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...

Today is December 7th. On this day in 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, a naval base in Hawaii. 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 were injured. 19 ships were destroyed. The following day, FDR addressed a joint session of Congress and requested a...

Image Source: HBR.org It can be stressful giving constructive feedback to a co-worker. Most of us don't want to seem like a jerk or damage our relationship with the receiver of feedback. We often feel like we want to balance the negative feedback with positive...

Early in the pandemic, I read an article in Forbes that predicted that the U.S. would flatten the curve and turn back the spread of the novel coronavirus because of American exceptionality. The author touted our country's ability to pull together, our scientific...

Antipope Clement VII Our current political environment in the U.S. reminds me of the time when the Catholic Church had two popes (and for a short period - three popes). That time of multiple popes is referred to as the Great Western Schism (or just Western Schism or...

In the U.S., our Thanksgiving traces its roots to a 1621 harvest celebration that occurred in Plymouth attended by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Native Americans. Thanksgiving was declared a holiday by President Lincoln. Link to IFOD on the proliferation of holidays...

My Inspiration for Writing About Vulnerability I've had a few things happen recently that have inspired me to write about the importance of vulnerability: I am writing a book about investment mental models. Even though it is non-fiction, my editor and book coach,...

It's just a flesh wound! Some People Dying of Covid Still Think It's A Hoax I've read of health care workers relating that some of their patients still believe that COVID is a hoax even though they are sick and in the ICU with COVID. A good example is the below quote...

This is a picture I took on the road to El Chalten, Argentina I collect quotes and keep them in a Word document. Below are the six that I keep coming back to and which have had the biggest effects on my worldview. They are chock full of wisdom. I hope that you find...

Rendering of Commonwealth Fusion System's SPARC reactor In the midst of the ongoing pandemic and election craziness you might have missed two amazing things that happened recently that portend a brighter future. 1. Waymo Driverless Taxis Waymo is the autonomous...

Beth Harmon, the main character in The Queen's Gambit Last night my wife and I finished The Queen's Gambit on Netflix. The show is about an orphaned girl who learns chess from the custodian at her orphanage and goes on to become a chess champion. It's a great show and...

Picture source: Milwaukee Independent Even though our country is polarized politically, most of us actually agree on quite a few issues. First, 71% of Americans believe that "we have more in common with each other than many people think." Source. Below are survey...

Here's a bit of merriment in the midst of election uncertainty: type into the Google search bar your birthday (without the year) and then "Florida Man" and read through the top few headlines to see what Florida Man was was doing on your birthday. For example, if your...

The results of the election might be in doubt for days or weeks. Humans don't deal well with uncertainty, so emotions may flare. With that in mind, today's IFOD provides a dose of understanding drawn from social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's excellent book The...

TL;DR: I propose a "Covid Golden Rule" which consists of asking ourselves the question, "Am I being part of the problem or part of the solution?" The Covid-19 pandemic sucks. It has sucked for a long time. And it's likely going to suck for a lot longer. While the...

I'm writing a book about investing. The first chapter is about how humans dislike uncertainty and how we make decisions in the face of uncertainty. In my research about how humans deal with uncertainty I've come across a paradox: as science has progressed, what...

Years ago I went to a psychiatrist who was shockingly unhelpful. I'd tell him of my struggles with OCD and anxiety and he'd respond with statements like, "you shouldn't worry about those things," and "just tell yourself to stop doing those compulsions." Worst of all,...

That looks like a long way down! Adaptive Rationality That we are hardwired to make irrational decisions due to our ingrained biases and heuristics has become a hot topic over the past few decades. In fact, over the past 18 years three Nobel Prizes in Economics have...

Imagine two new families move into your neighborhood, the Smiths and the Joneses, and both have two children. You learn that the Smith's oldest child is a girl but not the gender of the younger child and that one of the Jones's children is a girl, but you don't know...

Goods and services can be broken into three categories: 1. Search Goods. These goods are commodities that have attributes that the buyer can evaluate before purchasing. With search goods, you can assess both the price and the value before purchase. Examples include...

1972 Cadillac Deville Sedan Since 2010, sales of sedans in the U.S. have fallen by half. Drivers instead are choosing S.U.V.s and light trucks. In 2019 S.U.V.'s were 47.4% of new auto sales while sedans were just 22.1%. Source. While S.U.V.s have been gaining...

Why the Bakken Looks Like A City From Space At Night Natural gas being flared off of an oil well As shown in a picture below, the Bakken Shale oil fields are lit up at night like a major city. This is due to all the natural gas being flared off oil wells. First, let's...

My first thought seeing this picture was "why aren't they social distancing?!" Let's say you want to plan an outdoor happy hour with friends tomorrow. You check the weather and it says that there is a 40% chance of rain during that time. What does 40% chance of rain...

I love to read (link to my book lists). An amazing aspect of reading is that in a relatively short amount of time (hours) you can read a book that contains the teachings and wisdom of the author's life and career. Without reading, we are limited to just our own...

As of 2011, the last year for which data is available, the unintended pregnancy rate in the U.S. was 45%. Source. That means that 45% of all pregnancies were unplanned or mistimed. While that's high, it's an improvement -- in the early 1980s it was a shocking 60%....

I thought this was a good post for Yom Kippur as it is a day of fasting and atonement for those of the Jewish faith. If you are Jewish, fasting, and hungry, realize that there are some health benefits that go along with your fasting! Siddhartha on Fasting Before we...

Sometimes one hit is all you need . . . Today is National One-Hit Wonder Day! Way back in 2018 I wrote an IFOD on all the holidays and observances there are (about six a day). Here's that IFOD: Happy __________ Day!!!! According to daysoftheyear.com, "One-Hit Wonder...

Quick Summary of the Chicago Tylenol Murders In 1982 seven people were killed over a period of a few days when they took Tylenol capsules that were laced with the deadly poison cyanide. The killer removed bottles of Tylenol from retail store shelves, filled the...

TL:DR: The Tyrannosaurus Rex's closest living relative aren't reptiles, but rather are chickens and ostriches. We tend to think of dinosaurs as these large reptilian-like creatures because that's what we learned in school and how they've been portrayed in movies....

Survival of the Fittest is A Misleading Phrase Darwin's (and Wallace's) theory of natural selection, also known as evolution, is often summarized as "survival of the fittest." This brings to mind various species competing for scarce resources and battling each other...

If you don't understand this red pill and blue pill meme, watch the movie The Matrix. Are coincidences a blip in the matrix? Are they evidence that our lives and the universe have purpose and meaning? Unfortunately, no. If you like to think of coincidences as some...

The variola virus causes the highly contagious smallpox infection Humanity has eradicated just one infectious disease: Smallpox. Seriously? How about all those other horrible diseases that no longer seem to be an issue? They are still around. Horrible Infectious...

Image Source: Boston Post An effective way to be more persuasive is to make your communications cognitively fluent. What is Cognitive Fluency? Cognitive Fluency is how easy it is to think about something -- something that is easy to think about is "fluent" while...

Ever wonder why you get bit by mosquitoes more than other people (or vice versa - why you don't get bit as much)? What affects how tasty you are to mosquitoes include: CO2 Excretion: A key targeting mechanism that mosquitoes use to find their human targets is smelling...

The mythical quaalude People on ‘ludes should not drive. - Jeff Spicolli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) Quaalude is the brand name of the drug methaqualone and was a prescription drug in the U.S. from 1961 - 1984. I remember as a teenager in the '80s there...

Lewis Fry Richardson was an English mathematician, and being a Quaker, was also a pacifist. One area he studied was human warfare with the hopes of lessening the incidence and severity of wars. He developed a hypothesis that the likelihood two neighboring countries...

Way back at the start of the pandemic (it feels like years ago) a colleague clued me into a story related to Prince's epic halftime show at Super Bowl XLI: Prince is set to perform the 2007 Super Bowl halftime show in Miami. He uses like four electric guitars on a...

In a 2012 research paper, Vasilios Kosteas, a Cleveland State University economist, found that people who regularly exercise earn roughly 6% - 10% more than people who don't regularly exercise. Additionally, even modest amounts of exercise were found to boost...

In 1859 Charles Darwin published one of the most famous books in history: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, otherwise just known as The Origin of Species. What Darwin proposed in the...

In 2007, author and statistician Howard Wainer published an article in New Scientist titled The Most Dangerous Equation. What a provocative title! So, what is the most dangerous equation? There are two types of equations that can be dangerous: those that are dangerous...

Have you ever had the sensation that you were being watched, then looked around and in fact saw someone watching you? What's going on? Do we have a sixth sense (or a seventh sense if you can also see dead people)? It's a pretty common phenomenon and it's not a sixth...

Just lurking under a lamppost Way back in 2006 Jakob Nielsen forumulated what is now known as the 90-9-1 rule which states that in online communities most people don't actively participate. Specifically the rule states: In most online communities, 90% of users are...

Getting enough quality sleep may be the most important thing we can do for our health. As I've written previously, the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute says that there are four primary things to focus on for health and wellness and sleep is the most...

I heard a story once of a guy who in a meeting referred to his $250,000 motorcycle and when someone commented "wow, that is super expensive, what kind is it" he responded, "it's just a normal motorcycle that cost me $10,000 -- $250,000 is what the Microsoft stock I...

This is a Powerball Ticket I contributed to my Lottery Trust in 2018. (It didn't win) I buy a Powerball ticket 4-6 times a year and have been doing so for about 20 years. For me, buying Powerball tickets has led to some powerful benefits. First, let's get this out of...

Why is the night sky dark? That the sky is dark at night is a conundrum that puzzled scientists for centuries. German physicist Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers famously put the problem this way in 1823: If the universe is infinite in size, and stars (or galaxies) are...

Journalists are trained to be objective in their reporting, but sometimes the pursuit of objectivity leads to giving legitimacy to unsupported or untrue fringe views. This can occur where the press seeks to provide the viewpoints of both sides of an issue. This is...

My temperature has been taken a lot lately as I am sure is the case with you as well. I've noticed that I usually run just a bit over 97° and it sometimes is 96 point something degrees. Having been told throughout my life that the average normal body temperature is...

The Herman Miller Aeron Chair Some analogies I've heard about where we are in terms of the pandemic are "we're in the 3-4th inning," and "we're on a cross-country drive and in the Midwest about now." Unfortunately, these analogies are probably correct, as even the...

A Mouse and Elephant have about the same number of heartbeats during their lifetimes even though their lifespans are very different It turns out that all animal species have about the same number of heartbeats during their lifetime. This nearly universal rule was...

So many delicious fruits are in season right now, including grapes. I've been buying black grapes at my produce market and they are so sweet and delicious it is like eating candy. In fact, they are so good it made me question whether or not eating grapes is healthy....

Arthur C. Clarke Arthur C. Clarke was a British science fiction writer and futurist. (Don't like science fiction? Click Here.) Clarke was known as one of the "big three" of science fiction writing of the 20th Century, along with Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein....

Let's say you go on a first date. Over dinner and a few glasses of wine, you get to know each other a bit. At the end of the evening, you part ways and return to your apartment. As you discuss your date with your roommate she asks, "so, is he smart?" After a few hours...

A few years ago I volunteered at a food bank. My job was to sort various foodstuffs by type and also to check the "use by" or "best by" date on the food. What surprised me is that the food bank people advised that most food can be safely eaten long after it's "use by"...

Major Planets There are eight major planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. None of these major planets are named Dave. To be classified as a major planet a celestial body must do three things (source): It must...

You've probably heard about the statistician who put his head in the oven and his feet in the freezer so that on average he felt comfortable. Or the man who drowned walking across the river that had an average depth of three feet: it was one foot deep in some spots...