Every interesting email forward you’ve ever received — the Monty Hall problem and the origin of “savant” to the first ever gambling theory and its associated follies to how humans process words based on context or letter order — is covered in this book. At times a bit geeky, Mlodinow tries his hardest to keep the math to a minimum and the phenomenon at the forefront. The Drunkard’s Walk takes the mystery out of simple occurrences, but also reveals when our intuition is wrong with statistics in the same vein as Malcolm Galdwell’s many books.

If you grew up despising double lab science period and rid yourself of math courses as soon as you fulfilled the requirements, The Drunkard’s Walk might get tedious at times. I assure you, the information you’ll glean along the way is well worth the literary bushwhacking you may have to endure, for it’s filled with all sorts of fodder for every cocktail party in your future.

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San Francisco is the ultimate city, says the girl who was never intimidated by New York, who adores Paris, and who thinks Tokyo is the greatest place on earth. I’ve been to all those so called “World Cities” (Sydney, London, Berlin and the like) and I contend that San Francisco meets all the criteria for the peak of urbanity and then some.

described my first trip to the Golden Gate city as underwhelming, and while I far from hated SF, I didn’t exactly jump for joy at the pretentious air the residents had about them, the thoroughly over-applauded public transit system, and the at times garish aesthetics. Upon closer inquiry it became rather clear that though my bias had a sizable shred of truth, my initial inspection shortchanged the entire bay area a bit more than is conventionally fair. I papered all the same routes and visited all the same haunts, but what I gained on my last overnight venture through the city was a sense of context, an understanding that was not readily granted on my previous excursion. And let me tell you, when it comes to San Francisco, context is everything. You just have to coax the city into giving you her highly pointed opinions.

For starters, San Francisco has all the different neighbourhoods and suburbs of a place as sprawling and identity-confused as it’s other Californian great, Los Angeles, but unlike the masses of NYC and LA, SF has a definitive city centre. It’s big enough to get lost in, to stumble upon killer vistas or cultural hidey-holes, but small enough that after your 12-mile walk through the Presidio you still feel like you’ve gotten somewhere. It’s not just the density that makes SF great (though cultural and physical density are musts for any city to be called ultimate), but the contrast between a horizon of endless rooftops and open air squares, between tiny clusters of vertical townhouses and the reach of the palatial mansions in between, between the exclusivity of steep-grade hills and the breath of air the peaks and valleys grant, it’s all just the right mix.

I think it’s fair to say San Francisco’s balance between the urban and the natural is less precarious than other metropolises contending for the title of ultimate city. The numerous parks and open green spaces are tucked away into every corner of the city, every intersection that will allow a good view of the sunset or a nice place to nap, and it’s not uncommon to find the play of landscape and cityscape merging harmoniously together in whatever local refuge you find yourself currently. That’s the mark of a really good urban development, to blend in well with the city you’re in, for it’s pretty easy to turn a block into a garden but it’s harder to turn a garden into a destination that takes the city’s gifts into account and provides contrast without breaking character. San Francisco seems to have several of them, from the corner dog park to the massive expanse of Golden Gate Park.

It is perhaps San Francisco’s enduring character that makes it the ultimate city. Everything there just feels so…San Fran. The citizens, varied though they may be, all have a certain quality about them that you can’t seem to peg, and they all seem to be pretty engrossed in the same sorts of unique projects, programmes, and startups with a reckless ambition that you just can’t seem to find anywhere else in the world. The vibe is distinct, saturated, and potent enough that one taste of sourdough and one cable car ride are more than enough to bring your brain fully to the present. Of course I’ve still got some equally powerful qualms with the place, such as the atrocious etiquette of the homeless and the obnoxiously inflated cost of living among others, but even I cannot help but think that, love it or hate it, San Francisco is the ultimate city.

I grew up a Texan girl in a world filled with tex-mex. Our regional fast food chain which, some think, can’t hold a candle to In-N-Out or Five Guys, serves honey butter biscuits, thick slices of texas toast with every meal combo, and awesome, slightly misnamed taquitos every night after 10pm. Nearly everyone frequents another regional chain, Taco Cabana, which kicks Taco Bell’s sorry behind into exile in Oklahoma, for quickie fajitas and to stave off al carbon cravings. We’re the kind of folks that won’t think twice about downing a late night carnitas taco, the real kind without that beans and rice filler and with plenty of punchy sauce, and then throw back two breakfast tacos hours later, when we finally sober up. The rest of the world has the anytime kebab, and we have the taco.

But in a world of tacos, sometimes you don’t want to wake up reminded that your amazing authentic tacos were made with lard, and while I can scarf anything Mama Ninfa or Yolanda can serve up by the light of day, sometimes I want a late night alternative that doesn’t leave me squirming by sunrise. Have you ever tried to sleep on a belly full of beans? It isn’t so easy, and that’s why, deep in the heart of Texas, hidden amid the myriad taco joints, is Mai’s.

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Seated in the 4th ward of Houston, Mai’s is a noodle standard and a midtown favourite that’s been around for well over twenty years. It was the first Vietnamese restaurant in Houston, so you know it has to be quality, and its 4am close time on weekends (3am regularly) means you can expect the college crowd just as readily as you can expect family outings from the city’s now sizable Vietnamese population. The joint’s variety isn’t just limited to its patronage; Mai’s menu is as diverse as it gets and caters to everyone from serious meat lovers to the seriously meat-free. It doesn’t mater if you’re riding the tail end of a night downtown, if you’re heading north from your usual stomping grounds, or if you’ve made a special trip from Sugarland, Mai’s is the place for your vermicelli and pho and even stir fry needs.

Pho Chay from Mai’s in Houston Texas

If you’ve never had the Vietnamese version of noodles, vermicelli, you’re in for a treat. Vermicelli is a bowl of often cold and translucent rice noodles, spun thin like glass, piled high in a bowl, and topped with a carmelised pile of pungent meats, vegetables, and tofu. You can be a master of the chopstick, but once you pour on the slightly spicy sauce that comes with vermicelli, reminiscent of the sweet chili sauce Australians are so obsessed with, chances are you’ll be chasing around the slippery noodles for ever unless you just give up and do the “lift and shovel” maneouver everyone else in the shop is doing. Forget your Southern etiquette, Mai’s is a place for slupring and shoveling and smiling and verily enjoying your vermicelli, or any other kind of noodle encounter the powerhouse seems to provide. You can call it radical, you can call it regular, you can call it dinner, but any way you twirl it it’s another step in the great noodle march forward.

On my plate: Niko Niko’s felafel pita sandwich with tzasziki sauce and lemon potatoes

If I wanted to sound like a douche-bag, I’d assert that I am indeed a “content creator” looking to enter the “VOD-sphere” and possibly “hypersyndicate.” Or I could just tell you that I make videos, and yeah, you can watch them online if you want. After attending a three-day conference on the subject of streaming video and listening to some of the questions asked, I can’t help but feel there’s a lot of misinformation going on around the ideas of online video that I’d like to set straight. Now, I’m in no way an expert, but just because I don’t bill myself as a social media consultant doesn’t mean I’m completely clueless about the subject. Let’s just say there are 10 really obvious myths about streaming video that with just a little research are fairly easy to disprove, if not easy to dispel.

1. Your video can only survive if it’s interactive.
Flat out wrong. Social media is great, I’m a huge fan of it, but in the excitement over its development, a few of us seem to have lost touch. First of all, avid social networkers are a small piece of the pie. Not everyone’s on facebook, and not everyone on facebook is an active participant. If this wasn’t proof enough, let’s take something like TV. Just about every home has a television nowadays, including your grandma’s, but I would love to shake the hand of the grandma that’s on twitter (no offence to grandmas) and catches up on her soap operas via the internet. The point is, youtube may have caught on, and “vote for your favourite!” is the standard now, but to put all your eggs in the social media/interactive basket is to only appeal to a small percentage of your possible audience. Second of all, your product can’t be all that great of a product if it can’t stand on its own without the social aspect. I’m a member of the Gowalla community and not a member of the Foursquare or Brightkite community. Why? Because none of my real-life friends are into that sort of thing. Foursquare sucks without a network of people you actually know, and Brightkite has no purpose if all your “friends” are strangers you’d never meet up with. Gowalla on the other hand is still fun even if it’s just a location tracking app. Social is cool, but your product/service/purpose still has to be at least a little fun without the social aspect.

2. You can make money off of online video.
This is a huge misconception that’s hurting the industry rather than helping it. Now, if you’re online video is associated with a broadcast or studio content available elsewhere, then you can still be making money off of the endeavour (I’m talking to you, Netflix and CNN Money), but if you’re relying on online video itself to foot your bills, then you’re chasing a wave that will never come. The costs are still too high, there’s no good advertising model that actually delivers, and while users will pay for services, they’ll almost never pay for content. Should you be able to make money off of online video? Yes, but it’s damn near impossible unless you’ve already got a billion-dollar budget at present or unless you’re using it as a promotional tool to sell something else.

3. HD is the standard now (and everything is going mobile).
This is a big whopper of a lie. HD still has almost no demand; it’s all culture. If you offer HD you look legit, but pretty much no one is watching in high definition. The percentage of people who subscribe to HD cable and own a HD television is still a fraction of the market, and the number of online video viewers who can even stream video at speeds fast enough to accommodate HD still hasn’t reached 10%. It’s the trend to move towards HD certainly, but right now it’s still in infancy. There’s no HD standards, little HD-capable device proliferation, and a minority of carriers even providing it. Going for HD might be reaching for the stars, and our media rocket hasn’t broken the atmosphere quite yet. Same goes for mobile devices. Sure more and more of us have single-use, multi-use, and “smart” mobile devices, like cell phones, in-flight DVD players, and automobile flat screens, but being able to watch youtube on your droid doesn’t necessarily mean mobile streaming is here. There are hundreds of problems with streaming that much data to users, even fewer players in the CDN market able to deliver consistently, and almost no telcos ready, able, and willing to step up the game. Like HD, video-enabled devices are certainly the direction we’re going, but the train’s only just left the platform and it’s a long journey ahead.

4. Subscription is dead.
Not true. Subscription is hardly dead, and the model might be the saving grace of the industry if we can ever get it together enough to offer more software as a service and make the subscriptions worth paying for. As I mentioned before, pursuing ad-supported online video isn’t really working well. Either you don’t get the bills paid, or you inundate your customers with cheap advertising and they have a terrible user experience. Neither sounds like a great option. But give ad-free, unlimited access so long as you pay your subscription fee, and it isn’t such a bad idea. In fact it works with video on demand precisely because it doesn’t work with services like Napster. Streaming video on demand isn’t something you own, like a CD is, it’s something you do. You don’t suddenly lose all the music you thought you owned if you don’t pay the bill, because you can’t lose the experience of having watched a movie. The problem isn’t finding an alternative to subscriptions, it’s making the subscriptions feature-rich and easily available enough to be satisfying and the price point still low enough to reach the masses.

5. Digital distribution has totally taken off.
Don’t let iTunes statistics fool you; there are still some major problems with digital media distribution models. It’s great for the distributors, but there’s absolutely zero incentive for the customer to invest in digital assets. A blockbuster on iTunes (if you download to own) is at least double the price of going out and buying the DVD. You could buy a Blu-Ray disc of a new release at Best Buy for less than you could download an ’80s classic on iTunes. It’s even worse for other digital distributors. So how did we buy into this model? Because the music industry wanted you to. Downloading an mp3 of the latest Vampire Weekend album on Amazon’s MP3 store is actually less expensive than it is to have the physical CD shipped to you. Buying that album is better than pirating it because it’s faster, better quality, and you know what you’re getting. They tricked us into thinking record stores were a thing of the past. But downloading a movie is slower, worse quality, and harder to find than just buying or renting or netflixing it. No incentive, no selection, and no storage space means digital distribution of video is still taxi-ing before takeoff.

6. Viral is good.
Viral is not good. It’s hardly an advertising model, and it drives me bonkers when I’m asked to begin a viral campaign for anything. You can’t force viral. You can push through word-of-mouth — package it as clever and interesting and it gets re-tweeted, re-embedded, and re-purposed, giving it exposure to many more eyeballs than before — and that’s a good idea. Even if I could make a video reach viral status on command, “going viral” is a terrible idea, because by definition viral content is short-term. It’s quick, explosive, and then gets so oversaturated that everyone goes from loving to hating your product faster than the guy that lists side effects of drugs after commercials. Want examples? “Headon. Apply directly to the forehead.” See what I mean? You want your product to be treated seriously, thoughtfully, and well-recieved if and when it’s circulated around the cyber-rodeo, not as a constant source of wisecracks for decades to come (”Where’s the beef?” anyone?) or as the posterchild for THAT thing (remember the poor lightsaber kid!). So get over viral and go back to marketing basics.

On my plate: perfect diner-style over hard eggs, skillet potatoes, sourdough toast, and decaffeinated coffee - breakfast of sightseeing champions from Olympic Torch Cafe in downtown San Francisco

As you might have surmised, I am a blogger. I’m not just a blogger. I’m a vlogger, and a photographer, and a traveller, and a filmmaker, and many other -ers besides. This can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be worrisome. Through my blogging and general out-there-ness, I’ve ended up making portions of my life transparent. If you’re someone like Kevin Rose or Barack Obama, making part of what you do transparent can be a real success strategy, but if you’re someone a little less deliberate, you might find yourself in hot water pretty quickly. As with anything on the internet, there is common sense, and there are risks that supersede common sense. Giving out your home address is not the wisest course of action in life or online, but sometimes you don’t give it out, someone else does, and while there’s a lot of legal precedent for identity theft and privacy invasion in the real world, the rules governing online privacy have a much shorter history.

Before I delve headfirst into my take on online privacy, first I’d like to make a distinction between safety and privacy. These are two different concerns, though they often overlap. Privacy, to me at least, is about the balance between your right to express freely and your right to keep information out of the public eye. While safety is often a violation put upon us by others, the extent of your privacy is often a choice you make. So how do those of us exercising our free speech (transparently in places like the US and often anonymously in places like Iran) practise transparency while still maintaining our privacy, and the privacy required to retain our safety?

PROBLEM 1: In vs. Beyond Our Control

It’s worrisome because I find myself making decisions about what to write, do, or film based on these sorts of questions. A healthy dose of internet paranoia is probably wise, but it’s a shame that there are whole chunks of photographs I’ve taken, for instance, that I’ll never publish on the internet because they either give away too much personal information or could possibly divulge someone else’s. Some things I’d like to keep private, but sometimes the far reaches of google get the better of you. If you create a myspace page and then remove it, does it still exist? If you delete a file on your hard drive, can you get it back? If you send a private email, can you erase that information? Joi Ito, the CEO of Creative Commons and internet entrepreneur with some pretty strong privacy opinions, in an interview with the Japan Times spoke about a series of lists and references, essentially information about you collected and held onto by others that you have no control over. It happens offline too, but it’s so much easier to unearth online, that the thought of blogging personal or professional information, as Ito does, can seem terrifying for some. Ito combats the problem by controlling the information put out there, and he claims that by publishing the information first on his own platform, it’s much harder for it to be misunderstood because it’s framed in the proper context. He controls the information and thus maintains a level of privacy.

Ito’s tactic is an interesting one, and while my own writing can seem very personal, I honestly believe I don’t post anything I wouldn’t tell a stranger at a bus stop. There’s an alarming amount of information about me floating around the ethers already, and any determined hacker or con artist or wrongdoer could find out shedloads of personal information about not just me, but about you too with just a few internet searches and a phone call or two. So it has always been, and just because you don’t have a digital alarm system that tells you when someone is breaking and entering doesn’t mean having one would help. The thing is, there is information I wouldn’t divulge to a stranger at a bus stop, and that information certainly doesn’t get published here.

PROBLEM 2: Ownership vs. Privacy

So what’s the difference between the photos I put up on flickr and the photos of me on facebook? If I publish my photos to flickr, I’m controlling the content. I have no control over who’s putting photos of me on facebook. But with facebook comes the illusion of granular control. Because there are privacy settings, people feel okay putting up pictures, regardless of whether they use those settings. I’m guilty of it, sometimes I post pictures of passerby that may not want to have their photos available for download. It’s a risk I take, because I use flickr as a platform for my work and as a way to share my life with friends and family, and generally, more good than ill comes of it. Just because I have ownership of that photo though, does not mean that I have no moral qualms about publishing pictures of my friends and family. The internet is great for sharing my travel pictures with those I know, and showcasing my photography to those I hope to know, but I’m uncomfortable knowing that there are photos of me floating around facebook that I don’t even know were taken. It’s not a supposition, it’s fact by now.

It all comes down to your boundaries. A fellow vlogger in Osaka that I follow, Scott from Unrested, brings up a good point about other people’s privacy. There are certain no-nos that we all seem to agree on, whether we’re in Japan or in America. You can’t just walk around filming anyone or anything. You can’t film (and often blog about) your workplace, for example, if you intend on keeping your job. While there are laws (as any photojournalist knows by heart) protecting your right to take pictures in public places and laws sanctioning your freedom of speech, singling out others and exposing parts of their lives is considered an invasion of privacy, culturally at least. Unrested is married, but he asserts that he will never show his wife or his children in his videos, and in my opinion, rightfully so. “This isn’t their hobby, this isn’t their craft,” he says, and as such it would be unfair to put their faces unwillingly in front of all to see via the interwebs. He takes the risk but doesn’t throw it upon others. Merlin Mann, on the other hand, has no problem discussing, filming, and posting pictures of his baby girl, Ellie. So for him, the line falls in a different place.

Where’s that line between personal and public? It appears to be wherever you can get away with drawing it, because who you are changes everything. If you’re Scott, who has a large number of subscribers and whose videos garner substantial view counts, your line has to be pretty clear. If you’re 14-year-old Jane from Salt Lake, you can probably post videos of your family reunion and nothing will come of it. If you’re Paris Hilton, you’ve got to be okay with that sex tape leaking out before you even film it. It might be unfair, especially as your standards change, but it’s a fact of life.

PROBLEM 3: Good vs. Bad Judgement

The other half of the problem with digital privacy is social. Anything you post can be used against you at any time, any place. Treat digital like it’s never truly gone, because that facebook photo could turn off a potential employer, and that twitter comment could get you fired. On the other half of the coin, anything you post will be used to support you at any time, any place. That potential employer might see your blog posts illustrate how knowledgeable you are about finance, and that video of you dancing might fund your next vacation. The problem is, socially we keep condemning people for having opinions and activities outside of their professional image, but then we keep asking them to. We’re expected to be social networkers but put ourselves out there and still carry the same cleaned up image politicians and their PR teams create. I’m not talking about reputation blemishes, I’m talking about having a public opinion, a public face. Be forward thinking and with the times, but only in an outdated, conservative way. As long as this dichotomy exists, we won’t be able to build clear legal and moral boundaries around online privacy.

I won’t lie, it terrifies me to think that years from now I might be regretting writing these very words as my interviewer asks me, “We see you’ve written on your website about Korea…” They can’t hold your support of gay marriage against you, but enjoying South Korean cinema could still be a liability, never mind that my two years of blog posts thus far illustrate I am reading and thinking about contemporary issues like healthcare and international relations, spending my time and money experiencing other cultures instead of, say, doing drugs in my mum’s basement and watching trash television. It’s a double standard in its own way; it’s great that you write but it’s still a strike against. I’m sure something somewhere will come back to bite me but I make no apologies, because I am presenting a true and honest version of myself. That’s my solution: to be the same person on my weblog that I am in real life. I’m not hiding my name or masking my whereabouts. I’m putting myself out there because I believe I have something to say, and hopefully my consistency and character will be enough to see it through.

CONCLUSION

Here’s where the real discussion begins, because in spite of all the dangers and all the problems that come with putting yourself so out there, people still do it. Personally, the benefits of blogging currently outweigh the risks. As someone is passionate about new media and would like to continue working in the field, not participating would deny me a great experience. Putting my work on display has allowed me to become a part of projects that would ordinarily never have come my way. The community of bloggers and vloggers has been a huge source of inspiration and both personal and professional development for me, and I enjoy giving back to the same society that supported me when I decided to become a serious traveller. If the costs start outweighing the benefits, then I’ll probably reconsider my participation, but for now I’m willing to put my word on the line for the better parts of the experience. There are of course still a great many risks, but I do my best to mitigate them.

I’m a person, not a robot, not a secret team writing under one alias, not a committee designed to test you. As such, I have feelings, I am under time constraints, and I always run the risk of upsetting someone. So let me lay this on the line: this website is my personal vantage on the world, comprised of thoughts, opinions, first hand accounts and experiences, and a good deal of speculation. At risk of sounding like a copyright disclaimer, please know the views expressed here are mine and mine alone, and the writing published here was penned by and belongs to me. I want to believe that I’m making a difference with the words I say, and I’d hate for anything to be a) taken out of context and misconstrued, b) passed off as something it isn’t, or c) held accountable as anything but my own thoughts, opinions, and experiences. While this website is my personal blog, this website is not professional writing. I am not a published writer at present or a professional journalist, in fact, I’m not even a civilian journalist, and I assure you there’s no team of editors proofreading, fact checking, and ghostwriting anything you see on the site. That said, I know I can get it wrong sometimes. If you find anything erroneous in my posts, just let me know. Email me, direct message me on twitter, leave a note in the comments, message me on youtube, however you let me know I would be grateful for the assistance and more than happy to do a little more research, correct the misinformation, or even take down something wildly off-base. If you disagree with what I write, I’m open to a dialogue. That’s the beauty of a blog: contact me, write or film a response, comment my posts, or even reference my site. While I refuse to entertain hatemail for hate’s sake, I am more than willing to consider and give credence to decent arguments and other valid viewpoints. I’m in it for the exploration and the discussion and the expression, not to shout down to the world from my soapbox.

Please also know that, like other bloggers, I often reference and link to other people’s material (though I will never republish it or claim it as my own). This is meant purely to spread the joy and share some of the neat stuff I love with the readers of this website. I think the world deserves to discover some of the amazing work people are doing and am often excited to further the word-of-mouth. If you happen to be making any of this content and are uncomfortable with my allusions, think I have violated your rights or privacy, or feel I have taken it too far, let me know. The last thing I want to do is prevent the artists and designers, figureheads and companies I admire from doing well, so I’d be happy to remove content or come to an accord that we can both agree on.

Sources from this post include merlin mann’s personal accounts, Joi Ito and his interview with the Japan Times, Scott from Unrested’s great videos, Barack Obama’s whitehouse.gov and Kevin Rose. If you look closely, you’ll find I’m not the only one being upfront about who I am and what I do. Chris Gen, John Eckman, The Budak, Cabel Sasser, Gary Arndt, Dustin Curtis, and too many others to count are doing the same thing.

On my plate: rustic tomato soup with homemade herbed croutons in a sourdough bread bowl from Boudin on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Warf