Financial Mathematics Text

Sunday, April 21, 2013

The Perfect Parking Spot

So the other day I observed something I have many times before and it has always fascinated me (although it doesn't exactly surprise me.) As I'm walking toward the store to purchase groceries there's a gentleman in his vehicle waiting as a woman loads groceries into her vehicle. Now he's either checking out in a very stalker-like manner or he was simply waiting to take her parking spot. I would imagine he probably waited a least a minute or two to get this wonderful parking spot.

Now I could understand this under certain situations. For example, if available parking was limited then it might make sense to wait for a parking spot to be freed up. Or if the gentleman had some health problems that made walking long distances difficult. But I don't think either was the case here.

(1) There were parking spots, maybe, 20 spots away. So the gentleman was going to sit there and waste gas for a minute or two to alleviate himself from having to walk an additional 30 seconds more.

(2) If there were health issues, then I highly recommend he go see a doctor as it's not too difficult to get a temporary handicap parking pass. This would make available all of the, much closer, handicap parking spots.

But it really fascinates me that people (Americans) are willing to waste more time (and gas) looking for the perfect parking spot than just park somewhere in the back and walk a bit (and heaven forbid, burn a couple of calories.)




Sunday, April 7, 2013

On the Existence of Married Bachelors

In my series on That's an Empirical Question, I noted that philosophers often consider questions which are "empirical" as being outside the scope of philosophy. The domain of philosophy would then be some subset of "non-empirical" questions. Part of my goal has been an attempt to demarcate the empirical from the non-empirical.

Today I will continue this endeavor by exploring it from the other side: what makes a question non-empirical and is there a place for these sorts of questions. This is a very large subject, which could not be treated in one blog alone. I will, however, start with an example (as the title of the blog suggests): All bachelors are unmarried men.