Last week was the first week of school in Howard County, Maryland. It was a chaotic week for transportation and, I think it was caused in large part by contractor issues. In the USA we tend to believe that privatizing everything makes it better. But, in fact, all it does is create an extra layer of remove from key employees and create inefficiencies. As an example, from this news story:

“My husband is a bus driver for Howard County with a different contractor, and I know that there are companies like his where the drivers don’t have enough routes,” said Andrews, “Instead of us having to drive our kids to school, they need to use some of the existing contracts to fill these routes.”

One in 1,600,000.  That’s odds of randomly meeting someone I know in NYC excluding my wife’s family.  And yet, due to construction on the Q line, Danielle and I found ourselves on the bus with Katy Ho, who we hadn’t seen since graduation.

I’ve often remarked to my wife that it was odd we hadn’t seen any friends in New York.  And she always reminds me that New York has eight million people and the likelihood of anyone we know being in the same place as us is pretty slim.  I know this is true, but I strangely feel as if New York is a more intimate place.  I think it has to do with the fact that because there are eight million people there, you’re almost never walking alone on a street.  The city seems to be overflowing with people and it seems inevitable that you’d meet someone you know by chance.  But that’s just an example of how bad the human mind is at figuring out probability.  Katy was coming home from yoga and dinner with some friends.  And if the train tracks hadn’t been under construction, we would never have met up.