Jinn of Quality and Risk

Swatch celebrates its 20 years. In these two decades, 300 million copies have been sold, with 2,500 models. Few believed it would succeed when it was launched, on 1983-Mar-01. The Swiss watch-making industry was dying, having missed the quartz and mass-market revolutions spearheaded by Japanese companies. Three innovative elements contributed to the Swatch success story: low-cost manufacturing based on a plastic, standardized platform; presenting watches as frivolous fashion-statements, consumer items to be replaced at least once a year; and low prices (CHF 40-50, i.e. about USD 30 at the time). 

Fascinating aspects of the history of science, presented by Thomas L. Hankins: L. J. Henderson, a Harvard physiologist and the first president of the History of Science Society, attempted to analyze mammalian blood solely as a physical-chemical substance. He found that the only way he could describe a chemical system as complicated as blood was by a diagram called a "nomogram." This lecture tells the history of Henderson's nomogram and of nomograms in general. It describes the origins of graphs in the eighteenth century, their development in nineteenth-century engineering practice, and their importance in the twentieth century for describing physical and chemical systems. 

Red Herring (R.I.P.) was part of the "dot-com" electronic rush. There were other electronic rushes before and there will be more in the near future. As with gold rushes, some got rich, others didn't, the legacy is amazing, and the frontier spirit dominates. What an exciting world! Red Herring has closed doors: Red Herring's March issue, delivered to subscribers two weeks ago, turned out to be the magazine's final issue. It had a circulation of about 275,000. ... Founded in 1993, Red Herring focused on the venture capital community, an emphasis that helped it emerge as an influential magazine during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. Like several other magazines that rode the dot-com wave, Red Herring cashed in on the tech boom by selling huge blocks of advertising space to businesses eager to reach its upscale audience. Red Herring's advertising revenue swelled from $21 million in 1999 to $87 million in 2000, before shrinking to $15.6 million [in 2002]. Survivors, now much thinner and owned by very large media corporations, are Wired, Fast Company, and Business 2.0. 

Henry Petroski (Washington Post, 2002-Jun-29): Risk is ubiquitous. Each of us is born with a life expectancy, and like it or not we play the odds every day. Numbers can be put on the risks we face from cradle to grave, but it is not possible to play life strictly by the numbers. That is why each of us, in responding to risk, makes personal decisions based not simply on quantitative measures but on qualitative interpretations as well. We party on arsenic-impregnated decks. We play golf in thunderstorms. We build multistory houses despite the risk of falling down stairs. These days -- in a climate of heightened awareness of risk, both real and perceived -- many public policy decisions appear to be made in much the same way. Decisions come ultimately from the gut rather than from the computer.