I'm in New Orleans this week, doing some writing and also attending...Mardi Gras. I just saw my first parade, Muses, last night. Which inspired the joking title of this blog post. For fun, I Googled the phrase "the science of mardi gras" to see what turned up. All I got was a bizarre reference to a pretty unscientific comment by Anderson Cooper:
It’s a very public event, of course, but there’s something intensely personal about the throwing of the beads. You make eye contact with someone, toss them a necklace. They say thank you, and you roll on. The only beads people want are the ones they catch themselves. I find that very telling. The beads that fall on the ground are rarely picked up. They lack the personal connection, the bond has been broken.
That's not my experience of Mardi Gras. My experience is that the good beads are ...
