John Nash, RIP
05/25/2015
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I was walking down the street today and went past the block where there are now six mattress stores, all holding their Memorial Day Weekend Mattress Blowout. There used to be only three or so mattress stores on this block, but three more have opened in the last year or two to make sure that the neighborhood’s mattress needs are fully satisfied.

John Nash, who was played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind and died last week at age 86 in a hired car crash, is the mathematician who worked out the game theory for why all the mattress stores end up in the same block.

By the way, always buckle your seatbelt when in the backseat of a car being driven by a professional. Harry Baldwin points out:

When I had a corporate job, I often used car services. I noticed that a lot of the drivers were noticeably bad at their job. At first I thought, shouldn’t a professional driver be better than the amateur, just as a plumber or electrician is better than the average do-it-yourselfer? Then I realized people don’t get a job as a driver because they’re good at driving. They get the job because they’re not good at anything else, either.
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