I recently read Chris Chabris and Daniel Simon's excellent book, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, and found myself unlearning a great deal. For a fun test, answer this question: Can you tell when someone is staring at you from behind? Now watch the video below. (For an explanation read the [...]
Danger: Prevention Has Risks of Its Own
March 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Did you know that after childproof lids on medicine bottles were introduced, it led to a significant increase in the number of child poisonings? The reason is because parents became less careful about keeping the bottles away from their children. I am all for taking preventative action — especially to protect kids — but we [...]
Think Inside-Out the Box
February 2, 2011 By 1 Comment
The Truth About Halloween isn’t So Scary
October 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment
How many kids have been killed on Halloween by eating poisoned candy? The answer is zero. Let me repeat that: zero! If you're like me, you probably grew up on tales of avoiding Pixie Sticks for fear some creepy old neighbor had laced the candy with strychnine. Or, perhaps, you avoided perfectly healthy apples for fear that [...]
The Grass isn’t Greener on the Other Side
September 10, 2010 By 1 Comment
“You don’t understand something until you understand it more than one way.” –Marvin Minsky Question: Are there more words which begin with the letter “K” or which have “K” as their third letter? With words such as kangaroo, kitchen and kite readily springing to mind it is easy to assume there are more words [...]
