Four [Random] Thoughts 9 — We Need More Street Artists
1 Street Artists
What gives a city its unique personality? Obviously the people, and things that make up our streets. Its architecture, the street furniture, the city services, and infrastructure; as well as the the rhythm of cars, bicycles, and pedestrians. However, I believe art, and in particular street artists, contribute the most to the city's personality and color. From the many live performers, to muralists, sculptors, and graffiti artists.
Except for the living statues, I don't like those. :)
This week I've seen the couple in the picture, dancing at different hours on the same corner; and although they captivate a few tourists every time, they are invisible to the majority of people around.
They are great, and sadly, this is probably plan B in their lives. How do we educate ourselves to appreciate the value these artists bring to our lives? To our cities? What programs have you seen or heard about to support them?
2 Airlines Tricky Arrival-Departure Time Reporting
Regardless of the cause, the fact that many airplanes depart or arrive late all the time is ridiculous. I use Aeromexico because it is convenient to have direct flights to most cities I visit for work.
In my experience, they almost always depart late¹; yet, they arrived not that much late. Are they cheating? And if so, who? Certainly not the passengers. Why can they publish travel times that give them "some room" to arrive "on time"? Or to arrive earlier than scheduled?
I started recording the exact departure, and arrival times of my recent flights. Literally the moments of takeoff, and when they open the door and you can walk out of the airplane. See the sheet Airline Operator from Hell.
Airlines should be considered as breaking their contracts with passengers if they are late on departure, or arrival. And they should record the times as we passengers do. i.e. You arrive, when you leave the plane, not when the pilot welcomes you to the airport we just landed on… Sometimes it takes a long time for you to get off the plane.
I'd switch to an airline that focuses on the passenger experience in this way. Not the Uber Airway nightmare Cesar depicts in his article, mind you; but I'm sure we can do better.
3 Solve for Happy
I read Mo Gawdat's book Solve for Happy, and I would NOT recommend this book to anyone serious about happiness. It has a couple of interesting ideas, and points. But never delivers on the "engineering your path to joy".
Part of the book is a treaty on what you are not… You're not your brain, your ideas, or your body, etc. Gets old very fast, and not really useful.
It ends up not delivering the promised engineering formula to happiness, but a weird religious entity that will save you, an architect, not nasty like the one from intelligent design, and not as cool as the Matrix's architect.
4 Critical Thinking
Many things we learn are wrong, because we follow blindly patterns from our families and friends; or because we were conditioned to accept certain things. Religion, and even our favorite football team; are good examples of things we follow just because they were pass on to us when we were kids.
I fear that because we grow with many of these dogmas, it's easier to continue adopting beliefs, without involving reason, and solid arguments. The list of cognitive biases that turn off rationality is large, and complex.
I try to fight back biases by forcing me to stop and think more about any given topic, and do some basic research. Especially when I think or hear things like: "in my experience", "this works for me", "X did it and it worked", etc.
And, in general, by supporting my decisions on data as much as possible.
I'm conditioning myself to do critical thinking.
¹ In average, the 8 flights I've taken so far this year, departed 39 minutes, and arrived 1 hour and 10 minutes late. They counted many of those as 'On time', but I'm recording the actual takeoff and disembark times.
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