Consider The Equilibrium: Salt Shakers At Restaurant Tables
Should restaurants put salt shakers on the table? A variety of food writers weigh in on the question here. The naive argument is that salt shakers give diners more control. They know their own tastes and can fine tune the salt to their liking. The problem with this argument is that salt shaken over prepared […]
Consider The Equilibrium: Bulls Vs. Heat
Via ESPN: “Thibs is a guru,” Gibson said. “He understands the game plan. “He had me guarding Ray Allen. That’s how much confidence he has in everybody’s ability to guard on defense. He really drew up and knew what the team was gonna do. Every time they ran down and ran offense, it was exactly […]
Consider The Equilibrium
In my kids’ tennis class they are getting good enough to have actual rallies. The coach feeds them a ball and has them play out points. Each rally is worth 1 point and they play to 10. To stop them from trying to hit winners on the first shot and in attempt to get them […]
Consider The Equilibrium
Spouse A (henceforth “she”, the driver) prefers the air inside the vehicle to be a little warmer than the preferred temperature of Spouse B (“he”, the navigator, not because he is a worse driver –quite the contrary– but because he is an even better passenger.) In their regular confrontation with this dilemma they are seemingly […]
Consider The Equilibrium: April Fool’s Unraveling
We have coordinated on April 1 as the date where everyone gets to indulge their latent desire to say something false and hope that it gets believed. The problem of course is that as a result nothing you say on April 1 is believed. Credibility has a public good aspect to it and the social […]
Moral Codes On The Elliptical, Consider The Equilibrium
Arthur Robson wrote this on Facebook: If am peacefully working out, and someone else arrives in the gym, they usually grab the TV remote to bathe in the inane chatter of preternaturally perky news shows. What if I were to arrive while they were watching TV and switched it off? Which is a good point […]
Consider The Equilibrium
The clocks in Grand Central are off by 1 minute: But Grand Central, for years now, has relied on a system meant to mitigate, if not prevent, all the crazy. It is this: The times displayed on Grand Central’s departure boards are wrong — by a full minute. This is permanent. It is also purposeful. […]
A Sordid Link Consider The Equilibrium
I want to say this would be hilarious if true. But the thing is it can’t be hilarious even if its true because, not knowing for sure whether its true or a hoax its too easily hoaxed and its exactly the kind of thing that would be hoaxed and having that in your mind when […]
Consider The Equilibrium
This is a screenshot from an espn.com webstreaming replay of the French Open match between Maria Sharapova and Klara Zakapalova. As you can see Sharapova won the first set and now they are locked in a tight second set. But hmmm… something tells me that Zakapalova will be able to push it to three sets… […]
Genoeconomics, Consider The Equilibrium
I remember the first time I saw a session at a conference under the heading of Neuroeconomics. I thought it was some kind of joke. Well it certainly wasn’t a joke, it has turned out to be a big deal, bringing a new kind of data to economics. Genetic data is the next new kind […]
Consider The Equilibrium
Eye color and cuckoldry: The human eye color blue reflects a simple, predictable, and reliable genetic mechanism of inheritance. Blue-eyed individuals represent a unique condition, as in their case there is always direct concordance between the genotype and phenotype. On the other hand, heterozygous brown-eyed individuals carry an allele that is not concor- dant with […]
Consider The Equilibrium
The Golden Balls strategy we have been waiting for. Boonie bobble: Emil Temnyalov
Consider The Equilibrium
Bicycle “sprints.” This is worth 6 minutes of your time. Thanks to Josh Knox for the link.
Consider The Equilibrium
Professional line standers. The word “Intrepid” is on Hans Scheltema’s business card, and it’s more than just the name of his business. The professional line-stander prides himself on sticking it out, in all kinds of weather, on behalf of the lawyers, lobbyists and others willing to pay for a place in line at big events, […]
Consider The Equilibrium
Jonah Lehrer didn’t: In many situations, such reinforcement learning is an essential strategy, allowing people to optimize behavior to fit a constantly changing situation. However, the Israeli scientists discovered that it was a terrible approach in basketball, as learning and performance are “anticorrelated.” In other words, players who have just made a three-point shot are […]
Consider The Equilibrium
An n-candidate election in which the electorate views n-1 of the candidates as equivalent alternatives to the nth. But they need to solve the coordination problem of which one to vote for. A prediction market allows speculators to drive up the price of any one of them, convincing the voters that he is the focal […]
Consider The Equilibrium
This is from an article in the New York Times. When the taxi baron Robert Scull sold part of his art collection in a 1973 auction that helped inaugurate today’s money-soused contemporary-art market, several artists watched the proceedings from a standing-room-only section in the back. There, Robert Rauschenberg saw his 1958 painting “Thaw,” originally sold […]
Consider The Equilibrium
My sister-in-law asked me how many new PhDs in economics find jobs in academia (as opposed to taking private sector jobs.) I said “More than half.” Her reply surprised me, for a moment. She said “Really, that few?” I was surprised because my answer gave her only a lower bound. “More than half” could easily […]
Consider The Equilibrium
Maximize birthday wishes. I was born on Jan. 31, but I’ve always wanted a summer birthday. I set my Facebook birthday for Monday, July 11. Then, after July 11, I reset it for Monday, July 25. Then I reset it again for Thursday, July 28. Facebook doesn’t verify your birthday, and doesn’t block you from […]
Consider The Equilibrium
“You know an Asian restaurant is good if all Asians go there.”
Consider The Equilibrium: Very Short Baseball Players
On Tuesday, in the sixth round of the MLB Draft, the San Diego Padres selectedoutfielder Kyle Gaedele (who the Tampa Bay Rays had previously drafted in the 32nd round of the 2008 draft). Gaedele plays center field and shows good signs of hitting for power, but what most writers, sports fans, and guys named Bradley talk […]
Consider The Equilibrium
What was slated to be the world’s first brothel for women has been put on hold in New Zealand. The reasons are murky but here’s one tangential item: At the time of the launch, Corkery claimed that hundreds of men had applied to be $240-an-hour gigolos and satisfy the demands of Kiwi women wanting sex. […]
Consider The Equilibrium
Browser bookmarklet that inserts a real-time third-party auction into the checkout screen of an online retailer. So here’s the basic premise behind Gilt-ii. Everyday at noon ET, Gilt releases daily price cuts on luxury goods. There are limited quantities of these goods, and most of these items become unavailable within in minutes fo the sale […]
Shortening The NFL Lockout? Consider The Equilibrium
Seth Godin writes: When two sides are negotiating over something that spoils forever if it doesn’t get shipped, there’s a straightforward way to increase the value of a settlement. Think of it as the net present value of a stream of football… Any Sunday the NFL doesn’t play, the money is gone forever. You can’t […]
Consider The Equilibrium
Complaining about TSA screening is considered by the TSA to be cause for additional scrutiny. Agent Jose Melendez-Perez told the 9/11 commission that Mohammed al-Qahtani “became visibly upset” and arrogantly pointed his finger in the agent’s face when asked why he did not have an airline ticket for a return flight. But some experts say terrorists […]
Consider The Equilibrium
It is within the letter of the law of NHL hockey to employ a goalie who is obese enough to sit on the ice and obstruct the entire mouth of the goal. But can you get away with it? As strange as it may sound to anyone with a sense of decency, there is actually […]
Consider The Equilibrium
Following up on the Trivers-Willard hypothesis. The evidence is apparently that promiscuity, a trait that confers more reproductive advantage on males than females, is predictive of a greater than 50% probability of male offspring. A commenter claimed that there is a bias in favor of male offspring when the mother is impregnated close to ovulation […]
Consider The Equilibrium
Traffic jam bailouts: Chinese motorists stuck in traffic can now hire someone to sit in jams for them, with entrepreneurs finding a business opportunity in the growing gridlock across the car-crazy country. As wider car ownership leaves roads more congested in the country of 1.3 billion, motorists can now escape by calling a substitute driver […]
Consider The Equilibrium: Unanimous Juries
Did you know that in the states of Oregon and Louisiana a defendant is convicted if 10 out of 12 jurors vote guilty? In Federal trials and in all other states unanimity is required. A recent case was appealed to the Supreme Court challenging Oregon’s non-unanimous juries on 14th Ammendment grounds. On Monday the Court […]
Consider The Equilibrium
Arbitraging profiling. A white bank robber in Ohio recently used a “hyper-realistic” mask manufactured by a small Van Nuys company to disguise himself as a black man, prompting police there to mistakenly arrest an African American man for the crimes.
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