In hard times like this, the truth comes out

Wonderful cartoon by Emily Flake for the New Yorker.

What The Simpsons got right about Transport Planning

Many of you will remember that "Marge vs the Monorail" episode of The Simpsons*. Juliet Eldred has written a hilarious and thoughtful Twitter thread about how this episode encapsulates a lot of the common issues in Transportation Asset Management faced by transport agencies. Good food for thought about the dynamics of policy decision making, the creation of white elephants, and how routine maintenance gets sidestepped by the  hype of 'new' technologies and capital investment. This story speaks a lot to recent transport projects worldwide, including the silly idea of Elon Musk's tunnel project.

* If you haven't watched it before, waste no more time. Watch it here. You're welcome :)

Fresh new start

That uplifting feeling that every new year/project is an opportunity to have a fresh new start.

image credit: MonkeyUser

This is how the future of urban transportation will look like

This is true. If this prediction turns out to be wrong in 200 years, I will personally stop writing/editing this blog.

cartoon by André Dahmer

ps. As Ian Philips ‏said: "Excellent to see that in the future there's no compulsory helmet rule for cyclists."

Scientific Communication

Quick note to say I've been a bit absent from blogging while I'm writing up  stressing out about  my PhD thesis.  I keep tweeting a bit more often though.

Cartoon by Tom Gauld, HT Arthur Charpentier

My personal Christmas story

#truestory 

ps. This is that time of the year we celebrate the birth of a person who changed our understanding of the world in in many different ways.

The life of grad students

#truestory

Optimism bias

by Pat Byrnes

A biograhical note

by Roz Chast for the New Yorker

Assorted Links

1. 1% of real estate owners in Sao Paulo concentrate 45% of all property value in the city [PORT]
   
   
2. How Residential Building Restrictions Affect political Partisanship, via Tyler Cowen
   
   
3. Mesmerizing Milky Way mirrored in Bolivia's salt flats
   
   
4. Driverless  vehicles will soon start to be on the roads of Pittsburgh with driverless Uber and Helsinki with driverless busses. Cautionary note on why this hype on driverless  vehicles has gotten totally out of sync with reality (and here)
   
   
5. Ironically, the idea of the suburban shopping center was created by a socialist, ht Leo Monasterio
   
   
6. For every Starbucks in the US, there are 6 gun dealers
   
   
7. Between 1928 and 1948, the Summer Olympic Games also had "art competitions", including a town planning category, ht Tamara and Leo Monasterio
   
   
8. Amazing pictures of what happened to Fukushima Exclusion Zone
   
   
9. How classical philosophy advanced ,via Ian Duhig

The data 'is' or the data 'are' ?

Another great PhD Comic asking the big questions of Science, via Carl Schmertmann.

Autonomous Vehicles

by Paul Noth for The New Yorker

Merry OXmas

Merry OXmas everyone! 

via Thomas Bauwens

Mobile Lives

A good idea for Xmas gift.

[image credit: Liam Walsh/The New Yorker, via Arthur Charpentier]

Related quote of the day.

The Reason I am so Inefficient

[image credit: xkcd ]

Venn Diagram Doodle

Great Google Doodle today to celebrate the 180th birthday of John Venn, creator of the Venn Diagrams. I particularly like this one.

[image credit: ? via Flowing data]

Related Links

• Venn Diagrams and Regression Analysis

Normal and Paranormal distributions

Isn't it a brilliant paper?

Freeman, M. (2006). A visual comparison of normal and paranormal distributions. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 60(1), 6.

Science Experiment of the Day

[image credit: ?]

Eureka

"Eureka" is overrated

[image credit: Twisted Doodles]

Previous Cartoons:

• Political support
• Academic sins
• Brazilian Census
• Log Scale
• Peer effect + Neighborhood effect

Happy Holidays

A couple of centuries ago, a man was born who changed the course of history. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton!

[image credit: ?]

In the spirit of Christmas, I have two gifts to share with my hundreds of thousands of readers out there:

A song, by Ali Farka Toure:

And a short video about Christmas:

Happy Holidays from Victors & Spoils on Vimeo.