80 words, that's pretty consistent.

4. Usability. 9/10. I think this fails where you a forced to follow a link to get the main point of the note. But that has only happened a couple of times.

5. Multimedia. 9/10. I've resisted. If you want music and video, then watch MTV.

6. Common Theme. 8/10. Well a few personal diversions, but generally I think it's been consistent and holistic.

7. Cohesiveness. 8/10. Actually, I've probably gone too far with the internal links. It's become a web not a path.

8. No Advertising. 9/10. I lost a mark for the intrinsic self-promotion. But no other compromises.

9. No Pictures. 8/10. Perhaps this rule should be broken more often. I'm pleased with those that have been inserted, they were small and monochrome, but original drawings take a lot of time.

10. Title. 7/10. We need more silly puns. But I guess that most people don't get them anyway.

That's 81%. I'd love to know if there is any blog anywhere on the planet that would score higher. But then again, I did make up the rules :)

Gibbons

No surprise, the teacher apologised. She did a number two. Fair enough. I'd be scared of causing offence too - if I lived in a place with lunatic nutters who think that their own religion is so pathetic that it can't take any criticism or mockery. Oh hell, I do live somewhere like that.

Because I am not so offended by the fundamentalist madmen who are orchestrating demonstrations in poverty-stricken Sudan, I'd expect nothing less of them. I am more offended by those in the west who say that the reason that she should be pardoned is because it was the children who named the bear, not her. Implication - it would be ok to imprison/lash/execute her if it had been her own decision.

At least we don't have blasphemy laws in the UK, we can mock bronze age superstitions without fear of reprisal here? Or maybe not.

A spire

Yesterday we saw a summary of the blogosphere. Today, the top ten ways that we try to fit within it.

1. Frequency. One post per day, no more, no less.
2. Topicality. The stimulus should have happened within the last 24 hours.
3. Length. About 100-200 words. That's only 3-4 paragraphs of 3-4 lines each.
4. Usability. The whole thing should be able to be skimmed through in a few seconds or analysed carefully for subtexts. Every link should be optional, not an integral part of the post.
5. Multimedia. Those files are big and slow to load. Worse, it tends to run at its own speed, it is harder to skim through or linger over.
6. Subject. There should be a developing theme, not just a random personal opinion.
7. Cohesiveness. Although independent in itself, each post should connect with others in the blog.
8. Advertising. No.
9. Pictures. As with words, should be original, and the minimum needed to get the point across. A small monochrome bitmap will often perform better than a large cluttered one.
10. Title. Include a stupid unnecessary pun.

OK, number 10 was a joke. And of course these are common sense rules, not yours.

Simple Chemistry for blogs

There hasn't been a picture for a while. What there has been is an attempted return to the guiding principles developed at the dawn of blogtime - simplicity, speed, conciseness. But I said recently that I delight in diversity...




... although I just drew this picture, everyone should remember these images from basic school science classes. So let us visualise each blog post as an atom.

A is for Air. These are the random blogs that I may like to read but only if I like the blogger. There are all sorts of subjects mixed together, almost nothing connecting them.

B is for Boron (or any other metal, but that one seems appropriate). This would be a very structured homologous blog. All posts basically cover the same subject area.

C is for Common Sense. Actually it is for any blog like this with lots of very long threads, all twisting and merging and diverging. Those that have more internal cross-links tend to have greater structural strength. This one is definitely less like Polythene and more like Nylon.

D is for DNA. The ideal. Only a couple of threads, but they match together almost perfectly. And the replicating pattern seems to take on a life of its own. See, I told you this blog was holistic :)

Nadus

So the teacher did not get lashed, but instead was sentenced to what today's headlines describe as "15 days in hell", though others claim that was not enough When she gets out and gets home, what will she say? Three possibilities:

1. I have realised the true error of my ways and converted. I now accept that xxxxx (whoever) is the one true messenger of god. All other supposed messengers were deluded.

2. I apologise sincerely. I did not mean to cause offence. I fully respect all those ancient laws. Islam is a religion of peace and understanding, and I did not understand.

3. What a bunch of fascist cowards. Is their religion really so pathetic that it can't take a bit of criticism? Or a joke. Are punishment and suppression their only responses to dissenting views?

I wish her well, but I predict she'll do a number 2.

Sorry Brian!

We could discuss the news. But I'll stay personal today.

I used to have a pet snail called Brian. Well, he was not really a pet, but I did see him a few times sliding across my patio.

Maybe giving him that name was a mistake. But I can honestly say that I named him after the main character of the Magic Roundabout and not after the supposed prophet. I appreciate that some people may believe that Brian was a divine messenger whose every word should be obeyed. I used to think those people were gullible fools, but I realise now that only they know the true meaning of life.

Apology done. Now I'm off to get lashed.

Going for Gold

Original content is more important than original style here. But I regularly refer to the form that I consider to be ideal for a daily blog. This entire site is an attempt to demonstrate that. I often say what it is. But here is what it is not...

This is not a document of my daily routine. This is not a personal message to anybody. This is not a place where I just post links that I find interesting or entertaining. This is not a place where I develop long and complicated arguments. This is not a place where I review books that I have read or films that I have seen. There are (I hope) only very few exceptions.

But, here's the rub, even though I strive for that ideal, I am thankful that you do not. The blogosphere would be rubbish if every single one was like this one. I want you to follow different rules to me. I want you to carry both very long and very short articles. I want to read about your life. I want to see your pictures. I want to look at all of the links where you point me. I want you to post more than once per day.

So even though this blog strives for perfection, I am so glad that others do not aim for it in the same way. Delight in diversity.

Brian May Not Like This

Two recent news stories about the sea have been the resumption of whaling and the wastage of cod. Both were referenced in last Tuesday's musing/raving by a well known astronomer, physicist, guitar-maker, animal-rights activist and rock legend.

I share his disgust regarding the slaughter of whales. There is no scientific research that justifies it. Whales seem to have an intelligence, a compassion and a "conscience" that corresponds to that shown in many human societies. The care and attention that they show for society members, as with humans, goes way beyond personal survival. Weaker animals who would never survive alone are nurtured and defended by others. Youngsters are taught, praised and punished. They develop customs over time and over generations. And those who have lost family members can behave with what appears to be genuine grief.

But cod are completely different. There are various technical definitions of pain, but I would expect extreme stimulation of nerves to elicit withdrawal responses in any animal. Yet fish generally do not care for their colleagues or even for their offspring, although those species that have survived evolution tend to be those who tend not to eat their own, whether by migration or instinct. An individual fish seems to have little objective in life except to reproduce.

Dr Brian May remains an icon, my all time guitar hero. I am sure he knows the difference between a fish and a whale. Only an ignoramus could confuse the two.

The Big Title

Why did I name all this Common Sense in the first place? Because I maintain that even the most complicated developments usually follow very basic statistical rules, and it is only ignorance, delusion, cowardice or psychotic denial that fuel nonsensical models of reality. But although the phrase may have been original and accurate in 1776, today it has been over-used to the point where it is losing impact. So what else could I have called this?

Rana's Gently Holistic Detection Agency - accurate, and it reflects the "fundamental interconnectedness" of everything here, but it's possibly too derivative and too personal

I Don't Believe in Ghosts - well that would have been the unusual title for my newspaper column or book if I had been a famous footballer

Uncommon Sense - nice, but it seems that many others already think they own the phrase.

Simple Answers to Complicated Questions - I like that, it is what we strive for, and it also echoes Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Hmm, I'm ok for now, but it's never too late to change ...

Maradona and Statto

I usually play football twice per week. One of those games involves a group of us who have been playing at the same time each week for nearly a decade. The sides vary, but we have records of the match results, and also on how often each player wins. But in today's lesson on how stats can mislead, a reminder that win ratio does not correlate to talent or ability.

It should be obvious, but to help understand why, assume that one player (for the sake of argument let's call him X) is much better than everyone else. Fair enough, X would be expected to have a decent win ratio. But look at the effect on everyone else.

When we are choosing sides before the games, we make a conscious decision to balance them. And if we have said that X should expect a high win ratio, then those players who are almost as good will naturally have a correspondingly low win ratio. Yet we have just implied that they are amongst the best players that we have!

Common sense? Or just an excuse for poor results?

Stay indoors and shut the windows

This week the government recommended that a small village to the west of London should be erased and the volume of air traffic at Heathrow should be nearly doubled. Now I am not trying to speak for a thousand residents of Sipson. But I am trying to speak for a million people who live under the flight path.

The Baa-brigade say that planes are getting quieter. True, but a big plane is still bloody loud. And the number of those planes is increasing. And they want to scrap the runway alternation agreement that spares people from being under the landing path for half the day.

But are the current noise guidelines really acceptable? Should we really aim for a city where so many people do not open their windows or relax in the gardens? The standard of air pollution required today is not the same as 50 years ago thanks to the clean air act. It did not freeze the regulation at "this is today's level, don't get worse". It tried to make lives better. Where is the equivalent for noise?

It's obvious, but the electorate needs to evaluate "quality of life" as well as the simple claims of national GDP effects. Sorry, does that sound too green? Then let us build a new hub somewhere else.

Should people be persecuted for what they write?

There have been riots in the city of my birth. According to the BBC, Wednesday's trouble in the state capital began after the predominantly Muslim All-India Minority Forum called for blockades on major roads in the city.

What triggered this? The Forum is angry about a "feminist writer". Critics say she called for the Koran to be changed to give women greater rights. Shocking isn't it.

The BBC seems to neither condemn nor condone the unruly behaviour. The article merely asks the question that titles this note.

I am not writing an answer. But if you suggest that certain thousand-year-old middle-eastern dictates should have no place in the modern world, then perhaps you should be persecuted too.

Moving Information

In terms of effort, what is the difference between tactical marketing and loyalty marketing?

When someone is asked to produce a file for a one-off purpose, then the quote returned is often just as small as anyone visualising the information movement would imagine. That is, you pull the data from here, you match it against this, you split it like this, then you move it to there. Easy.

Yet when asked to produce the same file, but supplied regularly, that is often not just a little harder, but sometimes orders of magnitude more difficult. Because the supplier is not being asked to produce a particular product, but instead asked to produce a process. It is the difference between asking for a widget or asking for a widget factory.

But increasingly, as the lost customer data proves, even the one-off request is going to need a full process. The world is going to slow down.

Calm Down

Each note relates to the one before. I predicted the bandwagon but not the subject. I should call this thing anti-hysteria rather than common-sense. As with the little notes about urban myths, this is just a case of trying to stay rational in the face of mass delusion.

Of course everybody in the UK has heard of the missing 25 million customer records. It is undoubtedly a very serious and possibly criminal offence.

And as a practitioner of interactive marketing, CRM, one to one marketing, Pepper's Ghosting, whatever we call it, I must know the confines of our national data protection laws and work within them every single day.

But is it cause for mass hysteria? Looking at any individual customer record, was there really anything there that no-one else would ever know? Did the files contain the passwords and PINs to access your bank accounts?

No. Somebody could try to imitate you, but they cannot take anything from you unless some organisation further down the chain screws up badly. We need to watch the banks here.

Fuelling national hysteria

As I've just written on speed cameras, I may as well get this out of the way before the tabloids start encouraging the selfish bastards to start blockading roads again. So time to spell out the same basic economics.

Yes, taxes make up a large proportion of fuel price. But if we are to reduce tax, then we have a choice between lowering tax most for those who earn the least, or lowering tax most for those who generally drive the most expensive vehicles.

Taxing fuel rather than other things has other secondary effects such as discouraging urban sprawl and encouraging high street rather than mall shops, reducing traffic congestion while encouraging walking and cycling. Sorry about that.

There are winners and losers in every choice. But we should choose wisely.

Life on Earth

The BBC have been looking for a successor to the legendary Sir David Attenborough as he gradually slides towards retirement, while one of the cable documentary channels has been playing his classic series back to back all weekend.

Now it would be sacrilege to criticise him, many feel that he is a national treasure and candidate for greatest living Englishman. And for once I agree with the many. But I never write here to echo them. For I have a criticism. Not of the man himself, of course.

However, I was struck by the tone of some of those early programmes. It was all done with courage, enthusiasm and knowledge. But they had little sense of history or of future - they seemed struck by the wonder of now. The tone often seemed to be to describe how "ideally" adapted all these amazing organisms seemed to be. The wing on a sycamore seed was "perfect" to carry it far from the tree. The teeth of carnivores were "perfect" for tearing flesh and bone.

But that is not quite true. All the evidence around us is of organisms that are barely better than competitors. There are some genetic patterns that are replicating well and others that are not. Within us, within nature, there are countless examples of things that do not work very well, that could work better. Some "species" are always doing a good job of dying out regardless of human intervention.

I still think diversity is good. But remember there is no "ideal" in nature.

Speed Cameras

It is an easy topic. There are very obvious rants here. Everybody seems to feel so strongly about this.

Half of you seem to hold the top gear view. Speed cameras are evil. The maximum safe speed is rarely the set limit. It is not necessarily safe to drive at 54 and dangerous to drive at 58 down an open dual carriageway. It is the arbitrary application of the offence (this law does not apply to foreign drivers, unlicensed cabs, fleet operators, diplomats, joyriders) and the disproportionate penalty (a quarter of your license). Worst of all, they always seem to be set up just so that they can get the maximum revenue instead of really to save lives.

And half of you seem to hold the green view. Speed is dangerous. It is unarguable that hitting an animal at 40 is more likely to kill it than hitting one at 30. So the cameras are a necessary evil. And if you don't want to lose your license, then just obey the laws.

But as usual, the reason why I write here, I think you are all wrong! Well actually all the points above are true, so maybe you are all correct ...

Because even though I broadly subscribe to top gear, I think the authorities should have the courage to admit (even encourage) the revenue raising functions. The money should go to those who most need it.

The faster that you speed, the more environmental damage caused, the more you should pay. I say fair enough. It is only going above a different speed that it is dangerous, dependent on the pictorial or witness evidence of traffic and pedestrian and weather conditions. That different limit could be higher, could be lower. But it depends on the conditions, and points should only be taken if driving is shown to be dangerous.

Apples and Pairs

Within the last week, two friends have gone to New York from London, and each of them received a copy of my dual map.

The reaction of others to that little piece of artwork always seems really positive (unlike to much of the other material here). But although it is either obvious or perceptive to spot the similarities and it requires either local knowledge or research to match the particular areas, we should ask the same question for any disparate alignment - is each of the models just following a blind pattern based on simple evolutionary rules, or is it really a striking coincidence?

You know the answer. So the map was common sense. It has faults, but I'm still proud of it.

Nature should know better

There appears to be a regular stream of articles about the latest "hybrid species" to be discovered. Even reputable science journals seem to regularly dig them out with continual expressions of surprise.

Interspecies hybrids are usually sterile. Because chromosome pairs need to be reasonably close to align and transfer DNA. But the key word is usually it is not always. For those who insist on species-ism, new ones are continually being formed in front of our very eyes. It is evolution in action right now.

A species is only a group of organisms that tends to interbreed at a point in time. There may well be an ideal mate for each animal, but if the first choice is not available, then some do "choose" to mate across our specious divides. There are some weird individuals around :)

OK, it is probably useful to think in terms of species if you are categorising the diversity of life at this moment. But when looking through the eons of history then that model of nature is not so useful, it is more instructive to think of the transmission of molecular patterns rather than species.

Thirty years after the the publication of The Eternal Gene, surely Nature should know better.

Promotions

I am not referring to promotions in the sense of variable marketing offers, I maintain that those are basically worthless.

However the other sense of the word refers to the improvement in responsibility and salary that appears to be the periodic objective of the typical manager in a large corporation.

There is usually significant competition for promotions within the management tiers of the organisation. I have no comment on specific cases, but these are eventually resolved by some combination of past performance results and future performance potential, external directive laws and internal directive guidelines, justified personal loyalties and unjustified personal prejudices.

As a consultant running my own business, the whole concept is irrelevant to me. A good performance may result in a new contract for a new piece of work. A poor performance means no pay. That's it.

Panacea

I don't usually post links here ... usually I attempt original thought. However, today's newspaper has something that is just so funny, such a magnificent ridiculous spoof article that I can't take anything seriously at the moment:

An apology for homeopathy

Again, I apologise for using a link, but I'm still laughing. The only thing that can possibly compare is this. No apologies for this link, it has to be played, but it is sheer genius:

Superdrug

Not Rocket Science

Jet exhausts get very hot. We need turbines in the exhaust to power the compressors. How would you stop the turbine blades from melting?

That was the strange question that greeted my eighteen year old self in the interview for college. I can't remember exactly what I answered, but it was enough to get me in the door.

There were two tutors doing the questioning. The professor was my main tutor through the course and after a long career as an expert in thermodynamics he finally retired this year. The young research fellow, after a year of continually stressing the importance of our department, left to pick up big City bonuses. I have learned that sort of thing happens a lot in business.

And why did they ask that question? After so many years, Rolls-Royce Aeronautics are still sponsoring the Engineering fellowship at my college.

Flight of the Phoenix

We watched a movie this weekend. To be more precise, one of the freeview TV channels finally showed the 2004 remake of the classic 1965 film. The plot is familiar, a group of survivors crash land in the desert and build a new plane out of the wreckage.

And while watching, I asked myself: could I do that?

Now I don't think that I would survive many days in searing heat and biting cold with minimal food or water. However, given time and tools and materials, I think I could build a working flying machine.

After all, it's not rocket science.

Who hid the elephant?

A few days ago I said that a good magician must be a good actor. Today I discover there is a film in production about a great magician.

Yet many historians do not rate Harry Houdini very highly for magical technique, though they concede his skill as an escape artist. They seem to have a mental image of the ideal magician as someone who must be tall, elegant, debonair, eloquent.

Eric Weiss was not like that at all. He was short and bowlegged and awkward and he spoke with a jarring accent. Yet I rate him the very best.

Because he really pushed the boundaries of what the human body could do and what the human mind could comprehend. His illusions often involved genuine danger. His escapes included real police shackles and real prison cells.

And unlike many who exploited the bereaved and vulnerable, he bravely spoke out against the cheats and fraudsters who claimed supernatural powers. He knew that they were all just evil vultures. They still are.

Tort for the Day

Yesterday I noted that my drive home often spans the 6:30 pm comedy slot on Radio 4. On this special day, it is worth noting that my morning drive also spans a comedy slot. 7:45 am.

Staying holistic, the Agency has many of the qualities of the mighty religious tomes. It is full of strange imagery and weird anecdotes that could easily be quoted out of context to justify almost anything. It suggests how life started and how it could end. It has an elusive "hero" whose background is mysterious but whose achievements are legendary.

However it just missed out. To become a great sacred text rather than a great novel, the book needed only two more sentences within it:

1. Everything contained herein is true - it is divine revelation and absolutely not a work of fiction

2. Thou shalt propagate this message - attempts to resist or mock are blasphemy and will not be tolerated

And then find some monks or monkeys who would fall for those lines. If only DNA had included those instructions …

The Wholy Book

My drive home from the client often spans the 6:30 to 7 "comedy" slot on BBC Radio 4. For the last six weeks, concluding yesterday, they have been playing the adaptation of, in my opinion, the finest novel ever written.

But the adaptation did not really work for me. The hero sounded more like a Harry Enfield character than the mysterious East-European that I remembered from the book.

The book is inexplicable anyway. It is a murder mystery, a ghost story, an exercise in philosophy, an English textbook, a discussion of religion, an historical novel, a magical tour. It covers the history of the world from the primordial slime of 4 billion years ago through Coleridge and Bach to quantum physics.

But I hope the novel is just a tiny bit like this blog. It is about detection. It is about finding incredibly simple answers to incredibly complicated questions. It is about a thousand different subjects. But somehow they all tie together. Just like the methods used inside it, the book itself is holistic.

However, unlike Dirk Gently, this blog is not going to save all life on this planet. And if it were to, I would invoice a lot more than he did :)

Why Germany Lost the War

Shock Horror Exception - one of those circulating email pictures is posted here …

And though I just received the email, and was pleased to receive it, this joke has probably been circulating in one form or another for about sixty years.

Excuses. Firstly, it has been a very long time, months, since the last image posted here. Secondly, maybe it's more effective distribution to be viewed on a site like this rather than individually sent out to lots of people. Thirdly, I can see there might be generic socio-political points to be drawn from it. Fourthly, it just tickled me.

And the value added, what I think it needs is a conclusion…

so I suggest that Stone beats Scissors … Fight the Power :)

The Language of IT

As should be perfectly clear from much of the material here, I do not abide by many of the common distinctions between the business world and the world of information technology.

Many in the business do not delve into the information technology that supports us, perhaps because they think that they cannot understand the language. There may be a lot of data to absorb, but the principles are all common sense.

But as with natural languages, things that initially appear incomprehensible can usually be explained very simply - not by a thorough memorisation of extensive vocabulary, but simply by recognising how the language is built up - the basic components of grammar and a general understanding of how things evolve.

There may appear to be major differences. For example, in our daily interactions, someone who knows the vocabulary and syntax of more than three or four languages is quite unusual in the English speaking world.

But for those who work in computing, it is quite normal to be able to write fluently in far more than that. However the non-technologist would counter: compared to German or French or Russian, the language of computing is usually exceedingly simple, with very limited vocabulary and very few rules of syntax …

… and that is exactly why everyone should be able to understand it.

It's a kind of magic

I like magic. Depending upon the scale of the illusion, a good magician is a good actor or a good director.

The actual mechanics of tricks are usually fairly obvious to anyone who thinks through them like an engineer. They rely on science and common sense. I am not going to explode the Magic Circle if I say that various combinations of sleight of hand, drapes, mirrors and misdirection account for most illusions. But we do not need to dissect every one in detail, because instead we can just enjoy the show.

Those who claim that their magic is powered by supernatural or paranormal ability are not magicians. They are cheats, liars, fraudsters, and worse. Those who claim to communicate individually with your dead relatives are not only liars but evil vultures.

But an honest magician is just putting on an act. And the good magician, like the good actor, can make you briefly forget about reality … or make you think that the marketing message was really targeted just for you.

Size matters

At one time, every large human group was a small human group. What are factors that could have made it grow faster than other groups?

While in a minority in a region, it could encourage isolation from competing ideas. Within families, the group could discourage contraception and encourage large numbers. It could encourage conversion into the group.

It could discourage dissent. Alternative groups could be suppressed by removing competing ideas or by removing competing individuals.

But total numbers in the group will not rise if people leave at the same rate that they are joining. So it could be made difficult to leave the group. Once any group has taken control of land and business, there will inevitably be social pressure on others to conform. Or penalties for leaving the group could be made even more explicit.

Many of these factors could apply to any group that is growing. But does the fact that something is growing mean that we should encourage it?

Common Sense

Yesterday I got a comment from another blog with a similar name to this. It was no surprise to discover that there are plenty of other publications out there already called this. This blog is honoured to claim direct spiritual ancestors since at least 1776.

On the back of empirical evidence, any scientist knows that even apparently crazy theories should be reduced to common sense, it just takes an acceptance of statistics. I believe that everything here is eventually obvious (these posts should be generic discoveries not personal pictures) unless you prefer to ignore the data or prefer to fall back to narrow minded anecdotal or religious arguments.

But to explain concisely why I do this, I will conclude by quoting the complete (two line) eponymous poem by the late great Ogden Nash:

Why did the Lord give us this agility
If not to evade responsibility?

Paramedics

This is a blog for common sense (and for unnecessary puns) - not for discussion of metaphysics or formal philosophy.

In a detective story, the initial diagnosis may look like it is causing a paradox. But once you have watched or read through to the end, it is always the case that there was no paradox, just an incorrect deduction.

In my example yesterday, we had two conclusions, one drawn from each line of data. Those two were fair enough. But it was then just lazy or presumptuous to draw another conclusion from those two conclusions, instead of from the data.

So once we understand the data then there is no paradox.

That only leaves quantum theory ...

Touching the Data

This note is not really new material for those who work with me, it is one of those examples that I have been dredging out for year after year. But as I've just mentioned the reverend Simpson, and as this blog is holistic, it seems appropriate to head back to the analysis and evaluation of marketing activity.

If programme 1 performs better than programme 2 in a first phase, with a significantly higher response rate, and if programme 1 also performs better than programme 2 in a second phase, - then that does NOT necessarily mean that programme 1 has performed better than programme 2 overall. Even if programme 1 "wins" subsequent phases.

Nothing to do with creative or external factors, just really simple maths. Hence common sense.

But most people seem to understand this better when related to football than to marketing. With my invented numbers:





Easy.

I just need to recognise, manage and control this effect in real campaigns every single day.

Touching the Cloth

Joe Simpson was the climber who shattered his legs when he was dropped down a crevasse descending a peak in the Peruvian Andes. His story was the subject of the film Touching the Void. It was a miracle that he survived the fall, a miracle that he dragged himself out of the ravine, a miracle that he crawled all the way down the mountain, a miracle that he was able to walk again. But there he was on TV this weekend, describing how he had resumed climbing and even ascended the Eiger.

A man of the cloth is a term used for someone who is considered to be close to God, or at least someone who helps the rest of us to get closer to Him.

Mr Simpson was invited onto Desert Island Discs recently. I listened. The interviewer grilled him about those times when he was very close to fading out, when he genuinely thought he was about to die - did he ever think of God or a possible afterlife at those times? No, he replied. Never. Even faced with imminent death, the idea of such a crazy Thing did not even cross his mind.

In addition to your chosen records, the programme lets you take a little reading material onto the desert island. It assumes that everyone will take the Bible, and so many people wanted the complete works of Shakespeare that they started allowing that too. So two hefty books for free, and one more of your choice. Joe took the Shakespeare, but politely declined to take the Bible. Even as toilet paper.

The Pleasure of Hope

The title here is the opening sequence to a classic album by Pendragon. Another of the best albums ever recorded is the only release by a band that the genius Jim Steinman christened as Pandora's Box, so obviously hope was a main theme in there as well.

But though those are two of my all time favourites, neither of them are very well known, neither would appear on the top ten list for most people. However, when it comes to films, perhaps my taste is more universal. The Shawshank Redemption is a favourite for many others too.

But there is one little thing wrong with the movie. They bastardised the end. It is not just me who thinks that the main theme of the story was the title of this post, Stephen King himself sub-titled the original book with a similar sentiment. So the correct place to end the film would have been with Morgan Freeman on the bus. I hope that I will make it across the border. I hope that my friend is there. I hope.

Animal Ethics

I had an assortment of curries for lunch, and this was followed by a discussion about the ethics of eating animals. So the predicted tangential point.

In common with most other chimps, humans tend to be omnivores. I enjoyed my lamb, and I have already stated that I hope that it was killed with its pain minimised according to scientific knowledge rather than religious barbarism.

Generally, given equal price, convenience and availability, we tend to prefer to eat "wild" animals rather than factory farmed ones. There are good health reasons for this.

But farming has made our ethical choice easier in one respect. What three thousand years of selective breeding has done is to gradually remove much of the "life" out of farm animals. I don't mean life in its strict biological sense of replicating DNA, in that sense farming is the best thing that ever happened to the genes for chickens, cows and goats. I do mean the "zest for life", the spirit, the aggressiveness, the unpredictability and the fight to survive that characterises wild animals.

Perhaps one day, as DNA suggested, we will end up with a pig that wants to be eaten. If that happens, it would be a pleasure to oblige.

Mean Time

I left the last post saying it was ridiculous to give everyone stress and jetlag twice a year, but left it fairly equivocal on when we should we fix our zone - in October or in March.

However, generally lights are on for longer in the evening than the morning. On average we surely spend more waking hours before work than after work. It's the same for entertainment - the afternoon kickoffs today will all need expensive floodlights next week. So in terms of energy usage and carbon footprints and global warming and best aligning daylight with peaks in human activity, we should keep brighter evenings.

Some people in the highlands say it wouldn't get light until 9 am there in midwinter - well do they all really prefer it to get dark every day at 3 pm? Anyway, they can have their own time zone if they really want one, but whatever they choose is not going to increase their daylight. Obviously.

So finally, I have no great prejudice either way so long as it is fixed as soon as possible. But as a positive suggestion, the UK should stay on BST all year - call it British Standard Time and leave it there.

Saving Time

It's that time of the year, so (for once I hope) a very predictable post.

The "clocks" are going back this weekend. By the "clocks" I mean every single thing that reports time in your home, your car, your office, your train station, your airport, your radio and TV broadcasters. Today there may be clocks on your central heating system, your cooker, your fridge, your radio, your DVD player - you know the list, a few may reset automatically, but don't forget the spare watch in the bedroom drawer.

Only an idiot thinks we gain daylight by doing this. On top of the time wasted to change clocks, clearly whatever you save in the morning you lose exactly the same amount in the evening. Obviously. Everyone knows that. Except idiots.

The time taken to change clocks (and timetables) is a non-productive drain on society. Perhaps it was only a minor inconvenience when every home had just one clock in the hall that needed to be regularly synchronised with BBC chimes anyway. Today it is lunacy.

Changing time is a significant cost for every local business, and it is an enormous cost for every global business. Jet-lag is a real drain too. We force the whole country to endure an hour's jet-lag twice a year. Ridiculous.

Some people prefer brighter mornings. Some people prefer brighter afternoons. Don't try to justify clocking with bullshit about getting closer to nature. The cockerel doesn't suddenly decide to crow sixty minutes earlier. Cows don't realise when it's GMT and trudge down for milking accordingly. Crops ripen according to the sun, not the clock.

I would prefer to stay on BST. Others would prefer to stay on GMT. But, as often stated, this is a blog for common sense and not for personal preference. We can adjust to either time zone. Just leave the damn thing alone.

The Bleeding Edge

There are plenty of people who are critical of academics and futurologists and towers of ivory. Despite what you may believe, I would support that criticism. The writers that I most respect have backed up their words with actions. George Orwell really did spend time down and out in Paris and London.

But I genuinely do work developing strange new mixtures of technology, statistics and psychology that together form the essence of this blog. I have been selling these ideas since my college thesis, and have been doing my best to implement them in real business applications ever since.

Even where I veer onto the more global and more controversial stuff, the really big issues that are destroying our world, I still sometimes stick my neck in where it hurts. Even if you are not a professional journalist, a broad subject does sometimes require unpleasant research.

So it is true that I did not volunteer to risk my life fighting in the Spanish Civil War. But I really have endured the Alpha Course. Sometimes we have to suffer for our art.

Disinterested

The word is often misused, but this blog has broader ambitions than pointing out minor semantic errors.

Before my diversion into the future of customer relationship marketing, I almost did a typical diary post … I went to x show, it got x stars from me etc. But this blog is broader than that too.

I said that most of the reviews that you see elsewhere are only the the gushing sycophantic praise of professional critics who long to get quoted on billboards and invited for celebrity interviews.

If any magazine really gave honest reviews to the 50% of releases that are below average, then it would be highly unlikely to get the next exclusive interview with the famous cover star. That applies as much to the criticism of strikers' performance on Football Focus as to product reviews or film reviews in any glossy publication.

And the same thing goes for any articles that do not criticise those who advertise around there. Be careful whose opinions you trust.

Patent 1863-326

So now, as this blog is holistic, time to bring the last few notes together.

Pepper's Ghost is an illusion. According to the specifics of the patent, it documents the precise angle of semi-reflective surface needed to create the false image for various customer locations, although the term later developed a more generic usage. I had thought that it was a commonplace expression now, but I suppose that not everybody reads books about the history of magic and deception.

So in marketing, I refer to Pepper's Ghost as the illusion of 1 to 1 communication. It is a derivation of the original CRM vision, so it honours the creator, but the personal relationship required for message customisation does not exist - except in the mind of the customer. The personalisation is only an illusion. The customer only needs to "believe" that the marketing has been tailored to her.

To achieve this effect, we are back at the intersection of science, technology, psychology and statistics. That is the core of this site. And that is how mass marketing must work in the real world of incomplete information.

The Peters Principle

To explain any ghost story, you need a little diversion into real life.

It is strange to think that only fifteen years ago there was no such thing as customer relationship marketing as we know it today. CRM was only practiced by the local grocer who genuinely knew each customer individually. Like all great ideas, and also maybe some of the ideas here, the advantages are blatantly obvious in retrospect. It just needed the technological and social environment to catch up. And it needed a champion.

I was very impressed when I met Don Peppers. As a real business leader, in search of excellence in terms of vision, commitment and eloquence, I can only compare him to Tom Peters. His ideas immediately seemed common sense to me - the measurability and statistics, the information requirements and rules engines, the technology and the simplicity, the implicit feedback loops and control theory - it fit me well.

So for the last decade of my working life, I have been explaining these principles to senior business managers, and also making them work in real world systems. I have not seen many people who seem to understand both the core message and also the IT enablers.

And in at least one little area, in terms of explaining and implementing the CRM vision, I think that I go further than those original 1 to 1 manuals. I needed a new phrase to summarise this idea, I called it Pepper's Ghost ...

Pepper's Ghost

I said that I would relate a classic stage illusion to modern individualised marketing. Can I also bring in musical perfection?

My musical epiphany was noted earlier. However that band split up soon after, and nobody else could quite replicate that magic sound. Then, many years later, by a miraculous turn of fate, original drummer Michael Pointer met the keyboard genius Clive Nolan who had carried the torch in Pendragon for so many years...

The resulting supergroup was called Arena. Their latest studio album is genuinely called Pepper's Ghost.

And tomorrow I really will evoke Don Pepper's ghost in current marketing strategy.

Supermagic

We went to the theatre today. Not just the local theatre but a proper full-on Cameron Mackintosh West End production. I had not bought the tickets myself - I would not have chosen either this particular show or this particular date. But as it was a heartfelt family present I was happy to go.

So I did not have high expectations. But I confess, it was truly magical. That is not the gushing sycophantic praise of professional critics who long to get quoted on billboards and invited for celebrity interviews. I mean it was magical like a magic show. Things were appearing and disappearing and time-shifting and flying around as though they were CGI effects. Amazing. Songs and music were ok too.

Now the difficult bit - next I will relate a classic stage magic trick to modern individualised marketing.

Alternatives

Of course there are many different causes of many different types of cancer. But I suggested that we should look for what is common between them, and the common factor is that the cell division that is normally so well regulated (for example by CDK activity) is not so well controlled in cancerous cells.

And of course there are many anecdotal stories about alternative treatments. But alternative treatments do not work. At least not in a consistent verified manner. That is why they are called alternative treatments and not called proper medicine.

By the way, except for its entertainment value, an alternative theory is fairly worthless if it only describes behaviour, it also needs to predict behaviour. And like genetic mutation, I find that most alternative models perform worse than the original. Topical quote, it's elementary my dear Watson :)

How to cure cancer

Any alternative treatment or strategy should still have a background in facts and a testable model. But if it can help to think from reverse angles about minor things like train tracks or aeroplane design, maybe we should apply similar ideas to the most important things in life.

Anyone with even basic high school biology will have been told about cell cycles, DNA and RNA, and they will have learned (or not learned) the various stages in cell division. But school textbooks are largely just descriptive - step 2 follows step 1 etc. Perhaps in fear of religious fundamentalists, they spend little time on exploring root causes of process and behaviour, and instead they largely document details of what actually happens now.

But it is clear to anybody - if living cells are given time, space and nutrients then they tend to multiply. That is what they do. We see it all the time. What is perhaps more interesting is why healthy cells eventually stop multiplying.

I don't expect non-specialists to understand the specific mechanisms used by cyclin-dependent kinases such as CDC2 to regulate phase transition in mitosis. Lacking a Nobel prize in medicine, I don't know the answer. But I think the solution may be in there.

Can I play with madness?

I know that there are easy targets. But they are like invasive weeds in your garden, every time you think they've been controlled, they crop up again in unexpected and unpleasant places.

And I try to stay topical. Unfortunately, today's lunchtime talk was about the benefits of complementary therapy. The speaker preferred the word complementary rather than alternative words such as untested, unsafe, ineffective, lunatic, stupid.

It all started fairly innocuous although very obvious - drink lots of water, exercise, eat a balanced diet with less processed food. Everyone knows that anyway. Then the presenter veered off onto her own strange planet of reiki and chakras and reflexology. She even seemed to be taking some of the audience with her.

I'll be kind to the presenter. I'll call it salesmanship. She must have been hawking us unverified codswallop to boost her own bank balance rather than because of mental condition. It's ridiculous as science, but fair enough in marketing.

The root of all errors

I appreciate the sentiment of the many that I quoted, and equally those of the few who comment here. I hope that I echo all of their concerns. Because all of us who share an education tend to be the sort of people who do not abuse punctuation or engage in Bush-speak.

But it would be easy for a daily blog to only list little quirks and errors each day. To point out things about language that are liked or disliked. In the same way that it would be easy to write a little ode to a different film or book or game each day. But, forgive the analogy, that is a little like racism.

It is easy to look at different groups of people and to comment on their differences. I am a racist, in that I accept that there are statistical differences in average abilities for these different groups. But differences are easy.

What is more difficult is to look for similarities. To look for common influences across completely diverse languages and cultures. To look for causes and origins. To find the essence of what makes us human. In order to predict different patterns of behaviour or patterns of speech then we need to look for the factors that have made them different in the first place.

Words and Rules

In a conversation today, something that I said was corrected. Nothing unusual there. I had accidentally dropped in an incorrect word while saying something. Again, nothing unusual there. We all have the odd slip of the tongue, and I'm happy to clarify anything misleading.

But then my corrector got it completely wrong. He said that I was a stickler for accuracy with words. Absolutely yes in published research. Absolutely no in conversation. I know he reads the blog. I guess he misreads the blog.

Because there is a broad spectrum of people who comment on English usage, from the language mavens who truss the speaker to the language liberals who trust the speaker, and I thought it was perfectly clear that I am firmly on the Pinker side.

I can still think that incorrect spellings or extra apostrophes are ugly. I can still think it is the duty of all writers to check their work before publishing. But I keep saying - what really matters is the message not the medium.

Oval balls

There is going to be a lot of focus on rugby over the next few weeks as patriots and xenophobes and decent English people revel in vicarious victory. So an alternative point here.

As mentioned earlier I went to a whole load of schools, but I recall only one of those where the winter sport was rugby. The cliché about games teachers being sadistic bastards has only a small amount of truth. It was only the cross country runs we hated - football was better but I genuinely enjoyed rugby too. Except for one thing...

As a kid I always played outside, and even now, unless injured, I choose to play football outdoors at least twice per week throughout the year regardless of wind, rain, or snow. But I wrap up. And thanks to the hated foreign invasion that has made the Premiership the "best league in the world", even professional footballers can now wear gloves or undershirts. Yet as a schoolkid playing rugby in midwinter, I just remember being cold.

I genuinely don't know the clothing guidelines for school games today. But I hope they have learned.

Signals

I suppose that yesterday's idea needs to be made more explicit. A previous price is just a signal, one of many factors that help to clarify the real value of a product. Other obvious indicators to product value are the brand, the product model identifier, competitor prices, even the selling location.

For comparatively low-value interchangeable items, the sort that you see in a typical supermarket food isle, the money off one purchase is not changing your life. There the offer serves primarily as a "look-at-me" signal rather than a major financial incentive. But the key factors here are those adjectives, low-value and interchangeable. It does not substantially affect your life to substitute one product for another, and the use of the offer is to bring a different item to your attention.

And for higher value items, the previous price is becoming even less useful as an indicator because technology is advancing so rapidly, while because of competition and globalisation, many product prices need to decrease in real terms.

So if the previous price is just a signal of very little relevance then so is the offer.

I knew I'd be able to bring together economics, linguistics, mathematics, and semiotics :)

Variable Marketing Offers

You see something advertised as so many pounds or dollars or per cent off the original price. Does that fact make any difference whatsoever to your decision to purchase it?

Unless you are a complete alien to that shopping environment then the answer is clearly no. The offer should make bugger-all difference to your decision to purchase. When you are shopping then the two main factors are "I have this much time and money to spend" and "I have this much value to obtain". The third factor of "this is how much I have 'saved' versus some totally notional figure made up by the retailer" is completely irrelevant.

Nobody has the complete information of free market economic theory. But we generally have enough information to decide whether something is worth buying.

I know the things stated here are sometimes very obvious. But then I look around and see people who really do seem to choose on the basis of what they think they are saving instead of what they think they are buying. When describing a purchase some people really do glory in how much they have "saved".

There is no absolute line, we all take many factors into account. But some are just lunatic.

Global Consumer Trends

I had not planned to talk about this subject today. The previous note was a very specific comment on the way that information was presented, and a very broad comment on the direction of the world.

But on reflection, almost everything I write here is about this topic. The reason that I found the presentation both very interesting and also completely obvious is precisely because in my work, and in the work of the team around me, we do spend most time trying to relate actual marketing activity to the changing demographics and infrastructure of the world around us.

It seems that I am almost always discussing global consumer trends, perhaps sometimes I help to define them.

So I did not mean to criticise or offend the speaker. The subject does need a broader audience. But I delve deeper.

People Facts

As any politician knows, the way that a fact is presented has a major effect on the way that you expect people to respond to it.

I saw a presentation on global consumer trends today. I emphasise the word global.

With a tone that seemed to be somewhere between concerned and disappointed, the presenter pointed out that 43% of people now live in countries with birth rates that are at or below death rates. The implication was certainly that this was a major problem.

An alternative way of presenting exactly the same information could have been to say that 57% of the people of the world now live in countries where the population is still increasing. And presumably still increasing at a faster rate than land and oil and other resources.

I have no comment on the statistics other than to point out the irony. The presentation's final slide was about the basic human need for peace and quiet and personal space.

22.5 minutes

I love the BBC. I love sport. But when it comes to football, I can't stand the commentary on five live. It is true that one particular BBC commentator makes me green with rage and I turn off the radio whenever he is on. But this is a blog for common sense, not for personal dislike.

The BBC is constantly under cost pressure. They have claimed they cannot bid for sporting events because they do not have enough money. They are relocating to cheaper offices. They are making staff redundant. So why, unlike virtually every other radio station on the planet, do they feel that they must switch commentators halfway through a half? I'm not talking about the co-commentator, the guy who provides a foil for the main speaker throughout the game. I'm talking about the crazy switch that happens 23 minutes into the action.

It is ridiculous. Don't pretend that "it's radio so they need to talk more than TV guys, what if one guy loses his voice, there are no commercial breaks during a half, what if one guy gets eaten by an alien" ... other radio stations across the world manage fine. And if you've listened across the world, other commentators talk much much more than BBC ones.

But the thing that takes this scenario from wasteful (of which there are plenty of examples everywhere) to downright ridiculous (hence this note) is that adding the extra costs actually provides a worse service. While listening to a game, changing the main voice breaks up the flow. It spoils the game. A ninety minute football match is not a five day test match, one professional should be able to manage it.

By losing the second commentator, they would reduce costs and also provide a better listening experience. It's win-win. It's common sense.

Trusted Tellers

At least anecdotally, everybody in the western world has heard of the phenomenon of the "phantom withdrawal". It is when you get your monthly bank statement and then see an ATM transaction that you cannot recall.

In a similar manner to the credit card issue mentioned yesterday, it is not easy to prove your innocence. If your own experience does not tie in with the results of the statistical correlation algorithms used by the bank to detect unusual activity, then it is your word against theirs again.

If the banks can be bothered to investigate, they might spend time and money looking to see if there is CCTV footage. But even if you can prove it was not you, they will say it is an "accomplice".

The process could easily be easily fixed. As customers, we would only need to agree that only pre-specified people could make withdrawals with each card. Then scan a finger or hand or face with every withdrawal. It would be very expensive to scan and verify and record this centrally in real time with every transaction, it would be very cheap to just store it locally as an audit record. It would eliminate the phantom withdrawal. But it is still not in the banks' interest.

Chip and pin the blame

Marketing comes in many forms. I listened to a talk about credit card fraud today. The presenter spouted the usual guides about being careful with the security of your actual card, about hiding your PIN, all the obvious stuff.

Throughout the presentation, the lady from the bank constantly emphasised that she was on our side, that the interests of the banks and its customers were completely aligned. While I agree that it is in both sides' interest to reduce fraud, she was nevertheless somewhat disingenuous.

Because we are not always on the same side. She works for the bank, we customers fund the bank. And when there is a query, when they claim that you conducted a particular transaction, when you claim that you did not, then it is not a win-win scenario - one party is right, one party is wrong, one party has to pay up.

Back in the old days, when there was a disputed credit card transaction, there was always a paper trail with your signature. It was relatively easy to provide evidence. In the new chip-and-pin world there is no audit record. Each transaction could have kept a signature too for added customer security. But they only chip and pin to reduce their costs, not to increase your protection.

If you dispute a transaction, it is now your word against the banks' allegation. Investigation costs money. And I know which side can afford the better lawyers.

Threads

There are about four distinct threads here, each taking about a quarter of the space.

Often we will see a detailed point about marketing, business, science, technology or mathematics. They may seem fairly unrelated fields, but I operate directly at their confluence.

Occasionally I will present what I think may be an original idea in some unrelated field. Not necessarily a grand scheme to feed the world, perhaps just a new way of looking at an old idea or a new word for the dictionary.

There is less of this now, but a strong thread a the beginning was a lesson in how-to-blog. A self-taught developing lesson. So not really a guide for how you should blog, more a description of the style that seems to work best here.

And there is a little about me. Not necessarily about what I've just done, more about who I am. I did apologise for this but it is inevitable that anything that I ever write must reflect the skills and experience offered by my company. So if you're looking for a marketing consultant or database architect or project manager ...

Picture This

I'm conscious that I don't put up many pictures here. It is partially a desire to keep the site clean, clear, and lightning-fast. But it is also partially because it simply takes much longer to draw an original idea than to write an original idea. The exception is if you are a professional artist whose work has intrinsic value because of what it is rather than what it represents. I am not a professional artist.

But I always draw original pictures in my consulting work. It requires a particular skill that I have noted before. The skill to take a seemingly endless spiel of marketing requirements, spouted in broadly sequential yet apparently random fashion, then transfom that into a diagram. It is a skill that is essential for anyone who needs to translate business objectives into real deliverables, in fact for any technology or process improvement.

If you work in office environments, you'll recognise the sort of people who can't help but draw boxes and arrows after every few minutes of conversation. The sort of people who visualise bits and bytes flowing across disks and wires.

So I know a picture can be worth a thousand words. But I try to keep to a hundred.

Set in stone

Finally time for another little picture. I travelled into central London on the tube at the weekend. Except for rush hour, it's a fairly rapid and pleasant way to cross the city. We pass a station where one line to the west splits into two lines to the east. I used to live there. There are three platforms at the station.

When travelling west to east you need to be sure that you get the right route. People on the platform don't know quickly which branch the train will take. We all know on-platform monitors are sometimes inoperative, then you need to read the little note on the front of the train to work out where it's going or hope for an intelligible station announcement.

And going east to west, it's a crazy random game. There can be two trains about to head in exactly the same direction, down the same track, but whichever one you settle in, you "know" the other one is going to depart first.

The whole line was closed for months recently. They should have rebuilt the station. I'm not presuming more space. You would still have three platforms. You would still have exactly the same lines going in and exactly the same lines going out. But issues above all sorted. Easy.