spontaneous order

In the spirit of appreciating when things work, even the very little things…
Last night I was next in line at OfficeMax between the only two open registers.  I figured it was silly to choose a line when I could straddle them and go to the one that’s available first.  To make my intention clear I stood back a few steps and toward the midpoint between the registers, hoping that if any customers approached, they would get the idea, even though OfficeMax doesn’t operate that way.  Two guys come up speaking a foreign language to each other, choose a line, then look at me, realize what I was doing, and back off to give space.  I don’t think we even exchanged words until I thanked them.

Now if only traffic could work that way when merging lanes.  What can you do about the drivers who merge late by passing 20 or 30 cars, and then having the nerve to try to get in?

Behind the Pittsburgh Steelers logo

From the American Iron and Steel Institute: “The Steelmark was originally created for United States Steel Corporation to promote the attributes of steel: yellow lightens your work; orange brightens your leisure; and blue widens your world. The logo’s meaning was later amended to represent the three materials used to produce steel: yellow for coal; orange for iron ore; and blue for steel scrap.”  This page also reveals why the logo is only on one side of the helmet.

Toques, video games, and the “logic” of collective action

I was wondering about this, i.e., their shape, look, etc., yeserday at the Wilson Center. A guy who works in the kitchen wears one, but is he really a chef? Does one need to be a certified chef to wear one?

Malcom Gladwell’s review of Everything Bad Is Good for You is a good read, as are most of his articles.

I’ve also been reading Demosclerosis, a book by Jonathan Rauch based on his orginal article of the same title. The book was reissued in ’99 under the title Government’s End: Why Washington Stopped Working, which is a bit more paletable. Anyway, it’s about Mancur Olson’s Logic of Collective Action and Public Choice Theory applied to politics of the ’90s. Quite depressing, actually. Sort of makes me want to leave D.C. and contribute to making huge profits. Of course, this will increase tax revenue for the beast. And this thought, allows me to recall yet another article I read on the Metro, Politics is not the Problem.

Not there aren’t real policy issues to hash out, such as those addressed in this film screening next week.

So that’s a snapshot into my mind these days.

Two types of employable skills

I just want to jot down this thought before it escapes me. One type of skill (Type II) is to know the intricacies of a bureaucracy, set of rules, etc., such as patent law, the structure of government, or the rules of bridge. This can be a valuable asset to an organization. Another skill (say, Type I) is to know the intricacies of (for lack of a better term) natural world, such as scientific questions that could apply if people were not around, or being able to evaluate whether a piece of technology will work, or predicting the effect of a policy on the market. Now, this last example might seem to creep into the first category, but I classify it with the “natural world” because people are part of the natural world, and to some extent act the same way regardless of time, place, citizenship.

OK, all that is rather rough, but in terms of what skills I want and would like to use in a job, I’m pretty sure I prefer Type I skills.

Deep Inside, I know I’m him

The marketing campaign for the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm is brilliant: Deep inside, you know you’re him. For me, maybe not that deep. I just had a Larry David moment yesterday, though it’s not worth the typing effort to explain it.

In other extremely inane news, I’m pretty sure that on my computer keyboard at work, the “S” on the s-key is upside-down. So I removed the key, and tried puttng it on the other way, but it wouldn’t fit. So, yes, you guessed it, I went to the store and bought a new keyboard. Nah, I’m too cheap for that. OK, actually, I just snuck over to someone else’s cube and switched the keys. Just kidding. Not a bad idea, though, which scares me, because I was just conjecturing on what someone like, say, Adrian Monk would do.

A convincing argument, but I don’t agree.

Since my last post, I defended my PhD, left Boulder, Colorado, drove to Maryland via St. Louis and Wheeling WV, and began a ten-week fellowship at the National Adademy of Sciences. Currently I’m helping out with what’s known as the “Prospering study”.

The program has an extensive orientation on policy-making and how the NAS works. One presenter was talking about the peer-review process each Academy study goes through. Apparently a reviewer can disagree with the report’s conclusions, but still accept that it makes a convincing argument. Huh? I asked how that could be: If the argument was truly convincing, how could the reviewer disagree with it? Wouldn’t he be convinced?

I understand that people do not always completely articulate their reasons for holding a point of view, and hence could find an argument convincing, but still hold our because of unresolved and/or unarticulated conflicts. Often our intuition about these, or mine at least, is quite useful, and can be articlulated with some work. Certainly it’s worth the time to do this with a National Academies Report. If anything, perhaps the reviewer can agree with a narrower version of the “convincing” conclusions.

America’s Test Kitchen

My friend Friso told me about a book called Best Recipes, published by the authors of Cooks Illustrated magazine. For each recipe, the authors relate several different methods of preparing it, with the goal of finding the best way. They include several variables: type of utensils, cooking temperature, time, types of shortening, etc. Since there’s a new edition out, the old one (1999) was on clearance at Borders, so I picked it up. The new one has 1000 recipes, while this one has only about half that. I can deal.

That day I sold or donated a large bag full of old books, and felt quite liberated knowing that I could do without them, and when the time comes to move, I’d have less. This book is quite a brick, or a slab, actually, and I was concerned that I would not use it. After all, there is a Best “Quick” Recipes edition; wouldn’t I be more likely to use that?

Turns out that I’ve used the book in a way I did not intend. (That is, I actually use it, hah.) I thought I’d flip through, see a recipe I liked, and try it. Instead, I found myself starting to prepare what I’d make anyway, and see what the book says. The more I read, the more I realize this book is the cook book for me. it satiates my hunger for perfectionism or optimization quite well. Poor choice of words, I suppose.

Old Photos of University of Colorado

Outside the Duane Library (Math/Physics) are photos of the University of Colorado from its beginnings. The first building was Old Main, which I suppose did not have that name then. I got a strange feeling looking at these photos, as Boulder as I know it did not exist then, at the end of the 19th Century. Pretty much nothing was there except for Old Main surrounded by some dirt roads. I remember, about ten years ago now, how at Swarthmore some construction was being done around Trotter Hall. The roads were changed so people could no longer drive their cars through campus. Once something is gone, it takes some mental effort to recall what it looked like before, especially if you’re standing right there in the face of the new orientation. Surely the old photos of CU are on-line somewhere, but I could not find them. On a related note, Google maps is rather nifty, as they have arial photos and maps based on them.

Flora

I was at a plant nursery the other day and I was pleasantly surprised to find some very nice looking ones. The employee (or owner, perhaps), Sean, told me about a video series he saw, The Private Life of Plants. One plant, I can’t recall the name, was a type of vine that grew on top of trees, created a ball-like bundle of seeds that eventually fell off the tree and broke upon hitting the ground. Seeds had a very short time, ~14 hours, to take root and find a tree to grow on. Otherwise, they would die. Apparently the video showed this process in a time-elapsed manner. Sean also told me about the corpse plant, which smells like, well, a corpse, attracts insects.

On a completely inane note, I bought a cleaning product that claims to have a “clean scent.” What does that mean? Usually clean denotes a lack of an scent. Surely a clean carpet smells, well, like tiny carpet molecules, unless it was recently “cleaned,” so it smells like, uh, the cleaning agent? So the “clean smell” is the smell of whatever soap was used to clean. Clearly there’s a redundancy here.

Linked from Geekpress.com, penny sculptures. People do some strange things.

To make or not to make…

The bed, that is. Paul at Geekpress.com linked this BBC News article: Untidy beds may keep us healthy. Ugh, that dustmite photo is nasty!