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...

Since the pandemic began I've been engaged in an activity that I know isn't good for me: spending lots of time scrolling through Twitter and news feeds reading grim news. Even though I know better, I find that I'm drawn to obsessively reading the news about the...

Burial of Covid victims in Brazil I follow a Twitter account called "Underwhelming Facts" that tweets out facts that are really obvious. Such as: "empty wine bottles weigh less than full ones," and "TAB is an anagram of BAT." Wow. Today's IFOD may seem like its an...

One Saturday in 1987 when I was a strapping young man of 17, one of my chores was to rotate the tires on one of our family cars (rotating tires merely means taking off each wheel and moving them to different locations to even out the wear). Using the tire wrench I...

Does your spouse's personality affect your career success? This question was addressed in a study by Joshua Jackson of Washington University in which he found that yes your spouse's personality can affect your career. According to Jackson, “the experiences responsible...

Ben Booker leading a "Live to Fail" workout on the Daily Burn App One pandemic bummer (among many) is the inability to go to the gym. Even when gyms open, I don't know how we're all going to feel about going back while the Covid is still an issue. So what to do? If...

What is Perfectionism? Perfectionism is "broadly defined as a combination of excessively high personal standards and overly critical self-evaluations." Source. According to Paul Hewitt of the University of British Columbia, "setting high standards and aiming for...

Does our age affect our sense of happiness and well-being? According to research led by economist David Blanchflower of Dartmouth our happiness is "U-shaped" with a happiness trough occurring at about age 47. The U-shaped happiness curve was found to exist in all 132...

Today is Juneteenth which "marks the day in 1865 when a group of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned that they were free from the institution of slavery." Source. Thus, Juneteenth is celebrated as an annual holiday marking the end of slavery in the...

A slippery slope is a type of argument that is usually a logical fallacy. A slippery slope argument suggests a series of causal events that lead to a bad outcome when there is no evidence that one event will cause the others. It's an argument that if A happens then B...

It's Sir James Dyson - the inventor of the Dyson bag-less vacuum cleaner and other cool consumer products such as the airblade, room fans, hairdryers and the like. Dyson has an estimated worth of just under $20 Billion. In case you are wondering, Richard Branson isn't...

A previous IFOD covered the chances of dying from various diseases and accidents: Chances are you'll die of . . . It is interesting to see the odds of various ways to die. For example, our chances of dying of heart disease are one and six, and our chance of dying in a...

Pharmaceutical companies and researchers around the world are racing to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. As of June 5th 139 vaccines are in development and 18 are in human trials. Part One of this post covered the different types of vaccines and how they work. This post...

This is part one of two posts about vaccines. A SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is sorely needed and, fortunately, as of June 4th there are 137 vaccines against the virus that are in development across the globe, and 17 are in human trials. This post is about the types of vaccines...

Broccoli is one of the most nutritious foods out there. Here are some interesting facts about broccoli: 1. Broccoli is a human invention. It was bred from the wild cabbage plant. Broccoli isn't alone in being created out of wild cabbage. Cauliflower, kohlrabi, kale,...

In her important book, So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijemoa Olou says there are two definitions of racism. The first definition is: "racism is any prejudice against someone because of their race." Under this definition, you are not a racist so long as you don't...

In early March we started to prop open the doors in our office that have a keypad because they are probably the most commonly touched surfaces in our office. We hoped that reducing the touching of common surfaces would reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2. (Note that it...

My youngest daughter graduated from high school (Whitfield School) last evening. It's been tough for the class of 2020 as the usual rituals and milestones surrounding graduating have been upset by the pandemic. None of us expected that we'd be watching a virtual...

Yum! Last weekend my daughter got a pair of kittens for her 21st birthday. They are adorable. Here they are: https://youtu.be/m6zBMg5pIRk They are so sweet it's hard to imagine it, but they are potentially deadly killers. Domestic cats are a major source of wildlife...

TL:DR - short answer is yes. The Three Types of Masks Broadly speaking, there are three types of masks that are relevant to the pandemic: N95, Surgical and DIY/Homemade Cloth. Here's a summary of the main purpose of each type of mask: While surgical masks and homemade...

Mount St. Helens Erupting in 1980 40 years ago yesterday Mount St. Helens erupted. In reading about the eruption, I came across a really crazy story of which I have a vague recollection from back then: the fleeting fame and subsequent death of Harry R. Truman. Mount...

C. Northcote Parkinson was a British Naval historian who passed away in 1993. Studying the British military provided him fertile ground for seeing how organizations operate as he formulated two well-known organizational laws: (1) Parkinson's Law and (2) the Law of...

Synesthesia is a condition that results in the blending of the senses: the stimulation of one sense triggers an experience in another sense. According to the American Psychological Association, "some synesthetes hear, smell, taste or feel pain in color. Others taste...

It simultaneously feels like an eternity and also just yesterday that our firm started working from home. In reality, it's been only two months. For most of us, the use of video conferencing services like Zoom, WebEx, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts have gone from being...

There are a slew of COVID19 antibody tests being released into the market from various manufacturers. These tests don't look for current infection but rather are designed to tell whether you have antibodies in your blood specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. If you have...

Here is my video blog about an important mental model: The Wisdom Hierarchy. Knowledge of this mental model can make us better investors and help us make better decisions. https://stlouistrust.wistia.com/medias/0bgewdz5gc

I have friends who have complained they are so tired of cooking at home but afraid to order takeout food from a restaurant due to possible SARS-CoV-2 exposure. Is their concern well-founded? Is it safe to order food prepared at a restaurant during the pandemic? The...

A defining characteristic of the human species is our advanced "Theory of Mind" which is our ability to understand and appreciate the mental states of other people. We are able to think about what other people might be thinking or feeling. According to Daniel C....

A previous IFOD, How Will You Measure Your Life, discussed the importance of determining your life's purpose. Without direction and purpose, life can meander or go off course. A key aspect of establishing purpose is defining success. Without a personal definition of...

Can you imagine what it would be like quarantining without the internet? No videocalls, no streaming TV shows and movies, no email, no social media, etc. It would suck because as most of us work from home (WFH), shelter in place, isolate, quarantine and practice...

Social distancing and isolation are getting old. And most days it seems like an overreaction: nobody in my circle of friends, family, or co-workers has tested positive.* I can see why some people are protesting lockdowns: they probably haven't personally seen the...

Our brains have evolved to protect us from harm by constantly scanning stimuli received through our senses for danger. Our brains do this primarily at the subconscious level - if we had to consciously evaluate all the stimuli that we receive we would have little...

James Stockdale James Stockdale - Captive and Hero Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale was a former Vice Presidental candidate (running mate of Ross Perot), academic, and a naval pilot during the Vietnam War. He was captured by the Viet Cong in 1965 when his A-4 fighter...

As we all know - a day is the amount of time it takes the earth to spin around its axis. But why is that period of time divided into 24 periods? Seems weird. If you were a space explorer and discovered a new planet that spun on its axis would you decide that a day...

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” - Marcus Aurelius The spread of SARS-CoV-2 isn't just causing illness, death, and grave economic consequences, it is also birthing a vast array of...

Eerily empty Times Square I remember 16 years ago asking my doctor after surgery for an injury, "how long until I can expect to be back to 100%?" He replied, "you won't ever be back to 100% -- expect more like 80-90%." I had stepped through the door into a new normal....

Moore's Law: Can you imagine the current social distancing/quarantine/isolation without the internet or mobile phones? Technological advance has been robust and fueled by the exponential increase in the speed of the microprocessor. Moore's Law, first coined in 1965 by...

If "World War Z" only makes you think of a crappy movie starring Brad Pitt, you are missing out. World War Z is actually a fantastic book from 2006 that has almost nothing in common with the movie. The book, by Max Brooks (son of filmmaker Mel Brooks), tells the story...

Hi. I'm 50 today. My wife and daughters wrote today's IFOD: Today is John’s 50th Birthday. There is clearly no party or fun with friends that can be arranged today. Tammy, Claire and Audrey decided writing the ifod would be a fun way to celebrate John. We each picked...

According to The Center for Generational Kinetics, "A generation is a group of people born around the same time and raised around the same place. People in this 'birth cohort' exhibit similar characteristics, preferences, and values over their lifetimes." Generations...

Before the discovery of Australia, people in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few...

Grey-Headed Flying Fox Genomic studies of the SARS-CoV-2 virus strongly suggest that the virus originated in bats and jumped to humans through an intermediary mammal, most likely the pangolin. Here's what a pangolin looks like: How exactly the SARS-Cov-2 virus got...

Warren Buffett The last month in the stock market has been a very wild ride. Remarkably, the recent decline has been the steepest in the history of the stock market with it dropping 30% in a mere 22 days as compared to the 250 days a 30% pullback took during the...

May you live in interesting times -A purported Chinese curse* Few things in life are 100% good or 100% bad. With respect to social distancing and quarantine are there any silver linings? Yes! 1. Time with family As a friend texted me a few days ago: "one nice thing -...

Ignaz Semmelweis Science advances one funeral at a time -Max Planck Ignaz Semmelweis, a 19th-century Hungarian doctor, noticed something curious: the mortality rate of women delivering babies in his hospital was markedly different in two different wards. Mothers who...

Not a dog toy: Picture of SARS-CoV-2 virus from CDC I know everyone has been inundated with information about the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) which causes the sickness known as COVID-19. Cutting through all the noise and information, there are three main facts that...

Source: Sketchplanations How about a break from the spread of COVID-19? I was recently forwarded a blog post by a friend that discussed the three categories of fun -- supposedly these categories of fun are widely known by adventure-type people. I instantly connected...

Matt and me - Taking the Long View I am the guest on the current episode of Take the Long View podcast with Matt Hall. Links to the episode are below.Matt Hall leads the investment advisory firm Hill Investment Group and last year he began the Take the Long View...

Why Are People Hoarding Toilet Paper? We humans are interesting creatures. You've probably heard tale that toilet paper is selling out in stores all over the place. What's going on? Why is there a run on toilet paper? Who knows exactly how it was triggered. But once a...

Even though modern medicine has advanced in ways that were unfathomable 100+ years ago, when it comes to limiting the spread of contagious disease, the main tools are old school: Social Distancing, Isolation, and Quarantine. In the absence of a vaccine or effective...

The idea of "boosting" your immune system is attractive, especially given the spread of COVID-19, but that's not the right way to think about it. Our immune system is complex and it is a system with many parts working together. It can be bad to boost one part of the...

Joseph Smith For most people, The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormon Church, is most closely associated with the State of Utah. However, Missouri has an important and colored history with the Mormon religion. Mormonism was...

I travel on planes a lot (which I love). Lately, as concerns of the spread of COVID-19 are on everyone's mind, I've been wondering how exposed we are to germs when we fly. If someone is sick on the plane, is everyone on the plane going to catch it? This question was...

David Stine My friend Matt Hall leads a successful investment firm, authored the dynamite book Odds On: The Making of an Evidence-Based Investor, and has a podcast called Take the Long View. An eclectic mix of people has been on the podcast, ranging from restauranteur...

Will a surgical mask protect you? Probably Not. Instead, wash your hands well and a lot. The new coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV or SARS-CoV-2, causes the flu referred to as COVID-19. It's been an epidemic in China and is on the verge of becoming a pandemic. An...

In 2004 I was at my gate at O'Hare getting ready to board an American Airlines flight when I heard the following over the intercom: "will passenger Jennings please report to the gate agent." Wow. The gate agent informed me that I was to be seated next to a woman with...

The Golden Rule says "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." Basically, treat others as you yourself would like to be treated. Seems like a good plan, right? Yes. But maybe there is a better perspective. A potentially better rule is the "Platinum Rule"...

Visualization of the top 500 passwords Everyone is sick of hearing about passwords: make them long, don't re-use them, change them often, etc. There's a good reason we hear about passwords - most of us don't use good password hygiene and our poor passwords are the...

Let's say you are on the phone when a friend, can you tell from the sound of their voice if they are smiling? In 2008 researchers from the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. set out to determine the answer to this question. To do this they asked subjects 17...

After rising for decades, violent crime across the U.S. began a material decline starting in the early 1990s. In 1991 there were 758.2 reported violent crimes per 100,000 people and by 2018 it had dropped 368.9 per 100,000 people. A 52% drop! The drop in crime has...

Do you remember when people used to carry suitcases because they didn't have rollers? It wasn't until the early 1990s that the trend of having suitcases with rollers caught fire. Before then, people carried their suitcases. According to Nobel Prize* winner Robert...

This pic of a glacier in the Himalayas has nothing to do with this IFOD - I just thought it was cool Do you ever wonder how people can believe something so different than what you believe? Especially when you are sure that all the facts are on your side - how can...

"You'll find out this is one of the greatest cities in the world. It's a great time to be a part of St. Louis." - Wayne Gretzky Living in St. Louis rocks! Jetsetter magazine recently listed St. Louis as one of the most underrated cities in America. I agree. Here's a...

Clayton M. Christensen (1952-2020) Clayton Christensen died on January 23, 2020 at age 67 of Leukemia. Christensen was an entrepreneur, visionary thinker and a professor at Harvard Business School. He authored 11 books and many articles. He is best known for his book...

I love Groundhog Day. It makes total sense that an overgrown rodent can predict the weather! Punxsutawney Phil has been correct about 30% of the time. It's also 02/02/2020 which is a true date palindrome (dates such as 9/19/19 aren't really date palindromes because...

Sometimes advanced math and physics makes no sense to the layperson. One such instance is this crazy assertion: all positive integers equal -1/12th. Or: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + . . . . . ∞ = -1/12 Amazingly, this result is used in physics in various calculations. How can...

English can be a tough language with many exceptions to its many rules, letters that are silent only sometimes, homophones and contronyms all over the place, and inconsistent pronunciation of similar words. It's no wonder that we often screw things up when we speak...

A fallacy is an error in reasoning. The ecological fallacy occurs when conclusions are made about individuals based on group data. Any group whether it be St. Louisans, community college graduates, immigrants, BMW drivers, people who own fish, etc. will have a range...

"Alternative" is a genre of rock and roll that is outside of the mainstream. Its roots are in the late 60s and 70s and rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s. Alternative bands usually arise on independent record labels and often are hard to pin down in terms of...

When my oldest daughter was born I remember loading her into her pumpkin car seat, driving away from the hospital and thinking "wait - where's the instruction manual for this thing we are taking home?" I recall my wife and I staring at each other when we got home...

Stein's Law, formulated by economist Herbert Stein (and father of Ben Stein of Ferris Bueller's Day Off fame) seems sillily simple but is actually profound. It states: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” This is a very important rule to remember...

Lindt Truffles According to economist Dan Ariely "we live simultaneously in two different worlds— one where social norms prevail, and the other where market norms make the rules." Each of these worlds has its own set rules which are perfectly illustrated by the...

Source: The Guardian In 2015 Beth Breslaw conducted an experiment: for two months on crowded Manhattan sidewalks she didn't move out of the way of other pedestrians. What happened? She collided with lots of men and almost no women. In an article in New York magazine,...

A colorized picture of the SS La Bourgogne. Source: shipwreckworld.com Everyone knows the story of the sinking of the "unsinkable" RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912. It was a tragic loss of life where about 1,500 passengers and crew died. Eighty percent of those who...

My morning routine includes coffee, meditation, IFOD editing, walking my dog, a workout and thinking about my death. Each day I say to myself "you are one day closer to death than you were yesterday --what are you going to do today to make it worthwhile?" I find this...

Source: Nautilus Magazine Capgras Syndrome describes the mental disorder whereby a person believes that a loved one or friend has been replaced by an imposter. The disorder is named after Jean Marie Joseph Capgras, the French psychiatrist who first identified it. An...

Source: Wall Street Journal I am concerned about America. We are more polarized than ever. Based on our political ideologies we hear almost completely different views of the news. It's not good for our country that we are so divisive. In that vein, below are some...

2019 was a banner reading year for me. I had set a goal of reading* 100 books and I finished the year having read 101. Here's a link to a list of the 101: 2019 Books Read. I don't think I'll set a goal of 100 books again. While I really enjoy reading, the pace I had...

Why won't this fly? It looks like the other planes. Richard Feynman on Cargo Cult Thinking In 1974 Nobel Prizing winning physicist Richard Feynman gave the commencement talk at CalTech. His main topic was cargo cult thinking vs. scientific thinking. Here's his...

We are a social species and it behooves us to be likable. Here are five simple (but not easy) ways to be more likable based on research: ONE: Show interest in other people A recent Harvard study found a positive relationship between asking questions of another person...

“When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.” Source. This is known as the Pygmalion Effect and it is a type of "self-fulfilling prophesy." Pygmalion Effect in Education The seminal...

Finding the right gift can be hard. IFOD on what makes a good gift. If you're still looking for a gift for a guy, here's a list of not very expensive things that most guys would like based on an unscientific survey of some guys: One: A really bright flashlight like...

In 2012 economics students at Lehigh University calculated that the first Death Star, the one destroyed in the first Star Wars movie (Episode IV A New Hope), would require about $852,000,000,000,000,000 worth of steel. This $852 Quadrillion amount was calculated by...

As we all learned when we were quite young, a noun is a person, place or thing while a verb connotes an action, state or occurrence. At first blush, it seems pretty clear. Language is amazing, however, and over time nouns can morph into verbs while still retaining...

While exact origins of superstition around Friday 13th aren't known, fear of Friday the 13th is a 20th Century invention. It is the combination of existing fear of the number 13 with a wariness of Fridays in general. For an in depth article of the origins of fear of...

When it comes to private, single-family residences, a home called Antilia, located in Mumbai, is king. Completed in 2010, it is worth an estimated $1 billion - $2 billion. It is 27 stories and 570 feet tall (as a comparison, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis is 630 feet...

“Given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 55 minutes understanding the problem and five minutes resolving it.” - Attributed to Albert Einstein* Jumping to Solutions One of humanity's killer apps is our ability to solve problems. We are solution generating...

A K-class blimp in flight. Source: Defense Network The "Battle of the Atlantic" refers to the fighting between German U-boats and Allied forces in the Atlantic Ocean during WWII. From the start of World War II to its end, Germany launched over 1,000 U-boats whose main...

Albert Einstein made some of his most important discoveries by engaging in thought experiments. For instance, as a teenager he imagined himself chasing a beam of light and what he would observe while traveling next to the beam of light. The chasing a beam of light...

Picture Source: The New Yorker Homo sapiens originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago and then migrated north into Europe and Asia about 70,000 years ago. When they arrived in Eurasia, Homo sapiens found two other hominid cousins already occupied the Eurasian...

I've been a vegan (well 97.5% vegan - more on that below) for 17 years. Related IFOD: Why I am (still) a vegan. Over the years I've been asked a lot of questions about being vegan. I realize that if you are a meat eater it can be sort of mind-boggling to think of not...

Jeff Tweedy co-founded the bands Uncle Tupelo and Wilco which pioneered the "alt-country" genre. He grew up in Belleville, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis. Wilco has released 11 studio albums, and six of them have been nominated for Grammys, with A Ghost is Born...

I wonder if the tattoos make him faster? A person on a bicycle is the most efficient form of travel on the planet. No other living creature expends so little energy related to the distance traveled. Bicycles are able to convert about 90% of effort into forward kinetic...

The above chart shows on the Y-Axix early navigators used a model of the earth and stars to predict the correct route to their destination. This worked even though they were wrong and thought the Sun revolved around the earth. Thus, their model predicted but didn't...

Source: Sketchplanations Clay Shirky is a professor at NYU, author, and internet theorist. Notably, he was one of the first to foresee the powerful effects of social media. In 2010 he coined what is now known as the Shirky Principle: "Institutions will try to preserve...

Last Christmas I bought my daughter Claire an entertaining book on grammar called Eats, Shoots and Leaves. The name is derived from the following joke about poor punctuation: A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to...