Relax, I order you to relax!

In an interview, Amy Sedaris, also known as Jerri Blank, said she invented a new style of acting, where you say how you feel instead of acting it. In every episode of Strangers with Candy she would look at the camera and tell us what's going on deep inside: "Sad", "Humiliated", or, my all time favorite, "Shame, it's just more shame".

My least favorite radio station, the classical top-40 WCRB, decided to adopt the same approach. Instead of playing quality music, they pause every 10 min to tell you (in a deep baritone) that they are "the best classical music station". Listen, morons. There's nothing less relaxing than someone hammering into your head "W-C-R-B, the most relaxing music on radio". And you cannot make up for a minuscule collection of music, dominated by fringe boring baroque composers (William Boise? Who the hell is he?) by repeating the mantra "best music on radio". And, by the way, interrupting the music every 5 minutes to tell us you're continuing with your long sets of uninterrupted music is, how shall we say it, kind of dumb.

WCRB, I hate you.

What makes me switch to a different radio station

Here they are, the top things you don't want to hear on your radio:

1. "You have had some horrible surgeries. Tell us about them." -- heard in a WBUR interview with polio survivors. I was not fast enough, and heard a bit about having all your foot bones broken before I switched the station.
   
   
2. "This is our spring fund raiser." -- is there really a difference between a commercial based radio station like WCRB and a sponsorship-loaded fundraising-every-other-week NPR station?
   
   
3. "My name is Laura Carlo, and I want to tell you about my wonderful new Bose radio." -- turns out there is a difference after all. How come a voice so sweet and full of high-fructose corn syrup just makes me want to puke? (WCRB)
   
   
4. "And now, a symphony by William Boise" -- WCRB has approximately 12 classical CD's. This seems to be one of their favorites. I had never heard of this composer before WCRB, and its main talent seems to be having written 5-minutes symphonies, that fit right in between commercial breaks. Oh well, maybe he sounds much better on a Bose radio.
   
   
5. Anything to do with Lake Wobegon. -- Prarie Home Companion's host Garrison Keillor is the male equivalent of Laura Carlo - hearing his voice creates an allergic reaction in my body. And regarding the so called "humor" of the program, I'm in one mind with Homer Simpsons on that: in one of the episodes Homer and family find themselves watching A Prairie Home Companion with increasing frustration. Homer is finally reduced to pounding the television and yelling "Be funny! Be funny!"
   
   
6. "With us is Dr Montross, a psychiatrist in Brown University, who has released a poetry book about her love of cadavers." -- heard on WBUR On Point.
   

The Last Straw

America is obsessed with food cleanliness. You order a happy meal (not that you should), and the straw that comes with your coke arrives wrapped in thin white paper. Why? Do the kitchen staff have a habit of licking straws? And what's the deal with straws that have only a small piece of paper left, covering their tip? How can we be sure that nobody nibbled on the lower end? Or even - god forbid - nibbled on the top end of the straw, and then placed the paper right back on? And while we're at it, why wrap only the straw in paper? Why not the cup itself? Or the fork, knife and plate? What about the hamburger we're being served, isn't it more hygienic to wrap it in paper while handling it? or wrap the cow that produced it?

Where I'm coming from, people are not afraid of a little dirt in their food. It's part of the culture - you can call it the "secret sauce" of middle-eastern food. The last time I went to the local falafel shop in Central Square, I asked the guy to get me 10 falafel balls. I know how these shops work and I don't expect their kitchen to be clean, but hey, any bacteria that survives deep frying will be killed by the hot sauce - the schug. He used tongs to remove the falafel balls from the oil, and then used them again to move the balls to a plastic take-out container. So far no hands! I was totally amazed by his adaptation of the American standards. The guy was about to hand them to me, but something stopped him. He looked at the box with a frown and one by one, he poked his index finger into each of them, counting from 1 to 10. Yup, 10 balls mister, as you asked. Bon Apetite.

The falafel was delicious :-)

When Free Markets Don't Work

Economists on the right say that the market knows best, and left alone will produce optimal results. I'm not an economist, but this assertion cannot be true, and I see it every day on my commute back from work. I'm an avid NPR listener, and Boston is fortunate to have two great public radio stations, WBUR and WGBH. Most of the time they have different shows, and usually I listen to one of the two (anything to avoid the horrible WCRB, I'll leave that to another post). But on weekdays between 4pm and 7pm they have the same exact lineup: 2.5 hours of news followed by Marketplace. Surely, listeners would be better served if they could, say, choose between news on WBUR and music on WGBH. And surely, with the rival station having the exact same programs at the exact same time, listeners choose more or less randomly between the two - there's no reason to prefer one over the other (unless it's fund raising time, which is a different story altogether.)

This makes perfect sense in an unregulated market. Suppose that 70% of the people prefer to listen to news, while 30% prefer music. If both stations broadcast the news, they'll get 35% rating each. If one of them switches to music, its rating will go down to 30%. Hence, neither station is motivated to change their programs. The end result is that the consumers lose.

A similar example happens with the location of shops. Have you noticed that once there's a tailor shop or a grocery shop in a city block, another one will pop right next to it? Imagine a sandy beach, mile long, and imagine you're the sole ice cream vendor on the beach. Assume that the sunbathers are equally spread along the beach, and want to walk the shortest distance possible to get their ice cream. The optimal place for your booth will be right in the middle. When a second vendor comes, the optimal place for him is just next to you! This way he'll get half the beach (for instance, if he's on your right, all the people in the right side of the beach will prefer to go to his booth). Once you're both in the middle of the beach, none of you is motivated to move your booth - moving it will only decrease your sales. But with regulation, the city can force both of you to space your booths. If they are located at the 1/3 and 2/3 milestones on the beach, you'll still divide the space equally between the two of you, but shorten the average distance that a sunbather needs to walk to get ice cream by almost 50%.

I heard this example once on the radio... probably on an NPR station :-) A quick search in Wikipedia found out this is actually called Hotelling's law.

Fastlane to Hell

I'm often amused (or annoyed) by how stupid people are. It often shows in Fastlane, the electronic toll system installed on the Mass Pike. In spite of HUGE SIGNS above the toll, people would invariably get confused. Is it so difficult to understand what CASH ONLY means? I have a theory that the TICKET ONLY signs scare people who are afraid of getting a ticket. In any case, it's often the case that approaching a Fastlane booth, I'll see the driver in front of me slowing down, obviously confused, going slower and slower into the wrong lane, until they get stuck. I would sigh in despair and let them out. But not this time.

This was the case a few weeks ago. The warning signs were there: an out-of-state license plate (Kansas, if I remember correctly), a driver that slows down way too much, and then, finally, stopping dead at the booth instead of going through. I stopped and waited. The driver, a middle-aged woman, peeped out of the window, looking for a cashier. There was none around. Then, understanding her mistake, she looked back to see if she can back off, and saw my car. With a pleading look she asked me wordlessly if I can back off to let her out (going through the toll without a Fastlane reader carries a hefty fine). I sighed and put the gear in reverse, getting ready to back off. And the I saw the bumper stickers on her car. One of them read:

Supporting our President George W Bush

Bad, but not a mortal offence. Then I read the other one:

Marriage is for One Man and One Woman

with cute little icons of a man and a woman holding hands.

I paused.

I frowned at her.

I put the gear in Drive again.

And then I blew the horn - the expression on my face saying MOVE ON BITCH AND GET BACK TO WHERE THE HELL YOU CAME FROM!

She looked genuinely scared, and immediately drove through the toll. Red lights blinked, a warning alarm sounded, the camera flashed, and the state of Massachusetts, the only state in the union that supports same sex marriage, got a $50 gift from Kansas.

I call it my good deed of the day.

3rd Rail

I don't know why this upsets me so much, but I hate seeing these signs in the subway:

Warning! 3^rd Rail!

I keep asking myself - what is it about a third rail that freaks people out? Is 3 a bad omen? Is there a problem with an odd number of rails? Would 4 work better?

And more seriously, either you know that a third rail is electrified and will kill you if you touch it, or the warning should be

Warning! High Voltage Rail!

Not that complicated, right?

The last example is from New Hampshire. Have you ever seen one of these signs?

This has got to make you scratch your head. Rear seats don't have air bags. If air bags save lives in an accident, and if you place your children in the rear seat, they'll die. Maybe the idea is that grown-ups are more important and should take the front seats in case of an accident? Or maybe if you care about your children you should place them at the front seats? After all, the first line says "Airbags save lives."

Of course, the right sign should be:

Air Bags Kill Children
Always Place Children in Rear Seat

But we all have to be nice and positive, to the point that the meaning of the signs get completely obscured. I'm sure this can tell us something important about the american culture, but I have to rush to a meeting (BC cPPT if you must know), I'll try to figure it out later!