Category Archives: Coincidences

McCloud (Dennis Weaver) Dies

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Just heard that TV actor Dennis Weaver (aka ‘McCloud) has passed away. In the US they are wondering how come Don Knotts, Darren McGavin, and Dennis Weaver all died this weekend gone? But for me it’s just another funny coincidence. Why?

Well ’cause back in 2003 I went to a nerdy conference in Portland (same trip I coincidentally presented a paper which quoted the Muslim invention of algebra which I recently blogged for Headshift on 1001 Inventions & where I saw a T-shift for Ozomatli which eventually led to me figuring out that I was called ‘Stuart’ for American cultural reasons (see earlier blog entry about my father’s US work for NASA) rather than Scottish & where I heard at Seattle airport on the TV that Microsoft where finally gonna release some code & where I caught K19-the Widower; another coincidence); at the conference dinner (where I was sitting with my Harvard friend Meg, recently dooced) there was a guy who was a really close match to McCloud in my eyes though no one else had said anything.

So I asked the guy, “hey anyone tell you that you look like McCloud?”; and his reply was peachy. “Funny you should say that, but my grandmother dated Dennis Weaver”. This guy was an academic so of course I believed him!

PS: What a coincidence of coincidences.

Fat finger syndrome

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Loved this story from Tokyo in Japan where human error plus system error cost over £100m.  When will ‘they’ design systems with fat fingers factored in from the outset? The fact is that the two errors are fundamentally rooted in one and the same problem. The implicit concept of a system as separate from the operator/user of that system..<I should add that this error is scalable – that is it occurs at both the very small and the very large>

“Mizuho Securities revealed last week that it had placed an order on Thursday to sell 610,000 J-Com shares for one yen despite intending to sell one J-Com share for 610,000 yen as a result of a trader typing error known as “fat finger syndrome”. The mistake will cost Mizuho Securities an estimated 27 billion yen (£128 million).

“Yesterday Mr Tsurushima admitted that the Tokyo trading system failed to respond to attempts by Mizuho to cancel the order when the broker swiftly realised its mistake.”