Random thoughts

Enjoying the last days of my summer freedom, but I stopped by the office for a few minutes and thought I'd share some random thoughts.

First, I love counter intuitive stuff like this:

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby. [See, there's always a catch!]

The guy should have been an economist. I'm thinking of buying his book, but it seems it'd be wasteful to have it shipped here from England. Seriously, if the guy's "pitch" is what it seems, how can he justify using up resources printing books?

What else has been going on? Well I had a run of household "accidents" that led me to consider the possibility that my domicile was located on a burial ground populated by recently infuriated Indian spirits. Fortunately, the mishaps seem to have abated and I now have a nifty new
washing machine. I'm not a big fan of spending large sums of money on anything, but buying a new washing machine really burns me up. See, every washing machine I've ever had a "personal history" with has lasted at least 20 years. Hence, it seems silly to spend multiple hundreds of dollars on a new appliance when the classifieds are chock full of used ones. Heck, if you search you can even find ones just a couple of years old.

The problem, though, is the "lemons problem" (for which this guy won a Nobel prize) of asymmetric information:

1. The seller knows MUCH more about the used appliance than the potential buyer.
2. The buyer knows such appliances last a long while, so why would the seller be selling -- unless it's a lemon.
3. Hence, many mutually beneficial trades will not occur because of the asymmetric information. How does a seller of a quality used washing machine convince me it's a good machine?

I tried a few options on my own and had just about resolved myself to buying new, but then I talked to Caffeine Brother. He knows a guy and this guy hooked me up with a fancy new" (some minor unloading scratches) high efficiency front loading machine for less than 50% of even the sale price. So far I've done a couple of loads and all seems well. I hate to admit it, but I am very fond of the new machine. It has all kinds of cool lights, timers, options, buttons, knobs, etc. I have no idea if I need all those, but damnit they're fun.

Oh, I also spent a goodly chunk of Friday sitting in the local ER. [No, I wasn't the injured party; I was helping a friend.] That, though, deserves a later post of its own. For now, I'm going back to enjoying the last days of summer vacation.