ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Time now to read from your emails. And first, about my conversation yesterday with NPR's Chris Arnold. We talked about why it's difficult these days to get a mortgage or to refinance one.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Upon hearing this, Bruce Carr of Garden Grove, California, felt compelled to defend appraisers. He writes: Remember that appraisers were and are the only ones in the entire mortgage process who would behoove to tell the truth. The lender wants one thing, the homeowner or borrower wants one thing, the government may want one thing, but the appraiser tells them all their professional, studied, considered and learned opinion of value. What happens with those numbers is irrelevant to the appraiser.
SIEGEL: Mr. Carr also took issue with my characterization of appraisers. He writes: Mr. Siegel, really, would you refer to the person who came to appraise your fine art, your fine china, your antique cars or your heirlooms as some guy with a camera, as in who did you talk to from NPR, honey? I don't know, some guy with a microphone.
CORNISH: We also have a correction to make. On Monday, we said that the 1940 census was the first to have processed its information on punched cards. But several of you wrote in to say not so, including Michael Geselowitz, director of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers History Center at Rutgers. He writes: Actually, the first census to use punched card equipment to tabulate the results was 1890.
SIEGEL: And he emphasizes that statement with three exclamation points before linking us to his center's wiki on punched card equipment.
CORNISH: There, we read this: Punched card tabulating equipment, invented and developed by Herman Hollerith to process data from the United States Census of 1890, was the first mechanized means for compiling and analyzing statistical information.
SIEGEL: And who was Herman Hollerith? An American statistician who founded one of the companies that would become IBM. He also sported one mighty fine handlebar mustache.
CORNISH: Send us your comments at npr.org, just click on Contact Us. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.