{"id":542,"date":"2010-04-07T04:43:25","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T11:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=542"},"modified":"2010-04-07T04:45:04","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T11:45:04","slug":"einstein-socks-cab-fares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=542","title":{"rendered":"Einstein. Socks. Cab fares."},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday coming home I was thinking about Einstein, socks, and cab fares.<\/p>\n

Let me explain.<\/p>\n

There are many things that baffle me.\u00a0 Mens socks are one.\u00a0 You never lose a pair of socks.\u00a0 You always lose one sock.\u00a0 Every six months I go to the closet and find a handful of socks none of which match.\u00a0 Where did their pairs go?\u00a0 So I go to the store and buy a dozen pair.\u00a0 Slowly the phenomenon repeats itself.\u00a0 Months later another drawerful of single socks each forlornly in search of its\u00a0 match.\u00a0 Back to the store.<\/p>\n

Hold that.<\/p>\n

\"einstein\"So yesterday I was on a day trip to New York.\u00a0 I took the 8 am shuttle from DCA to LGA.\u00a0 Caught the 7 pm back home.\u00a0 Fare to the city:\u00a0 $38.\u00a0\u00a0 Fare back from the city to the LaGuardia:\u00a0 $30.<\/p>\n

Then it struck me.\u00a0 Why are cabs from the airport TO the city are ALWAYS more expensive than cabs FROM the city to the airport?\u00a0 It was a phenomenon that has been bothering me for some time.\u00a0 Just like socks.\u00a0 I travel a lot.\u00a0 Boston.\u00a0 St. Louis.\u00a0 Atlanta.\u00a0 San Francisco.\u00a0 Every time it is the same thing.\u00a0 Cab fares from the airport to the city are X … cabs from downtown to the airport … less than X.<\/p>\n

I’ve tried to identify all variables.\u00a0 Time of day.\u00a0 Tolls.\u00a0 Traffic.\u00a0 None seem to fully account for the difference.\u00a0 After I net everything out it is always cheaper to go from the city to the airport than the other way around.<\/p>\n

The only factor I can think of is that coming home always seems quicker to me than going away.\u00a0 This is a phenomenon that is widely recognized.\u00a0 There are all sorts of theories but as best I can tell they all boil down to how we perceive time.<\/p>\n

Things seem longer when you are under stress (going away) and things seem shorter when you are in delight (coming home).<\/p>\n

As Einstein once said<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So I get how the cab ride can seem shorter or faster or easier going one way or the other. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I just can’t figure out the fare part of it all.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And the socks.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday coming home I was thinking about Einstein, socks, and cab fares. Let me explain. There are many things that baffle me.\u00a0 Mens socks are one.\u00a0 You never lose a pair of socks.\u00a0 You always lose one sock.\u00a0 Every six months I go to the closet and find a handful of socks none of which…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45],"tags":[41,6,14,157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}