Jul 28
lindsayrgwattScience high performance, military, Psychology, Sports
There have been two fascinating articles published in the past few days talking about how we perform under pressure. Both are fascinating reading.
In the first, The Guardian examines why athletes choke. The short answer: you think too much. When you’re a master athlete, you have muscle memory and your actions are literally built into your body. If you think too hard about what you’re doing your brain, rather than your muscles, takes over and you fail.
The second article is the Times talking about how some soldiers seem to have a sixth sense for danger. In this instance, the brain is processing images subconsciously faster than it can consciously. Humans appear to build a subconscious model of normal situations and tiny variations of this can be sensed sometimes preattentively (this isn’t magic; the Gestalt philosophers knew this).
There’s a chemical element at play in the Times article too: Navy Seals under pressure release the same amount of cortisol as normal soldiers, but they are able to recover to a normal level much faster.
I’ve no idea how to interpret all of this, but there are some interesting themes. Training makes it easier for you to recover to normal faster, meaning that you can use your muscle memory rather than having to think? A well-developed mental model makes it easier for you to find patterns and deviations from that pattern, meaning that you can then respond more quickly without thinking? Anyone want to speculate?
Jul 22
lindsayrgwattHistory, NYC inflation, rent
I was walking around the neighbourhood the other day when a historic plaque caught my eye:
…the workingmen’s cottages on Warren Place were among the first planned low-income housing in the nation when they were built in the late 1870’s. At that time, rent for a four-room apartment was $1.93 per week.
Wow! $1.93 a week rent sounds great. But what is that after inflation? According to the inflation calculator, that’s about $37.41 in 2008 (assuming 1875 as a base year). Given that a 1Br goes for about $500 a week around here (and has roughly 4 rooms), if you were a very old person with rent control, you’d be laughing.
Also, if you were a landlord, the difference between $500 and $37 ain’t much of a return. That’s a compound return of only 1.90% over the 130-odd years, meaning you’re doing much better than inflation, but not a whole heckuva lot. You still would have done better in the stock market.
Jul 21
lindsayrgwattFood, NYC hot dogs
New York is crushing on the hot dog right now (witness this and this). As a result, Wen and I decided to devote Saturday to eating hot dogs.
Our first stop was at Dogmatic near Union Square. You get to pick your dog (i.e., pork vs. beef vs. lamb, etc.) and then pick your sauce (e.g., truffle & gruyere, yogurt, etc.). I had the lamb & yogurt and it was a smashing success. The bun is great too: it’s a half a baguette:
Dogmatic also gets bonus points for their interior: you sit at a monolithic shared table:
Later we headed over to Brooklyn Flea to check out Asia Dog’s unique dogs. Check out their flavours:
We split the vinh and the ito. Next time I’m trying the wangding-although it requires a run first:
These hot dogs are definitely the taste of the summer.
Jul 20
lindsayrgwattNYC bklyn, sunsets
As I write this, the sun is starting to set over the New York harbour. One of the true pleasures of our new apartment is watching the sunset. We’ve got a great view of it and it’s amazing how dynamic it is; I guess this is what people did before they had television.
Don’t take my word for how great it is; check out the gallery below:
Jul 16
lindsayrgwattBusiness crisis, Economics, housing, law of unintended consequences, Risk
I’m always fascinated by the unanticipated side effects of people’s actions. Here’s an interesting one related to housing.
Housing has definitely started the current economic crisis – but no surprises there; it’s just simply people taking on too much debt. However, it might make it worse than other crises. Why? Well, when people buy houses, they tend to stay in them – even if their neighbourhood goes to hell and has high unemployment, etc. On the other hand, the renters tend to get out of town.
Here’s the killer quote from a study linked to via Creative Class:
Being tied down to a house tends to make people less likely to leave an area in which employment prospects are deteriorating …A seminal study by British economist Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick traced the link between unemployment and homeownership. Oswald looked at the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Sweden between 1960 and 1996 and discovered that, on average, a 10 percentage point increase in homeownership tended to correlate with a 2 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate.
Jul 13
lindsayrgwattRandom inspiration, philosophy, prophet
When I was in high school, the band Mad Season recorded the song River of Deceit, which began with the following lines:
My pain, is self-chosen
At least, so the Prophet says
I never really understood it, but it took on a bit more poignancy when Layne Staley, the lead singer and songwriter, later died of a heroin overdose.
Recently, I began to understand a bit more where the lyrics came from, as Karim gave me a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and I read it on the honeymoon.
In the passage On Pain, Gibran writes:
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility;
The book is littered with brilliant insights. Here are some of my favourites.
From the opening chapter:
Let not the waves of the sea separate us now, and the years you have spent in our midst become a memory.
You have walked among us a spirit, and your shadow has been a light upon our faces.
Much have we loved you. But speechless was our love, and with veils has it been veiled.
Yet now it cries aloud unto you, and would stand revealed before you.
And ever has it been that loves knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
From the section On Work comes the following:
You have been told also that life is darkness, and in our weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is an urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
Or the following from On Joy and Sorrow:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked;
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
The book goes on and on (actually, it’s only 96 large type pages) with more great verses; let me close with one from On Teaching:
The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.
The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrest the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.
And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.
For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.
Jul 12
lindsayrgwattTravel culture, society, wildlife, wyoming
About a week ago, Wen and I got back from our honeymoon in Wyoming (this blog has been dark for two weeks as the combination of honeymoon + moving to new apartment upon return + crazy work has made it tough to blog). It’s a beautiful – and culturally very different – part of America. Here are a couple of notes for you:
one We were told by some locals that people in “Wyoming” are family-oriented. I’m not sure what this is a euphemism for (likely “socially conservative). After all, I live in the Northeast and people don’t regularly abuse their kids or similar things out here.
Ironically, on our last night in town we sat next to a table of cowboys. Turns out that they’d made the wives and kids eat at another table in the restaurant. And one of the cowboys offered the waiter a chance to sleep with his wife in return for 50% off the bill. Judging by the heavy eyeliner and sagging halter top on her, I’m not sure he was joking.
two Wyoming is the least populous state in the Union, checking in at a little over 500K people. This means that they also have the most unique license plates in the Union. Take a look at the generic plate below. The number on the left represents the county you’re from; the right is a number assigned to you. We didn’t see one that went above 5 digits!
three Montana may officially be “Big Sky Country”, but Wyoming is a close second:
four Continuing on our license-plate theme, when I was a kid, when our parents took us on American road trips, they’d trick us into being quiet by asking us to try and spot the license of every state. The place to do this is Grand Teton/Yellowstone. I’m convinced that I saw every state there; the Lupine Meadows parking lot looked like a governor’s convention, there were so many different states represented.
five the only challenging part of Wyoming is that you quickly learn that people’s ability to drive is inversely proportional to the size of their vehicle-and people in Wyoming like their vehicles big. Now everyone knows that people with SUVs are vehicularly challenged (witness the gravel road that some people took at 20 km/h: people, you’ve got a 4×4!) but Yellowstone was ridiculous. People there had land-based aircraft carriers: 30 foot long behemoths with cars in tow – and they took at least as long as an aircraft carrier to turn (I think I saw little tug boats helping them on tight corners).
Note that Yellowstone consists of two lane roads, so travellers: ye have been warned…
six One interesting fact we learned is that Wyoming is Utah’s playground. Everywhere we went, even remote corners like 10 miles into the Targhee forest, we kept coming across trucks from Utah. Apparently the state sport there is heading up to Wyoming on long weekends and set up trailers in the middle of the forest and drink beer.
seven English in Wyoming is a living language. “Buffalo” is slowly transmuting into “Bison”. More worrisome is the pronunciation of “creek” as “crick”. I had a great time asking my cowboy horse riding guide the name of yonder crick.
eight Cowboys in Wyoming are a hearty and dynamic lot; they have had no challenge adapting to the 21st century. We met some who constantly used the air conditioning in their cars and carried plastic water bottles on the trail to stay hydrated. Nothing too fancy there.
Then they started telling us that they want to get satellite tv in their camp because they’re bored of one another (What! No songs around campfires every night?) and that they use Google AdWords to buy keywords to advertise their services. Technology: 1, old way of life: 0. Now we just need to work on the Amish.
nine Wyoming has the craziest weather of any place I’ve been. We were told that there is snowfall on record for every day of the year except August 16th. When we hiked, we came across more snowdrifts than you can imagine; snowball fights on the 4th of July in the mountain are routine.
It thunderstormed every day we were there; the lightning seen across the valley was amazing. One thunderstorm was followed up with some particularly aggressive hail – nickel-sized balls bouncing off the ground.
ten Jackson is home to the National Museum of Wildlife Art. It’s a fabulous little museum with a great selection of wildlife paintings; they feature a lot of American art of life on the plains plus a quick historical tour of how wildlife painting has evolved.
One thing that became eminently clear is that when men paint pictures of bears, they turn into imbeciles. How else can you explain William Dunton calling the following “Monarch of all he surveys”:
Or Charles M Russell calling this “To the victor belong the spoils”:
The museum also reminded me of what a small world it is. The museum has a prized (and fantastic) collection of art by Carl Rungius. In 1910, he was invited by Jimmy Simpson up to Banff to hunt; he subsequently painted many of the hunts. Later in his life, Simpson would build Num Ti Jah lodge – where I had been married less than a week before.
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