Category: Mind Space

Be Lazy When Waiting for the Bus

Waiting for a bus that never seems to come can be one of life’s more aggravating moments. No need to sit around getting all frustrated with underfunded services though. Thanks to the power of mathematics we now know that you should justbe lazy and sit and wait for the bus.

Scott Kominers, a mathematician at Harvard University, and his colleagues derived a formula for the optimal time that you should wait for a tardy bus at each stop en route before giving up and walking on. “Many mathematicians probably ponder this on their way to work, but never get round to working it out,” he says.

The team found that the solution was surprisingly simple. When both options seem reasonably attractive, the formula advises you to choose the “lazy” option: wait at the first stop, no matter how frustrating (www.arxiv.org/abs/0801.0297).

2008 Will be a Blue Year

blue cloud heartThe colour blue is predicted to overtake green in the coming year, and I like it. Blue has bee chosen because it is calming and radiant, perhaps it really is the colour of the zeitgeist?

“From a color forecasting perspective, we have chosen PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris as the color of the year, as it best represents color direction in 2008 for fashion, cosmetics and home products,” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “As a reflection of the times, Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspect of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast.”

Starbucks Actually Helps

Starbucks is a massive international coffee chain that is infamous for putting their own coffee shops across the street from one another. They also have a reputation that they drive local independent coffee shops out of business, it seems this reputation is undeserved.

Slate has an article examining how Starbucks helps small coffee shops by giving them new customers.

The first time Herb Hyman spoke with the rep from Starbucks, in 1991, the life of his small business flashed before his eyes. For three decades, Hyman’s handful of Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf stores had been filling the caffeine needs of Los Angeles locals and the Hollywood elite: Johnny Carson had his own blend there; Jacques Cousteau arranged to have Hyman’s coffee care packages meet his ship at ports around the world; and Dirty Dozen leading man Lee Marvin often worked behind the counter with Hyman for fun. But when the word came down that the rising Seattle coffee juggernaut was plotting its raid on Los Angeles, Hyman feared his life’s work would be trampled underfoot. Starbucks even promised as much. “They just flat-out said, ‘If you don’t sell out to us, we’re going to surround your stores,’ ” Hyman recalled. “And lo and behold, that’s what happened—and it was the best thing that ever happened to us.”

Dangerous Ground Project Travels London WIthout Touching it

No More Landmines came up with a creative way to bring awareness to the danger of landmines around the world. The idea was to not touch the ground in London by using parkour, a way to move around using one’s body in the most efficient way possible. The fundraiser is one of the more creative ones that I’v eseen recently, and remember that £1 = 1 square meter of land.

Here’s a map of the route that they took:


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