land O links

Here are six links for your weekend reading:

1. Bill Cook proposed a new TSP challenge. The best tour in the 115,475 city tour will receive a $500 prize.
2. “11 ways that consumers are hopeless at math” is a nice article that went beyond the obvious. I particularly enjoyed #8, the section on how we avoid transaction costs.
3. The Operations Room posted a new blog post about tiered pricing for free hotel wi-fi. A nice post on incentives, congestion, externalities, and consequences.
4. There are several misconceptions about the US healthcare system. Three of them are discussed in this article. The first misconception is how Americans tend to grossly underestimate the amount of public money is spent on healthcare. I was a little surprised by the degree to which this was underestimated. Read the full article to see the nifty figures.
5. Why do we wear pants? If you’re a man: horses. If you’re a woman: bicycles. “[T]echnological systems — cavalry, bicycling — sometimes require massive alterations in a society’s culture before they can truly become functional. And once it’s locked in, the cultural solution (pants) to an era’s big problem can be more durable than the activity (horse-mounted combat) that prompted it.”
6. I saw an article called “A Tale of Two Americas” in the USA Today when I was traveling earlier this week that summarized how many Presidential commercials are aired mainly in just a few swing states. I live in one of those swing states. There are four months until the election and I am already sick of the election coverage. The image showing the “two Americas” is below. You can also see it in this video about the article.

A tale of Two Americas. Almost all of the election commercials are being aired in just a few swing states.

Thanks to my readers and tweeps who brought these to my attention.