Ordinary Nothing

I noticed this lovely Guardian article talking about how according to WHO statistics "Europe is world’s suicide hotspot".

The article of course doesn’t mention Israel, so it wasn’t clear if we’re considered Europe or Asia for this purpose.
So off I went to the WHO website (They have a special, and large, suicide related area. How sad is that?), and looked at the statistics myself.

In the global comparison table, suicide rates here are higher than
some countries, but are indeed lower than the scary levels of most
west-European countries.

But it’s very hard to make anything from the data. What’s available
on the site is PDF files. The data is collected over different years,
and the PDF means it’s not easy to run any cross sections, sort the
data, or whatever… I certainly don’t care enough, or am bored enough, to
do hard manual work and check this for myself.

Personally, I’m not about the commit suicide in the foreseeable future, so there’s no urgency…

I am curious as to why suicide rates here are lower, though.
Sociological theories related to suicide (well, the few ones that I
actually came across. Really not my field, or area of interest) would
suggest this indicate people here are happier, or that the population
here is more cohesive. And I must say, they’re not, and it isn’t.
On the other hand, this is one mystery that I don’t feel any crucial imperative to explore…

Been a very busy week…

Anyway, things should be calmer now, so I’ll get back to posting
things here. Will probably use the next few days to catch up (on
volume) with a few extra posts, then get back to "normal".

Yea, yea, I know, I’m supposed to just start posting again, and not to
actually announce that I’m going to, nobody cares… But heck, it’s my
blog, and I can post this if I want to.
So there.

After the pharmacy from the previous post, I went into a different
store. At some point their public announcement system (a bunch of low
quality, but high volume, speakers spread around the store) came to life
with a loud "To all our customers! To all our customers! Your
attention, please! A special offer! Only today!".

And that’s it. Silence.

People were staring at each other a bit puzzled. And nearly a minute
later again an announcement. "Attention, customer! Pay attention
please!". And died again, this time with a low quiet trace in the
background of someone whispering to someone else a sentence along the
lines of "… not working, I don’t know what…".

I never did get to find out what was the special offer. And the
announcement system wasn’t dead, if the thought occurred to you. It went
on perfectly in it’s usual work of calling personal to come to specific
stations.

Most odd. They got my attention, then did nothing with it…

I had to go to the pharmacy yesterday to take out some prescription. I
arrived only about half an hour before official closing time, and this
was a large central pharmacy, so there was a long line of people there.

Since they often have more customers than clerks (Yes, yes, they’re
"pharmacists", and studies long and hard for it. Sure. But these days
they don’t make prescription drugs, just take bought boxes off the
shelves and give them to people. The only actual requirement is being
literate) they have a queue system in place.

Near the entrance there’s a dispenser with a paper roll of sequential
numbered tags. And next to the counter there’s a small electric
billboard showing the next number to get services. Pretty common stuff.
But the billboard only has a two-digit display. The numbered paper tags
go to three digits.

I didn’t have any problem with it. I took out number 608, and the board
showed 67. I never doubted that it means my turn is in about 41 people.

Other people seed to have a problem with it, and were not able to grasp
the simple mechanics of number overflow over the hundred’s digit. Again
and again (and again) someone would take a number and stare entirely
puzzled at the billboard, until another person told them that "once it
gets to one hundred it will roll back and start again". Then
they’d sigh a long "Ahhhh" of understanding, mutter about how long they
have to wait, and find a place to wait in.

The fact that so many people constantly were unable to realise that
indeed the lower two-digit numbers will return, I found quite sad.
The fact that so many other people kept telling them "one hundred" I found somewhat sadder. The numbered tickets had the number on them! it was six hundred and something. There are only two ways to look at it:

 
1. The billboard shows only two digits. It will only reach to 99,
   and then start again. It can’t show a hundred, so it will never reach
   it.

 

2. The billboard shows the last two digits of the whole number. It will reach 600, not 100, it went over 100 nearly 500 people ago.

And yet nobody merely said that the numbers will return, they all said 100. ALL.

On a different side note, I was once at the same pharmacy when there
were about 90 people waiting… This is very close to having 100 people
waiting… In which case two people are going to come to the counter
claiming it’s their turn whenever the billboard progresses…

Lately I started to get a large number of
hits from various search engines, by people searching for "Tsunma" of
all things. Some alone, some together with "tidal wave" or "disaster"
or other things of the sort. So I assume it’s not some ancient Japanese folk hero that they’re looking for…

So just to make it clear to the poor people that look for info and can’t find it: You spell it Tsunami, not tsunma.

Go that?

Thank you, and better luck on the next search. Glad I could help.

Thinking back to my school days for the previous post, I also recalled a certain incident.

I was sitting in class, the teacher was talking about something
boring (Nope, been too long, I don’t remember what) and so I wasn’t
paying attention. I didn’t speak with anyone else or made any noise (That I recall. Been a while, like I said), I
just didn’t pay attention.

She noticed. I think I said I was sorry (If I did, it was probably a
lie, but it was for the sake of politeness to a teacher, which at that
tender age seemed more important than complete honesty). In typical
schoolroom manner she didn’t leave it at that, but instead told me to
collect my things and leave the class.

What usually happened in those cases (I was far from the first kid
asked to leave the class due to ‘interrupting’ the lesson. It was my first time, but far from being her first) was that the
kid started crying, pleading, yelling, and making a huge loud mess
begging to be left in the class. This never helped, the kids always got
their schoolbag and went out to the hall, and it wasted lesson time,
but everybody enjoyed the show.

I was being a pragmatist, and I was (still am) generally indifferent to
social trivia. If the teacher told me to get my things and get out, it
seemed to me that the best thing to do will be to get my things and get
out. Which I quietly and promptly did. I mean, I was bored anyway, so
why make a pointless scene asking to stay ?!

The rest of the lesson passed quietly in the hallway. I never had a
problem to find things to do by myself. And I figured this was about
the end of this matter.

Not quite. You see, as it turned out the poor teacher was
incredibly offended by my behaviour. Yes, offended and hurt. And yes,
to a large enough a degree to develop general hostility toward me, and
to half sobbingly complain to my mom on the next meeting at school.

She got the feeling that I just don’t give a darn about her at all
(why should she bloody care?) .  She expected the loud scene, and
was shocked that she didn’t get it. How was it that she put it to my
mother… "I told him to take his notebook and bag, and to get out to
the hall. And he… he… he just took his things and went out! Just
like that! He didn’t ask to stay! He didn’t try to convince me to leave
him, or to argue!
He didn’t cry, or anything! It was like he didn’t care that I sent him
out! He didn’t care about me at all!!!".

Appalling, isn’t it? I was being a good kid that did exactly what his
teacher told him to do, and doing so ranked by this teacher as one of
the worst problems any kid gave her that school year…

Some education system teach children math skills by teaching them
how to do math. Some other education systems, ours included, starts by
forcing the kids to memorize lots of meaningless information that looks
like math, so that they will have the appearance of being able to do
basic math.

Such as the multiplication table. Instead of explaining to kids the
idea behind multiplying, they are forced to learn by rote the results
of multiplication of all pairs of single digit numbers.

I personally preferred to do the math. This meant that it usually took me a
bit longer than for some of my classmates to come up with the answer, but
it also meant I was never in a position where I couldn’t provide an
answer due to forgetting it…

In any case, here’s a simple trick that kids (can) use to aid in
this. It allows to get result for the whole multiplication table when
you only need to remember the lower half of it (1-5 times the rest):

Hold two fisted hands.

On each hand count off fingers by the
difference from the number and 5 (so it you multiply 6×7, count one
finger on one hand, and two fingers on the other).

Each finger that
you counted is worth 10 (in this example, that’s 2+1, so we have 30).

Now multiply the remaining fingers on each hand (4*3, after we used 1
and 2. So 12 here).

Add the two results. Presto! The
correct multiplication answer:
30+12 =42 = 7*6 .

Cute trick.

Of course, kids are mean towards anyone who is different, and so as
you may have noticed the trick only work if you have five fingers on
each hand. Those unfortunate souls scary freaks that have lost a finger, or the scary evil demon mutants with an extra finger, cannot use it as-is.

The trade-in idea isn’t new. Various sellers in various industries
offer customers a discount if they bring in an older product similar to
the one they’re buying.
You see many trade-in offers for cars, for televisions, lots of home electronics equipment, phones, refrigerators,
and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, there are some things that you would normally not see offered as part of a trade-in deal. Like this tantalizing offer that I saw in the newspaper today…
A trade-in discount for… toothbrushes. Yes, you read that right. Bring in your old used toothbrush, and get a discount when buying a new one.

I mean… who would go to a store carrying a used toothbrush,
for crying out loud ?! The discount price is small, the price for a
brand new top of the line toothbrush is small. Would this really
overcome the gross factor ? Would it overcome the reaction of other
potential customers that would get out of the store when they see
people brandishing their used toothbrushes about ?

Personally, I may buy another competing brand of toothbrush just to avoid being asked if I carried the old one with me…

And from a different point of view, this also doesn’t make much
economic sense. Trade-ins are done as a sort of partial price
discrimination. Trying to attract the customers who won’t pay full
price because they have a similar product, but who may be willing to
pay less to get a sort of an upgrade. Well, newsflash:

1. Everybody has a toothbrush. Everybody.
2. The features of a new product are meaningless in the toothbrush
   industry. People replace a toothbrush when it needs to be replaced.
   They will replace it in the same time, regardless of price variations
   of the new product or the available features.

So this trade in does not make their toothbrushes appealing
(although maybe appalling) to more people. It does not attract extra
customers beyond those that would by them anyway.

The only idea is to try and shift some people who already buy a
toothbrush from the competitors to them. I admit that it is a valid
economic purpose, but is this really the way? Somehow, I don’t quite
see that.

If anyone wonders, the offer is for new Colgate toothbrushes. So if
you happen to be in Israel, have your old toothbrush with you, and want
to get a shiny, new, dirt-cheap Colgate toothbrush, now’s the time.
Me, I’ll buy Oral-B next time…