I enjoy writing. I believe words matter. When I’m asked how I have time to write, I sometimes snidely answer “How do you have time to watch TV?” I’ve shared writing advice from famous authors, including the very practical from George Orwell: If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. and…
As soon as I finished reading Daniel Willingham’s fascinating book Why Don’t Students Like School?, I immediately put it on my list to blog about. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, applies the principles of cognitive psychology to the world of education. Essentially, his goal is explain to teachers how their students’ brains…
We always seem to be on a search for cause. In college my statistics professor’s favorite expression was “correlation does not imply causation.” In case you’re not familiar with the phrase, I’ll borrow the explanation I learned in school: When male college students wake up with a headache, a large percentage of the time they…
Ever notice that food tastes better when someone else makes it for you? In the fourth annual Food and Drink issue of the NY Times magazine, noted psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains: When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you’re working on it. And when you think of a particular food for…
For reasons I’d rather not go into, I decided to do a little research into food poisoning with a seemingly simple question: How does food get poisoned? It turns out most food-related illnesses can be separated into two types: toxins and infection. The traditional use of the term food poisoning stems from the existence of…
“It’s true I deceived you but I wasn’t lying.” The statement, spoken brazenly by a work colleague, momentarily floored me. They claimed they were deceiving without lying but I thought deception and lying were the same thing. A little bit of research suggests there may be a difference. In ‘Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in…
Ever watch those TV infomercials late at night when you’re bored and can’t sleep? Of course you do. And you’re likely to buy things you don’t really need as well. ‘But Wait… There’s More’ – the most fascinating book I’ve read in a long time – explains the science behind infomercials. Virtually every element of…
Many popular phrases have their roots in sports. For example, the cliché “there is no ‘i’ in team” comes from the idea a cohesive team of players is more likely to win games than a collection of individual superstars. Players are told to focus on the team’s overall success rather than their individual performance. The…
What would get people to reuse their towels in hotel rooms? The answer might surprise you, as it’s not saving the environment or saving money. People are more likely to reuse their hotel towels if they are told that everyone else is doing it. This variant of the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ effect seems…
As the name implies, biomimicry is the discipline of designing products by mimicking phenomena that already exist in biology and nature. The best-known example of this approach is Velcro, which was developed in the 1940s by engineer George De Mestral when he noticed burrs clinging to his dog’s fur after a walk in the woods. It…