Critical Mass

I just returned this book to the library, one week late, because while Philip Ball writes clearly, you can only do so much to simplify a book talking about how structure of society, flow of human traffic from a room on fire and urban sprawl are correlated with the state transition of liquid at a certain temperature. That certain temperature is also called the critical point, which is shown in the brilliant graph I've drawn below.

Warning: It is very brilliant, I almost forgot how to label the axes.



This graph was applied to road congestion, where y = average speed of cars on the road and x = number of cars on the road. I forgot why the cars traveled slower when there were little or no other vehicles on the road, it has been almost a month since I read that part. But anyway, Ball wrote about how the speeds of the cars slow down dramatically after the red dot (critical point) because everyone begins to get more careful as the number of cars around them increases. This has a exponential effect as car #3 behind car #2 slows down even more, car #4 slows down even more and dadadada.

Now let's try to apply the graph



to indie music. Let x = number of fans and y = level of coolness according to the Internet. Fits well, doesn't it? We'll name this band "For The Venti Poetry" and as you can see, it starts off with some amount of coolness even without any fans and it only increases as time goes on. The coolness multiplies exponentially as various music blogs, Pitchfork, AbsolutePunk and many forums start spreading its name around. However, the critical point occurs when a local radio station starts playing it and from thereon, it's a swift decline in coolness. There's a mistake though, just imagine the graph retracts back to the origin point because as the "fans" will latch onto the trendier kids' dislike of the band and the band becomes totally uncool, even moreso than when it had zero fans.



Alright, let's try applying this graph to "How much faith you have in this theory", where x = Amount of faith and y = Time spent thinking about it. Holy shit, mind blown.

That was a little too sarcastic, even form me but if you see the book on the library shelf, grab it if you have the time to spare because there are some genuinely interesting parts, which do not include the first few chapters which was PURELY Physics and Chemistry. That really did well to remind me that it has been almost half a decade since I last touched these sciences and I ran away from Junior College because of Physics.

However, it can be quite useful in attracting girls to you because as during the time when the book was in my possession, I had a girlfriend. You can't find such logic in any liberal social-scientific book, my friend.

Alright, here's something less pseudo-academic to end the post on:

I was eating lunch on the same table as Jules' mom when she asked me, out of the blue:

Mrs. Jules' Mom: What do you see in Jules?

Me: Wow. Nothing.

- No laughter -

Me: It's her personality, you don't find girls like that anywhere.

Mrs. Jules' Mom: Mmm, yes, that's right. (She said a lot of stuff here about how her daughter is a unique snowflake)

Me: (Totally listening) Yes, I mean, look at it this way, the three things most guys go for are: Looks, figure and personality. I managed to get looks and personality because honestly, how are you going to find someone who has all three?

Mrs. Jules' Mom: (Obviously very pleased) Yes, that's right. She takes after me a lot. Except that when I was young, I was slim.

Me: ...Wait, so you're trying to say -

Mrs. Jules' Mom: Yah la, perfect la.

Good stuff.