Unilateral Phase Detractors and Sinusoidal Depleneration

This is a bonus post. It was just too funny to pass up. I wasn't sure just how fake the video was, but a quick Google search (seriously, what would you do without it?) yielded a random thread that discusses an article from a mechanical trade journal in 1945. Further investigation (seriously how awesome is Wikipedia) yield the truth. As you'd expect, it's completely made up. Anyways, just watch the video and soak it up. Bernard Salwen was a genius.

I'm Not a Health Official, but I Have Watched Every Episode of "Gray's Anatomy"

Every once-in-a-while a public poll is released that really gives you a sense of what's going through the heads of your fellow citizens. Unfortunately, almost every time one of those nuggets is released it just makes you shake your head. Everyone has seen at least one poll like this from the number of high school students who can pick out "Europe" on a map to the number of adults who know the name of their Congress person. You see these statistics and you think to yourself "My G-d, these are the people that are electing our leaders (i.e. determining the fate of our nation)?"

A recent AP article explained how the CDC (that's right, the Center for Disease Control) is spending money (and time) working w/ Hollywood (yes, Hollywood) to make sure that TV and Movie scripts accurately portray major public health issues. You have to read about halfway through the article to get to the part that makes you want to break your keyboard over your head:

"CDC officials make time for Hollywood meetings, because they know what’s on screen can be influential. In a 2000 CDC-sponsored survey, more than half of TV viewers said they trust health information on prime-time shows to be accurate, and about one-quarter said prime-time television is one of their top three sources of health information."

This paragraph is nonchalantly placed in the article, but if true it's pretty remarkable (even if it's not completely accurate). Half of the Americans surveyed trust the health information portrayed in a TV (i.e. not a news program -- a fictional show about, say, doctors!). Of those people, half of them list TV programs as one of the top three places they get health information. TOP THREE! Let's see. Where can I get information on my health? Doctors? Health Magazines? Specialty Web Sites (WebMD)? How about "ER"?

Truth be told, the amount that the CDC spends on this is relatively little in comparison to what is probably their total budget. It's a sad state of affairs though when an organization focused on stopping the spread of disease through out our country feels that fictional TV shows are one of the most effective mediums to communicate those messages. And one really hopes that at most a handful of Americans take health lessons from fictional characters playing doctor.

I'll Pay You $3 to Wait in Line for an Hour

Every year Ben and Jerry's does something that drives every economist crazy: they offer a free small ice cream cone to anyone who shows up. On the surface this sounds fantastic: you get something (good ice cream) for free! Nothing is free -- even in those CD deals back in the day you had to pay for shipping (can you imagine paying for CDs?) But back to ice cream -- free! The best word in the English language. Or is it?

The problem, when you offer a good at a price well below it's value is that the demand sky rockets. Ben and Jerry's ice cream is very popular. In a city like Berkeley people will line up for over an hour to get a small ice cream cone. One hour! Think about that. A small cone costs ~$3. On any other day of the week you could walk up to the counter, pay $3 and get a small ice cream cone. Today you had to wait one hour, but you paid nothing. Interestingly I'm sure if if you offered $5 to cut to the front of the line no one would accept it (why would they? they just waited in line for an hour!). Yet for just $3 you could buy that same ice cream cone any other day and not wait at all. To make the situation even more absurd you could even go to the grocery store that very day and for $3 get a whole pint.

It Was Safer on The Battlefield Than in The Camp

Sometimes in life you see statistics that run counter to what our intuition tells us. Jerry Seinfeld in his pre-"Seinfeld" routine has a joke where he says:

"In a recent survey of adult Americans the number 1 fear was public speaking. The number 2 fear was death! Death was the number 2 fear!?!? That means at a funeral people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy!"

Many Americans (at least those with a sense of our History) are aware that the Civil War was the bloodiest war in American History (over 600,000 men, and by some estimates as many as 700,000 men died). That's somewhat misleading since it's also the only war where the US fought itself, but the statistic is still no less valid. What many people do not know is that 2/3rds of the deaths (TWO-THIRDS) were from disease! That number does not include deaths from infections resulting from battlefield injuries (those are included in the 1/3rd portion of the deaths). That's remarkable. For all of the carnage in the Civil War (Antietam is still the single bloodiest day in American History -- 3600 Americans lost their lives) disease was more of a problem than anything else.

Of course this isn't anything new. It's really only recently that man has devised ways to kill himself more efficiently than disease. In World War I ~19M people died (that number is almost unfathomable to begin with). It also marked the first time that civilian deaths outnumbered military deaths. However Mother Nature proved to be vastly more deadly. The Spanish Influenza of 1918-1920 killed anywhere from 40M-100M people (2%-5% of the World population!). Unlike many deadly strains of influenzas this one was deadly to young healthy people as well. It killed over 25M people in the first 6 months of the outbreak (in contrast AIDS took 25 years to kill that many people).