Earth spins at 1,040 miles per hour. The other planets in our Solar System spin as well: Mercury, 7 mph Venus, 4 mph Mars, 538 mph Jupiter, 28,262 mph Saturn, 22,994 mph Uranus, 5,544 mph Neptune, 5,143 mph Non-planet Pluto, 29 mph Why do they spin? Post-Big Bang...

A study published last year out of BYU concludes that exercise can slow ageing. The study, "Physical activity and telomere length in U.S. men and women" looked at the effects of physical activity on telomere length.   Telomeres are nucleoprotein caps positioned...

Today’s topic:  The Peter Principle, which was first introduced in an article written by Dr. Laurence J. Peter in the January 1967 issue of Esquire magazine (a few years later Dr. Peter also published a humorous book on the topic). The Peter Principle states that in a...

Yellowstone National Park is volcanic in nature. That is what accounts for its geysers and hot pools and streams. But, if it is volcanic, where is its volcano? Well, the whole park is actually an active volcano sitting on top of a ginormous volcanic hotpsot and all...

I found the facts in this IFOD mindblowing when I first learned them. I now think about breathing, straws and vacuum cleaners, among other things, differently. Hope you enjoy these facts as well. We live in a layer of high-pressure gas which we commonly call air. The...

Which mountain is the largest in the Solar System? It's not Mount Everest at a "mere" 29,029 feet. Nor is it Mauna Kea which is "only" about 13,000 feet above sea level, but has a total rise from the surface of the earth of 33,500 feet. The highest mountain in the...

Concrete is one of humanity's most useful materials as it starts in a semi-liquid form and hardens as it dries. Concrete is the most used man-made material in the world in terms of volume. Concrete was developed by the ancient Romans and ancient concrete was not that...

In June of 2017 a Pew Research poll asked Americans if they were "middle class." Sixty-Two percent responded that they thought they were middle class, but most weren't sure what exactly middle class is. There is no precise definition of middle class and it varies by...

Cars continue to become safer and safer. New cars today have airbags all over the place, crunch zones, and some even take over braking to avoid collisions. Here's a great video showing a crash test between a smaller 2009 Chevy Malibu vs. a larger and heavier 1959...

Why do dogs have tails? First, why do any animals have tails? There are a number of evolutionary reasons why animals have developed tails. Some of the reasons: Prehensile Tails are used to grab and hold things and act as a fifth limb. Monkeys are an example of this....

According to Google, tens of thousands of new web pages come online every minute and Google has indexed hundreds of billions of web pages. Google handles over 2 Trillion searches every year which is at least 5.5 billion searches a day, 230 million per hour, 4 million...

Prices that are not rounded (like the $399.99 above) are known as "charm prices" and are more the rule than the exception. According to a 1997 study, approximately 60% of prices in advertising material ended in the digit 9, 30% ended in the digit 5, 7% ended in the...

a For hundreds (maybe even thousands) of years there have been tales of giant waves that come out of nowhere, even on relatively calm days, that capsize ships.  Until recently, science has placed these “rogue waves” in the category of sea monsters and mermaids and...

Today's IFOD is about "The Golden Ratio" otherwise known as "phi." The golden ratio is pretty interesting, but first, let's discuss reproduction of bunnies (or you can just skip down to the meat of the golden ratio below): In 1202 Leonardo de Pisa, popularly known as...

How can a 700,000 pound 747 possibly fly? There are four forces that act on a flying airplane:  Weight (gravity), Lift, Thrust and Drag. For an airplane to fly it must win the tug of war between the opposing forces of lift vs. weight and thrust vs. drag.  During take...

Do you struggle with stress? Most of us do. There is a simple and effective exercise, discussed below, that can have a big, positive effect on your ability to handle stress. One of the primary causes of the negative stress we experience is our "fight or flight...

The Iditarod Dog Sled Race was first run in its current form in 1973.  The 2018 running of the race occurred earlier this month. It is about a 1,000 mile race from Anchorage (ceremonial start) to Nome through the Alaskan wilderness. The exact mileage varies depending...

Today's IFOD concerns things that are similar (or similarish) but not the same. Yams vs. Sweet Potatoes: First, neither sweet potatoes nor yams are even potatoes. Sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family and yams are related to grasses. Neither are nightshades...

In his fantastic book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Harari sets out an interesting timeline of the universe and of humanity. I found it quite interesting.  Then below is a very cool info-graphic showing the last 13.8 billion years and 10 billion of...

There is just something about drinking beer out of a long-neck bottle. It feels more substantial and in my opinion provides a more enjoyable beer drinking experience than drinking out of a can.* But, does bottled beer actually taste better? A study from 2016 conducted...

Why do we laugh?  Many scientists and philosophers theorize that humor and laughter evolved as a way for humans to bond socially and that bonding led to a survival advantage. Similarly, it is proposed that humor developed to allow us to attract mates. Others theorize...

What exactly is life? A tree  is alive, but how about the wood from a tree used to build a table? Is fire alive? It takes in oxygen, can grow and reproduce. How about Artificial Intelligence, is there some point at which a machine could be considered alive? If a...

One of the distinguishing features of the United States is our world-class higher educational institutions. As of 2015 there were 4,583 colleges and universities in the U.S. with about 22.5 million students  enrolled. About 1,700 of those colleges are 2-year...

Until his death at age 76 earlier this week Stephen Hawking was among the world's most famous living scientists. He was an astrophysicist and held Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, a position previously held by Isaac Newton. Dr. Hawking...

Happy March 14th: Pi Day! Pi, of course, is the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter. Pi is an irrational number, meaning it cannot be written as a simple fraction. Instead, it is expressed with an infinite, non-repeating decimal. Below is a discussion...

  In the his excellent book The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, Tom Nichols argues that Americans have become comfortable with everyone having an opinion, even if they don't have the requisite knowledge to have...

Irony is a tough, slippery concept. I have made troubled peace with the word irony by never using it for fear of misusing it. That’s a tough way to live - without ever using the word irony, so I undertaken research and have a better grasp of what irony means. Here is...

A prior IFOD explored the “second-half to the chess board” as an example of how humans struggle to think exponentially. That IFOD is here: Exponential Thinking Here’s another great example of how hard it is to think exponentially. Question: How thick would a piece of...

Daylight Saving Time starts this weekend as we'll turn our clocks forward one hour in the wee hours of Sunday morning which will provide us with more daylight later into the evening. While the original idea behind daylight savings was arguably a satire written by...

This year Easter is on April 1st.  Last year it was on April 16 and next year it will be on April 21st.  It can vary from as early as March 22nd and as late as April 24th (I'm only using the Western Church dates, not Eastern). Why does the date on which Easter...

The coldest temperature ever recorded on earth, −128.6 °F, was at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica in July 1983. I've experienced colder. This past weekend I stepped unclothed (except for underwear, gloves and socks) into a chamber with my head sticking out and...

I mainly listen to independent alternative music.  A lot of it.  Last year on Spotify alone I listened 30,000 minutes of music, over 3,500 songs from about 1,600 different artists.  Of all that music, much of it new, I really liked about 1/4 of it. I...

Sperm whales are obviously mammals and breathe air from the surface. They can stay underwater for around 45 minutes and routine dives reach 1,600 - 3,200 feet. They have been recorded going as deep as 1.2 miles! It is very interesting how these whales evolved to allow...

The stock market gets A LOT more attention than the boring bond market. If one didn't know better, you'd think that the stock market was much bigger and more important than the bond market. More on that below. First, an extremely short primer on stocks and bonds: If...

There is no way to tell for sure how various species perceive time or even how different individuals within the same species perceive time. Does time seemingly pass as the same speed right now for me and my 15-year old daughter sitting next to me? However, there is...

In our society, as well as most (and maybe all) others, beautiful people reap advantages denied the ugly.  Studies have shown that attractive people make more money and often have more successful careers than do the less-attractive. Is this fair?  Or are we just...

Plant-based oils such as olive oil, canola oil and sesame oil can make food taste great and are often required for recipes and cooking. The consumption of vegetable oils in the U.S. has exploded over the last 40+ years - by nearly 90%. Chart to this effect: Whether it...

Previous IFODs have discussed how crazy and strange quantum mechanics is.  A thought experiment designed by Edwin Schrödinger illustrates the disconnect between what we observe in the macro-material world and what goes on at the sub-microscopic quantum level.  The...

Dry cleaning has been to me like what riding in a car must be like to a dog: a magical process without explanation.  How do the clothes get so clean using a “dry” process? Is it like dry shampoo? No. In the process of dry cleaning the clothes get completely wet - just...

  Climate change can have multiple effects on our health - both mentally and physically. While the physical aspects of climate change have been a focus for some time, the mental health aspects of climate change are gaining greater attention recently. Mental...

Theodore Sturgeon was an author of Science Fiction and a prolific reviewer/critic of others' works. His eponymous law dates to the 1950s and is in response to criticism that "90% of Sci-Fi is crap." His response, now memorialized as Sturgeon's Law* , is that "90% of...

Believe it or not, scientists are not exactly sure why curling stones move as they do. More on this below, first some background on the sport of curling. Curling is a fun sport to watch and has been an Olympic sport since 1998. Curling consists of a member of a four...

Daniel Ellsberg, an economic theorist, discovered and presented a paradox in decision making under uncertainty now known as the Ellsberg Paradox. The Paradox is best presented as a game as follows: Imagine a container with 100 colored balls. You are told 50 are red 50...

Three studies over the past six years have found that firms with meaningful female presence on the Board and/or in Management tend to outperform those firms with little or no female leadership. First, a 2011 study by the non-profit Catalyst found that higher corporate...

Popcorn has been consumed by humans for hundreds, and possibly thousands, of years. Until recently, however, the exact mechanism of how popcorn pops has not been known. A 2015 paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society by two French researchers reveals...

On September 10, 2017 a twitter user tweeted the following: This blew a lot of people's minds on twitter and this tweet went viral.  The concept is that 3 ÷ 4 is equivalent to  with the dots as stand-ins for the 3 and the 4. Poof. Mind Blown. But, is it true? Ish. The...

Happy International Clash Day (honoring the great punk rock band The Clash)! It's also National Weatherperson's day and National Shower with a Friend Day (seriously). Tomorrow we can look forward to National Chopsticks day and Lame Duck Day (celebrating the passage of...

Even 150 after the beginning of the industrial revolution and thousands of years since we have moved from being hunter-gathers to an agrarian society, as a species we are still hardwired to notice animals over most other objects.  It is theorized that this sensitivity...

I am often befuddled by whether to use an "ie" or an "ei". Having gone to public school my entire educational career (except for a failed freshman year at TCU) I have blamed my confusion on our nation's public educational system. I recently had to rethink my worldview...

Groundhog's Day might be my favorite holiday. It makes me giddy with merriment to think that this tradition of speculating whether a rodent saw its shadow so we can forecast the length of winter is still is carried on. Today the IFOD turns one year old.  Thank you for...

There are  tens of thousands (maybe more) of people who believe the earth is flat. According to the NY Post, The “Flat Earth” movement believes that our planet exists on a giant, flat plane, with Antarctica forming a large ice wall around the circumference. An...

Bob Farrell was chief strategist at Merrill Lynch for 25 years and a Wall Street legend. Bob developed ten maxims on the stock market that have become quite famous in investment circles and are good for investors to keep in mind - especially at market extremes.  Here...

The National Weight Control Registry (“NWCR”) was created in 1994 at Brown Medical School to track and learn from people who lost more than 30 pounds and kept the weight off more than a year. It has tracked over 6,000 participants. I was a participant in the NWCR...

A prior IFOD discussed the amazing fact that about 7,000 languages are currently spoken on earth - read more about that here: IFOD - How Many Languages Spoken One such language is in a league of its own: Esperanto. Esperanto was created in the 19th century by Ludwik...

The letters in the word laser stand for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Lasers are very concentrated, narrow beams of light in which the laser's light beams travel with their waves lined up. This is very different from regular light, like that...

So, who are the one out of five dentists who don't recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum? I don't know because I'm not a dentist. But, I do use an electric toothbrush (specifically a Quip which is a glorified manual toothbrush that vibrates a bit)....

Today's IFOD consists of two  data tables from the Social Security Administration of the most popular baby names over the past 100 years as well as the top five most popular names in each year for the past 100 years. My name, John, it way too popular for my taste....

Lots of things happen to our bodies as we age - most all of them aren’t good. (But aging beats the alternative.) Three of things that are bad we can do something about. At the end of this IFOD is a simple mortality test that will give you an idea where you stand on...

What is the purpose of a dam? It can vary. Dams are barriers constructed to hold back water and raise its level, creating a reservoir. Depending on the type of dam and size of the reservoir, dams are commonly used to generate hydro power, create water diversion for...

Our solar system is made up of the sun and all the objects that orbit around it:  8 planets, some dwarf planets, a bunch of asteroids, comets, meteoroids and 181 moons orbiting the planets and dwarf planets. Lots of stuff.  Even given all that stuff, the sun is so...

Data about our lives is being collected in ways we may have never before imagined. A few days ago I finished a book on my Kindle app for iPad. Within a minute a got an email from Goodreads asking me how I liked the book I just finished and suggested others I might...

Time flies when you are having fun.  But does the reverse hold as well?  Do you have more fun when time flies? In a recent study, psychologists asked volunteers to take a “10-minute test” in a room without clocks (and the volunteers were not allowed to have watches or...

Marist College's annual polling to determine the most annoying word of the year has again found, for the ninth year in a row, that the word "whatever" is the most annoying word used in casual conversation. Other words found annoying in this year's poll include "fake...

This Saturday I attended the Bar Mitzvah service of the son of a good friend.  I hadn't been to a Bar Mitzvah since I was 13-14 years old myself. I was once again stunned by the achievement of learning Hebrew, chanting the Torah and leading the congregation in the...

It feels great when the economy is healthy: when unemployment is low, the economy is growing, debt is easy to acquire and the stock market is doing well. Yet "all stable economies sow the seeds of their own destruction." This is because stability induces risk-taking...

It's ski season!! What are the top 100 ski mountains in North America based on skiable acreage? List is below.  Some of the relative sizes and ranks surprised me.  One thing first - prior IFOD on ski injuries: How dangerous is skiing? Rank Acreage Mountain State 1...

Today's IFOD was a direct link to an article I wrote about a "one-stock challenge" I took part in recently.  My pick was a random stock ticker produced by a random stock generator on the world wide web.  It was a pretty interesting exercise.  Here's that article:  One...

Today's IFOD concerns a few interesting facts about car colors. First Topic: Safety. A few months ago we were shopping for a car for our 18 year old daughter. I found a black car I liked.  My wife said "let's not get a black car because I think they are harder to see...

An "exoplanet" is a planet that orbits a star other than our sun. The first exoplanet orbiting a star was not found until 1995.* According to NASA, there are now 3,572 confirmed exoplanets and another 4,500 candidates.  These exoplanets are found orbiting 2,700...

"Vestgial Structures" are body parts that serve no useful modern function and are vestiges left over from prior forms of the organism. Vestigial structures are clear examples of evolution at work. Here are some examples in humans: Tailbone (coccyx). This is supposedly...

In 1993, shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed, the U.S. and Russia struck a deal whereby the U.S. would buy 500 tons of bomb-grade uranium over 20 years. This uranium came from decommissioning nuclear missiles and bombs - about 20,000 warheads worth . Over the 20...

Another working day has ended. Only the rush hour hell to face. Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes. Contestants in a suicidal race. -The Police, Synchronicity II Mass suicide by lemmings is a myth - an urban legend. The myth holds that once lemming...

The Statistic Brain Research Institute reports that 41% of Americans usually make New Year's Resolutions and about 9% of people report that they are successful achieving their resolutions. A pretty low success rate to be sure, but other research suggest that people...

There are a number of factors which effect a food’s flavor:  taste, smell, color, temperature, texture, spiciness or hotness, appearance and psychological effects.  Taste is sensed by the taste buds which are found on the upper surface of the tongue.  Our sense of...

What will the stock market do in 2018? Nobody knows. Ignore those making predictions.  However, here's today's interesting fact based on data since 1926: Thus, just based on historical probabilities, it's probably going to be up next year. But a 1/3rd chance it...

Merry Christmas! Today's IFOD contains a Reindeer joke and then a few interesting facts about Reindeer. The joke, courtesy of the flight attendant on my Southwest flight last week: "Which of Santa's reindeer is a dinosaur's least favorite?" Scroll down for answer...

What happens to a bullet shot straight up in the air? It does not go into space. Of course, it falls back to earth. The details, however, are interesting: A bullet leaves the barrel of a gun at 2,000 - 3,000 feet per second.  The bullet leaves the barrel nose first...

When flying on a commercial airline, upon pulling up to the gate you'll usually hear a flight attendant say over the intercom "disarm doors and crosscheck." Soon thereafter you'll usually hear another say "doors disarmed and crosschecked." What does this mean?...

Here's a really interesting stat from the outstanding book Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz: "In 2004, in some parts of the United States, the most common search regarding...

Google debuted in  1998 and was the 21st search engine. The prior 20 included  WebCrawler, Go.com, Lycos, Infoseek, Alta Vista, Excite, Yahoo!, Dogpile, Inktomi, HotBot, and Ask Jeeves. While there were a number of factors which led to Google's success including it's...

The word “peruse” is one of the most misused words in the English language.  People commonly use the term when they mean “to scan” or “to skim” a document or other written material.  Peruse actually means the opposite of that.  According to the American Heritage...

Suppose you are enjoying spaceflight on your way to some distant planet when your spaceship is hit by a space rock, the hull is breached and you are sucked out into space without a suit. Bad situation.  What exactly happens to your body? Your body has internal...

I really enjoy reading and I always appreciate recommendation of a good book, thus, I really like year-end book lists. In that spirit, below are my five favorite books I read in 2017.  These weren't necessarily books written in 2017, merely ones I read during the...

The Curse of Knowledge is cognitive bias that interferes with our ability to communicate and explain. The Curse of Knowledge occurs because once you know something it is very difficult to remember what it was like to not know that thing and thus very difficult to put...

Why do we say "Bless You," and "God Bless You" after someone sneezes? In most western cultures, as well as some Asian ones, some form of blessing is commonly uttered in response to someone sneezing.  Why do we do this? We don't say bless you after coughs, burps,...

Fact #1: Hair grows on every inch of our bodies except for: (a) palms of our hands, (b) soles of our feet and (c) our lips. The fine, fuzzy hair that is hardly noticeable is called vellus hair. The longer, darker and noticeable hair is called terminal hair. Fact #2:...

The most famous equation in history is:  E=MC2   which defines the relationship between mass and energy. The "c" is a constant and is the speed of light (186,000 miles per second).*  This was the basis of Einstein’s relativity discovery – that the speed of light is a...

N Stein’s Law: ”If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” -Herbert Stein The Shocking Bitcoin Fact: According to Digiconomist, mining of Bitcoins uses over 30 Terawatt-hours of electricity per year and that number is growing in size everyday. How much...

A few interesting facts about siblings and their relative IQs: First-borns in general have higher IQs than later born children. The effect is around 1.5 IQ points on average. Why? IQ scores reflect both genetics and environment. Researchers posit that parents have...

In 1921 Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the photoelectric effect – or that light moves in packets called quanta or photons.  This was his only Nobel Prize – he did not receive a Nobel Prize for Special or General Relativity...

This view of the NYC Skyline has nothing to do with transitive correlations. If A is correlated with B, and B is correlated with C, does it follow that A and C are correlated? Not necessarily and usually not. Here's an example: A: Being rich is positively correlated...

Have you ever bought something and found that it led to the purchase of more items to complement the new item? There is a name for that: The Diderot Effect. It's defined as “the introduction of a new possession into a consumer’s existence will often result in a...

According to the Guiness Book of World Records, the producer of the most tires in the world is Legos with over 300 million produced each year (nearly 900,000 per day!). As a comparison, Bridgestone, Michelin and Goodyear each produce between 150-200 million tires per...

Here are a few facts about Thanksgiving and advice on surviving political and other uncomfortable discussions with relatives. About 51 million Americans will travel over 50 miles to Thanksgiving celebrations this year, 89% of whom will drive. The busiest day of the...

I recently mentioned to my daughter that Tame Impala just released a few B-Side singles. She asked “what is a B-Side?”  Good question. If you are above a certain age, you probably know what a B-Side is but here’s and explanation and some good B-Side info. Back in the...

While it is true that dogs age at a different rate than humans, the "one human year equals seven dog years" rule of thumb is not close to accurate.  Dogs can reproduce at one year of age and some dogs live 20 years. If the 1-to-7 ratio were correct, then humans could...

Do you think you have read this blog post before? Déjà vu is a freaky experience. Déjà vu describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. Is it just your mind playing tricks on you?  Is it a blip in the matrix?...

The very early universe (within the first fraction of second after the big bang)  consisted of energy and particles of matter and antimatter. According to theory, confirmed by experiments at particle colliders, matter and antimatter particles are always produced as a...

For decades, the prevailing dogma in neuroscience was that the adult human brain is immutable and unchangeable.  By the time we reach adulthood it was thought that we were pretty much stuck with what we have brainwise.  The thought was that if one cluster of neurons...

Today's IFOD is a chain of facts, loosely related. Fact Number One: Every human born prior to 1898 has died. The total number of human beings who have died: about 100 billion. Fact Number Two: It is estimated that the cause of death for about half of those 100 Billion...

I LOVE TO EAT NUTS! Turns out, nuts are quite good for you. Consuming nuts is negatively associated with all sorts of chronic diseases including heart disease and diabetes. Clinical trials have shown nuts help lower cholesterol and oxidation, and improve our arterial...

The closest galaxy to the Milky Way is the Andromeda Galaxy.  It is a spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way, and at 2.5 million light years away is close enough that we can see individual stars in that galaxy.  Andromeda is on a collision course with the Milky Way as the...

Added sugar (as opposed to naturally occurring sugars such as those found in fruit) is associated with all sorts of health problems including obesity, heart disease, liver disease, some cancers, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. As such, it would seem sensible to use...

The "cobra effect" occurs when an attempted solution to a problem ends up making the problem worse.  The original cobra effect problem concerned in colonial India when the British governor decided there were too many cobras in Delhi. To combat this problem he placed a...

I purchased an iPhone X on pre-order and it arrived this past Friday. This IFOD is my review after using the X for 3 days. One Sentence Summary: I love almost everything about the iPhone X - it's a big step forward. Biggest Change - No Home Button: There's no home...

Light consists of photons which have the characteristics of both particles and waves. Photons emitted from the sun as well as from artificial light vibrate and radiate in all directions. However, when light is reflected from certain flat surfaces it tends to travel in...

  Meditation has made a big difference in my life over the past 15 years or so that I have been practicing. Why meditate? Partial list of benefits: Its good for your brain part one. A study from UCLA found that long-term meditators had more grey matter volume...

How many people are buried on the moon? One. On July 31, 1999 the NASA Lunar Prospector Probe was intentionally crashed into the moon's south pole at the end of its mission with hopes of creating plumes of water ice. No ice plumes were created. Lunar Prospector did...

The United States is home to about 325 million people which  puts us as the third most populous country in the world behind China and India (1.37 and 1.3 billion people, respectively).  The world population is 7.6 Billion.  Thus, the U.S. has about 4.3% of the world...

On August 18th, 1913  something unusual occurred at a roulette table at the Monte Carlo Casino. At a particular table the ball had fallen on black many times in a row. After each successive black result gamblers placed more and more money on red thinking that after so...

Battle of Agincourt Today is known as St. Crispin’s Day. Huh? What is that? Today, October 25th, is the annual date of the feast celebrating Christian saints Crispin and Crispian, twins who were martyred in 286 AD. This day is also known for notable battles that...

Jennifer Chatman, a professor of organizational management at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted experiments in which she tried to find a point at which flattery became ineffective. It turned out there wasn’t one. Dr. Chatman found that, in general,...

We waste lots of food.  Some key facts: In the U.S. about 1/2 of all produce is wasted. The total value of wasted food in the U.S. is estimated at $165 billion per year and 273 lbs per person. In terms of calories, it has been estimated that food waste rings in at...

5G is coming! What is a "G"? It refers to the generation of wireless capability. Prior generations: 1G delivered analog voice only.  Think clunkly, big cell phones of the 80s. Ran at about 2Kbps. Was used from 1974 to 1984. 2G introduced digital voice. Started being...

With our open prairies and fields growing amber waves of grain, it is probably no surprise that the U.S. is the world's number one food exporter. How about number two? It's The Netherlands. The Netherlands is much more densely populated than the U.S. and is 270 times...

Fruit has a lot of sugar.  We know that sugar, in general, is bad for us.  But fruit seems pretty healthy? It's confusing - should we eat fruit? Fruit contains antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, phytonutrients and fiber. All these things are super good things for you....

A study in 2015 out of BYU found that when people either (a) were lonely or isolated, or (b) felt lonely or isolated (even if they had many apparent social connections) they had an increased risk of death of 26-32%.  Wow. We are social animals and lack of social...

Does dating success predict marital success?  Maybe not.  In a study of 92 dating couples and 77 married couples published in Psychological Science researchers determined there is one primary predictor of happiness for a dating relationship but two primary predictors...

Consumption of Whiskey in the US has been on the rise. Similar to what we’ve seen in the craft beer space, there has been a renaissance of craft whiskey over the past decade. Below, the different types of whiskey are described and a recipe for a classic Manhattan...

Ten years ago yesterday was: October 9, 2007. What was special about that date? It was the S&P 500 market top prior to the great recession. From CNN Money on that date in 2007: "Stocks rallied Tuesday, sending the Dow and S&P 500 to all-time highs as investors...

Since the industrial revolution in the 1800s, there has been a steady increase the percentage of population living in cities. In 2008 an important milestone was achieved as more than half of the world's population resided in an urban area (now it's 54%). For...

Last week I was at the fantastic Carlyle Summit in Santa Barbara on wellness and sustainability which co-hosted by UCSB.  There I learned that a UCSB professor,  Shuji Nakamura, shared the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering how to create blue LED lights. Why...

An IFOD in April was of a similar vein as this one: Our Fellow Americans Pt. 1 As a country in aggregate, we are not very good savers. A few startling facts on this issue: A Federal Reserve survey asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The...

Sovereign Wealth Funds ("SWF") are state-owned investment vehicles. Not all countries have them. SWFs are funded from budget surpluses, trade surpluses or natural resource revenues. The charter/purpose of SWFs vary. Some exist to protect the country from effects of...

According to legend, an Ethiopian goat farmer named Kaldi discovered coffee in the 6th century. He noted that his goats became energized when they snacked on what turned out to be coffee berries. Kaldi gave some coffee berries to a local monk who figured out how to...

Density is the ratio of an object's mass to its volume. Each material has a different density, the difference depends on how closely the molecules in the material are packed together. The range of densities in the universe is amazing. At the high side are black holes...

Dracarys! Anthropologists at UMass-Amherst have determined that ancient dragon myths are very common and have identified over 400 dragon myths on every inhabited continent. Interestingly, dragon myths evolved independently in Asia and Europe. How is this possible and...

In terms of attractiveness what is more important an attractive face or hot body? Fortunately, there is a study that answers this question. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin asked 375 college students to pick whether they would like to date a member of...

Is rock paper scissors a good way to settle disputes? A study a few years ago published in the Journal of Economics concludes that it is for non-important disputes. What the study found was: 1. People tend to be biased when playing rock paper scissors. In other words,...

Microwave ovens use microwaves (duh) to heat food.   Microwaves are part of the Electromagnetic Spectrum - relatively long wavelengths of particle-like radiation moving at the speed of light.  Microwaves are shorter wavelengths than radio waves but longer wavelengths...

Multitasking isn't really a thing. You can't effectively focus on two tasks at the same time.  Studies over the past 50+ years have concluded that multitaskers get less done and miss information as compared to people who focus on one task at a time. When people think...

The area of the brain most responsible for willpower is the prefrontal cortex. This area of the brain is responsible for a lot of things other than just willpower; it is the main area that oversees executive function including complex processes like reason, logic,...

The mosquito is by far the most deadly animal in the world.  Mosquito-borne diseases include malaria, dengue virus, West Nile virus, yellow fever virus, Chikungunya virus, Zika virus, and many others.  These diseases kill over 1 million humans each year and cause a...

Cats have an amazing ability to right themselves when falling and land on all four paws.  Here's a slow motion video demonstrating it: This feline ability to right themselves is called a righting reflex. It's been the subject of study since at least 1890.  Here's how...

Narcissistic Personality Disorder ("NPD") is a relatively rare mental condition affecting about 1% of the population and is more common in males than females. It is characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, and a great need...

Yesterday, Apple unveiled it's 10th anniversary iPhone - the iPhone X. The original iPhone, released in 2007, was a stunning achievement and the smartphone revolution it spawned has changed the world.  What sort of other notable tech achievements  have been introduced...

In 2013 scientists in Italy created a methodology for estimating the number of cells in various organs and tissues and thus the entire human body itself. There had been estimates previously, but with pretty large ranges. The answer: a 5'7" 154 pound human has...

There is a concept espoused by some futurists called the “technological singularity” or just the “singularity.”  This concept is somewhat related to Moore’s Law which states the number of transistors that can be fit on an integrated circuit double every 18 months or...

Writing for Women's Health Magazine, nutritionist Alexandria Caspero weighed herself every hour over a 12 hour period.  What happened? Her weight often fluctuated by a pound or two on back-to-back weigh-ins and varied by nearly 7 pounds over the course of the day! How...

An IFOD last week (found here: mapping-the-genome) covered some basics of DNA, genes and mapping the genome. Today is related, and concerns epigenetics. Epigenetics merely refers to modification of an organism due to the how genes express themselves rather than a...

Two research backed tips for a happy marriage: First: A study from March 2016 conducted by a professor at Florida State tracked 135 couples for four years soon after they were married. The study found that couples with higher expectations about marriage tended to be...

I am a pretty big consumer of music. Over the past four decades I've moved from vinyl albums and cassettes, to CDs, to digital downloads and finally to streaming (Spotify) as my main source of music. Turns out that my experience is pretty typical.  Here are facts...

A very large astroid named Florence 3122 is buzzing Earth today.  It will pass about 4.4 million miles from Earth which is about 18x the distance from the Earth to the moon. While this sounds like a long ways away, on a galactic scale it's quite close. Florence was...

Books matter. A  study from a few years ago has concluded that there is a strong the correlation is between a child's academic achievement and the number of books his or her parents own. In fact, the study showed that the difference between being raised in a book less...

What does "mapping the genome" mean? First, A Bit of Background on What Makes up the Genome A "genome" is an organism's complete set of genes and underlying DNA DNA molecules are double helix organized stands of base pairs that contain the underlying code for making...

What animals are the smartest (after humans - who aren't looking very smart these days)? It's somewhat of a difficult question.  There is no one standard measure for intelligence and it is difficult to say that one species is definitively more intelligent than...

What is a Hiccup? A hiccup occurs when there in a sudden, involuntary contraction of the diaphragm causing a sudden intake of air and then there is an accompanying shutting of the glottis (the flap that keeps food and water from going into your lungs). What Causes...

We are all made of stardust.  Literally.  Almost every element required for life, such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and iron, were created in the cores of super massive stars. The early universe was very hot and consisted mostly of Hydrogen and some Helium. As the...