I always just figured it was a way of teaching kids “if you drop it, it’s probably ok to pick it up and eat it, but not if you found it on the ground in the first place.” Keeps the little walking petri dishes from eating a candy bar someone dropped in the park the day before.

It’s a cool chart, but I feel like at least a handful of the “misconceptions” are just less than perfect idioms, like “steep learning curve.” That interpretation of the expression does make more sense, but it’s an expression, it means whatever the majority of people think it means.

I know it’s anecdotal, but I beat one recently and it was nothing special. They’re based on the wildly flawed premise that humans have a consistent and predictable set of physiological responses when we lie, and that those responses are measurably different from the reaction we would have if we were say nervous about…

I grew up with a girl who had injured her back in a car accident a few years before I met her. You’d never know there was an issue, but she couldn’t handle more than five or ten pounds in a backpack, so she’d use one of those backpack styled suitcases with the wheels. It looked odd the first time you saw it, but after…

Wow . . . you’re just . . . wow. If we ever cross paths on a night out, please don’t be offended when my friends and I sidestep you to avoid the wafting sense of smugness. I don’t know if we could survive that much haught.

Opera was populist entertainment long before people ruined it by pretending it could only be enjoyed if your clothes were at least slightly uncomfortable. I’d rather spend the evening with real fans in chinos than people who are seriously concerned about which were the spendier seats and whether or not they were seen…

I was intentionally homeless during a very ill advised Kerouac wannabe phase, and the biggest thing I learned is that busking beats panhandling any day of the week. Get a tinwhistle, a set of drumsticks, or some tarot cards to make yourself mildly entertaining and people will go from running you off to literally…

I’ve definitely met a few people like that, and I feel for the people who have a coworker or boss (someone they can’t avoid) who does the undermining thing. I have a sister in law who has a really interesting version of this where she is way way too nice and patronizing about something so that it ends up seeming silly…

I’m the same way. I look out the window, think about what I have to do that day, then pick up the nearest available pants and shirt that will do the trick. I’m dressed in maybe two minutes, if for some reason I have to tie a tie, twenty seconds if it’s a basketball shorts and tshirt kind of day. It’s like a chess move…

I love picking up new skills like this as an adult (age 31). It can be so easy to get complacent and just sort of settle into who you are and what you know how to do. An instrument, a language, a sport like this, that sense of accomplishment really shouldn’t be something reserved for twelve year olds.

I’ve got something like this http://www.amazon.com/ManGrate-2G-1B… in my car camping kit. Works great even if there is no public grill, you can just set it directly on top of a burned down campfire if you’re so inclined.

To add to number two. There are a bunch of people in my family with those sort of “hey, can you help me out, I’ll buy you a pizza” kind of jobs. I grew up doing construction in the summers, then did tech support during college. My sister in law is a stylist at Aveda. My girlfriend does graphic design, etc etc.

Cool graphic. It’s weird though, I’ve never been a bartender, just a waiter, but that isn’t at all the ordering order I’m familiar with. Maybe it’s regional?

I decided a few years back that the “oh, you just automatically tip 20% thing,” was BS since the whole idea (at least in my mind) is to reward good service, so these days I either tip nothing or 60-100%. I decided I was ok with the whole system where waiters and waitresses make their living based on tips, but then if…

Probably would have come up in the five minutes of research easily done on any vehicle, but even if it didn’t, it’s not a lot different than buying from an individual owner. If I met you in a parking lot and sold you a car then became unreachable, you’re no better off just because I was the actual previous owner.

I think I must be missing something. I understand that it ends up costing small business fees and lacking regulation, but if I take a good look at the car, do my research then get a fair price, why do I care how this guy does or doesn’t organize his paperwork?

but, it does seem like a totally reasonable level of annoyance with an extra “d,” on a word . . .

Vote: SPYDERCO DRAGONFLY 2 SALT

So, the correlation vs causation thing is true, and you have to keep it in mind when you are gauging how seriously to take something like this, but it's almost impossible for epidemiological studies like this to show anything but correlation.

A trick I use, that sounds really stupid, but is surprisingly effective is to ask yourself, “what would a smarter person than I do?” There are an awful lot of biases that, even if we couldn’t necessarily name them, we have some awareness of, or even just a vague sense of their existence. More often than not, we know…