Meditations on Coachella

Still haven't fully recovered from the 106 degree heat and lack of sleep. But wow, it was incredible. Certainly the most beautiful festival grounds I've ever seen. It felt like a mini-paradise, very intimate atmosphere. All the stages were so close together and (for the most part) everyone was super friendly and thrilled to be there. Not to mention the music, Saturday was also probably the best day of shows I've ever seen - Radiohead, David Guetta, Shins and Jeff Mangum. Spectactular! Even the bands that I had to miss on Saturday (Bon Iver, Kaskade, Miike Snow and Feist) would have made for a solid day! Pictures coming soon to Facebook.

The dangers of cohabitation before marriage

Interesting opinion piece from the NYT. I certainly agree with a lot of the authors points, especially about the different perceptions that men and women have about cohabitation. I also really like her point about "sliding not deciding." Its all too easy to agree to something without thinking about what it means if it doesn't really feel like a big deal. Good read throughout.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/the-downside-of-cohabiting-before-marriage.html

What the world will look like 2500 years from now

Fantastic blog post via Marginal Revolution, if our energy consumption continues to grow at its current rate we will be consuming an entire galaxy's worth of energy in 2500 years. I'm not sure if I should be optimistic or pessimistic about this...

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/04/exponential-economist-meets-physicist.html

More awesomeness from Google

I just spent the last half hour browsing through the new Google Art Project:

http://www.googleartproject.com/

Time to get back to work.

Hitchcock's Rear Window in 3 minutes

Thanks to my sister for sending an incredible video! This guy recuts the entire movie into a single panoramic shot and speeds it up. I'm a huge fan of Rear Window (and Hitchcock in general) and the quality of this is amazing.

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/04/a-mesmerizing-time-lapse-composite-of-all-the-views-in-rear-window/255385/?google_editors_picks=true

The entire TSA paradigm is flawed

This former FBI Special Agent really doesn't like the TSA. Given all my upcoming travel I agree with him 100%. According to a guy in charge of auditing the TSA:

“The ability of TSA screeners to stop prohibited items from being carried through the sterile areas of the airports fared no better than the performance of screeners prior to September 11, 2001.”

OUCH. Great (and depressing) stuff throughout.

http://gmancasefile.blogspot.com/2012/01/tsa-fail.html

Almost Alcoholics

From the Atlantic, some of the warning signs of an almost alcoholic... should I be worried?

• You look forward to drinking
• You drink to maintain a buzz
• You drink to relieve stress

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/04/are-you-almost-alcoholic-taking-a-new-look-at-an-old-problem/254585/

How actuarial tables changed my life...

A few months back I thought it would be interesting to look at an actuarial table to find the conditional probability of a 26 year old living to 27. What I discovered really changed my outlook on life:

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

A 26 year old male has a 0.1412% chance of not seeing 27, that's approximately 1 in 708. If you had asked me to estimate that probability I would have been off by a couple of orders of magnitude - I didn't think it was anywhere NEAR that high. So what does that mean for me? Well it makes a lot of my problems, my fears etc seem pretty trivial. Fits in pretty well with my life philosophy, don't worry about it, make the best of it and don't do anything (excessively) stupid.

Speaking of living in NYC

Interesting chart about how condo prices in NYC vary by floor:

http://nymag.com/realestate/features/high-rise-appraisals-2012-4/