Pigeons on the railway tracks
It is humid and quite warm around here, like in Houston end of January, but it feels hotter here. The pigeons do not seem to care much and like almost every morning there are a few hoping around on the railway tracks picking what morning travels leave behind them, little bits of croissants or burgers of last night. Not a healthy pigeon diet but they seem to do well.
Like everywhere where there are humans, there is waste, following us like a tail. The very moment we started to conquer space: Waste. Nowadays we produce so much trash of this and that, circling earth in space that the real things like satellites or space crafts are endangered.
Thus, I start wondering how large one’s individual trash tail would be, while waiting for the train, still watching the pigeons and I can clearly see myself wandering through this world with a dirty long tail of stuff that is going to stay around here for a while. Watching this imaginary tail of things that are still there years and years after I have left the world, there is time to muse on Mr Anderson’s The Long Tail, *you know….the fact that all sold low sales volume items in a particular market can make up a market share that is larger than the top sellers* With the internet being a key factor to be successful in this tail, and online business producing longer and longer tails in general, hence allowing niche in a niche in a niche (copy/paste 25 times….) brands to thrive.
Sitting in the train without pigeons but a hot coffee on the side, there are 15 min left on the lab top battery; a good motivation to bring things to the point…Even in pre-internet times, the perfume market was highly segmented, with a LONG TAIL, always was, always had a particular long tail. With the internet market, new communication tools, new marketing tools, on a global scale, the perfumery market is becoming more segmented even, started to do so already. Folks, taking Mr Anderson seriously, this means a lot of posts on new perfume launches….. Somehow this is wonderful, somehow I wonder how we will all be able to follow this. Question to Mr. Anderson: Is there an upper limit for this tail? ….greetings from the tip of The Long Tail.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:51 pm
You know, Andy, I *like* the end of the long tail. So many of my obsessions are on it. That said, I’d not heard of the concept before, probably because I live underneath a rock, so I appreciated the Wikipedia article. Interesting. I spent a few summers in my ‘wanna be a physicist’ period poring over heavy tailed internet-traffic models (the project was on ’self-similar’ Ethernet traffic modelling), so it was a bit nostalgic.
Incidentally, do you like pigeons? Or do you not? I like them, and have been taking small video clips of their mating dances during lunch in the park. My friend and I have managed to identify and name a few that are always around. Most people around here definitely don’t like them, ‘rats of the skies’ and all.
OK, I need to stop now, I’m just being weird. lol.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I like my pigeons wild, Arhianrad, and in cities they are semi-wild which brings me into a neutral position towards them. I must admit: Everything with feathers is already quite far (evolutionary, and emotionally) away from me. But I would never say something like rats of the skies. Having said this: I find rats quite lovely animals (you see…there is a bias for furry things ;-)
Talking pigeon: When I was unemployed a long time ago for quite a while, I could watch a neighbour of us, living in a house nearby, and every morning at around 10 she fed the birds, in her pink house suit, and the birds would start flying in a couple of minutes before.
Many of them were pigeons, of course, and it was every day such a lovely, peaceful scenery. Watching the old lady feeding the birds. Without pigeons: Would not have been the same, no way!
May 24th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I’m enjoying this dialogue between two of my favorite folk- good thinkers, both.
[I talk to the pigeons, although I do prefer the less tame variety.]
My beloved grandfather used to rise early, and feed the birds [some of which were pigeons]…
He was an overtly unsentimental man [though deeply feeling in reality !], and would feed them with the dubious greeting:
“There you go, you greedy sons-of-bitches !”
How I adored that man.
Heart of Gold.