Across The Universe

For those who are not fond of stars.

Every night, look at the sky, what do we see?

We see the universe.

There are clusters of stars forming the Milky Way, planets and their satellites reflecting the light, comets and bolides scratching the darkness.

Big Bang was an explosion which created the universe. And that explosion has kept the universe expanding till now. Normally and logically, the explosion effect must wear out by time. It means after billions of years of expanding, at a particular moment, the universe must stand still. And if the gravity force does exist, it will pull everything back and therefore, create a Big Crunch.

However such scenario is not going to happen. In fact, the universe, for some reasons, will keep expanding forever. More crazily, the expanding rate has always been increasing. The universe is becoming bigger and bigger. The distance between galaxies is becoming larger and larger.  There will be no Big Crunch. The arrow of time will never stop. And, what does it mean to us?

We are able to see things because the light from that object reaches our eyes. We see a star because its light has traveled through a very long distance to the Earth. Sometimes the journey takes minutes, like our Sun. Sometimes it takes years or decades. And sometimes it will never complete its journey. The galaxies are moving away from each other, faster and faster. The light will have to travel a longer and longer distance. It will take more and more time for the light to reach us. And sooner or later, when the expanding rate peaks at the light speed, nothing will ever reach the Earth, even the fastest thing of the universe – the light.

It means one day in the very far future, when looking at the sky, humankind will see nothing. No stars. No Milky Way. No moons. Only darkness, infinite and silent darkness. That is our children’s vision of the universe. Nothing. And if they cannot observe anything, will they have enough imagination to believe in our knowledge, their ancestors, on the universe? Will they have enough inspiration to look beyond the empty space to know that long time ago, the sky is full of light from stars, lots of stars? Will they have enough motivation to explore the outer space which is mysterious and scary? Will they accept that sometimes our naked eyes fail to tell the truth? And will they believe that we are not alone in this universe?

Welcome to the most remarkable era in human’s history, when the stars are still reachable.

Tonight most people will stay at home, waiting for tomorrow to see their lover. The stars will wheel forth from the daytime hiding places. And one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be your wing tip passing over.

1631.2km

Across the universe.

K

Driving people mad

Traffic. Always a big concern.

Unless you are unplugged from the world, what is happening out there in the streets always bothers you. Even when you are staying at home, it still can drive you mad for your pizza delivery is late because of traffic jam. And if you are in a developing country, the situation may get worse due to the lack of public transport, according a popular belief. However, it may be not true. In developed countries such as USA, lines of car waiting in street is a very common scene. It has me wonder about the true solution for traffic jam? Why does public transportation help? Of course I am not able to give a practically ultimate solution, though I really want to. What I am trying to do is to provide an economic perspective for this problem.

What causes a traffic jam? Mostly personal transportation, from small vehicles such as motorbikes, bikes to big machine like cars, trucks, buses. Some people may not contain bikes in this list, just because it is environmentally-friendly. However, when it comes to traffic, bikes are even worse than motorbikes for it only carries one person while taking a similar amount of space as motors. Traffic jam has a “price”. It is the cost of energy and time lost when you get stuck. Therefore, reducing traffic jam is one of the most priorities of all governments in the world.

If we consider traffic as a product, there are 2 ways to reduce the “price” of traveling: to increase supply or to decrease demand.

To increase the supply for traffic sounds a little bit vague. Put simple, it is to make more space for traveling. And to achieve that goal, we often choose to improve the infrastructure, which means building more roads, more streets, more bridges, more tunnels… It only takes a little time for this solution to take effect. When the new road is completed, almost immediately traffic on that road will be better. Vehicles can move faster because there is more space available. The same effect happens when it comes to public transportation. If people change from driving a car to taking a bus, the street will be less crowded and therefore creates more space. That is why most of budget used to improve traffic is spent on building roads and buying buses. However, though the effect is obvious and instant, it does not last long. Sooner or later the street will be full of transports again, even when the population does not increase much. How can it be possible? It is because if the traffic is better, it will lead to a greater desire to use personal transportation. When facing the fact that they may get stuck in a street for 3 or 4 hours, people give up the idea of buying a car or go out at rush hour. But now the streets are bigger and many people are taking bus, why worry about the traffic jam? Let’s buy a new SUV and enjoy the streets. And 2 years since the new metro, everything is bad again. Since roads are public goods, everyone wants to take the most out of it. Therefore, no matter how big your road-to-be is or no matter how effective your city’s public transportation is, traffic jam will always come back.

For increasing supply does not help much, we need to turn to the second solution: kill the demand.  The number of transports should be decreased. One of the easiest ways is to use tax or fee. But as all economics books say, taxes will create a dead-weight-loss for the whole society. Therefore, taxing is not a good answer. However, we can easily notice that traffic jam is not an every time and everywhere phenomenon. Only at some specific moment and at a certain amount of places. It gives us a hint about how to solve the problem: redistribution. We need to rearrange the time people go out. We need to rearrange the routine people take. We cannot rush out at the same moment. Neither can we travel in the same streets. We need a better time table for everyone.

We can see that before the working time, everyone rushes to downtown. On the contrary, in the evening, the crowd moves back to the suburban areas. The traffic is, therefore, like a pendulum, swinging from one place to another with all of its weight. If we can make people work in their neighborhood, things will be improved. They do not have to travel a long distance to their office. Student will walk to school instead of jumping in a car. We will not NEED to travel in the street much. As a result, there will more space for those who really need to travel.

Of course, once again, all the solutions above are just pure theory. Building a road is easy. Reorganizing the whole city is much tougher. But given the current technology in transportation, it is the ultimate solution for this complicated problem.

Kz

Why Beckham is so rich and why the queen always wear a glove

In the fiscal year 2011, David Beckham earned 29.1 million euro from advertisement while Cristiano Ronaldo, another famous football player, earned 17.3 million euro from selling his image. However, those two players were just still behind many other athletes in the list of richest athletes. Not only in sport do we witness a huge amount of money used to hire the celebrities, but also in other areas such as showbiz, politics…  A pair of Nike shoe has the average price of nearly 200 euro. A contact with Rafael Radal costs more than 4 million euro. It means Nike has to sell more than 20,000 pairs of shoes to earn enough revenue just to cover the promotion cost of Nadal alone, not to mention other celebrities. Why nowadays are companies paying so much to have a famous person appear in their posters? Are we, as customers, moved by such promotion? And does George Clooney influence my decision when I go shopping?

What is a celebrity? How can we become a celebrity? What makes a celebrity different from us – the commoners? There are many ways of become a celebrity. In the old times, you’d better have a talent. You can sing, dance, write novels or swim across the Atlantic. Or you need to commit a heroic act and get a medal from the President. Or easier, you are born in a royal family. Make no mistake, Royal is the highest status of celebrity. You may not know the best athlete of your country, but you are taught and told about your king and his queen since you are a kid. The common point of all those kinds is that no matter what you do, you need to be famous if you are a celebrity. The more famous you are, the better it is. Why was Beckham paid more than Rooney? Because in the football world, he is far more well-known than Rooney. You have a bigger chance to encounter Beckham’s image than Rooney’s [That helps explain why Tiger Wood used to be the richest athlete on Earth]. Once Nike has Ronaldo appear in the posters and commercials, it has made sure that the customers are going to recall Nike’s image many more times since then. It does not matter whether you hate or like Ronaldo, after you see him wearing and holding Nike shoes, you are going to think about Nike whenever you see him, even at that time he is not doing any sport. Pay much for one time, and now the companies can rest assured that their brands will appear in our brain for a long time.

The second magic power of celebrity that marketers have taken advantage of is that we all want to be a celebrity, or at least, want to be like them. In our conception, celebrity is living their dreams. Yesterday I heard that Brad Pitt was about to buy a shooting field for Angelina Jolie as a wedding gift. 3 days ago, I saw a photo of Tom Cruise riding a naked bike, which is my favorite kind of motor. Today, I acknowledged that Messi had just bought a new super car. To us, the lives of celebrities of are far beyond ours. It is a wonderful life when you can buy whatever you want, dine in the finest restaurant, go the party the hottest girls, wear the most glamour clothes that are made only just for you. We want to be one of them and to have such a life. However, of course, we cannot. Some has succeeded in becoming a celebrity.  But the majority of us are not able to do that. Therefore, what about trying to be like them, at least, in appearance? Wear the same Rolex Roger Federer wears, and we can become as gentle and mainly as him. Use the sampoo Ronaldo uses and we are lady killers like him. Dressing like them, acting like them, using the same stuffs as theirs does not make us a celebrity, but it can somehow satisfy the strong secret desire that we can be them. So, why not turn off this tab now, go to an online shop and buy you a shirt which is designed based on Ryan Glossing’s shirt in the movie “Drive”?

The third benefit of using celebrity instead of me in the promotion strategy is that even a “small” celebrity has more fans than all of my friends’ combined. You like Adam Levine? Let’s watch The Voice and buy Victoria Secret because his girlfriend is a model there. I have to admit I watch nearly all George Clooney and Josept Gordon-Levit’s movies because I am their fan. Though some celebrities has anti-fans too, it is not a too big problem because those anti-fans can help them become more famous.

But one problem arises. There are not enough celebrities. And those existing celebrities do not know how to maintain their magic power? Marketers need more celebrities. We cannot expect to see a heroic act or an arrival of a royal baby every day. Then comes the last and largest source: those with talents. So, now you know why there are too many reality shows nowadays. Those shows are created to find, discover, build and create potential celebrities, which can be used to trick us into buying goods. And the more we watch, the more they become famous and of course, the better the effect is. Together with finding now celebrities, marketers have to make sure that the recent one is still useful. They have to maintain the magic power. One of the simple rules of being a celebrity: you cannot be too reachable. Contact and communication is needed to create a friendly image. But too much contact will make a celebrity become normal. That’s why their usual meeting with public only lasts 30 minutes. And only a few people know why royals wear long gloves. Not only for elegance, but also to create an intentional psychological distance from members of public.

And do you how to boost the popularity ratings of a royal family? Host a royal wedding and welcome a new child.

Anything can sell.

Kz and Inor.

How randomness rules our lives

There is a famous saying that has great inspiration: “Everything happens for a reason”. As a logical creature, we, human, always try to find the causes of everything that happens in our daily lives. We try to understand, explain the universe, and through doing this, we can control our lives. When a big event happens, we all think of its consequence-to-be. We try to connect event A to the event B. We blame stock market downturn on Saddam Hussein’s arrest though he had nothing to do with the prices of IBM or AIG’s securities. We try to define success, failure with our own explanation. What we fail to realize is that most of the events happening to us every day is just random.

In a gathering after seminar I attended last March, a friend asked me whether I knew Warren Buffet. “Yes. Of course I know him. What’s the matter?”. He said that Warren Buffet succeeded as a stock traded because when his stock went down, he kept holding it till it rose again. Then he concluded that stock investment should be a long-term game, and that we should not sell our stock too early. It was kind of making sense. “But what if his stock kept falling down, he decided to sell it and reinvest into another stock and made a big profit? Does your lesson still hold true?” We cannot deny that Warren Buffet was a genius in stock investment. And neither can we ignore the fact that luck played a big role in his success. Unless you have some asymmetric information, randomness controls your fate in stock trading. It is no different from gambling. In thousands of gamblers, there must be a big winner. However, that does not mean that big winner must be a master of gambling or he is going to win more next time. And it also does not mean that the losers are always losers. When the next wheel runs, the chance of success of everyone is once again equal.

If you ever watch football or any sport, you may realize a strange phenomenon that the results of your favorite team or athlete is not stable. Sometimes, they have a very big win. But the next game they bow to a weaker team. We try to explain that. When the team wins, we say that it results from the correct tactic and hard-working training. When the team loses, it must be a bad day or the referee does not do his job in an appropriate way. However, if we can look father than just one game or two, we may notice that the result of our favorite team does not fluctuate much throughout seasons. Last season we might many big wins and lose. This season witnesses many draws. But both seasons turns out to have a similar final result. And that result is called mean. It is the average ability of our team in a normal condition and without many big changes. Our result musts fluctuate around that mean. If this time we have a big win which means that the result goes far over the mean, do not be surprised that in the next time we have a high chance to be beaten hard, so that after all, the average result would be the mean. Such phenomenon is called regression to the mean.

Many psychologists agree that compliment has a better influence on employees than complain. But it is not widely accepted among employers due to their own experience. They noticed that when an employee worked well, they gave him a compliment and the next time he would have a worse result. Vice versa, after receiving a complain from the boss, the employee tends to have a better achievement than his previous one. It is indeed true. However, it has nothing to do with the compliment or complain. It is just, once again, regression to the mean of the employee’s work. It does not matter whether the employee gets a compliment or not, next time he tends to have a worse result which can be his average result or lower. The same phenomenon applies to giving complain as well. Therefore, the next time your teammate fail to do his job, remember that giving complain only makes the situation worse. And in most cases, compliment does more good than harm.

“To be king is tough, to stay king is tougher”. That saying may and have concluded one simple rule that we often forget in our lives: “most of the events happening to us every day is just random”.

Good night, and good luck.

Kz.