Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind by Gary Marcus

Now, if you don’t want to blame your momma anymore, this is the book for you. All those problems -- making those questionable food and partner choices, believing in the devil and not in NASA’s moon trip, making dumb math mistakes, forgetting just about anything sometime—These problems are not your mama’s fault; they are not your fault. Those proto-monkeys and lizards did it. They spawned and recreated, bequeathing you a bottom brain that smolders and cooks up schemes for living in the jungle, not the city. Your brain stays always alert for that big, furry, pointy-toothed thing you have nightmares about, while always ready to grub for smelly roots, tasty rabbit parts and potential breeding partners. We have a lizard brain that is worse than our parents’. Gary Marcus explains our thinking tools as a big kludge—just a pile up of lizard, mammal, and, finally, faulty reasoning circuits that do not play well together.

The worst is--we default to the lizard brain when life gets tough.

Most people know how evolution failed us by standing up four-legged hoofers to a life of backaches and, eventually, metal knees. But the million year old brain is just as bad—we react; we don’t plan. We were evolved to eat, not to do math. According to Mr. Marcus, it’s a wonder we can even post well-reasoned stuff like this. He wrote a slim little offering, but it is a nice intro for the layperson. Note: I prefer Amos Twersky talking about wacky thinking or Eleanor Rosch explaining how we make categories in our heads.

Growing Nails

Everyone knows the two big growth areas in America are finger nails and coffee shops. But coffee isn’t hot anymore. Starbucks is closing shops down. What can you do after you have every street corner covered? You close low performers or do like Peets--sneak in tea. Read its full name sometime “Peets Coffee and Tea.” Tea is metro and hip and you pick your infusion (not just caffeine). So the curve is bending towards the tea guys. Just look at the SF (a culture leader, if there ever was one) tea house map.
But I don’t want to talk about drinking drugs today. I want to talk about nail shops. There are lots of them and they haven’t completely starbucked America yet. My prediction: nails have room to grow.
When I was a kid all the women I saw did their own nails. I remember moms and teenagers sitting on the porch with their wet toes shining bright red, sipping on a coke in the 100 degree summer heat, waiting for them ten guys to dry. Now it’s different. Do you know how many people do nails for someone else‘s feet? The census says 51,000 nail doers do it. And the Stats of US Businesses says 12,000 nail places were selling gels and acrylics and all sorts of nail stuff in 2008.
But I thought about it and the census number seems really wrong. I drove by more nail places than that last year.Look at the map of LA metro. Google shows 11,000 nail salons (That’s Google‘s term, not mine). So with about 20 million people that’s one nail shop for every 2000 people. If every shop has only 4 nail doers then that’s 1 nailer for every 500 folks (including old retired guys like me and babies too who don‘t do their nails often).
OK go ahead and argue that LA is nail happy and different from the rest of the US. So let’s look somewhere that doesn’t make you think about body parts right away--How about Casper Wyoming (I stuck my cursor in the map with my eyes shut to get it). I think boots and saddles for Casper, not nails and pedicures, but it has 23 nailerys for 50 thousand folks. That’s pretty close to the same as LA--one nail shop for every 2000 people.
So for the US with 300 million folks that means 150 thousand nail shops. And using my very conservative 4 nail doers per shop you get 600,000 nail doers.
We just need more growth companies like nail salons. Poofy dog shops are growing. Weird phone ringtones are hot. Two thousand dollar bikes with show-all tights are doing well. And all the old guys at the gym talk about how their wives like their snuggies.
America is on the move. Don't let those panhandlers standing around fool you