Game Theory at the Airport

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Southwest Airlines does a sort of hybrid first-come, first-served seating that creates a fascinating game theoretical problem at the airport.

As you check in you get a boarding pass in group “A,” “B” or “C,” and the groups line up and board in that order. No assigned seating. The result at the gate is a somewhat complex waiting game. If everyone cooperates, we all get to sit until right before it’s time to board. But inevitably a few people start lining up early, which starts a stampede. And then everyone ends up standing in line for a very long time. Here at gate A7 at the Albuquerque airport, where I’m sitting waiting for a flight to Phoenix, people have been lined up for half an hour for their flight.

The benefit of this group behavior seems minimal, but I admit I’ve done it myself more than once. Today, I’m sitting.

05/05/05

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As has become my custom, for my birthday I went out today and rode my age.

The last couple of years my age didn’t seem a particular challenge, so I added mountains. But with the knee feeling tweeky, today just getting out and cruising 46 miles seemed a reasonable bargain. Going slow rather than fast, I was reminded of why I ride.

Up on the Alameda Bridge, the USGS guy who takes care of the river gauge was there, taking river bottom measurements. I told him I log into his gauge ever day on the Internet to see how the river’s flowing, and he seemed geniunely pleased. Someone cares! He explained to me how the gizmo works (radar, bounced off the river surface to measure its height), and showed me the device he uses to figure out where the river bottom is (it’s constantly changing).

Down in the south valley, a crew was out planting chile.

And somewhere in between I ran into my teammate Sage, and we rode together and chatted. Lovely day.

Tomorrow: MRI.

Peiser’s Analysis

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British climate wag Benny Peiser went public last week with an analysis that had been rejected by Science magazine questioning the alleged scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are changing Earth’s climate. Peiser repeated an analysis published in Science last year by Naomi Oreskes, and claimed that Oreskes was wrong to say that zero papers among nearly a thousand reviewed questioned the greenhouse consensus.

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Daybook

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books: I’m flirting with two books right now. The Worlds of Herman Kahn is Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi’s biography of the RAND thinktank guru of nuclear war strategy, the real Dr. Strangelove. It’s an odd book, but that is a good thing. Thinking about nuclear weapons and nuclear war is and should be unsettling. Moneyball is Michael Lewis’ look at Billy Beane and the Oakland As’ love affair with statistics and low-rent pro ball. Dan McKay, who works with me at the Journal, sat down with me at the ballpark the other day and asked what I thought the most underrated statistic was in baseball. I suggested runs scored. He offered regression to the mean, and made an excellent case. He loaned me his copy of the book.

family: I had a lovely evening Friday, driving up to Española with Nora to see a student film festival. We stopped off in Santa Fe afterwards for a thin crust pizza at the Atomic Cafe, which she suggested. That she was able to take me to one of her places…. Well, it occurs to me that my daughter is largely over the divide between little girl and young woman, and she is delightful company.

cycling: It’s hard to understate the frustration of reading the steady stream on my cycling team’s email list as they talk about the training rides and the upcoming races. (Tomorrow morning it’s hill climbing repeats. God how they hurt, and I love them.) Out of frustration I sent out a message Saturday organizing a Ride for the Wounded, promising no intervals, no hills, small chain ring only. I got some company, a nice leisurely 40+ miles with a couple of the wounded (two bad knees and an aching rib cage among the group). It was lovely.

The Stench of Angels

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The Phelpsoids’ assessment of last week’s Angel Action:

Some really tolerant people dressed up in PVC pipe and thread-bare, ratty sheets masquerading as angel?s wings, and people holding up banners attempted to block our fabulous signage, but it worked as well as stink trying to escape a feces eater. As we ducked in and out of their foolish attempt at sign blocking, Megan expertly maneuvered around their smelly selves, and said, “14 years on a picket line will teach you some pretty awesome tricks, amateurs.”

So if Nora and her friends are amateurs, I guess that makes the “Tachmonites” …. what?

As Nora put it, “What a great way to spend 14 years.”

Mile Swim

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It’s a little emotional scar, of self-doubt. When I was a teenager at summer scout camp in the Sierra Nevada, I failed at the Mile Swim. They had a swimming area at the lake, and you could get your Mile Swim badge by swimming laps back and forth. I couldn’t do it. I got too tired.

I’ve been depressed about my knee, not really able to do much on the bike that is physically challenging, so I decided I would swim a mile this weekend. For a real swimmer, it’s really not that far, but I’d never done it before, and a thing I’ve never done before was the sort of challenge I needed. The Y pool was closed today, but I Googled and found a city pool that has lap swimming and did it. It only took about 45 minutes, and I kept going until they pulled up the lane markers and the kids started jumping in for free swim. In fact, I kept going through the free swimming kids, so I could get in an hour, which seems the minimum these days for my body to feel like it’s right.

2200 meters by the time I was done. Not fast. I’m a pretty pathetic swimmer. But by my tally (the exercise numbers junkie has a log of these things), it’s the fastest and longest swim I’ve ever done. Enough to banish the demons for a day.

Thursday Bird Blogging

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For the story of the extraordinary discovery of the Ivory-billed woodpecker, I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Carl Zimmer.

My bird is a little less rare but I hope none the less delightful in a modest sort of way:

killdeer

(Image courtesy USGS)

That’s the killdeer, which tends to show up about this time every year in the urban wetland created in a big bend of the concrete flood control channel near my house.

Jeff Baxter, Missile Defense Analyst

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Via the Arms Control Wonk we learn that NASA has chartered a new Exploration Systems Advisory Committee whose members include “Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, Missile Defense Analyst, Beverly Hills, Calif.” As Jeffrey puts it:

Yes, that is “Skunk” Baxter of the Doobie Brothers. How the hell does a guy in a band called the Doobie Brothers keep a security clearance? …. Perhaps our missile defense policy makes more sense if you’re high.

In addition to the Doobie Brothers, Baxter also did a stint with Steely Dan, where on Countdown to Ecstacy he “sheds his outer skin and stands revealed as a Wild Boy.”

Lonnie swept the playroom, and he swallowed up all he found.
It was forty-eight hours ’til Lonnie came around.

I think there’s little doubt that this is the only album I own by a bona fide Missile Defense Analyst.