My oldest daughter is off to college today.  So, here are some interesting facts about college: In the U.S. 88% of adults over 25 have graduated high school while 32.5% have a bachelor's degree and just 12% have a graduate degree. Do those undergrad and grad...

Avocados are everywhere! On toast! In guacamole! In smoothies! On burgers! In quinoa salads! In tacos! Here are some facts about avocados: Americans on average eat 7 pounds of avocado annually as compared to one pound in 1989. Per-capita avocado consumption has...

Psychopath and sociopath are pop psychology terms for what psychiatry calls antisocial personality disorder. People with this disorder tend to disregard and violate the rights of others around them and lack empathy.  In her book The Sociopath Next Door Dr. Martha...

Unless you live in a cave, you are aware that a full solar eclipse is occurring across a narrow band of the U.S. on Monday the 21st.  Here's a prior IFOD on the eclipse with map and some info: http://www.theifod.com/the-2017-total-solar-eclipse/ Safety Tips from NASA:...

So, what makes us happy and what can we do to be happier? Research has shown that greater happiness has beneficial and tangible benefits, including: larger social rewards (higher odds of marriage, lower odds of divorce, more friends, stronger social support, richer...

We Americans love to buy stuff.  We are consummate consumers.  Here are some very interesting stats about our stuff. There are 300,000 items in the average American home! In 1950 the average size of a home in the U.S. was 983 sq. ft.  In 2011 it was 2,480. Americans...

Donald and Melania Trump are dog-less occupants of the White House.  The last president to not have a dog while president was William McKinley who died in office in 1901 from gangrene as a result of an assassination attempt. President McKinley did have other pets:...

The box that changed the world:  The Cargo Container.  Usually about 8.5 x 8.5 x 40 feet.  We see them everywhere, especially near the coast, but often on the back of flatbed trucks and train flatbeds. The cargo container is actually an amazing development in the...

A recent study found that if everyone in America switched from eating any form of beef and instead substituted beans that America would meet its 2020 greenhouse gas emission goals pledged in 2009.  Note that this still allows for consumption of all other types of meat...

L'appetit vient en mangeant is a French proverb which translates to "appetite comes with eating." In its broadest sense, it means that once we have some of a thing, we often want more, and with food, even if we are not hungry, the act of eating creates an appetite....

All around us everything is abuzz, so to speak.  Quantum particles do not sit still.  They move all over the place and jump around. In fact, virtual particles can spontaneously flash into existence from the energy of quantum fluctuations and then disappear.  Even in a...

"Circadian rhythm" refers to the built-in clocks  that regulate many biological processes in our bodies. Our circadian rhythms vary by individual and are not exactly 24 hours (for most people it is longer than 24 hours). There are a number of external factors that...

Medical School Syndrome is a common condition among medical trainees whereby they experience the symptoms of the disease or diseases they are studying. It is considered a form of hypochondria and was first noted in medical literature in 1908. Some studies have found...

Since the Great Recession we've heard a lot about the rising inequality of wealth in the U.S. - we're becoming a country of haves and have nots. Another, lesser reported facet of this is an increasing gap in life expectancy in the U.S.  A recent study published in The...

Categorization is a innate human function (other animals engage in categorization as well). When we see an animal, listen to a piece of music or read a book we consciously or subconsciously categorize them.  For example, upon hearing a song we might think of it as...

"God does not play dice." -Albert Einstein Or does he/she? Based on what we see and experience everyday, the natural laws of the universe appear to work like clockwork where objects follow clearly defined rules.  For example, with respect to a car moving down the...

From the mid-1980s into the late 90s the  Starbucks drink menu had three sizes: Short, Tall and Grande. Short and Tall being english words standing for small and medium and "Grande" being Italian for large or big.  (Howard Schultz's naming of drinks and sizes was...

Andrew Lawrence, a real estate analyst with Barclays Capital, created the "Skyscraper Index" in 1999.  The Skyscraper Index is a theory that posits extremely tall skyscrapers are linked to the economic cycle and the completion of the world's tallest building is a...

A prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that is divisible by itself and 1 and no other number.  Prime numbers include: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53 . . . . With the use of computers, prime numbers have been proven out to...

Until 1998 it was theorized that the universe was expanding but that at some point gravity would slow it's expansion and then would cause the universe to collapse upon itself. In 1998 observations from the Hubble Telescope found that in the distant past the universe...

  26.2 miles is a long way to run.  The training leading up to the race and the race itself can take a toll on a body.  Do marathons lead to more deaths from heart attacks?  Yes. The rise in deaths is from non-participants.*  A recent study published in the New...

The average yawn is six seconds long and we average eight yawns a day. Humans begin to yawn while still in the womb.  Yawning is not limited to humans - snakes, fish, cats and dogs, among others, all yawn. What causes yawns?  Scientists are not completely sure what...

How many ancestors do you have? You have two parents. Four grandparents. Eight great-grandparents. Sixteen great-great grandparents.  At 10 generations you should have 1,024 ancestors.  Using this logic, however, at 40 generations you'd have over 1 Trillion ancestors!...

Typos have been with us ever since Guttenberg invented the printing press in 1440.  One famous example is the so-called "Wicked Bible" from 1631 which mistakenly says "Thou Shall Commit Adultery."  Only about 1,000 copies of the Wicked Bible were printed before they...

Today's IFOD concerns the "Anthropic Principle" which builds on last week's post on the four  four forces in the Universe and is a philosophical answer to the question "isn't it really amazing that our Universe is the way that it is?" If many finely balanced qualities...

The Chinese language is very complex. It is made up of around 50,000 characters and knowledge of about 4,000 of them is necessary for functional literacy.  The characters are intricate and some take as many as 64 strokes to write. So, how do they use keyboards? The...

Two very interesting pieces of research related to junk food: First, a study out of Australia found that eating junk food (high fat, sugary foods) actually rewires the brains of rats. After two weeks of eating "cafeteria food" the reward circuitry in the rats' brains...

Three is powerful.  The "rule of three" is a principle in writing that suggests that things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things. More than three things can be confusing and overwhelming.  It is...

Only 5-10% of cancer is based on inherited genes   The other 90-95% of cancer is attributable to random mutations (bad luck) or lifestyle factors.  Why does it seem that cancer runs in families more than 5-10% would suggest? Researchers postulate that lifestyle...

A force is a push or pull acting upon an object that if unopposed will change the motion of an object. There are four fundamental forces in the universe: Gravity, Electromagnetism, Strong Nuclear Force and Weak Nuclear Force. As discussed below, it is possible that a...

Dairy is big business in America. A few facts: Milk is the third-largest agricultural commodity in the US, behind cattle and corn. Americans drink more than six billion gallons of milk per year and another 10 billion gallons are used to produce cheese. Bone...

In addition to satellites and the international space station, there is a lot of other stuff orbiting the Earth of man made origin: space debris.  Space debris moves at around 18,000 miles an hour so even pea-sized piece of debris can cause great damage to a satellite...

The above picture is of replicas of Little Boy, 15 Kilotons of explosive power dropped on Hiroshima Aug 6, 1945 and Fat Man, 20 Kiltons and dropped on Nagasaki Aug 9, 1945.  Both bombs are "atomic bombs" and are powered by nuclear fission which creates energy from...

Why would a rabbit, which is considered a delicious treat by many predators, have a white tail? Such a tail would seem to be a big disadvantage from a survival perspective. I've long considered this issue as I watch my dog every spring chase rabbits to no avail (on...

Lawns of grass arose in 16th and 17th England and were found on great estates.  Grass grows nicely in a northern European climate.  It's quite a bit tougher to have a nicely quaffed lawn in much of the U.S. as grass is not native to most of our country. Here are some...

Why do the people of so many natural resource rich countries live in poverty?  Why does having great oil reserves damage the economy of the producer? Examples of this phenomenon abound: Venezuela, Nigeria, and most middle eastern countries including Saudi Arabia,...

How Did the Moon Form? The predominant theory is that a Mars-sized planet struck the Earth when it was around 100 million years old (which is when the Earth was still very young and likely still molten). The name given to this planet that struck Earth is Theia. The...

The U.S. and its territories, Canada, Bermuda and 16 Caribbean countries all use a telephone numbering system called the “North American Numbering Plan.”  You are familiar with it: a 3 digit “area code” followed by a seven digit phone number.  This numbering plan was...

In 2016 we spent $3.4 Trillion on healthcare in America.  Here are some interesting facts about that spending. $3.4 Trillion is $10,350 for each American. $3.4 Trillion is 18% of our GDP or 1 out of every 6 dollars spent. That level of healthcare spending is 50% more...

Why do women wear high-heel shoes? They are quite impractical, uncomfortable, and can lead to long-term foot health issues.  It's an interesting sociological phenomenon why they are worn at all. A few theories and some facts about high-heel shoes: High heels first...

As we come upon the Summer Solstice, people often say it's the "longest day of the year."  Of course, that is not really true, each day is 24 hours whether on the Summer Solstice or the Winter Solstice. What is meant is that the Summer Solstice is the day with the...

The Seven Wonders of the World is a list of architectural, engineering and/or sculptural achievements of the ancient Mediterranean world. Various Greek authors in the second century BC compiled the list.  Here they are: 1. The Great Pyramid of Giza Standing 480 feet...

Some very interesting facts about Amazon.com The smile in the above logo goes from a to z The amazon.com website launched on July 16, 1995 In 2016 Amazon accounted for 43% of all online revenue! The first purchase was by John Wainwright, who on April 3, 1995 (much...

There are now more stock indexes than there are stocks!!!!! What is a stock index? It is a rules based method of grouping together stocks to represent a market or sub-set of a market. Common examples are the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average. Why the...

Short Answer: If your car says premium is "Required" then you should use premium in your car.  If it says premium is "Recommended" you probably should save the money and skip it.  Below is an explanation of what premium gas is, why it matters and then links to lists...

Ever hang up clothes to dry indoors and wonder how that occurs? It makes more sense that something wet would dry when laid out in the sun, but it is less obvious why wet clothes dry hanging in my basement. As we all know, the process of drying is called evaporation....

It is incorrect to put two spaces after a period. Period. Who says its incorrect? Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. Every modern style guide agrees that there should be one space after a period - The Chicago Manual of Style, the AP Stylebook, and...

Have you ever wondered if unattractive couples find each other attractive? A study by researchers from Columbia, Carnegie Mellon and Duke address this question.  They utilized data from the website HOTorNOT.com to help them answer the following question:  “When less...

Only about 26 people die due to elevator accidents each year (almost of these people die while servicing elevators). Elevators are also about 20 times safer than escalators. One of the only elevators to fall due to a complete cable system failure occurred during 1945...

97% of 12-17 year-olds play video games regularly and 85% of those video games contain some form of violence. Do violent video games lead to more violence?  The short answer: probably not, in fact, they may lead to a reduction in violent crime. A bit longer answer:...

What is Dark Matter? Short answer: nobody really knows.  In fact, it may not be matter, or it may not exist.  As of now, Dark Matter is really just  a hypothetical construct that allows the formulas that describe gravity to work. Longer answer: If you add up all the...

Here's how long it took for each of the following technologies to reach 50 million users worldwide: The telephone                       75 Years Air travel                                   68 Years Automobile                             62 Years Light Bulb          ...

Because the Earth is a sphere, it doesn't translate well to a two dimensional, square map.  Because of the issues in projecting a 3D sphere on a 2D map, no 2D map can be entirely correct - choices must be made. The primary map model of the Earth we all learned in...

A few amazing facts about the human brain: The brain is considered the most complex object in the known universe. The average adult human brain weighs 3.3 pounds and is about 70% water.  Even a minor amount of dehydration can affect your cognitive abilities. Of the...

Something extremely bizarre is going on with the star known as KIC 8462852. It is about 1,480 light years from Earth and is nicknamed "Tabby's Star" after Tabetha Boyajian, the Yale astronomer who discovered its bizarre behavior. What's happening?  A few years ago...

How old are you?  It’s a tougher question to answer than you think.  There are about 37 trillion cells in the body and each type of cell has it's own lifespan. The average age of an adult’s cells may be as low as 7 - 15 years.  This is because most of the body’s...

Sometimes, improving something makes it worse.  Such can be the case with road networks and the addition of a new route.  In 1968 mathematician Dietrich Braess proved that often adding an additional route to a congested traffic area could increase overall travel time...

A recent study out of Harvard Medical School found that there was a slight, yet material difference in mortality of patients treated by older doctors as opposed to younger doctors.  In the study of hospital based internists patients of doctors age 40 and under...

There are benefits to Facebook, for sure, including relationship maintenance and social support.  Notwithstanding these benefits, many studies and surveys have found that use of Facebook and similar social media makes us less happy than if we refrained from using...

We humans look and feel solid.  As do our houses, cars, pets, food, trees, etc. Yet, we (and everything else) are 99.999999% empty space. Everything is made up of atoms.  The size of an atom is determined by the average location of its electrons.  Within the atom...

A common sentiment heard among investors relates to wanting to either (a) invest in stocks located in a particular country high GDP growth or (b) avoid investing in stocks of a country with poor growth.  While this would seem to make sense on the surface, it is flawed...

I recently was at a conference and got to have a drink with a Harvard sleep researcher.  I asked him about napping as I love naps!!!!  He also loves naps!!!! I learned some very interesting things from him: Napping is a not a good substitute for a good night's sleep....

Brains of newborn humans require 87% of the body’s metabolic energy to operate and grow. By age five, the energy requirement drops to 44% of the body’s energy. As adults, even though our brains make up only about 2% of our body weight (at a normal body weight), it...

We're getting smarter.  Literally.  IQ test raw scores have been generally increasing every generation. Each generation is about 9 - 15 IQ points brighter than the one before it.  If we set the current average IQ at 100, then the average IQ of 1900 was about 60. IQ...

The Sun loses mass at a rate of about 5.5 million tons per second which is about 174 trillion tons per year!  This loss of mass occurs for two reasons: (1) protons and electrons that boil off the surface of the Sun in what is referred to as the "solar wind" and (2)...

The Appendix is a tube like sac that averages 9 cm in length and is connected to the large intestine right about where it joins the small intestine.  It has long been thought that the appendix is a so-called vestigial organ that serves no modern function. That turns...

It it turns out all mammals like to be petted or caressed, not just dogs.  A 2013 study at Cal Tech found petting triggers special neurons in the brain of mammals called MRGPRB4+.  These neurons produce both a calming and pleasure response in the brain. These neurons...

The job of picking winning investment managers has become more difficult over time. A primary reason for the increased difficulty in picking winners is the “paradox of skill”.* It is not that investment fund managers are not skilled. Conversely, it’s that the skill...

The Second Law of Thermodynamics, also known as Entropy, states that in a closed system energy flows from order to disorder. Common expressions of Entropy in day-to-day life include: "things fall apart", "ashes to ashes", "rust never sleeps" and "shit happens."...

  Two very entertaining studies about investment fund names, enjoy: In a recent academic paper entitled "Hedge Fund Flows and Name Gravitas" the researchers found that "Investors allocate more flows to hedge funds whose names exhibit gravitas — defined as a...

Public health experts are worried that we are unprepared for a global infectious disease pandemic.  In the early 20th century influenza wiped out over 50 million people. The AIDS/HIV virus infected 70 million. In the past decade, we've battled Ebola, SARS, West Nile,...

A recent study of more than 3,500 participants over age 50 found that reading books is positively associated with longevity.  The participants were tracked for 12 years and questioned about their reading habits.  The respondents were divided into three categories: (1)...

In school, we likely learned that an atom looked like the above model, which is TOTALLY WRONG!  Here's a more accurate diagram of an (simple) atom: Electrons don't orbit the nucleus like the planets orbit the sun. Instead, electrons are found in a "cloud of...

"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice" - Robert Frost What are the biggest risks facing humanity?  There's no way to know for sure - time will tell.  However, a number of academic groups, think tanks and government agencies have laid out their best...

The tulip was introduced to Europe in the 16th century from the Ottoman Empire.  They became especially popular in the Netherlands and were considered a luxury item and a status symbol.  By the 1620s - 1630s many types of tulips became very sought after and valuable...

Here are some very interesting facts about our citizenry: Percentage of over-25 year-olds with a bachelor's degree:   32.5% Percentage of over-25 year-olds with a graduate degree: 12% The six-year graduation rate for those attending four-year colleges is 60% and is...

What is horsepower?  What type of horse?  Thoroughbred?  Clydesdale?  Tennessee Walking Horse? The short  answer is that Horsepower is a measurement of amount of work done over time. The exact definition of one horsepower is 33,000 lb.ft./minute. Put another way, if...

This IFOD concerns "quantum entanglement" which is the craziest thing I have ever heard.* Einstein described it as "spooky action at a distance." Quantum entanglement occurs when two subatomic particles remain connected, even over large distances. Entanglement arises...

Mt. Denali: The Highpointers Club is made up of the 280 people who have ascended the highest point in all 50 states.  The highest points in some states are quite challenging from a mountaineering perspective.  Mt. Denali in Alaska is 20,310 ft.; Mt. Whitney in...

The chemical that makes peppers hot is capsaicin. While it hasn't been settled scientifically, it appears that peppers evolved to have capsaisin to avoid being eaten by rodents who register pain upon consuming capsaisin, whereas birds do not have pain sensors that...

"We are all Africans under our skin" is a common quote of Dr. Spencer Wells a population geneticist who heads the National Geographic Society Genographic Project.  What does he mean? Our species, Homo Sapiens, evolved in eastern Africa about 200,000 years ago. About...

Magnitudes of earthquakes are measured by logarithmic magnitude scales based on the work of Dr. Charles Richter. Being logarithmic scales, the magnitude of an earthquake increases tenfold for each one point change.  Note that magnitude measures the amplitude of waves...

Stars burn at tens of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, yet in an amazing paradox, are created by cooling gas. Here's how it works: stars are created in giant clouds of interstellar gas made up of mostly hydrogen (number one on perodic table).  As the gas cools it...

"Tabatas" have become rather popular in many exercise regimes.  What exactly are "Tabatas"? In the early 1990's Dr. Izumi Tabata, who was an adviser to the Japanese Speed Skating team, developed a new type of workout that now bears his name.  His workout is based on...

Americans on average read 12 books a year, but that average is skewed by a smaller number who read much more than 12 books, as the median number of books read by American adults is four. Are those books likely to be traditional print books, or an eBook? The Kindle...

The average weight of an American adult has increased 24lbs since 1960. That additional weight costs the airlines money as hauling extra weight takes more fuel. At around $3 per gallon of jet fuel, the 24 extra pounds translates into about 175 million gallons of add'l...

Legend has it that Marie Antoinette's hair turned white the night before she was guillotined. Presumably the stress of impending decapitation caused her locks to lose color within hours. Can stress cause hair to turn grey? Did the stress of the Presidency cause...

I turn 47 today, so here are some facts about birthdays: September 16th is the most common birthday in America according to data collected by a Harvard economist of all births in the U.S. from 1973 to 1999. Today, April 6th is the 286th most common birthday. August is...

A recent study has concluded that attractive couples are 26% more likely to have a girl as their first child as compared to less-attractive couples.  This conclusion was based on at-home interviews with over 2,900 randomly selected parents between the ages of 18 and...

Maybe my memory is fuzzy, but applying to and choosing a college seemed much less stressful and involved 35 years ago when I was applying than it is today. Today's high schoolers are under immense pressure to get good grades, do well on standardized tests, and do the...

My daughter will be attending McKendree University in Lebanon, IL in the fall.  I recently came across a blog of someone who is driving to all the Lebanons in the United States.  It turns out that there is a town named Lebanon in 29 states!!!! Here's a map of all the...

Notwithstanding the Millenium Falcon's ability to jump to hyperspace, travel at the speed of light, or faster than the speed of light, is not possible according to the theory of special relativity. It turns out that Star Wars is just fiction. There are two reasons...

Our dog was one of a litter of ten puppies.  About half of them looked like him: dark with brindle fur.  The other half looked almost like golden retrievers: light fur with no brindle. We asked our vet about this and she thought that there must have been different...

Waves are created by energy passing through water.  However, water does not actually travel in waves - the waves transmit energy, but not water. Other than tsunamis, waves on the surface of a body of water such as the ocean are caused by the wind.  No wind = no waves....

On August 21, 2017 a total solar eclipse will be visible along a relatively narrow path of the United States, staring near Salem, Oregon and ending just north of Charleston, South Carolina.  Along the way total eclipse will be visible from just south of St. Louis....

How many people should be in a meeting?  Well if the meeting concerns making a decision, research suggests that seven or less is usually the correct answer. Each person beyond seven who attends the meeting reduces decision effectiveness by around 10%.  Thus, meetings...

The dog was the first animal domesticated by Homo sapiens - about 15,000 years ago - and the only animal to be domesticated before the Agricultural Revolution. Dogs initially were bred for hunting, fighting and as warning systems against human and wild animal...

In the modern world the standard model of sleep is so-called "consolidated sleep" - meaning we go to bed and (try) to sleep in one straight shot of about eight hours until the morning.  Waking in the middle of the night is seen as abnormal. But maybe sleeping straight...

Imagine you and your significant other go on a date to a movie. Ten mintutes in, you realize the movie is horrible.  Your surreptitiously check reviews on your phone and confirm it doesn't get better - it's just a horrible movie. What do you do? You've paid $30 for...

Automation and technology  have had huge effect on our lives over the past 100 years and had a huge effect on jobs and wages over that time period (both positive and negative). While technology has driven a lot of changes in our economy, interestingly automation and...

"Either we are alone, or we are not; either way is mind-boggling” -Lee DuBridge (Astrophysicist and Science Advisor to Pres. Eisenhower). Is there life elsewhere in the universe? In our galaxy? In 1960 Dr. Frank Drake (Prof. at U. of Calf. Santa Cruz) developed the...

It's spring break time - lots of people hitting the slopes!  I'm leaving to go skiing tomorrow and I'm a bit nervous as I suffered a pretty major injury skiing a year ago (x-rays below) and this will be my first time skiing post-injury.  So, this IFOD is about skiing...

In their book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die,  communication experts Dan and Chip Heath explain why some ideas are "sticky" -- they get stuck in our heads and make their way into the zeitgeist. An idea can be sticky and true or sticky and false....

Commercial airliners are designed to fly after losing a single engine.  The airplane manufacturers are required to show the performance of their airplanes after losing an engine and they have to be able to fly, fully loaded, for three hours on only one engine (for...

Have you ever looked at a mannequin, a robot or a computer-generated human and felt a wave of revulsion? If so, welcome to the so-called "uncanny valley." The "uncanny valley" is a theory proposed by Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori in a 1970 paper. His...

"Implicit Egotism" is a psychological theory that suggests  we prefer people, places and things that are like ourselves and our subconscious directs our choices based on what is connected to us.  Here are some interesting examples: Studies have shown that people are...

In America, a common initial response to a question is "that's a great question" or "that's a really good question." We hear this over and over, often in response to questions that are not all that great or are pretty obvious.  I've been observing this is a common...

There about 7,000 languages spoken on Earth!  Here are some crazy interesting facts about languages: Half the world's population speaks one of ten languages.  These most spoken languages, in order of number of speakers are: -Chinese (1.2 Billion) -Spanish (400...

I travel a lot on planes.  And I sleep a lot on planes.  Or, alternatively, I spend a lot of time on planes feeling tired.  Feeling sleepy on planes is a common phenomenon. What causes it: First and foremost, commercial airliners are pressurized to the equivalent of...

We've all had it happen.  We click on a link and instead of our desired page, we instead get a webpage that says something like "404 Error - Page Not Found" and might look something like this: What is a 404 Error page? The internet runs on a set of protocols set forth...

Flying back from Belize this weekend our flight was overbooked and the airline asked for a volunteer to miss the flight in return for a free night in a hotel and a $300 voucher towards future travel.  The airline we were flying (Southwest) knows how many seats are on...

Do you feel bad charging your iPhone at your friend's house?  You shouldn't. It costs about $0.25 per year to charge.* Here's where we use our energy now (ish) vs. 1978. Interestingly, the total energy use is the same (10.58 vs. 10.55 quadrillion Btu) even though we...

A study from 2014 found that people predicted that having a conversation with a stranger while commuting would not be as pleasant as keeping to themselves.  It turns out an experiment found the opposite. One group of participants was asked to strike up a conversation...

Regular old soap works by causing bacteria on your hands to loosen their grip and/or removing whatever the bacteria are clinging to.  In other words, regular soap doesn't actually kill bacteria, it merely removes it in conjunction with scrubbing. SCRUB SCRUB SCRUB: To...

I've long thought that our fingers and toes get wrinkly after spending time in the water due to some sort of osmosis effect.  It turns out that is wrong. In 2011 researchers proposed that our fingers get wrinkly after time in the water because it helps us pick up and...

As humans, we have a much easier time understanding linear progression versus exponential progression.  Here's a famous fable illustrating our troubles grasping the exponential: In the fable, a wise man invents the game of chess and presents it to his king. Pleased,...

One mystery of human behavior is why we (sometimes) behave altruisticly.  One explanation is found in "costly signaling theory." A great example of costly signaling is found in male peacocks with their large, beautiful tails. The tails of male peacocks waste energy,...

  So, what is more risky - taking a bath or flying on a plane? We all will die of something.  Here are the odds of dying of various causes during your lifetime (2013 statistics): Odds of Dying:   1 in 1 Heart disease:   1 in 6 Cancer: 1 in 7 Smoking Related:   1...

A recent study found that an A is the most common grade at four-year colleges. A's are awarded 42%  of the time compared to 10% of the time in 1963 when the most common grade was a C . The awarding of A's has been increasing 5-6% per decade. Originally, grade...

It is amazing what we can get used to.  I remember the first airplane I flew on with wifi about six years ago. Mind blown! Internet in the air!  Now, when I fly it is frustrating when the plane doesn't have wifi.  Even if it does have wifi it's slowwwww and you can't...

Pets are big business: Americans spent over $62 Billion on their pets last year. $24 Billion of that was food, with $11.6 Billion spent on dog food and $3.8 Billion on cat food.  A number of facts about dog food: We care about our dogs - maybe more than we care about...

“When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?”                             -John Maynard Keynes What actually happens to our beliefs when we are confronted with facts that suggest our beliefs are wrong? Do we change our minds? A study from last year...

Exercise is very important to overall health.  As mentioned in an IFOD a few days ago, strength (as measured by grip strength) is inversely related to all sorts of bad health results. While exercise will increase your fitness and overall health, one thing it doesn't...

It is tempting to invest in trends or themes in the market.  Here is a recent article I wrote that highlights the difficulty of investing in trends and also has some advice related to investing  in trends: The trend is not necessarily your friend

  Over the past several months, many people have asked me whether they should take risk off the table by selling some of their stocks. Given the heightened perception of uncertainty in geopolitics and the financial markets, this question is understandable. In...

Dogs may be the most popular pet in the U.S. (37% of households), but cats (2nd most popular pet at 30% of households) rule the internet. Over 2 million cat videos were posted on the internet in 2014 and those 2 million videos received about 26 billion views! Cat...

Most species of animal are about the same size. Except for dogs. Dogs have the greatest size variation of any species of animal. While all dogs are descendants of wolves, they have been selectively bred for thousands of years for different purposes. It is surprising...

As a society, our grip strength has declined by around 20% since the 1980s. Not surprisingly, as more and more jobs have become less physical (even auto mechanics use many more power tools) our grip strength has declined. In essence, there has been an inverse...

The term "China Syndrome" was made famous by a movie of the same name from 1979 starring Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas. In the movie two reporters discover a mishap at a nuclear reactor.  "China Syndrome"figuratively refers to a  nuclear reactor core in meltdown...

A study conducted by an insurance company of 3,000 adults found that on average we lose nine items a day.  That adds up to about 3,300 items a year or 200,000 items over the course of an average adult lifetime! (Note that in the study, "lost" apparently doesn't...

Here are some really @)$#%&! interesting facts about curse words: Swearing can help you endure pain.  A researcher at Keele University in the UK ran a study whereby 67 college students put their hands in ice water.  One group of students yelled swear words while...

How GPS actually works is quite interesting.  There are 27 satellites that orbit the Earth about 2x a day (24 active ones and three spares all owned by the U.S. Military).  These satellites transmit just two pieces of information: 1. the position of the satellite and...

When we were young the summers often seemed to drag by.  Each semester of school seemed to go on and on. The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed to take an eternity.  As we have gotten older the years seem to speed by (can you believe that 2007 was 10...

Anecdotally, dentists and anesthesiologists have for decades reported that redheads usually require more anesthesia than those with other hair colors (about 20%).  Recent research has confirmed that redheads are actually more sensitive to certain types of pain due to...

What numbers are interesting?  Zero is interesting.  It didn't exist until centuries after the other integers.  The catholic church banned it.  Entire books have been written about it.  It is interesting. How about 1?  The first positive interger.  The first prime...