Water, water everywhere

Simple things we can do to save water. Every day. It all adds up.

Nuclear Energy - Do we need it?

Following a very interesting debate in our Public Economics class, I looked for other arguments for and against nuclear power. Here's a great debate on TED.

Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy? | Video on TED.com

Also, The Economist Debates has a great debate and associated background reading here.

Domestic Transformer

This is an amazing apartment in Hong Kong. It might seem a bit unwieldy, but I think it's genius - all the details.

HT: TopCultured

Opportunity Cost view of rating movies

How I rate a movie depends on how badly I wanted to watch the movie, and what my situation is. This leads me to believe that the "opportunity cost" of watching the movie has a large part to play in how I rate movies. If it's a middling movie and I'm bored, I am entertained enough for it to be worth my while. If I'm really busy and I find a movie even marginally less than superb, it will get a relatively bad rating from me.

This is also why I may not trust other people's judgement (unless it's a consensus view). Wisdom of the crowds may remove this effect though, through regression to the mean.

Work-Driving as bad as Drink-Driving

... according to NYTimes.

A Kinder, Gentler take on Success and Failure

This TED talk advocating a softer approach to judging oneself and other people, is quite a gentle but effective thought-provoker.

A case against the kind of meritocratic snobbery we all indulge in.

trip trop nyc - public transport visual map of nyc

This tool can tell you approximately (visually) how far and accessible a place is from any given address in NYC. I think there's an equivalent for London too. Quite nice.