or else maybe he's been missing dinner parties all these years but people just assume he's flaky and don't bother asking why afterwards

A footnote in Jon Elster's Explaining Social Behavior (p. 49):

[A]nother coincidence felt more significant. There are two experiences I've only had once. One is being invited to a dinner party and then forgetting I'd been invited. The other is being invited to a dinner party and then having the host call me up half an hour before I was supposed to be there, to tell me he had to cancel because of illness. The coincidence, which made me think for a second that someone was watching over me, is that this was one and the same party.

Complete non-sequitur: I'm making good progress on the Elster book despite a recent re-obsession with the Back Dorm Boys. If you've never seen their performance of "I Want It That Way", I'll embed below. I can't believe many sociologists still want to talk about globalization like it's a bad thing.

coincidence, or causality: lost luggage edition!

Regarding my lost luggage, I decided I couldn't count on Northwest anymore and decided to take matters into my own hands. So, I went to the mall and plunked down money for a razor to replace the one in my bag. Sure enough, shortly afterward I got the call that my bag had been located in Detroit. I received it this evening. The handle had come loose, taking the tags off with it. I'm not exactly sure how one goes about getting the handle to a piece of luggage repaired, although I suppose calling a shoe repair shop may be the obvious place to start (actually, a luggage repair shop would be the most obviously obvious place to start, but this does not seem to exist as a category of American small business).

(ongoing series) correlation, or causality?

January 30, 2007:

Eszter gives a talk in the renowned TechTalk series at Google.

January 31, 2007:

(via NYT)