Loading ...Laziness As A Bus Stop And Blog News
By Evan ~ January 24th, 2008. Filed under: daily life, world news.
As I sit here, wondering about where today disappeared to, I am drawn to a recent article published in The Globe And Mail about the relationship between laziness and industriousness. One mathematician from the California Institute of Technology and two from Harvard University have answered the age old question, “Is it better to wait or to walk?”. Together they created an equation that calculates the best option for people who are at a bus stop and cannot decide if it is going to be quicker to — you guessed it — wait for the bus, or walk to the next closest stop.
“Their equation has these variables: n, for the number of bus stops spaced along the bus route; d, for the distance along the bus route; Vb, being the bus speed; Vw, the walking speed; and p(t), being the probability in time that a bus will show up.
Their verdict: Stick around and wait for the bus at the first stop. If you set off walking, there is a comparatively greater risk that the bus will pass you before you reach the next stop on the route.”
Now that I am looking at my completely destroyed room, with bed-sheets messily draped over a cardboard box or crumpled on the carpeted floor, mattress pad torn from the mattress, clothes hanging from various pieces of furniture, an old bagel plate, an old sandwich plate, an old yogurt spoon, an old pint glass, boxes and cases and objects randomly dispersed throughout a space that seems to grow smaller each successive day, I can say to myself, “No, Evan. There’s no need to clean this atrocious mess, those mathematicians were right on the ball when they decided, ‘The answer is intuitive: the optimal strategy is the laziest.’”
Maybe I’ll fold my laundry and put it away, because random piles of dirty clothes are forming in various pockets across the room…but I’m sure as hell not going to clean anything else. That would be mathematically wrong of me.
In other news, I’ve decide that I’m going to try my hand at performance art. Since it can happen anywhere, at any time, for any length of time, I probably won’t tell you when my actions will constitute “art”, but it’ll happen sometime in the near future. All I can say is, it involves mispronouncing every single word I speak, for an entire day. I practiced in the car today with Ilya as we were driving home from Soy Cafe, following a brief conversation about the correct pronunciations of Rudimentary Peni and Sleater-Kinney. It’s going to be impossible to decipher, especially when I get into the nuances of words, like pronouncing “sh” as individual “s” and “h” sounds instead of their widely accepted linguistic use.
And, finally, there are going to be some aesthetic changes around here occurring in the next few days, so if you stop by and notice that the entire template and color scheme has changed drastically, do not fear — it is only temporary. Hopefully this will all be figured out by tonight or tomorrow night.
I can’t wait for tomorrow’s top ten.
