3 things I didn't know I needed

My friends Danny and Tao Kai always complain that they can't get me anything, since I have everything I can possibly need. For my 1/3-life crisis I threw a big party, and even though I specifically asked for no presents, I ended up with a few highly useful items I never knew I needed!

And the top 3 are:

1. Lips. You can always use a pair of red lips.

2. A set of 6 self-adhesive mustaches. Don't be caught in public with a naked upper lip!

And my personal favorite...

3. A wine bottle cozy. You've probably seen bottle coolers - used to chill a bottle of white wine, or to keep it chilled while it's not refrigerated. But what about red wine? How can you keep it in room temperature when it's too cold outside, or if you've just brought it up from your cold wine cellar? The hand-made wine cozy comes to your rescue!

My Hot List

Hindsight is Always 50-50

I'm still looking for a title for this blog. In the meantime, I decided to borrow one from Joey. I don't remember if he was a bit under the influence when he came up with it, but I always thought it's a brilliant summary of the impossibility of looking backward and reliving your life. Even if we did know everything that was going to happen, every result of every possible action, would we make the right choice? Joey gives it a 50-50 chance, and he's probably generous. Oh well. We'll burn that bridge when we cross it! (another one from Joey's).

Fox News in the Simpsons

Just too good not to share:

Do Democrats Cause Cancer? Find out at foxnews.com



Liberals

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.
   

Secrets

I'm a big fan of PostSecret. Secrets of other people can make me laugh, or cringe, or feel sad, or see something in myself that I knew was there and wasn't let out. I collected my favorite secrets in my website. You're welcome to try to guess which of them are actually mine. The one I did intend to send is still in the top drawer of my desk.

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 :-)

A Year of Bach

As much as I love modern and contemporary music, I always go back to the basics, and for it is the music of Bach. Many "top 10" lists of classical music include his B minor Mass at the top of the list, and having listened to it last week in a concert in Jordan Hall (with the Cantata Singers), I would concur. After the concert I went to the web to take another look at that complete Bach edition I always coveted, a $2,400 172 CD box from Hanssler. Good performances by well known artists, but a bit pricey. And then, I found another complete edition, with lesser known performers but good reviews. At $107 it was too tempting to pass on, and 2 days later I got it in the mail.

And I've been listening to Bach ever since. 5 CDs a week, or one CD every day on the way to work and back (and a bit over the weekend) - it should just be a year before I finish listening to all of it. I'm so excited! It is an amazing deal, and I never expected to be able to listen to all of Bach's music, but it's going to happen this year.

The performances are pretty good so far. The box is sorted by genre: orchestral music, harpsichord, chamber music, cantatas, organ music, etc. I decided not to listen to them in order - I don't think I would be able to survive 60 CD's or religious cantatas. Instead, I've started with every 10th disk (1, 11, 21, etc.), and when I finish these I'll move to 2, 12, 22, etc. Surprisingly, the first batch of 5 CDs included some of the most amazing music ever written (IMHO): the Well-Tempered Klavier, Goldberg Variations, Brandenburg Concertos, "Ich Habe Genug" cantata, Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin... and this is just a random sample! I can't wait to see what surprises I'll find along the way.



And when I'm done, there's always the $110 complete Mozart edition!

Port Doom

Turns out I was too late in securing port 666. Id Software, the makers of Doom have already taken it. Click here for a full list.

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.