1min's Blog

Peaceful night sky So it's currently Spring Break over here in Brown. I didn't go anywhere, but instead elected to stay on the campus. It's really peaceful as everybody already left for warmer locations. I decided to try an experiment for the duration of the break--I decided to go nocturnal . Why you ask? No particular reason. It's just something that I naturally tend towards anyway. I get most of my work done at night. I play with my friends at night. I sleep really late and wake up even later. My life has always been on the nocturnal side. I am no morning person. So this break, I decided to fully embrace it and go 100% nocturnal--sleeping at 8AM and waking up past 6PM. Or sleeping at sunrise and waking at sunset. I don't really know what biological effects this experiment has had on my body ( Vitamin D ). But so far, I feel perfectly fine. Adjusting my sleep cycle took a few days where I progressively slept later and later. First 6AM, then 7AM, then 8AM, a...

Car / Pedestrian and directions of travel Imagine this scenario, I'm sure it's already happened to you many a times. You're walking down the street, when a car is coming at you from your right. What do you do? The car could stop and wait until you cross the street, then continue on its way. On the other hand, you could also stop and wait for the car to pass by and then continue on your way (Assume there are no stop signs, traffic lights, or police officers). Either way, somebody must stop. One person must necessarily wait for the other in order to proceed. If we assume that time saved is a normal good and that waiting is an inferior good , then obviously, a rational individual would want to minimize their waiting time and maximize the amount of time saved. We can show the results in a payoff matrix. Both Go Suppose that both the pedestrian and the car decide to go without waiting. Then assume that there will be a car crash and both individuals will die and the...

W is worth only 4 points? Lately I've been playing Words With Friends a lot. For those of you that don't know what it is, it's basically just Scrabble for your smartphone or a Facebook game that you play with your friends. I like it particularly because I don't have to overly commit to it and can play at my own leisure. I make a move, you make a move. It could take days, even weeks, for a single game to end. Sometimes I have to look at a specific game-board multiple times (couple of days) before I can finally decide on what word to play. And If my opponent notices that I haven't played a word for a long time (3 days+) he/she starts pestering me, "Hey man, it's your turn on Words " or "Are you ever going to play your word?" It's not particularly annoying and most of the time I just brush them aside until I have the time to actually sit down and play my turn.  Yet, I can't help but think that the pestering has a subtle subconsci...