Law of Conservation of Market Congestion

The fewer the people at the market, the more awkward their choices of standing place and the more unpredictable their movements.

Remember Acid Rain?

A facebox friend of mine, an old coworker, asked today "remember acid rain?" As an air quality researcher, I do, in fact, remember acid rain. It comes up fairly regularly in my work and in discussions with other people at the university. But the point he was trying to make was that acid rain was a big, big deal for a long time. I remember the news and the people talking at my grade school. But now, the news never (hardly ever) talks about it anymore. My friend then asked if there was any other thing which seems to be following the same pattern. I assume he meant climate change.

Acid rain occurrence in the developed world has been greatly reduced through regulation. I think a lot of that was because people are inherently afraid of acid. It sounds dangerous. Another part is that people didn't really have to do anything. Regulations were made and cars, gas and industrial processes changed, but most people didn't have their daily routine changed.

CO2, on the other hand, is not something that most people would think of as bad. It's plant food, right? Everyone makes it, therefore it can't be bad. And global warming, well, I mean, who wouldn't want things a bit warmer? And the solutions require major, major changes in the way the developed world runs. Instead of saying you have to improve the catalytic converter on your car, you need an electric car, or a hydrogen car, or no car at all. Instead of scrubbing the effluent from industrial processes, it's an end to industrial farming. On top of that, it's a very slow process. It's basically a recipe for people to avoid dealing with it:



So, while acid went away in the media, it was in large part because regulations have helped decrease it to a point where other stuff is more important / interesting. We can only hope that climate change goes away from the media for the same reasons.

Altogether now!

We all of us have our vices, not least of all me. Being aware, however, that I am subject to various shortcomings, I try to plan in advance for them; to trick my future self, if you will, into doing the right thing.

I would like you to, just for a moment, open your mind to the possibility that it (your mind) plays tricks on you. It's easy to admit that other peoples' minds play tricks on them, but I can assure, without even knowing you, that your own mind does it to. One category of these trick is Cognitive Biases. They are surprisingly universal. I'm not saying that every single person is guilty of every single cognitive bias all of the time. But it is possible to test how often they come up and under what circumstances and the answers are quite surprising to most people.

So it is important to be aware that these biases exist and that, without even knowing it, you may be suffering from one or more at any point in time. With that in mind, please listen to this song.

Next time you're absolutely sure about something, remember the song and think about which biases you might presently be suffering from.

Everyone is susceptible to cognitive biases.

Except for me. I know because the only examples I can think of right now fit my expectations, which are that I have no cognitive biases.

We already knew that

I have started working out regularly, again. It's nice. I waited a couple of weeks for the "New Years Resolutionistas" (as I saw a friend call them about a month ago on the facebox) to give up and go back to sleeping in. Another friend who continued right through the New Years rush saw a guy who brought his laptop and an instructional video during that period. It would've taken all my willpower not to "accidentally" step on it.

I think my favourite thing is seeing the same people every time I go to work out. There's Fake-Tan-Guy-Who-Way-Overdoes-His-Static-Stretching and Older-Fat-Guy-Who-Sweats-A-Lot and Spandex-Girl-With-Eyebrows-Several-Shades-Darker-Than-Her-Hair. And the two girls who are sort of a workout gang: they monopolize specific pieces of equipment by moving in a pack. And then there are the iPod people. You know the ones for whom the workout is less about becoming fit and more about being seen at the gym. They sit down on a piece of equipment and spend 10 minutes setting up their playlist; actually using the machine would just mess up their hair anyway.

This Thursday I accidentally slept in and wound up arriving at the gym about half an hour late. To my amazement, the same people were showing up at the same part of my workout as on a normal day. Apparently everyone was running half an hour late.

Just another piece of evidence for the "I am the centre of the Universe" pile.

6 Month Lag

Today, I had to tell my students that they will be getting a new TA next semester, that I will no longer be assisting them in CHE204. That was kinda sad for me and some of them even seemed genuinely sad to see me go. Even though I probably marked harder than any of the other TAs, I think that, at least for some of them, they will remember me as one of the TAs they actually liked.

Later, L and I got talking about how, within a few hundred years no one will remember me or her. Unless we become really famous. I then pointed out that people have very short attention spans these days, and people would need to be reminded.
She said, "That's why I'm going to permanently carve a huge sculpture of my face in—"
"The moon?" I interjected.
"I was going to say the Earth," she clarified.
"Yeah, well," I pointed out, "it would take at least 6 months for google maps to pick that up, whereas everyone has to see the moon almost every day."

The Unkindness of Strangers

I'm feeling pretty bitter about living in the city right now.

So a friend of mine needed a bike. We tried and tried to find her one and nothing seemed to be quite right. Bikes in the city of TO are way over priced, I think. Especially used ones. So anyway, I dug up some parts and grabbed my mom's old racing frame and went to work putting together the coolest bike ever. During all of that I realised that what I really want to do is put together a fleet of coolest bikes ever and use them to give bike tours of the city.

Since I had a big pile of bike junk already from the first bike, I was already well on my way. I bought a clunker off of craigslist and got another one for free off of craigslist and chained them and all the parts up out front.

I had a friend, H, come visit from out of town. I get around mostly on bike these days so I figured if she and I were going to hang out, she'd need a bike. Also on my bike-to-do list was teaching my friend, A (of breakfast buddy fame) to ride. Can you believe she's never ridden a bike before? Anyway, H and A are of similar size so I figured that the clunker bike was an ideal candidate for both tasks. I fixed it up. H said it was a really smooth ride, despite looking like a pile of rusty bars.

So yesterday morning, I got up and looked out the window at my pile of bike stuff, including the now-functional clunker. Or, rather, not including the clunker. Overnight, someone had stolen it. No teaching A to ride. Great.

After dim sum with the Usual Suspects (I know, dim sum on a Saturday, what the heck?) I met up with an old friend and wandered around the city a bit. I had a small pick-me-up when we ran across a group of buskers on xylophones at Bloor and Spadina. It was really neat. There 5 xylophones.

That temporary regrowth of faith in my fellow man was quite dispelled this morning, however, when I looked out my window to see some guy with a pair of pliers ripping apart one of my frames.

"Hey!" I yelled out the window, "that's my bike!"

"It's not a bike, it's a frame," the guy responded quite calmly. Your logic is infallible, I thought.

"Thanks," I snapped. "It's still mine."

He gestured to my pile of bike stuff and asked if it was all mine. I told him it was.

Without any apology or atonement whatsoever he said "okay" and walked away from the pile.

I think I'm going to get a pellet gun, like one might use for deterring rodents in the country. Not strong enough to really hurt them but enough to sting them and make sure they don't come back for a while.

That way, instead of semantic debates about the differences between the word "bike" and the word "frame" I can vent my frustration and get the point across all at once.