About Badri

The Badri Srirangam Blog

Category: Everyday Observations

  • The mystery of convenient Road Debris

    The mystery of convenient Road Debris

    Have you noticed that most of the time, debris fallen on a busy freeway is nicely positioned away from the middle of lanes and more or less on the dividing line/buttons? (This is true unless it’s a big object or if it has fallen off very recently.)

    This is convenient, because, traffic doesn’t have to swerve to avoid them. But from a pure probability stand-point, it’s impossible that a majority of objects that fall off vehicles going at high speeds land at such a convenient place. Perhaps there is an intelligent entity, a benevolent force, guiding this?

    If you didn’t get my drift, this sounds like the ‘intelligent design’ argument.

    I think that the reason for this phenomenon is simply this: the object initially will land most likely in the middle of a lane. Then a vehicle will hit it and it will be moved. Then another vehicle will hit it, and it’ll be moved again. And so on. This will continue randomly until the object accidentally comes to rest at a harmless location, which looks miraculously convenient.

    We could say the object’s position evolved to perfection!

  • Inventions I Need Now – 2009 Edition

    Every now and then we all think of something that ought to have been invented already. Here goes my list of the top of my head.

    1. When I get some cold, cough, fever etc. I want the exact diagnosis right away – no clinical diagnosis (“it should be a viral – just wait it out”), no guessing (“let’s try an antibiotic for a few days”), etc.
    2. Written, spoken language recognition everywhere. Scanned docs should not be treated as images. I shouldn’t need my hands to browse the internet or flip channels in my tv/radio or turn off the microwave, etc.
    3. Not-dumb traffic signals – I should never have to wait several minutes at a light when there is no other vehicle in sight
    4. Easy-empty tooth paste tubes – getting the last ounce out should not require pro-wrestler strength
    5. One volume setting for all programs all channels, be it on TV, radio, iPod, whatever (I have a feeling this one is already around, just not available in the stone-age devices I tend to own)

  • Make air pollution look ugly, make it stink

    Here is a simple idea to tackle carbon emissions – make them visible and unpleasant.

    I know California has some tough smog standards, but even then I find it amazing that air is clear and pretty fresh here in the Bay Area. You could be right in the middle of a commute hour grind on Highway 101, and still not really smell the pollution the cars are spewing out.

    So I don’t really worry about it.

    Imagine that the exhaust from your car is black and smells like a dump. I bet you’ll notice that. I bet everyone will notice the amount of this stuff they are contributing.

    But it’ll be so unpleasant, we won’t like it. It’ll never happen, not just for that reason, but more so because we’ll need the oil companies to cooperate to make it work, and I don’t expect them to be bending over their backs to implement this.

    I still like this idea though. A very effective way to influence people’s behavior will be to give them immediate and appropriate feedback. Incentives are nice, but they go only so far. A little bit of in-your-face disincentive may work better.

  • Change Thresholds

    Do you remember the last time you hiccupped? Perhaps you do, perhaps not. Nothing remarkable either way. But do you remember ever realizing your hiccups have stopped the same instant that happened? Let’s give it an allowance of a few seconds, if you want. Even then, I bet not. We eventually realize we are hiccupping no more, but only after a while.

    But I just had the once-in-a-life-time experience of knowing exactly when i had my last hiccup!

    Not only that, it was easily the biggest hiccup I have ever had (at least in memory). I am sure i freaked my cube-neighbors out with that monster hiccup! Perhaps, I was so shocked at its magnitude, that my hiccups stopped right there!!!

    I find this phenomenon of not detecting the end of such things interesting. Other examples include coughs, temporary pains, etc. One possible explanation could be that our brains are for the most part designed to detect change (in stimuli) a lot better than constancy. This might sound contradictory – when something stops happening, it’s a big change. True. But, if the stopping happens gradually, the rate of change or frequency becomes so low at some point, that it falls below our brain’s threshold. So we never notice the transition (from presence to absence).

    This is pure lazy speculation on my part. But, while at it, let me have some fun.

    As with most things, there should also be an upper threshold for rate of change that our brains can detect/cope with. An example I can think of is looking out a moving train. As long it is moving slowly (or the horizon is far away), we find it an interesting spectacle. But once the speed at which the scenery changes becomes too much, we tune out.

    On the other hand, suppose that the train is passing through a desert. Now, again, we’d tune out quickly, but this time because the change is too little – the other extreme. I find this fascinating.

    If you can think of more examples (or counter-examples) for the presence of the higher-threshold, or some real science related to this, do let me know.