At the turn of the 20th century, a third of all cars on the road were electric. Electric cars had advantages over their internal combustion engine rivals: According to the US Department of Energy early electric cars "were quiet, easy to drive and didn’t emit a smelly...

In 1631 Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, royal printers to King Charles I of England, printed about 1,000 copies of the Bible that had a curious mistake in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are found in Exodus 20: 3-17. Here's the list from the Wicked Bible:...

Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School, one of the world's foremost experts on aging, thinks aging is a disease that someday can be cured. In the meantime, there are treatments that can add years (or even decades) to our lifespans. The information for this IFOD....

“Success is failure in progress.”-Albert Einstein In 1953, fledgling start-up Rocket Chemical Company's three employees sought to create a rust-prevention and degreaser for the aerospace industry. Their first 39 "water displacement" formulas didn't work but the 40th...

“The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed.”― Aldous Huxley I've recently written a book which will be published in the spring of 2023. While overall the experience has been deeply satisfying, at times it was incredibly...

A few weekends ago, I watched Lethal Weapon 2 with my daughters and nephew. Early in the movie the main characters, Martin Riggs (played by Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), are startled by a worker at Murtaugh's house using an air gun. Riggs and Murtaugh...

I love to read both fiction and non-fiction (and do so in about equal amounts). While I think fiction is hugely important and beneficial, non-fiction books have had a bigger impact on how I view the world. (For the IFOD on the special benefits of reading fiction,...

What's your life's purpose? It's a big question, and finding an answer is hard. It's common to think of purpose with a capital "P" -- an overarching reason for being. The Japanese have a different approach -- they look for "purposes" with a little p rather than a...

Here's my now 13 year old dog Dylan as a puppy. Back in the middle ages, there were all sorts of crazy and ineffectual medical treatments: blood-letting to cure sickness, drilling holes in the skull to treat head pain and other brain maladies, and the use of astrology...

Source By the time you're an adult, you've acquired a ton of knowledge, from interesting facts about the thickness of hockey rink ice to knowing how to safely drive in the snow. How have you learned all that you have? Some things you learned formally through explicit...

That's a lot of colors to choose from! [This IFOD is guest-written by my friend Jill Gaither, brilliant polymath and autodidact. She lives in St. Louis and is the Regional Business Manager for Aadi Bioscience. She has a love for reading and a degree in journalism. You...

The main way I've always used Google is to go to the homepage and just type in what I want to search for. For example, if I want to read reviews of Joy Division's 1979 album "Unknown Pleasures," I'd just do this: That search gave me 5.6 million results. The top...

Charles Daniels I just finished a book written by a friend of mine: The Watermen: The Birth of American Swimming and One Young Man's Fight to Capture Olympic Gold. It is along the lines of Boys in the Boat and Unbroken -- a story of perserverance and grit. America is...

On January 2, 2019, the St. Louis Blues had the worst record in the NHL. Five days later rookie goalie Jordan Binnington made his first start and went on to lead the Blues to their first Stanley Cup. He's a quirky guy (as most NHL goalies are). In the midst of the...

Yesterday I was on the phone with my wife and I accidentally hung up on her. She was on her way home from running an errand so I didn't call her back thinking she'd be home soon. A few minutes later she called me and said, "you didn't call me back -- I was worried you...

About a decade ago my firm bought a CRM software system (CRM = "customer relationship management"). After we implemented it, we noticed that almost nobody was using it to record client interactions or to keep track of to-dos. Given that was the main reason we bought...

Smoke rises from a crack in the road in Centralia Pennsylvania in 2010. Centralia, Pennsylvania was a mining town home to over 1,500 residents. The town had a problem: illegal trash dumps that created odors and rat infestations. To solve the problem, in 1962 the city...

My eldest daughter, Claire, turns 23 today. On one hand, it totally feels like 23 years have passed. Yet, her birth also seems like it just happened. The vagaries of time are interesting. Claire hates to flip the page to a new age. When she turned four she cried...

YouTube is awesome. I use it to watch music videos, movie and TV clips, cat videos, tutorials for fixing things, and all sorts of things people post via social media. Speaking of cat videos, check out this adorable one: cats sharing food. YouTube is huge. It is the...

We've all been there: contemplating doing something that we think would be good for us but not liking the particular activity. A great example is running. I love to run (but I'm not supposed to anymore which makes me sad). I've talked to all sorts of people who'd like...

That women talk more than men is a common stereotype. A 2007 research study on this question summarized the usual view and its source: The stereotype of female talkativeness is deeply engrained in Western folklore and often considered a scientific fact. In the first...

"Ladies and gentlemen, rock 'n' roll." Those were the first words said when MTV went live on August 1, 1981 at 12:01 a.m. On the screen was an image of an astronaut planting a MTV flag on the moon. The first video played was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the...

Years ago I attended a leadership and self-improvement retreat where one of the leaders said something that knocked my socks off. He said: "expectations create unhappiness." I've thought a lot about this and I think he's correct. Think about when you've been angry,...

Dylan at 4 years old (he's 13 now) -- He's an Andorran Retriever.* Lately, I've been paying special attention to my dog, Dylan, and noticing how he approaches life. From my observations, I think there's a lot we humans can learn from dogs about how to live our lives....

A previous IFOD covered the Coastline Paradox -- the notion that you can't really know the length of a border or coastline. That's because the size of the ruler you're using matters: as the size of one’s ruler gets smaller, the length of the coastline or border gets...

I've been on quite a few charitable boards over my career. Early on, when I joined a board I was an eager beaver. Right away, I typically had all sorts of suggestions about what the organization should start doing and stop doing. But with rare exception, my ideas...

I'm 52 today. Younger than some. Older than most. Older but not old? Regardless of the categorization of my age, I have 52 thoughts about life I’d like to share. Things I've been collecting for some time now. 1. Life is both tragic and hilarious. Sometimes at the same...

Charlie Munger is quoted as saying, "All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there." I guess Charlie should avoid the hospital given that's where about 68% of Americans die. Based on the causes of death listed on death certificates, the top...

Our minds are constantly abuzz, flitting from one thought to the next and back again. How many of these flitting thoughts do we have in a day? Research out of Queen's University in Canada found that humans have around 6.5 thoughts per minute or about 6,000 per day,...

I've never been to Albuquerque, but I feel like I've been there after watching all five seasons of Breaking Bad. It seems like a lovely city and a nice place to live. As of 2022, the Albuquerque metropolitan statistical area ("MSA") is about 900,000 people, making it...

Being a bird probably is pretty cool -- mainly due to the whole flying thing (eating worms, not so much). But being a bird has its downsides, namely all the manmade stuff they crash into. And then there are the cats. Here are the non-natural causes of bird deaths each...

Earlier this year United Van Lines released their 45th Annual Movers Study, which reports on state-to-state migration patterns. Here's the map summarizing the 2021 data. Note the legend -- blue states had more people inbound than outbound, while yellow states are...

I tend to get appreciative comments when I share things I'm enjoying currently. In that spirit, here are five things I've been digging lately. 1. Garmin Instinct Solar Watch I was in the market for a new watch this past fall. In terms of activity and sleep tracking, I...

My basement man cave with my analog stereo setup Japanese Tea Ceremonies The Japanese Tea Ceremony is a ceremonial way of preparing, presenting, and drinking a type of green tea called matcha. The process of making the tea and its presentation is considered an art and...

One day in 1972, Dr. Henry Heimlich, a thoracic surgeon, was reading an article in the New York Times Magazine about accidental deaths and noted that choking was number six on the list. About 3,000 people died each year from choking. Being a thoracic surgeon, Dr....

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity. -A. Edward Newton, author, publisher, and collector of 10,000 books. In...

The four symbols on the inside sleeve of Led Zeppelin's fourth album I discovered the band Led Zeppelin when I was in middle school.  I was completely blown away. Prior to then, I had mainly listened to what my parents listened to: 1970s soft rock and oldies from the...

They probably aren't arguing about Euclid's proof of infinite primes Gregory Benford's 1980 science fiction novel Timescape contained this line: “Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.” This is known as "Benford's Law of...

According to legend, 15th century Japanese Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa broke a beloved ceramic bowl. His artisans attempted a repair which he rejected. He instead asked them to mend the bowl using gold. Thus was born the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is as much of...

"To make a long story short" is a commonly used idiom that signals that the speaker is about to summarize the information they are about to tell you. And the information doesn't need to be a story -- the phrase is commonly used prior to conveying all sorts of things...

For me, 2/2/22 is a day of converging events. It's "2's day" -- a meaningless yet fun string of 2's in the date (even 02/02/2022 is fun). It's Groundhog day (maybe my favorite holiday). A day of snow in STL (a foot or so is predicted). And it is The IFOD's fifth...

Vesna Vulović 50 years ago, on January 26, 1972, a DC-9 exploded at 33,000 feet over East Germany with 28 people on board. A bomb in the cargo hold placed by Croatian terrorists caused the explosion. Shockingly, one person, flight attendant Vesna Vulović, survived....

Being a bit nervous giving a speech is a good thing We tend to think of stress as bad. And it can be, as too much stress is associated with various health problems. But stress has an upside: up to a certain point it is associated with higher performance. The figure...

A few nights ago I had a bad dream (I won't bore you with the details) and woke feeling fearful and disoriented. It was a crappy start to my day and I felt a bit off for the next few hours. We've all been there. But maybe bad dreams have a beneficial purpose. Research...

How many ways can you combine six LEGO bricks of the same size and color? Before knowing the answer I guessed a few thousand and thought I was probably overshooting. It turns out that I massively underestimated the answer. In 1974, for whatever reason, LEGO computed...

Heavy Metal is a sub-genre of rock music known for its “distorted guitar ‘power chords’, heavy riffs, wailing vocals and virtuosic solos by guitarists and drummers” (Oxford Music Dictionary). The origins of Heavy Metal trace to the late 1960s and early 1970s....

We're all aware of the placebo effect -- a beneficial effect that occurs even though the drug or procedure is a fake. It turns out that there is a lesser-known opposite to the placebo effect called the "nocebo effect" which can happen when a patient has negative...

As the president of a successful multi-family office, I get tons of e-mails and voicemails every day from salespeople wanting to sell their products and services to our firm or our clients: investment managers, IT consultants, recruiters, HR consultants, private jet...

Looking for a good book to read? I read 51 books in 2021. Here's a link to that list: Books Read in 2021 Here were my favorite six of the year -- four fiction and two nonfiction (the numbers are the order in which I read them during the year): 5. Agent to the Stars,...

ANSWERS:1. Run aground. 2. A run in her stocking. 3. Take the money and run. 4. Run it up the flagpole. 5. Also-ran. 6. Run a fever. 7. Running on empty. 8. Runs in the family. 9. Home run. BONUS: "Along the riverrun" from "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce. Source The...

We're in week 16 of the NFL season and playoffs are close on the horizon. We're also in college bowl game season. With that in mind, let's consider a key decision that faces coaches multiple times a game: should they go for it when faced with fourth down? On fourth...

https://youtu.be/eTLJQwcec_8 My dog, Dylan, loves to ride with his head out of the window of the car. Even if it's freezing out he still wants his head out in the wind. But if we're going over about 25mph, I need to have more than just his window down to avoid that...

What is Unclaimed Property? There is a huge amount of unclaimed property in the U.S. -- an estimated $49.5 billion of it is held by the states, waiting to be claimed. "Unclaimed Property" is money or other property (like an insurance policy) that belongs to you but...

Last week I was at a St. Louis Blues hockey game (we won) and the guy sitting behind me asked his granddaughter a question I overheard: "How thick do you think that ice is down there?" Stop and think of your own answer. The granddaughter replied, "well, the way you're...

Bottled Water When bottled water was first introduced a few decades ago I thought it was one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard of. Why would someone pay a dollar or more for something you easily could get for free from a tap? Of course, I was horribly wrong....

First-ever image of the far side of the moon from 1959. Taken by the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft In common parlance, the Moon has "a dark side." This doesn't mean that the backside of the Moon harbors a secret base for Darth Vader where he and his minions practice using...

About 375 million years ago, creatures that lived in the oceans began moving onto land. These animals are the ancestors of all vertebrate land dwellers, including humans. The eyes of these early land animals had evolved to see underwater -- they were water-filled and...

Lewis Hamilton driving his Mercedes F1 Formula 1 is one of the most popular sports in the world. Analytics company Nielsen projects that it will have 1 billion fans in 2022. It hasn't been as popular in the U.S. as the rest of the world, but recent years have seen...

John Dorr, a protege of Thomas Edison, founded an engineering firm that made him extremely wealthy. In 1940 he used a chunk of that wealth to create the Dorr Foundation to support scientific projects in the areas of metallurgy and chemistry. But an observation in the...

A selfie while waiting for NYC Marathon to begin on Nov. 6, 2011 This past weekend was the 50th running of the New York City Marathon. After being canceled last year, about 33,000 runners competed this year. Ten years ago I ran the NYC Marathon. It was the third of...

Repairs and upgrades to America's infastructure is long overdue Last week the $1 Trillion "bipartisan" infrastructure bill passed the House. How bipartisan was support for the bill? In the House, the vote was 228-206 with 13 Republicans voting for it, while six...

Getting enough quality sleep is essential to good health. As I've noted in a previous IFOD, there are four primary things to focus on for health and wellness and sleep is the most important thing, followed by good nutrition, then resistance training, and lastly...

Welcome to November (how is it that I'm always surprised when a new month comes around?). Given all the supply chain issues, shopping and ordering early is probably a good idea. First, what makes a good gift? Psychologist Dan Ariely says this about gifts: “A good gift...

Over my adulthood, I've been surprised numerous times upon hearing of a couple getting divorced because it seemed that they had a solid relationship. On the flip side, I've also been surprised that some married couples stay together because they seem to have a stormy...

Some Quick Anxiety Stats Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S. According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, about 18% of adult Americans -- about 40 million people -- suffer from some form of anxiety. Anxiety disorders...

Here I am taking out the recycling at my house and being captured by my Ring floodlight camera Security and surveillance cameras have become ubiquitous. But the extent to which our comings and goings are captured on camera may surprise you. A study last year from...

According to the International Energy Agency ("IEA") in its 2020 World Energy Outlook, "For projects with low-cost financing that tap high-quality resources, solar PV is now the cheapest source of electricity in history.” The U.S. Energy Information Administration...

“In the beginning the Universe was created.  This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams was published on this date in 1979. Have you read...

Earlier this week I published a post titled "Everybody Struggles." A friend of mine said she read it as "Everybody Needs a Snuggle." I thought that was hilarious at first, but then I got to thinking, does everybody need a snuggle? It turns out that we do -- being...

Yesterday I took a Peloton cycling class (a 30-minute climb ride). At the end, the instructor started crying. She said she had things in her life she was working on and was frustrated that she wasn't seeing progress. She thinks she needs to improve in a lot of areas...

According to Britannica, a meme is a "unit of cultural information spread by imitation." The Oxford Engish Dictionary says a meme is "a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users."...

Videogames are a $180 billion industry. Let's put that in perspective -- that's bigger than: The global film industry which posted $100 billion of revenue in 2019 before being decimated by COVIDSports in North America which notched revenues of $71 billion in 2019The...

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights do make a left. UPS drivers are given a specific route to follow for each day's deliveries. The UPS routing software doesn't necessarily choose the shortest or fastest route because its algorithms include a rule to...

A rocky hill in Ebihens, France Our brain’s ability to recognize patterns helps us predict future events, which gives us a survival advantage. When our minds can’t detect a recognizable pattern, we have difficulty anticipating future events and we experience stress....

Chuck Norris is an actor who usually plays a tough guy. As you may be aware, over the past few decades, the internet has provided us with the gift of hundreds of "Chuck Norris Facts." These "facts" are humorous statements of Chuck's toughness and invincibility. I've...

I received positive feedback on IFODs that are sort of recommendations for things: A Few of My (Recent) Favorite Things, Five iPhone Apps I Can't Live Without, and My Three Favorite Health and Fitness Devices. Here are some other things that I'm really digging right...

Tris jumping off a building in the movie adaptation of Divergent Divergent The Divergent series of young adult books by Veronica Roth is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian Chicago. In Divergent society is divided into five factions: Abnegation (selfless), Erudite...

Ergodicity is a concept from thermodynamics. It's complex but a simplified way to think about it is where group probabilities don't necessarily apply to individual events. What happens to the population at large isn't what matters -- it's what happens in your...

Early in the history of our firm, our founder told us a story that has shaped how we deal with bad situations. The story is made up, but the point is real. Here's the story: For your 20th wedding anniversary, you and your wife decide to spend the weekend at a Four...

John Boyd “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” - Pablo Picasso This past weekend I drove with my daughter from St. Louis to Lewiston, Maine to drop her off at college. Our 20-hour route took us through Erie, Pennsylvania (we stopped and had...

Monument commemorating the Elvis Fight A Bit of Background Elvis Presley was an American cultural icon. Known as the "King of Rock and Roll" he was one of the most popular musicians from the mid-1950s until his death in 1977. He was also a movie star, having starred...

Image source: Dailysliceofpi Perfection exists when something cannot be improved -- when it has no flaws or defects. Few things in life are considered perfect. Sometimes perfection is subjective, like Nadia Comăneci's perfect score on the uneven bars at the 1976...

The "Original Six" NHL teams -- Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins, Detroit Red Wings, Chicago Blackhawks and New York Rangers -- comprised all the teams in the league from 1942 until 1967. In 1967 the number of teams doubled to 12 -- adding the...

When we're looking to change or improve something, it's in our nature to add rather than subtract. That's the conclusion of recent research titled People systematically overlook subtractive changes in the journal Nature. Consider the Lego structure below -- if...

Double-decker horse-drawn streetcar in London circa 1900. Source. The industrial revolution spurred an urbanization movement as new factories created jobs and economic growth that drew workers from rural areas and other countries. For instance, in 1850 New York City...

In Rockport, Maine there is a plaque marking the birthplace of Hanson Gregory. It reads: “In commemoration. This is the birthplace of Captain Hanson Gregory, who first invented the hole in the doughnut in 1847. Erected by his friends, Nov. 2, 1947.” Humans have been...

I'm currently 51 years old. When I think back on my childhood, much of it is lost in a fog -- especially the long, boring days of summer break. However, I do have vivid recollections of attending various sleepaway summer camps. I bet many of you have similar (mostly)...

In 2016, I suffered a serious ski injury. It occurred on an easy run and I don't even know what happened. One moment I was skiing along and then next I was missing a ski and crashing. Not knowing what caused the crash is unsettling -- if I knew what had caused the...

Origins of the Myth In 1918, the USS Cyclops, the biggest ship in the Navy, with 306 people and 11,000 tons of manganese cargo for steelmaking in World War I, was lost at sea in the area now known as The Bermuda Triangle. The last message from the Cyclops was “Weather...

Vinyl Albums I bought my first album when I was in sixth grade -- Wings Greatest Hits. I had saved up the money and went with my uncle to a record store to buy it. It was followed by The Beatles White Album and then hundreds more. By the time I was a teenager I had...

During WWII the US Army (there was no Air Force yet) faced an interesting problem: where should they put armor on bombers in order to reduce casualties? Armor is protective against bullets but it is heavy. Too much and the planes won't perform well. Too little leaves...

After a long day of work and parenting do you stay up later than needed scrolling through social media, flipping through TV channels, or reading a book? If so, you aren't alone -- it's a common enough behavior that there's a name for it: Revenge Bedtime...

Height is determined by a combination of your genetics and your environment. Factors such as childhood nutrition and disease play an important role in how tall a person becomes. Notably, a study in the British Medical Journal found that the correlation between parent...

The other day I was in a meeting with a co-worker brainstorming estate planning strategies for a client when he said "there may be more than one way to skin this cat." I knew what he meant because I was familiar with the phrase but unfortunately an unwelcome image of...

My iPhone is stuffed with over 100 apps -- which is probably pretty normal. While my email, texts, and Chrome internet apps are my most used and essential, there are five others that are gamechangers for me: 1. Dashlane Without a password manager like Dashlane, I...

I'm going to cost my parents a lot of money The estimated due date that obstetricians provide assume that pregnancy lasts 40 weeks. But there is no timer that goes off at 40 weeks that signals that labor should occur -- it is considered normal to give birth up to two...

In 1975 Fred Brooks proposed that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." This is now known as "Brooks's Law." While Brooks's observation was specific to late software projects, it rings true for other types of projects and where it is tempting to...

There's a man of convictionAnd although he's getting oldMr. Browning has a predictionAnd we've all been told-"New Madrid" by Uncle Tupelo Here's a bit of trivia for you: the largest earthquake ever recorded in the lower 48 states didn't occur in California -- it was...

I love to snack on hard pretzels and over the past few years I've been noting which pretzels stand out. Here's my list of the best hard pretzels I've come across: 1. Quinn's Whole Grain Sea Salt Pretzels I recently bought these at Whole Foods and was completely blown...

Also called the "law of first digits," Benford's Law says that the first digits of numbers are not evenly distributed for naturally occurring numerical data. "The law maintains that the numeral 1 will be the leading digit in a genuine data set of numbers 30.1% of the...

I've been vegan for nearly two decades and "where do you get your protein" is the most common question I get asked (for other questions I get asked, check out this IFOD: Mostly Dumb Questions Vegans Get Asked). It's an understandable question because a common...

The Godzilla of recent movies is huge -- about 350 feet tall -- which about half the height of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Such a big animal is physically impossible. Here's why: Increasing size in one dimension scales linearly. For example, as you spool out a...

Source: sketchplanations In the 1970s a group of disability activists in Berkeley, California got the city to take out a curb and install a sloped ramp of concrete. This action in Berkeley sparked advocacy for so-called "curb-cuts" across the country so that those...

I've been in YPO -- "Young Presidents Organization" -- for five and half years and I love it (actually I'm in YPO Gold now that I'm over age 50). My favorite part is being in a forum, which is a group of nine of us that meet monthly to discuss business, personal, and...

SARS-cov-2 Virus Things seem to be getting better. The economy is recovering, people are traveling, restaurants are full, and the CDC says that vaccinated people can dispense with their masks and social distancing. We'll see what the future holds, and I'm cautiously...

Albert Einstein is among the most famous scientists for with good reason. His theories of special relativity and general relativity upended physics and changed our understanding of how the universe works. His discovery of the photoelectric effect (for which he won his...

Articles and books about leadership tend to focus on what qualities make a manager an effective leader. Characteristics such as having strong ethics, being forward-looking, dependable and a good communicator, clearly defining goals and objectives, investing in...

In 1927 Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the first automatic bread slicing machine. His first sale was in 1928 to a bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri and his second was to a baker in St. Louis that same year. In 1930 sliced bread was mass introduced with the roll out...

Financial planning 101 includes understanding the concept of compounding returns and power of saving and investing earlier rather than later. For example, consider two scenarios: 1. At age 22 Carl invests $5,000 per year and continues to invest that amount for 15...

In his 2016 essay in Medium, David Hopkins blames the TV sitcom Friends for the downfall of Western Civilization. The premise of the article sounds ridiculous, but it makes an important point about our society’s view of experts. He claimed the show “signals a harsh...

"Eva" the robot A.I. in the move Ex Machina Alan Turing was an English mathematician who was a key figure in code breaking the German "Enigma Machine" during WWII and is considered the father of the modern computer. He was also among the first to consider the...

I would have grabbed the peanut M&Ms instead! My wife and I have been watching Breaking Bad (for the first time) and we just viewed the episode where one of the drug dealers working for the main characters was held up by some junkies and robbed of an ounce of...

Happy 420 Day Today is April 20th and informally is associated with marijuana. The association began back in the 1970s when a group of teenagers in San Rafael, California would meet at 4:20pm to hunt for abandoned cannabis plants in the nearby forests. Over the...

Twenty-Five years ago, at the dawn of the internet age, if you had told me that a few decades hence everybody would have nearly all the world’s information in our pockets via smartphones I would have thought that our society would be better informed and more rational...

There's a lot of holidays and commemorative days. Related IFOD: Happy __________ Day! A prior IFOD celebrated National One Hit Wonder Day. Today is National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day. I love grilled cheese. Even though I am vegan, I still make a mean grilled cheese...

I turned 51 a few days ago and a friend texted me "you are now officially in the second half of life." If he's suggesting that I'll live to 102, I'll take it. But, if you step back and look at your life, you can break it into multiple halves. Here's how I break down...

In my 30s I was crazy into triathlons which morphed into me being totally into cycling. I loved going for long rides with friends. My longest bike ride was the "Seattle to Portland Ride" with my brother -- 204 miles in a single day. But I stopped cycling about 8 years...

What does it mean to be successful? It's a complex topic and there is no single definition that fits. What success means is both highly personal but at the same time is wrapped up in societal expectations. I've been noting various definitions of success over the past...

A few years ago, I led an investment training session at our firm. I thought I did a pretty good job and made some salient points. However, after the training in talking with my co-workers I came to realize that my points were generally misconstrued and my message...

On Friday March 20, 2020, the S&P 500 declined 5.2% and the stock market was seemingly in freefall, having declined nearly 35% from its February peak. News was bad and getting worse. Many states and cities had shelter-in-place orders and there was little doubt...

What do Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States have in common? They are the only three countries that haven't adopted the metric system. I was born in 1970. I recall as an elementary school student in the late 1970s and early 80s being prepped for America's...

Screenshot from upcoming movie "Dune" based on the book by Frank Herbert Are you a reader? If you are, good for you! Reading has a lot of benefits including possibly resulting in a longer life span, and benefiting your children's future success. Reading both fiction...

People have mentioned that they appreciated the recommendations of my three favorite health and fitness devices, so I thought I'd provide a list of a few things that I love beyond health and fitness (BTW - I get no $$$ for linking to these things). 1. Leesa Hybrid...

Females make a much greater investment in reproduction: nine months of pregnancy, the health risks of giving birth, and years of caring for the child. Males, on the other hand, have a much lower level of investment in reproduction and can be as low as zero investment....

By far the brightest light on earth is the Sky Beam at the top of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. As you may be aware, the Luxor Hotel is a pyramid and the Sky Beam is a solid cord of white light that emanates from the pinnacle of the pyramid. Here's a few facts about...

I can vividly recall sitting in our car in front of the hospital in 1999 with our newborn daughter in the backseat. As my wife and I sat there the vast responsibility we now had was sinking in. I turned to her and said, "ok, so now what do we do?" I was shocked there...

Penicillin Was Not the First Antibiotic "Ask most people what the first antibiotic was, and they’ll answer penicillin. But the real antibiotic revolution started years before penicillin was widely available." Source. What was the first antibiotic? It was sulfanilimade...

I miss traveling. I've only been on a plane one time in the last year. While I usually pick aisle seats on a plane, when I do sit by the window I am always struck by how much of the country seems to be undeveloped. Is that true? Yes. The Continental U.S. (i.e. lower...

Vaccine production continues to increase and it's possible that there will be enough doses for any American who wants to be vaccinated to do so by mid-to-late summer. So, let's dive into common questions about these amazing vaccines (I'm not an infectious disease...

About 10,000 years ago humanity transitioned from living as small bands of wandering hunter-gathers to large communities whose nutritional needs were met by farming. This transition is referred to as the "agricultural revolution" and whether it was a positive or...

During the 20th century more than 60,000 people in the U.S. were sterilized, often against their will, based on the bogus theory of "eugenics." What is Eugenics? According to History.com, "eugenics is the practice or advocacy of improving the human species by...

Years ago a friend who is a chef mentioned the importance of including umami in soups and various other dishes. I had never heard the word umami and had no idea what it was. Here's an IFOD on umami if you are curious. After learning about umami, I started to see the...

Un A "lexical gap" is the absence of a word in a language. For example, individuals who have never engaged in intercourse are referred to as "virgins" but there is no word in English for someone who is not a virgin. When we come across a concept that has no word, we...

Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsing in 1940 For years I had a recurring nightmare of traveling as a passenger in a car on a bridge impossibly high over a miles-wide river that steeply sloped down to the opposite shore. The bridge was so narrow cars could barely pass each...

I love Groundhog's Day. Not because I actually believe that Punxsutawney Phil can predict winter's duration but because I receive merriment from the notion that a large rodent has weather predicting abilities. It is so ridiculous that I cherish Groundhog's Day. (For...

Why We Like Baseball Even Though It's Boring Years ago at a conference I had the pleasure of hearing Harvard psychologist and author Daniel Gilbert speak. He told a story that went something like this: Imagine you go to a baseball game. It's hot out and the game is...

Amish women rollerblading behind a buggy (which looks super fun!) We are in the 22nd year of the 21st century and are inundated with technology: smart phones, smart appliances, voice assistants, internet, video games that look like real life, social media, texts, zoom...

Salvator Mundi In 1958 the painting Salvator Mundi sold for around $200. It resurfaced in 2005 when an art dealer bought it out of an estate sale in New Orleans for $10,000. In 2017 the Salvator Mundi sold for an astonishing $450 million. Why did the painting...

During George W. Bush's presidency I read an opinion piece that contained the following nugget of wisdom: "Just because W says it, doesn't mean that it's untrue." This notion is simple yet profound. Just because you usually disagree with or dislike the messenger...

We moved to a new house on Friday and over the past few weeks we've bought some new furniture which required assembly. I've found that each time I walk into a room with furniture I've put together I feel a sense of accomplishment and think that the new furniture is...

Today's IFOD is written by my 18 year old daughter. I am what people call "vertically challenged" or "fun-sized." Standing at 5’2”, and no long growing, I have encountered obstacles that have made me want to be taller.  It wasn’t until my first semester of college...

A view of Lake Baikal from space A "lake" is a body of water surrounded by land that is deep enough that sunlight doesn't reach the bottom (a "pond" is a body of water shallow enough that sunlight reaches the entire bottom and photosynthesis can occur on the bottom)....

Paying attention to our sleep and getting enough exercise is essential to long-term health. There are some amazing devices out there that can help us in these areas. Below are my three favorites. 1. Oura Ring Before I get to gym equipment, I want to give a shout-out...

As I read this morning how Bitcoin returned over 300% in 2020 and is now up to $34,000 when it traded for about $10,000 in October, I felt a desire to jump on the Bitcoin train again (having exited it when it hit $20,000). Is Bitcoin worth $34,000? Who knows - it has...

In 2019 I met my goal of reading 100 books in a year by reading 101 (list). This year my focus was on reading long books. Not all of them were long, but many of them were over 500 pages. Consequently, I only read 50 books this year due to the focus on long books (and...

I am in the midst of moving houses. We currently live on a "Lane" and our new house is on a "Drive" which is pretty close to "Forest Park Parkway." My office is on the corner of "Hanley Road" and “Forsyth Boulevard." Why do streets have different suffixes and what do...

Years ago my business partner and mentor, Spencer Burke, told me that one of the most powerful things you can do to make someone think you are smart and want to help you is to ask for their advice. He told me that when you ask for advice that other person becomes...

There was an elderly gentleman named Mark who worked on the same floor in our building as me. By elderly, I mean that he was probably around 90 years old. He had fought in World War II and was among the soldiers who stormed the beach at Normandy. He used a walker and...

Tessa the Border Collie - age 5 Right around the time I graduated from law school my wife and I got a Border Collie puppy we named Tessa. At the time we lived in an apartment in Columbia, Missouri that didn't allow pets. We got Tessa notwithstanding our apartment's...

On arrival to college as a Freshman, I pledged a fraternity, and along with my pledge brothers, experienced an entire semester of old-school, Animal House-style hazing. It was brutal. Here's a small example: one afternoon I was cleaning toilets at the fraternity house...