Origin: Drink From a Fire Hose

Summary
In 1991, a group of MIT students attached a fire hose to a water fountain thus fulfilling former MIT President Jerome Wiesner's notion that getting an education from MIT was comparable to getting a drink from a fire hose.

"Getting an education from MIT is like trying to get a drink from a firehose [sic]."
(Photo: MIT Hacks)

See Also

• Fire Hose Drinking Fountain at MIT's Interesting Hacks To Fascinate People Gallery for more details.
• Firehose at YouTube for a famous scene in the 1989 film UHF during which Michael Richards provides a drink from a fire hose as a prize on a television show.
• Fire hose at Wikipedia for a description of the history and types of fire hoses.

Synthetic Happiness

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Correction (2010-07-04): The idea for this post was incorrectly attributed;it was actually from a post "Reader Survey: Which Personal-Finance Books Should I Review?" at GetRichSlowly. The Metaist apologizes for the error.

Summary
Dan Gilbert has an interesting discussion about ways in which our "experience simulator" (aka prefrontal cortex) makes mistakes-- particularly in judging our future happiness.

(Video: TED)

Commentary
Gilbert highlights the notion of Impact Bias: "tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of future feeling states." Example: both lottery winners and paraplegics feel about the same level of happiness after a year.

Why? Here are some reasons & insights:

• There is a sort of psychological immune system that allows us to synthesize happiness.
  
  
• Despite our feeling that "natural happiness" (when we get what we want) is somehow superior to "synthetic happiness" (when we don't get what we want) they are both about the same in quality.
  
  
• Synthetic happiness actually changes your intrinsic preferences and outlook.
  
  
• Irreversible conditions promote synthetic happiness. However, people think they would prefer reversible decisions.

Meta
Ever catch yourself synthesizing happiness?

Seedless Fruit

This post is based on a comment by reader Matthew Garland. Suggestions for posts can also be sent to metaist.blog@gmail.com.

Fun Fact
The term "seedless fruit" is a botanical contradiction in terms because "fruit" are typically defined as having seeds.

(Photo: calliope1 at Flickr)

Commentary
According to Wikipedia, seedless fruit are the result of either:

1. fruit that develops unfertilized (parthenocarpy), or
2. aborted ovules or embryos that didn't produce mature seeds (stenospermocarpy).

The former gives us seedless cucumbers, the latter gives us seedless grapes and watermelon.

Meta
Does anyone know if Fruitarians are for or against the reproductive rights of fruit?

Feedback Friday: March 2010

Summary
The Metaist is having a hard time getting out of this slump. If you guys have any suggestions, now would be a good time to let me know so I can cook up some more posts. Otherwise, I think I'll just end up writing about a whole bunch of cognitive biases (which might be okay).

Looks like parts of California could use some moisturizer.
(Photo: arbyreed at Flickr)

Feedback
As always, your submissions & feedback are appreciated.

Review: Mint.com

Summary
Mint.com is a website for managing your bank accounts, loans, and retirement funds. For the deeply paranoid, it's a conspiracy to gather all of your banking information that is already available online in another place online.

It starts when you notice their cool green color and refreshing taste.
(Photo: stankuns at Flickr)

Review
Mint.com is relatively new (since 2006), yet amazingly popular.

As I see it the main benefits of Mint.com are:

• Transactions - All your transactions across all your accounts (almost; some banks aren't supported). This includes things like your checking, savings, CDs, credit cards, loans, and retirement accounts. It's nice to be able to see them all together and categorize them appropriately.
• Graphs - Being able to easily make visual representations of your spending or the trends of your retirement account is nice.
• Notifications - Mint can notify you about certain important financial moments. For example, they can notify you
  • if your spending seems anomalous (this takes a few months to adjust),
  • when a large purchase clears, or
  • when you are near your credit limit.

Some downsides:

• Small Banks - Even though many institutions are supported, some smaller (e.g., local banks) are not, and there's no way to manually import your data. (Although, they say it's coming "mid-march.")
• Privacy - Mint has a strong privacy policy and many implicitly trust its security model. Nonetheless, it's a little strange to trust one entity with all of your transaction history (*Cough* Google).

On balance, Mint helps people who are interested in their spending habits get a larger picture of their income & expenses.

See Also

• MintLife Blog for personal finance articles that occasionally feature high quality infographics.
• Mint.com at Wikipedia for some other information.
• Want Everyone To See Your Credit Card Transactions? at TechCrunch for a discussion about Blippy-- a twitter-like site that tells everyone what you're buying.