Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

When I checked into my American Airlines flight on Monday, it offered me the chance to mail the boarding pass to a bunch of different places.

But what was interesting was that there was an additional field that was shown but disabled. This was the option to mail the boarding pass to my mobile device.

And this morning, I checked in for another flight (yes, I spend more time at airports than anywhere else — welcome to the story of my life). However, I now noticed the ability to mail the boarding pass to my mobile device. Of course, being the geek that I am, I had to give it a go.

The TSA checkpoint was a breeze — they have a little reader that goes green when you run it through. And the agent at the other end of the metal detector didn’t even want to see it — he just asked me to put it through the x-ray screener. Of course, I’ve heard all kinds of stories — some TSA agents step through, see the phone, then ask you to run the phone through x-ray; others just ask you to hand the phone over to them, and then let you walk through.

And the American boarding gates also have readers, similar to the ones that the TSA have.

It is almost surreal, and I for one welcome the paperless tickets. Welcome to the future — there may not be any flying cars, but there certainly is an easier way to go around in flying planes.

Reality Update

So, at the boarding gate, the person looks at my phone and goes, “Uh oh… oh no!” And then, of course, she asks me to scan the phone, and it doesn’t work. She asks me if I have a paper ticket (which I didn’t). At which point, she sighs and asks me for my name and searches for my reservation, and manually lets me in. Well, nobody said the future is perfect.

Hell freezes over. Dr. Pepper offers a free drink to every one in America. The Chinese government bans it. And you too can reminisce about the golden age of rock with Guns N Roses’ new album, Chinese Democracy.

My favorites include This I Love, Streets of Dreams and Catcher in the Rye.

While there is some synth that disappoints me, the album as a whole is quite good. There are some piano-rich songs, such as This I Love. There are some typically great Axl Rose vocals. And while unfortunately there is no Slash, Buckethead plays 12 of the 14 tracks — and it is a rather kickass performance.

To be fair, there are also some mediocre songs, and some that I find to be attempts at being a bit “prog rock”-ish.

But would I spend money on it? Hell yeah.

There is some interesting research being done on the relationship between human behavior and the markets.

The idea is that steroid and cortisol levels may be indicators of how people interact with the markets, and consequently, how this could be affecting the economy as a whole. In this interview with the Naked Scientist, John Coates talks about some of the work his team is doing.

Meera – How did you go about actually testing this in City traders?

John – I got access to the floor in the City and we took salivery steroids from a group of traders over a two week period to test that steroids were in fact responding to the money they were making and losing in the market and whether this, in turn, was affecting their trading performance.

Meera – What did you find?

John – We found that the traders, if they had high testosterone in the morning relative the the median levels, they made a lot more money for the rest of the day than they did on the days when they had low testosterone.

Now, what I’m particularly curious about is when this research was conducted. Because if this was indeed done during a bullish market, then there is a much higher chance that risk takers were rewarded, rather than punished.

Meera – When most people think of testosterone they obviously associate it largely with males. Does this then mean that females are relatively unaffected?

John – Women have about 10% of the testosterone that men do. It’s entirely possible that they’re not subject to this kind of overconfidence.

Meera – But you’re also looking into levels of cortisol, as well.

John – That’s right. In the current environment that may be the more interesting steroid. When the market turns around it turns into a crash what can happen is that cortisol, which is a stress hormone, can become elevated in the bodies of traders. Cortisol, if you’re exposed to it chronically at high levels for a long period of time, it can have a devastating effect on both the mind and the body. In terms of affecting traders decisions what it can do is affect the memories you recall. You tend to recall bad memories, negative precedents. You tend to see risk where maybe there is none. You become fearful, you feel anxiety. I think that decreases a trader’s appetite for risk. While testosterone is causing people to take too much risk cortisol is causing people to take too little risk in the crash.

Meera – What do you think the current situation is now? Do you think there are going to be higher levels or cortisol in the traders at the moment?

John – It’s not only how far the market has fallen. It’s how long it’s been falling. These traders have been under stress for almost a year and a half now. Their cortisol levels must be elevated. I’m sure there’s a very good chance it’s affecting their decisions.

You can also download the MP3 of the interview, or listen to it on the website.

From the NYT -

Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the country. But these are not ordinary times.

For now, the port itself is the destination. Unwelcome by dealers and buyers, thousands of cars worth tens of millions of dollars are being warehoused on increasingly crowded port property.

And for the first time, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Nissan have each asked to lease space from the port for these orphan vehicles. They are turning dozens of acres of the nation’s second-largest container port into a parking lot, creating a vivid picture of a paralyzed auto business and an economy in peril.

Well, shouldn’t the increased demand translate into lower prices for these vehicles? Cars are one of the worst depreciating assets around, and yet, the markups on cars is quite insane and rather staggering.

Perhaps this will encourage auto makers to reconsider their pricing models in these troubled times.