← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Headline of the Day.

Dozens of Drivers Got Stuck After Blindly Following Google Maps Into a Mud Pit

Margaret Soltan, June 27, 2019 6:09PM
Posted in: headline of the day

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=61648

5 Responses to “Headline of the Day.”

  1. David Foster Says:

    On a much more serious level, there has been growing concern in aviation about excessive trust placed in automated systems, often without full comprehension of what these systems are actually doing. The phrase ‘the children of magenta’ has been applied to pilots who follow with excessive reverence the magenta line on their navigation displays.

    There is also more than a little of this in business and in other kinds of organizations; I fully expect that the current vogue for ‘big data’ will lead to even more.

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57060.html

  2. David Foster Says:

    I see that the link to the classic video by an American Airlines pilot, ‘The Children of Magenta’, is broken: here’s a link that actually works:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4GqKbGgbfY

  3. UD Says:

    David: Many thanks. I watched the entire video. Of course it’s scary, but very informative.

  4. David Foster Says:

    A truly chilling accident involving excessive reverence for automation occurred in the DC area in 1996. Described in my post Blood on the Tracks:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/43911.html

    Hopefully, Metro has learned the right lessons from this and other accidents…

  5. charlie Says:

    Google sends people to mud pits. Computer dating sent me to train wrecks…

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories