Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. This colorful phrase, called Hanlon’s Razor, explains that people aren’t always out to get us; sometimes they just make mistakes. It’s a practical application of Occam’s Razor which states that, everything else being equal, the simplest solution is usually the best one. Hanlon’s…
For many years, I used to brag about how little sleep I needed. 5 or 6 hours was plenty; 7 was a luxury. I even once blogged about the benefits of resting as an alternative to sleeping. I’m not alone. Many (perhaps even most) of my colleagues / acquaintances have told stories about getting very little sleep…
In the climactic scene of the movie A Few Good Men, Lieutenant Kaffee (Tom Cruise) demands the truth from a testifying Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson). Jack’s response is a cinema classic: You can’t handle the truth! It’s a mesmerizing scene which contains an interesting psychological tidbit. People often rate honesty as the most important value…