What Would Pythagoras Do?
"Just ask for directions, honey" "Sssssh! I'm trying to remember my cosine laws!"
There’s a weird psychological phenomenon that humans exhibit regarding cognitive mapping — or how we instinctively choose how to move from Point A to Point B. Apparently we aren’t very good at it.
In fact, in a 1995 UC Berkeley study [pdf], one experiment showed that only 16% of subjects traveled the same walking path from A to B as B to A.
This doesn’t make sense, but I can’t help but find myself doing the exact same thing every single day! I take one route to the coffee machine, and a different route back to my desk. I take one route to work, and a slightly different route back home. It is entirely subconscious, but I’m mentally satisfied that my decisions are appropriately the fastest routes in both cases.
But clearly I’m wrong; both routes can’t be the fastest. Unless they’re equal, but that’s highly unlikely.
Perhaps human brains are easily tricked into thinking a certain route is faster over another. Didn’t we pay attention in high-school geometry?
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TBAG prototype, circa 2009
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Simulating Trends: Why “Twilight” Is So Damn Popular
Vampiric popularity is inversely proportional to piratic popularity.
I’ve reached that point in my mid-twenties where I look toward the trailing generation with confused bewilderment. I prefer Grandpa Simpson’s explanation:
“I used to be ‘with it‘. Then they changed what ‘it‘ was.”
Small, unknown bands I used to listen to are suddenly selling out entire stadiums. Other bands that were once popular have retreated to Japan. Meanwhile, the crappy music those urban kids listened to five years ago is still topping the charts for some reason.
The rise and fall of fads seem chaotic at best. I’ve simply come to accept the fact that I won’t understand the popularity of the Jonas Brothers, just as I didn’t understand the popularity of their parents the Hansons. But how and why do trends like these spread?
Fringineering: The Rubik’s Cube Trap
photo: exploratorium.edu
Fact: People who can solve a Rubik’s Cube are pompous, smug asses. I know this. I was one.
It was December of 2006 and I had just seen “The Pursuit of Happyness”. As the end of college approached, I had been unsuccessfully looking for a job. So in preparation, I immediately purchased a Rubik’s Cube and, á la Will Smith, learned to solve it within a 10-block cab ride. Proud, I expected some sort of reward for this amazing logical feat. I received no such reward.
Determined to receive the notoriety I assumed was advertised on the box, I demonstrated my Rubixal powers to anyone who would lend me 45 to 210 seconds. Still, nothing.
It was then I realized the insignificance of my accomplishment. Like sword-swallowing or landing on the moon, the world had become desensitized to the Rubik’s Cube.
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