law of inverse relevance

"The less you intend to do about something, the more you have to keep talking about it.

(from yes minister)

qotd

in the absence of choice, rationality prevails.

--anon

floaters

why do these eye floaters appear orange/ant-like?

sleep in motion

why does a moving car/bus/train cause people to get into sleep mode?

is it related to why babies are put in rocking cradles etc?

(for some reason the movement does not really extend to airplanes)

does being in a bigger vehicle make people more rash drivers?

shuttle/truck/bus drivers seem more rash than those in compact cars :-)

maybe that size gives them a feeling of invincibility?

sizing toileteries in hotels?

the things that hotels give you seem rather wasteful. maybe they should have variable sized soap/shampoos etc depending on the length of the reservation.

airline seat assignment?

should airlines profile passenger weight/build etc before doing the seat assignments. makes sense to have "compact" people in middle seats :-)

randal

why do there appear to be a more than normal share of people named randal/randalls in academia?

why do we sleep with eyes closed?

is it because visual processing is (one of) the most expensive pieces of brain processing? shutting that input makes it easy for the brain to go into sleep mode?

recursion

everytime i see the billboard for some eyeglasses on the way back from the airport, i think that the model there looks like "thirteen" from house.

now everytime, i see the billboard, i think that the billboard reminds me that i think that the model looks like thirteen from house ...

how to avoid check-in fees?

airlines seem to be doing something dumb doing gate checks for baggage for free but charging for them at the ticket counter.

maybe they should check whether its carry-on-able at the security checkpoints?

to ski or not to ski, that is the question

sidewalks and artificial constraints

(yet another post in the funny how serious)

seems like i strive to contrive, take long strides, go out of step etc. to make sure that the start or end step coincides with the line between two stones/slabs.
is it just me, or does everyone like to synchronize their footsteps with the start/end of the sidewalk stones/slabs?

as an side, this reminded me that most constraints are artificial. no real reason to do what i do :-)

interesting sociological experiment

imagine a hypothetical capacity-constrained facebook :-)

each person can only have a strict limit of k-friends, and your ex-"friends" can see your current selection/comment on it etc.

would be curious to see what happens!

left-handedness and making up stuff on the fly

someone pointed out that the way left handed people write looks contrived.

knowing nothing left handedness, writing or anything close to that, i came up with 2 "theories" on-the-fly (that have withstood the cant-find-an-obvious-contradiction-in-10-seconds test of time)

1. teachers in early classes are primarily trained/overfitted to right-handers. so they end up not knowing the optimal smooth strokes for different alphabets for left-handed kids (i recall that there was a time that left-handedness was considered evil ..and teachers forced kids to become right handed .. but i digress)

2. its easier for a right handed person to write left-to-right (less constrained stroke). so our writing style is pretty much designed for the common case. so left-handers have to contrive to write in the direction that is not entirely natural

if anyone knows any better, id like to know. would also like to hear more cant-find-an-obvious-contradiction-in-10-seconds theories as well :-)

the last bite problem

funny how no one wants to finish the last chocolate or the last bit of some snack. somehow, even though there is less than a mouthful, when it comes to the last few bites, the lifetime of the snack seems to get prolonged. somehow, the act of "finishing" must create a sense of guilt! surely, some diet experts must exploit this somehow?

buses and insects

funny how a bus smells similar to when an insect gets squished. reminded me of this little-black-dot-of-a-creature that used to give out this most obnoxious smell when squished (incidentally, this is what i was doing in some "classes" --tracking/squishing insects :-) ). cant describe either the smell or the insect (didnt have any distinguishing feature beyond just looking like a black dot). but if anyone has any clue what the heck im talking about, id be very curious to know the name of that insect.