How Would You Like to Take a Nantucket Sleighride?
We all know about hunters and gatherers and how primitive societies tended to be one or the other. You won’t find many gatherers far up above the Arctic Circle where all is ice, snow, and patches of open water. Except for sled dogs, lost birds, and the occasional...
Why Do We Call Them White Collar Workers and Blue Collar Workers?
Throughout most of the 1880s, men wore hats, suits, and ties every day and everywhere. Called sack suits, they had three pieces. The loose, hanging single-breasted jacket, the matching vest, and trousers. Nearly all the shirt was covered by the jacket and vest, but...
Who Was Jasper Maskelyne?
As the story goes, Jasper Maskelyne outfoxed the Germans by making the Suez Canal disappear. From my safe distance high atop Civilization’s Hill of Knowledge, built on all the things we’ve learned in the 85 years since 1941, I feel confident that the Suez Canal is...
What’s the Difference Between Hobos, Tramps, and Bums?
My concept of hobos was taught me by tv. The first I remember was a hobo that came thru Mayberry. Opie liked him right away, but the hobo turned out to be a ne’er-do-well that was teaching bad habits to the gullible kid. Andy put a stop to it, of course. TV and movies...
A Closer Look at the Dance Crazes of the 1950s and 1960s
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters didn’t sing moon-June-spoon songs like most white bands. Their songs were considered by many to be raunchy, a catchall word that captures things earthy, sexual, and vulgar. Their 1954 song Annie Had a Baby was salacious (“She can’t...
A Closer Look at Why Burmese Pythons Are a Florida Headache
Burmese pythons are ambush hunters that can grow to be as much as 19 feet long in the wild in the Florida Everglades. Females are five or six feet longer than males and may lay as many as a thousand eggs over a typical life span. Burmese pythons rarely move about,...
July 1st is National Postage Stamp Day. What Are Your Plans?
Three very bad man are after the money they think Audrey Hepburn has because her husband stole it from them and he has turned up dead, thrown from a train in his pajamas. The police gave her the small travel bag they found with his body. Inside were a few francs, a...
Europeans Invade American College Basketball
Greetings, faithful readers of this space. You don’t know me. I’m Mike Strange, a retired sportswriter, who was once, in a galaxy far, far away, a college fraternity brother of David, your usual host. David asked me to step in for a week while he is tasked with a...
What Do Texas Longhorns Have To Do With Your Company’s Logo?
Butch Cassidy’s Hole-in-the-Wall Gang were mostly robbers of banks, stagecoaches, and trains at gunpoint, sometimes dramatically, as portrayed in a dynamite explosion the gang set off when Woodcock stubbornly wouldn’t part with Mister E. H. Harriman’s money. But to...
Thursday I Was Still Writing Four Articles – Friday I Had First Drafts of Three
As usual, I have four or five stories somewhere early in development, as the film folk like to say. Some are pretty good late drafts. Most are just early drafts, notes, ramblings, musings, maybe even a rough outline. A few are still in the incubator. Dozens more exist...
A Closer Look at Asparagus
Asparagus is a flowering perennial that is native to the area where Europe and Asia overlap. The young shoots are harvested and eaten as vegetables. The green tips with the clusters of tiny developing branches are valued for their tenderness and taste. If you’re going...
Do You Know the Real Winnie-the-Pooh or Just the One In Children’s Books?
Harry Colebourn (1887-1947) was a lieutenant with the Royal Canadian Army Veterinary Corps. He was on a train taking him to the port where he would board a troop ship on its way to the fighting in Europe. When Colebourn’s train stopped for water in White River,...
A Closer Look at National Frog Jumping Day
Daniel Webster was America's most famous orator, statesman and congressman of the early 1800s. As a lawyer, he argued more than 200 cases before the United States Supreme Court. Old Dan'l's oratory was so strong that it would last for hours and leave those in the...
Was Annie Edson Taylor a Real Maid of the Mist or Just a Nut?
In 1859, the Great Blondin crossed Niagara Gorge on a tightrope. Then he did it with a wheelbarrow, blindfolded, on stilts, and carrying his manager piggyback. In 1876, Maria Spelterini crossed the same gorge by tightrope, the only woman to do so. And in 1901, Maud...
Was It a Woman Who Came Up With the Idea of Mother’s Day? Or Was It a Man?
After watching all day, Mork told Orson that today was Woman in Relation to Her Children’s Day. It's an occasion where overfed Americans stand in line for hours to pay too much much money for a mediocre meal that took far too long to be served by frazzled employees...
A Closer Look at America’s Oldest Candy: Necco Wafers
The first medicated throat discs date back to Egypt in 1000 BC. They were made from honey and flavored with eucalyptus. The first ones we'd recognize were called Throaties, invented in 1930. Today’s medicated throat discs are commonly used to temporarily treat sore...
Let’s Take a Closer Look at the Pretzel
Like so many things from the past, the pretzel comes equipped with lots of stories of how it came to be and what it symbolizes. The favorite story of most pretzel historians features a 7th century Italian monk who designed a cracker for his students. As a reward for...
What’s Your Sign? A Closer Look at the Zodiac
In the 1970s and 1980s, there was one question asked over and over again by men and women alike in every bar in town - from fern bars to discos, pubs, and dive bars. What’s your sign? It was a jumping-off point for mutual seduction that was so popular in the days of...
A Closer Look at the Hurdy-Gurdy, Organ Grinders, and the Monkey
The organistrum (the organ I strum) is a stringed musical instrument from the Middle Ages. It was commonly referred to as the “wheel fiddle” and was so large that it took two people to play it. One person turned the crank while another pressed keys that changed the...
A Closer Look at the Mutiny Hotel in the Days of the Cocaine Cowboys
Skylab was America’s first space station. On July 11, 1979, it ran out of gas (figuratively) and gravity took over. As it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, the 99-foot-long Skylab disintegrated, spewing 154,000 pounds of soon-to-be flotsam over most of the Indian Ocean....
A Closer Look at Where Marshmallows Come From
Marshes are zones of transition between the land on one side and the water on the other, be it ocean, lake, pond, river, or creek. Marshes are flat, low-lying, treeless* land covered mostly by fresh or salt water or a mix of the two. Whatever land is there is always...
A Closer Look at Sylvester Graham, the 17th Child of a 72-Year-Old Preacher
A cholera epidemic reached Europe after starting in India and spreading to Asia by land and sea routes. Cholera is an infectious disease caused by bacteria that thrive on rotting food and drinking water contaminated by human waste. Infection occurs mostly in the small...
What Is the Overton Window and What Does It Have To Do With Think Tanks?
Until he was killed when his single-seat lightweight aircraft crashed, Joseph Overton was a Fellow at The Mackinac Center for Public Policy. A policy analyst, he described the range of topics acceptable to mainstream thinking as the window of discourse. Overton...
A Closer Look at Female Pilots During Women’s Aviation Week
A Closer Look at Female Pilots During Women's Aviation Week Women of Aviation Worldwide Week is upon us, and the only female pilot I know is the famous one, Amelia Earhart. She was aviation’s darling until she disappeared along with her navigator and was presumed dead...
A Closer Look at Kewpie Dolls
Rose O’Neill was nineteen years old when she left Nebraska for the Big Apple in search of work as an illustrator and cartoonist. A self-taught artist, she had enjoyed six years of success selling her artwork in Omaha, so she had reason to be hopeful. A Closer Look at...
A Closer Look at Barney Google and His Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes
The Stanford University team working on interweb search technology called their product “BackRub.” Later, wiser heads suggested if the goal was to provide enormous volumes of search results, the name ought to at least suggest hugeness beyond what we now think is vast....
What Does a Good Indian Curry Have to Do With a Mythical Horse Named Fauvel?
The big event of the 14th century was the Black Plague. After killing off half the population of Europe, the Black Death (its street name) left the other half living with hunger, fear, and poverty. Regular people had to make do with scraps while the elites lived in...
Number, Please: A Closer Look at Telephone Switchboard Operators
Party lines aren’t the ones where people wait to get in where the action's going on. Not the Texas Two-Step, the Electric Slide, or the Hustle, either. In rural areas there were so few telephone owners that it was impractical and too costly to run lines to each home...
Did Someone Invent the Potato Chip – or Was It an Accident?
The potato chip (puhleez don’t say iconic) is a symbol of portable snacks, specifically the category the food industry calls salty snacks. American companies turn four million tons of potatoes into chips every year. That’s $10 billion of what most Americans consider...
A Closer Look at Those Little Drink Umbrellas
Look on the top of most better bar counters and you’ll find cherries, oranges, lemons, limes, sliced, wedged, twisted, and impaled upon little plastic swords with sharp points and tiny little hilts. Next to them you’ll see swirled stacks of bevnaps (the portmanteau...
A Closer Look at (and a Closer Listen to) Saxophones
For many, the word woodwind is just what it sounds like: wood wind. It conjures up visions of clarinets and oboes, those slender and hollow wooden tubes with holes drilled along their length. Musicians supply the power by blowing into those tubes, changing the sounds...
A Closer Look at Bad Breath, From a Safe Distance
Billy’s father was Catholic and his mother was Jewish. When he was 23, he married a 40-year old woman who fixed his bad teeth, changed his hairstyle, taught him how to act, and talked him into changing his name. Joan Crawford co-starred with him in eight films. She...
A Closer Look at Nutcrackers
The first nutcrackers I ever saw were rounded silver jaws with teeth and handles hinged at the far end. We used them to crack open walnut shells, especially around Christmas. The second one was the soldiers falling at Radio City Music Hall. It was The Nutcracker, a...
Read This To Become the Mistletoe Expert This Holiday Season
Have you heard of the Western Hemisphere tribe that steals hemiparasites from their hosts and uses them as the centerpieces of a ritual that goes back centuries? People hang from the ceiling special organisms that feed on the resources of others. Once situated...
Why Did The Conch Republic Declare War on the United States?
Florida City, the southernmost sub-suburb of Miami, calls itself the gateway to the Florida Keys. In April of 1982, the U.S. Border Patrol closed that gate when it blockaded the 125-mile-long chain of 800 coral islands. Troops set up their roadblock on U.S. Highway 1,...
Let’s Take a Closer Look at Gentlemen Bandits
There was a rumor that Charles Boles sent some gold home to his wife via Wells Fargo. The stage was robbed and his gold was stolen, thus the story that Boles chose to get even with Wells Fargo by robbing their stages and no others. Another story has it that Wells...
Let’s Take a Closer Look at Beale Street in Memphis
One year after the United States celebrated its 200th birthday, the U.S. Congress declared (no hurry, boys) Beale Street is the official Home of the Blues. The bill was sponsored by Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. in 1977. This was a nice gesture, but hardly a newsflash....
Who Was Boss Crump?
The side-wheel steamboat Sultana was only a few miles above Memphis on the Mississippi River and headed north. Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse just two weeks before. More than 2,000 Union...
Why Is Taps Played On a Bugle?
Day is done, gone the sun, From the lake, from the hills, from the sky; All is well, safely rest, God is nigh. If we know the tune at all, we know Taps was written to signal lights out to armies spread across large outdoor encampments. Armies used the bugle because it...
Who Were Peter and the Wolf?
No, it’s not Peter Wolf, once married to actress Faye Dunaway, of Chinatown and Bonnie and Clyde fame. Peter Wolf was the frontman for the J. Geils Band. Perhaps you’re familiar with their tune, Centerfold, from the album Freeze-Frame. Rolling Stone called him “the...
What In the World Is a Mosquito Fleet?
Recently I came across the term “mosquito swarm.” I pictured a high-pitched whining mob of vicious mosquitos looking for blood in swamps, but I searched the term anyway to see what the machine would try to feed me. In most cases the first several results had paid to...
Would YOU Like to be Queen for a Day?
The Tuscaloosa News called Queen for a Day “A daily blend of laughter and tears.” “That unspeakable horror,” said innocuous, “and an over-arching feeling of creepiness." Critics all over the country registered their disgust with how the show exploited human misery to...
Who Was Little Black Sambo?
Once upon a time, there was a series of books called The Dumpy Books for Children. These bound paper books were smaller than your hand. Little Black Sambo was the fourth in a 40-book collection of The Dumpy Books. Little Yellow Wang-Lo was 26th, Simple Simon was 38th,...
Let’s Take a Closer Look at Bras
Before you get all excited and run out the door to see what’s going on near you today on National No Bra Day, let’s take a closer look at this bra thing. Most agree that bras were once called brassieres and are undergarments worn to confine breast movement. After...
Who Was Dorothy Parker and What Was the Algonquin Round Table?
Dorothy Parker and highbrow playwright Clare Booth arrived at the single-file door held open for them by a man with epaulets. “Age before beauty,” said Booth, gesturing toward the door with an exaggerated sweep of her arm. In one of the great all-time comebacks,...
Bethpage Ryder Cup Sets New Low For Fan Behavior
The partisan crowd at this golf match just east of New York City was touted as America’s secret weapon. They were going to make lots of noise. But for two days, the every-other-year parade of costumed freaks was so quiet that one of the golfers said it was like...
Intelligence Is Real, Not Artificial
These days, dozens of articles and opinions about fake news and accusations of fake news (two different things) are warning people to not accept things at face value because of this artificial intelligence thing. Marvin Gaye used to tell us to believe half of what we...
Marketers Are Poisoning America’s Children
When they called themselves the Sales Department, they had only one job. It was selling the company's products. Salesmen, saleswomen, and salespersons who missed their sales quotas lost their jobs.* Now that they changed their name to marketers, their job is to...
Axe Me No Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies
All of the letters and sounds in the word ask are also in the word aks. When the letters S and K trade places, the word ends up sounding like axe, the woodsman’s sharp-bladed implement for chopping trees. People who say "Axe me" are fortunate that Little Miss Borden...
A Closer Look at Interstate Highways
The first section of highway that would later become part of Germany’s Autobahn was opened in 1932. Contrary to the common perception, Hitler did not plan or create the Autobahn. He did get on board quickly, though, when his military advisors told him that the...
CRACKER BARREL CEO KILLS BRAND AMBASSADOR
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store serves comfort food in restaurants with a country feel and a general store gift shop. The stores define country with old tools, signs, relics, and curios all over the place in a large wooden-walled room that has the feel of a country...
A Closer Look at Mae West
Mae West was a larger-than-life character who came roaring out of the Cultural Revolution of the 1920s. Prohibition had put an end to inhibition. It brought us organized crime, flappers, talking films, the Jazz Age, the Machine Age, exuberant optimism, and prosperity...
A Closer Look at Roller Skating
Note to readers: You’ll find no ads on this site because I want you to enjoy a leisurely scenic drive without all those annoying billboards blocking the view and intruding on their enjoyment. From time to time I provide links in the text so people can see more, hear...
A Closer Look at Kelsey’s Nuts
Note to readers: You'll find no ads on this site because I want you to enjoy a leisurely scenic drive without all those annoying billboards blocking the view and intruding on their enjoyment. From time to time I provide links in the text so people can see more, hear...
Who Was Jack Foley?
Films, radio, and tv use SFX as an initialism for sound effects, artificially created imitative sounds that are neither speech nor music. They’re background sounds that are added to make the movies we watch seem more real. Sort of the audio version of verisimilitude,...
Who Were the Luddites and What Are Cottage Industries?
For most of recorded time in societies all over the world, goods were produced on a small scale by active hands that turned raw materials into finished products. Traditionally, these industries produced handicrafts using non-mechanized methods to knit, weave, and...
Who Were Fibber McGee and Molly?
Silent films had no synchronized dialogue, music, or sound effects. And unlike the projectors we rarely hear in today’s theaters, the ones used back then clattered like coffee cans full of lug nuts. They made such a racket that patrons complained they couldn’t enjoy...
Who Was Rube Goldberg?
Wallace, of Wallace and Gromit, invents elaborate contraptions that don’t always work as planned. Nick Park, Wallace’s creator, said all his inventions are designed around the principle of "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.” In each episode of Cracking...
A Closer Look at Fireworks
Most people think the Chinese invented fireworks around 200 B.C. Technically, that’s not true because historians tell us it was an accident, not an invention. As it turns out, when the ancients tossed bamboo* sticks on the fire, they flickered and sputtered while they...
Let’s Take a Closer Look at Humane Societies
In 1821, well-known activist and Member of Parliament Colonel Richard Martin (King George IV called him Humanity Dick) accused fruit and vegetable peddler Bill Burns of being cruel to his donkey. Animal welfare influencer Martin shocked everyone when he had attendants...
What Is the Video Grief Industry?
StoryFile is an a.i.-powered video company that sets up conversational interactions with dead people. No, not seance style, but on whichever screen you use to watch videos. I saw an ad of theirs featuring Captain Kirk as spokesman. We’ve still got a ways to go before...
The History of Garbage
Long ago, people left their waste where it fell and moved on, just like the animals. Later on, they started disposing of it where the stink of rotting organic matter wouldn't bother them. By law, residents of the city of Athens had to dump garbage one mile from the...
Who Invented the Ballpoint Pen?
Most sources say that László Bíró invented the ballpoint pen in 1938. What many don’t bother telling us is that he was the inventor of the modern ballpoint pen. Some sources tell us that John J. Loud was issued U.S. Patent #392,046 for a ballpoint pen 50 years earlier...
A Closer Look at Our Left Hands
Nearly 200 studies involving more than two million people conclude that one in ten humans are left-handed. In the U.S. alone, that’s more than 33 million left-handers living in our very right-handed world. Dogs and cats are left-handed, too - actually left-pawed...
When Did Jesus Go A.I.?
The names of the three males used as models for depictions of Jesus back in the days of Greek Gods sound like a perfume, a handbag, and a Harlem theater. Orpheus had superhuman skills and hung out with Jason and the Argonauts, a Toronto band. Hermes was the god of a...
Today Is National Limerick Day
Hickory, dickory, dock The mouse ran up the clock The clock struck one, And down he run. Hickory dickory, dock. That’s the first limerick I remember from childhood, thinking all along it was a nursery rhyme. According to literarydevices.net, Hickory Dickory Dock (née...
7 Reasons Why Starbucks Can Never Be a Third Place
The coffee houses of the seventeenth century were places to discuss politics, trade, and business. In England, coffee houses were referred to as Penny Universities. One penny was the price of admission to a place where people from all social classes could join in...
A Closer Look at Mink Stoles
Somewhere along the line, early human ancestors pulled animal skins around them when it was cold, raining, or both. When these skins and pelts and furs became everyday wear, is another mystery. Let’s say most agree that would have happened at least 100,000 years ago....
Forks In the Road: A Case Study
Forks in the road come along more often for some than others, but everyone makes choices along the way. Some opt to keep everything the same and live their entire lives in the same place they were born. Some never leave the nest, living at home with parents their...
Who Was Edward R. Murrow?
There were no cars or telephones in Polecat Creek, North Carolina, the nearest community. No electricity, running water, or toilets in the Murrow home. Ed had two older brothers, meaning he was the third to wear the clothes Lacey handed down to Dewey who handed them...
What Are Cargo Cults?
This article was written by David Allan Van Nostrand In the news recently was the story of an American tourist arrested for leaving a soft drink can on a remote island 800 miles east of India’s mainland. It doesn’t sound like much of reason to be arrested for until we...
Déjà Vu and Your Nose Are What?
Scientists say high-emotion memories are triggered by familiar surroundings and events. You and I think of that as having a feeling of déjà vu -- or as our table overheard when a Young Modern loudly proclaimed she was having a zsa zsa de va moment. Vu or va, the...
What Do You Know About Dog Dancing?
As it happens more often than not, while I'm taking a closer look at a particular topic or subject, I come across things I know nothing about. Zip, zero, zed, zilch. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to enter into one of those Charles Kuralt-style On the Road adventures. The...
Have You Ever Wondered About Wonder Woman?
Every one of the weekly articles I’ve written for this site since 2016 starts with research. This is more or less wandering around and seeing what’s there. One of the things I enjoy most about conducting background research is how many interesting things are right...
Why Can’t Lie Detectors Detect Lies?
The American Psychological Association doesn’t like the term used by most people, lie detector, because the machine does not detect lies. The APA prefers the more scientific term, polygraph, a Greek word that meant “writing much.” There is no detecting going on...
What Do Personality Tests Reveal About You?
You have all the right qualifications for the job; the education, training, and skills. You hold an advanced degree from a good school in the field they’re looking for. You began working on the shop floor while other kids went on vacation. You quickly earned...
A Closer Look at Obituaries
The first obituaries were published long ago in newspapyri somewhere around the Mediterranean Sea. They were little more than death notices. When someone of great stature died, there would be brief life summaries. Asp Takes Cleo. A Closer Look at Obituaries A month or...
What Was the Underground Railroad?
We all know that railroads are networks of parallel steel rails laid upon beds of gravel and wooden crossties. We also know that a railroad is everything that rolls on those rails, and everything it takes to keep people and cargo moving. Underground means just that:...
What Are Ball Jars?
Felix Mendelssohn composed The Wedding March (“Here comes the bride”) for a stage production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Sixteen years later, it became a wedding must-have when Queen Victoria’s daughter Victoria chose it to be played at her...
Can It
Armies must keep their soldiers fed.* When successfully engaged with the enemy, armies keep advancing and their supply lines stretch longer and longer. The French were fighting battles on four fronts back in 1875, each with its own supply line struggling to keep up....
What Are Knee-Jerk Reactions?
Some people call the prefrontal cortex our personality center because it manages our memory, speech, thoughts, emotions, and decision-making.
A Closer Look at Skis and Skiing
The Switzerland-based Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS) created World Snow Day to attract kids to snow-related sports and activities, mostly snow skiing and snowboarding. Their vision is to become a giant, worldwide snowy fiesta that includes tobogganing, making...
3 Steps to Mastery
Leonardo de Vinci started as an apprentice. So did Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford. What they learned as apprentices, they applied along their years-long journeys to becoming master craftsmen. Knights Templar says becoming a medieval apprentice was “A rite of...
Frosty the Snowman
“Frosty the snowman / Was a jolly happy soul. With a corncob pipe and a button nose / And two eyes made out of coal. Oh, Frosty the snowman / Was alive as he could be. And the children say he could laugh and play / Just the same as you and me.” Those are only a few of...
A Closer Look at Hubcaps
Hubcaps or Hub Caps? Wikipedia says a hubcap is a decorative disk on an automobile wheel. True, but that’s starting the story in the middle. Long before hubcaps (one word, emphasis on the first syllable), there were hub caps (two words, emphasis on the second...
The Life of Riley
The Life of Riley In the 1920s, America’s most popular comedians were on the radio: Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Burns and Allen, Fanny Brice, Red Skelton, and more. Most told jokes or performed skits. When programs put a regular...
Ugly Christmas Sweater Day
Most early sweaters were made of wool, the natural fiber that keeps us warm by trapping our body heat and preventing it from escaping.
Half Full or Half Empty?
Half Full or Half Empty? Objectively speaking, the glass contains water up to the half-way point. The rest is a matter of interpretation. Half-fullers interpret the reality in a positive context. Half-emptiers interpret the reality in a negative context, focusing on...
The Lost Fairy Tales
It was the first time anyone had collected stories that had been passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth.
A Closer Look at Executions
The primary goal of torturing victims before executing them is to make victims suffer excruciating pain before “putting them out of their misery.”
The Pumpkin Pie Experiment
Implicit norms are the unspoken, unwritten standards of behavior that are understood by most people in a society. They are the many things we know without knowing we know them.
It’s Thank a WAC, WAVE, WAF, and WASP Veteran Week
American women have never been given enough credit for the crucial roles they played in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, and both World Wars.
The 2024 Presidential Dog Challenge
A nominee for Vice President gave a political speech was later named after a dog that had been a political gift. He won that election and later won a presidential election. What was his name and what was the dog’s name?
What Is The Curse of Knowledge?
Most of us take our knowledge for granted when speaking or writing, resulting in cheating our audience because we didn’t explain things simply.
Wife Beaters
Some say that the word wife-beater normalizes contempt for women and violence toward them, so they’ve decreed that henceforth, wife beaters are to be referred to as wife pleasers.
Elon Musk Cries Wolf
Musk’s exaggerated and extravagant claims are heavy on showbiz and light on financial and technological details.
How Much Do You Know About Christopher Columbus?
Most of us know less about Christopher Columbus and his voyages than we think.
7 Hidden Meanings In The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz is a blank wall upon which many people project their own ideas.
What Is the Bluebird of Happiness?
Opera great Jan Peerce recorded the song The Bluebird of Happiness. It became so closely tied to him that he later titled his memoirs “The Bluebird of Happiness: The Memoirs of Jan Peerce.”
What Is a Third Place?
Informal public gathering places are a significant part of civic engagement, a functioning civil society, and democracy itself.
Why Does America Need Actively Involved Citizens?
The people employers need to hire to collect, manage, and use information arrive at the workplace woefully unprepared to do so.
What Is a Quack?
If you are a denier or conspiracy theorist who is unlikely to believe anything in this article — so stop here or proceed at your own risk
It’s National Toilet Paper Day
Why do we ask where the bathroom is when we want to use the toilet?
Where Do Babies Come From?
When kids ask their parents where babies come from, they typically get a fumbled explanation of seeds and flowers, a plumbing lesson, or the timeless, “The stork brought you.”
A Closer Look at Roller Coasters
What are your plans for National Roller Coaster Day, Friday, August 16, 2024?
How To Fact-Check
Study samples and methods were intentionally constructed to tell the story the sponsors wanted to tell.
29 Things That Happened on July 29th
What do you think will happen this year?
Today Is Pied Piper Day
The Pied Piper led the dancing children through the opening in the mountain and the door slammed shut behind them.
Who Was Mr. Wizard?
When a demonstration worked, Mr. Wizard explained why. When it didn’t, he explained why it failed and made sure kids understood why failure is a part of doing things the scientific way.
Who Invented the Fire Department?
Fire insurance companies hired their own teams of firefighters to protect the houses they insured. If you were willing to pay the fee, your home got priority protection in case of a fire.
Who Is America’s Uncle Sam?
Thomas Nast’s 19th-century illustrations depicted Uncle Sam in a variety of contexts, gradually shaping him into a recognizable national symbol.
Who Was Lillian Gilbreth?
Lillian Gilbreth revolutionized kitchen design, believing that a properly laid out kitchen should be not only efficient, but should make cooks’ chores easier, too.
A Closer Look at Sugar
As demand for sugar continued to increase in Europe, planters in Brazil and the Caribbean brought 12 million slaves from Africa to do backbreaking work on their sugarcane plantations.
A Closer Look at Coconuts
He who plants a coconut tree plants food and drink, vessels and clothing, a home for himself, and a heritage for his children.
A Closer Look at ACRONYMS
When you tell people you’re nauseous, you’re actually telling them you’re the kind of person who makes others want to vomit.
What Is The Rule of Three?
Our brains are constantly seeking patterns to make sense of the complexity of the world around us. Threes are deeply embedded in our individual and collective consciousness as easy ways to remember things
What Is Burma-Shave?
Burma-Shave’s more than 7,000 signs amused and entertained motorists all over the country.
What’s the Difference Between Qualitative and Quantitative Research?
I no longer get involved with planning any research unless it is designed to use the best of both qual and quant as they are meant to be used.
Nine Steps in the Research Process
Conducting a research study is easy. Conducting a study that provides you with trustworthy information that can be used in dozens of different ways is lots harder — until someone shows you how.
Why Are Traffic Lights Red, Yellow, and Green?
In seafaring parlance, left is called port and right is called starboard. I could never remember which was where until someone told me port has the same number of letters as left and port wine is red. Left=port=red.
What Is a Zoot Suit?
Zoot suits had a drape shape and a reet pleat with a reave sleeve, ripe stripe, and stuff cuff.
Typical Is Not Average
Typical describes the overall sense of something that may also be called normal or standard or common, but not average.
What Is a Vivarium?
The more natural the enviroment around them, the more the animals living in it behave naturally.
What Is Faux?
Faux genuine is the term I use to refer to products and services that seek to project the aura of authenticity, especially where there is none.
Who Invented Bowling?
Bowling evolved gradually across cultures and over the centuries. Rules, tools, and objectives all came together in what we call bowling today.
Why Do We Have Funerals?
“What a waste,” he said. “All those people saying all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to hear any of it.”
Where Did Daylight Saving Time Come From?
Why is it called daylight saving when the amount of daylight doesn’t change?
Who Was Howard Becker?
The theme that runs through all of Howard Becker’s work is “How people do things together,” which is also one of sociology’s simplest definitions.
What Is the Military-Industrial Complex?
Controlling this military-industrial complex is nearly impossible. With all those billions up for grabs, deals are made and bribes and payoffs are inevitable.
What Is “A Message to García?”
Rowan didn’t ask how he would get there or what García looked like, or how to go about finding him. The only information Rowan was given was that García was a freedom fighter in the jungles of Cuba.
What Is a Potemkin Village?
If you’re a person in power, be aware that wherever you go, your outings have been orchestrated by handlers whose mission is to hide the truth from you.
What Are Stratified Societies?
The more expensive the luxury item, the greater the importance of instant recognition, hence the logos and proprietary designs
What Is Stupidity?
What makes stupid people truly stupid is that they do stupid things over and over and over again.
What Does It Mean to Suffer Fools Gladly?
In situations where where efficiency, and effectiveness are highly valued, people with high standards are typically unwilling to tolerate incompetence.
Who Invented the Parking Meter?
The original specs were simple. The parking meter must be easy to understand, easy to use, weatherproof, and safe from vandalism.
What Are Defense Mechanisms?
All defense mechanisms can have value as temporary coping mechanisms, but all are also unproductive in the long run.
Who Invented the Hearing Aid?
Do you find it odd that we wear glasses to improve our vision but we don’t wear hearing aids to improve our hearing?
All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth
More than three out of four Americans want Christmas gifts they can actually use.
Who Were the Hell’s Angels?
The Hell’s Angels motorcycle club took its name from the crew of a World War II B-17 bomber, who took their name from a Howard Hughes film starring Jean Harlow.
What Are Retirement Communities Like?
55+ retirement communities come in all shapes and sizes so you can find the home, neighborhood, activities, and amenities that appeal to you.
Who Is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross?
By teaching 125,000 students about death and dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross transformed the way people look at the terminally ill.
What Is Sociology?
MBA students learned a bit about Sociology, Psychology, and Anthropology in my SPA courses, made mandatory by UWI for students who worked for global companies
What Is Intelligence?
What Is Intelligence? Human intelligence is the skilled use of knowledge and reason. It is also the ability to learn from experience, understand and apply abstract knowledge, and use that knowledge to deal with things skillfully and efficiently. Abstract knowledge...
Who Invented the Motel?
No standards, no reservation networks, no national advertising.
Who Were The Beats?
The Beats spawned the Beatniks who spawned the Hippies.
Who Was Newton Minow?
Newton Minow the Vast Wasteland
How Safe Is Halloween Candy?
How Safe Is Halloween Candy? In the ‘60s and ‘70s, there were a lot of stories about people maliciously tampering with Halloween candy. In 1982, concerns increased when seven Chicago-area Tylenol buyers died from cyanide poisoning just before Halloween. Investigators...
What Is the Rat Race?
When you’re undecided about something, you are not literally “up in the air.” When you're "over the moon," you're still on earth, and when something hits you like “a ton of bricks,” you’ve not been hit by a single brick, much less 2,000 pounds of them. Idioms like...
Who Is David Ogilvy?
Who Is David Ogilvy? The New York Times said David Ogilvy was the Father of the Soft Sell The hard sell is the in-your-face way of selling products. It’s the strategy employed by timeshare salespeople, car dealers, Billy Mays, and the Bass-O-Matic. The hard sell’s...
What Is Linguistics?
The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Sociolinguistics is the study of how people use language and how it changes over time. It examines all aspects of the interrelationship of language and society, how language varies among speakers, and the...
What Causes Hysteria?
Sigmund Freud is a name most of us instantly recognize. The classic photo below has him bearded, balding, and scholarly, wearing a three-piece suit and holding a cigar. We know him as a physician who treated mental disorders by exploring repressed and unconscious...
What Is Operant Conditioning?
When our behaviors produce favorable outcomes and the same stimuli are presented again, we are more likely to repeat that behavior because we have learned to expect the same positive result.
What Are Concepts?
Skilled problem solvers agree the toughest challenge is figuring out what the real problem is, and not just the apparent ones.
Where Did Our Portable Music Come From?
In 1920, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company broadcast the live returns of the presidential race between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox, two-term governor and two-term U.S. Congressman from Ohio. Cox’s running mate was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who...
What Is Critical Listening?
The bandwagon fallacy assumes that something must be true because others think it is. A great example is found in thousands of HR departments that value the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator because so many others use it. Just like a perpetual motion machine, its popularity...
What Is Semiotics?
The Guardian tells of a visiting British minister who presented a pocket watch to a Taiwanese official. When asked to comment on the gift, the official said he might sell it to a scrap dealer for some money. The stunned minister sniffed that in the UK a watch is...
How Does Punishment Affect Kids’ Behavior?
Most common sense punishments aren’t as effective as parents believe and often create effects worse than the original transgressions.
A Closer Look at Pavlov’s Dogs
A Closer Look at Pavlov's Dogs When asked who Ivan Pavlov is, most people mention something about dogs. Some add that the dogs slobbered at the sound of a bell. A few know that Pavlov won a Nobel Prize, but almost no one knows it had nothing to do with his work with...
A Closer Look at Breakfast
The sandwich story most of us know involves the time John Montagu, Lord of the Admiralty, was hungry but too busy to stop what he was doing to sit down for a meal. He sent a servant for a piece of meat to gnaw on and asked that it be put between two slices of bread so...
How Do Pros Make Online Purchases?
When we click on a link to a product in a review, we are taken directly to a product page on a retailer’s website. No one is surprised to learn that the retailer with the most product links is Amazon. There will be product links to other sellers, of course, but Amazon...
What Is Freelancing?
Cavemen sharpened the points of wooden poles and used them to kill game and fight their enemies. When pointed steel tips were added to the business end of these long poles, spears became lances. When lances were adopted by cavalrymen (and yes, they were men) on...
A Closer Look at Product Reviews
An article by Gabriel Daros in Rest of World discusses a recent trend in product reviews in Brazil. For as little as $4 each, freelancers create scripted product review videos. The videos are in Portuguese, one minute long, and appear to be real customers reviewing...
A Closer Look at Reader Favorites
In 2016, I converted the more than 1,000 slides I had built for my classroom lectures at the University of the West Indies into articles that I posted on a new site, LetsTakeACloserLook.com. The subject of most of those early articles was an amalgam of what I call the...
What Are Personality Tests?
Personality tests are designed to reveal what's going on in our subconscious minds, the deep-down place where our emotions and inner conflicts reside. Structured surveys have a list of anywhere from 10 to 600 questions and test takers answer each by choosing from...
Why Do We Yawn?
New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova tells us how in 1923, neurologist Sir Francis Walshe noticed some interesting things involving yawns and motor reflexes. They led him to conclude that yawning was an act outside our conscious control, deep down where our lizard brains...
A Closer Look at Blue Jeans
In Reno, Nevada, just after the Civil War, a man named Jacob Davis made tents and wagon covers from heavy-duty canvas duck cloth. When the biggest silver deposit anyone had ever seen was discovered, thousands of miners came to work the Comstock Lode. These...
A Closer Look at Bud Light
Bud Light put two marketing executives on leave after someone thought it was a good idea to appeal to a transgender crowd that makes up less than one percent of the population. That promotional campaign backfired with unintended consequences, cutting into sales (-25%)...
A Closer Look at Station Wagons
At the peak of its popularity in the USA, the classic station wagon was a four-door sedan-style automobile with an interior passenger compartment that held nine people. Three rows of bench seats went all the way to the back of the car, as did the roof, so there was no...
A Closer Look at Pennies
“Find a penny, pick it up; all day long you’ll have good luck.” Some say the origin of this superstition comes from long, long ago when metals were believed to protect against harmful spirits. Others say when metal coins were first used as currency, only the very...
A Closer Look at One Tribe’s Bizarre Secret Rituals
Learn to be non-judgmental takes a lot of training and practice; few of those who are not anthropologists or sociologists or scientists think it’s worth the bother.
Who Was Margaret Mead?
Beginning in the 15th century and for the next 200 years, European explorers and traders roamed the world in search of peoples to conquer and resources to wrongfully take by force and/or guile. In doing so, the Westerners came into contact with people who looked,...
A Closer Look at Bamboo
Any fabric claiming to be made from bamboo is not a natural fabric.
What Are Contrails and What Are They Made Of?
"Look! Up In the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! Yes, it’s Superman, strange visitor from another planet who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his...
A Closer Look at Bananas
The 1876 World’s Fair was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was there that Americans were introduced to an exotic new fruit. Before that, most Americans had never heard of bananas, much less eaten one. In one of the first recorded co-promotions, United Fruit...
What Does Peter Rabbit Have to Do with Easter?
Want to look at old things in new ways, see the commonplace in greater detail, and hear complex subject matter explained in simple, conversational language?
Which Are Your Favorite Closer Looks?
I want to put together a list of Readers’ Top 10 Closer Looks Most regular readers know me to be a fact-based non-fiction writer who was a business and consumer researcher for more than 30 years before giving it up to write. All around the world, I learned to look...
Did Noah Prank the Raven?
There are many theories about how April Fools’ started, so pick your favorite from some of the most popular origin stories. One such story says April Fools' Day comes to us from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, where the fox tricks the rooster on March 32nd. Another story...
How Do You Exercise Your Brain?
Puzzles are tests of ingenuity or knowledge. Solving them requires reasoning, study, and persistence. As games, puzzles present difficulties to be solved by clever and patient effort. Daring puzzle-solvers seek ever-more-demanding challenges. A puzzle can also be a...
Which Is More Important – Education or Experience?
As most of us understand history, white settlers from Europe considered the native peoples they met in the Americas to be heathens because they didn’t worship the God of the Bible, which was the one and only true word. Heathens dressed crudely, were uncivilized and...
How Good Is Your Mind’s Eye?
Those who have had their homes burglarized had to submit claims to their insurance companies. Only a few had safely put away somewhere the updated lists they tell us all to have, with photos and serial numbers. Only after the claim we filled out by memory has been...
Why Do Banks Close on Bank Holidays?
What people in the United States call bank holidays are also called federal holidays, public holidays and legal holidays. Bank holidays are normal business days where the doors to financial institutions are closed because Federal Reserve Bank employees take the day...
Burger King’s 1/3-Pounder
A hundred years ago, Roy Allen opened a string of root beer stands in California in partnership with Frank Wright. A&W was the name they used for their bottled and draft root beers as well as their roadside restaurants. By 1980 A&W had more than 2,000...
What Are Your Plans for National Fart Day?
A friend sent a noise yesterday, February 5th, in honor of National Fart Day. I decided to take a closer look and found it is “a comical holiday celebrated for humorous purposes.” I also found there is a National Pass Gas Day, a Fart Out Loud Day, and much more....
What Is the Goldilocks Principle?
Let’s take a closer look.
It’s Hip to Be Square
Famers and physical laborers needed three square meals a day: all full, well-balanced and hearty. They'd eat breakfast before sunup, work until lunch, load up on calories again and work until sundown, when they ate a big dinner and went to bed. One origin story says...
What Are Scales?
The next time you’re around your research provider, ask them to tell you a little bit about the type(s) of scales the’re using and why.
Turn Right on Red After Stop
Annie Oakley was a television series in the 1950s. The half-hour show was a highly fictionalized account of the legendary sharpshooter (née Phoebe Ann Mosey) who appeared as a star attraction with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The executive producer was singing...
What Is Chump Change?
Change is loose coins, almost always round and made of metal. In the USA, we use pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. We used to use half dollars and real silver dollars, such as the one George Washington is said to have thrown across the Delaware River. A chump is a...
Goat or GOAT?
Goats are hoofed, horned and bearded ruminants that are closely related to sheep but are hairy instead of woolly. The males are billy goats, the females are nanny goats and the kids are called kids. Goats were domesticated by humans who drank their milk, ate their...
And the Walls Came a-Tumbling Down
"Hello walls (Hello, hello). How'd things go for you today? Don't you miss her since she up and walked away? And I'll bet you dread to spend another lonely night with me, but lonely walls, I'll keep you company." This song about a man's lonely conversation with is...
How Many of These Character Actors Do You Know?
The original definition of a stereotyping was printing by means of a solid block of type, an image that was perpetuated without change. Anything that fit onto a single sheet, such as letters, posters and the like. Only 100 years later did it come to mean preconceived...
Tiger Woods to Head New PGA-LIV Tour
Tiger Woods to Head New PGA-LIV Tour! That’s the headline you’ll be reading soon when the powers that be get the details sorted out. It will not happen until early in 2023 because there are a lot of things that need to be done first. Why Tiger? Tiger Woods is the...
Domino’s Jumps Off One Bandwagon and Onto Another
Five years ago Domino’s announced it was testing driverless delivery of pizzas. Executives had come down with a case of autonomous vehicle fever and decided that was the future of home delivery. I wrote an article about it pointing out the fatal flaws in their testing...
Turkeys, TVs and Two More Minutes
Autumn harvests have been celebrated with feasts since before people started telling time. Historians tell us the harvest feast the Americans observe today began in Virginia 400 years ago when English Protestant settlers decided the day of their arrival in the New...
Do You Know What Kind of Reader You Are?
Studies show that reading on paper goes lots faster than reading on a screen. Those who read on paper generally are more aware of how well they understand what they are reading than screen readers, a skill called metacognition, or thinking about your own thinking. At...
Who Were the Buffalo Soldiers?
Most people don’t know that it wasn’t until the Vietnam War that the U.S. military stopped their practice segregating black and white troops.
Marathons Are for Wimps
Pheidippides was a courier employed by the Athenian army in the days when important messages were sent by runner, sometimes over very long distances that took days to deliver, sort of like Pony Express riders without the horses. The Athenian army planned on fighting...
Famous Last Words
Eric Arthur Blair was born the son of an opium agent in Bengal, India in 1903 and brought up in an atmosphere of impoverished snobbery, what he called lower-upper-middle class. As a child he was known for his intellectual brilliance and for being withdrawn, morose and...
Fire!
On October 19, 1856, someone at the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall in London falsely shouted “Fire!” and in the panicked rush to escape, seven were killed. On December 5, 1876, a fire broke out in The Brooklyn Theater. Employees didn’t want to panic people by...
What Is a Pecking Order?
What Is a Pecking Order? A pecking order is a social hierarchy. With domestic fowl, it is the social hierarchy of a flock of chickens in which the dominant birds peck the subordinate birds who submit to it as a signal of acceptance of the difference between their...
Circle Gets the Square
Hollywood Squares was a popular game show on television in the 1960s, patterned on the pencil and paper game of tic-tac-toe. The studio set had nine small cubicles, stacked three high and three wide. Within each open-faced square sat a celebrity. The two contestants,...
A Closer Look at Bulls
As early as 1820, cowboys competed to see who were the roughest, toughest and best at riding, roping, and bulldogging.
What is Brain Fog?
Brain fog is a cluster of symptoms that includes trouble paying attention, difficulty maintaining focus, poor judgment, and frequent loss of your train of thought.
Not That Blackjack
In the 1800s, street gangs didn’t have guns. They used cloth bags or socks filled with sand as homemade weapons to conk people over the head with so they could steal their money and their goods. The next technological evolution was the blackjack. Also referred to as a...
How Did You Get Under That Bus?
To throw someone under the bus is to shift the blame to them, usually to deflect it from yourself. It involves betrayal and sacrifice, particularly for the sake of personal gain. It is exploiting someone in a vulnerable position, especially when they are sacrificed in...
Frank Marugg’s Boot
Over coffee one day in the 1950s, a shop teacher heard a policeman say he wished there was a way to immobilize parking violators’ cars instead of just issuing citations that are often ignored. It could have been called the Frank Marugg boot, but was given the name of...
Does Your Dog Bite?
A man wearing a silly little hat and a trench coat belted tightly around his waist enters a quaint old European mountain hotel where a clerk with bushy grey hair, eyebrows and mustache sits behind the desk puffing on a long-stemmed pipe. Near the clerk, a small furry...
9 Things Cows Don’t Know
Milk was touted for hundreds of years as good for kids' teeth and bones, especially since Louie figured out how pasteurize milk. Back then there were no milk bottles. Vendors sold it by the dipperful. As the story goes, Dr. Henry Thatcher had an epiphany one day in...
11 Problems with Animals
Americans use any animal terms to describe common human concepts and situations, including pigs, fish, and bees.
What’s That Goop On Your Head?
A fly in the ointment is an unpleasantness that detracts from a larger positive but doesn’t ruin everything.
What Are Snow Globes?
Snow globes are transparent spheres of glass or plastic filled with a clear liquid and enclosing a miniaturized scene. Paperweights, ornaments, souvenirs and collector’s items, snow globes are little worlds that sit in the palm of your hand. Shaking the sphere...
Do the Name Ruby Begonia Strike a Familiar Note?
Sign up to look at old things in new ways, see the commonplace in greater detail, and hear complex subject matter explained in simple, conversational language.
Trinidad or Tobago?
Not many people know that Trinidad is closer to Venezuela (6 miles) than it is to Tobago (20 miles). Just 1,800 square miles, Trinidad is smaller than Rhode Island, but nearly twenty times the size of Tobago, a little squirt of an island. More than a million people...
What Are Consumers Absolute Suckers For?
This is the third of a three-part series about advertising characters in the United States. The first told the stories of the four greatest fictional characters to personify a brand and the second related the histories of the four greatest real-life television...
Whatever Happened to the Maytag Repairman?
In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, advertisers hired lots of second- and third-tier actors to play fictitious characters in their TV commercials. Jesse White was the lonely Maytag Repairman, Jan Miner played Madge the Manicurist for Palmolive dishwashing liquid, Nancy Walker...
Who Were Aunt Jemima and Betty Crocker?
The Chicago World’s Fair was opened to the first of 27 million visitors when U.S. president Grover Cleveland pushed a button and the newfangled electric lighting dazzled goggle-eyed fairgoers who only knew lanterns and candles. PBS tells us “Visitors gawked at...
Car 54, Where Are You?
“There's a holdup in the Bronx, Brooklyn's broken out in fights. There's a traffic jam in Harlem that's backed up to Jackson Heights. There's a Scout troop short a child, Khrushchev's due at Idlewild; Car 54, Where Are You?” The Car 54, Where Are You? television...
What Are Flotsam and Jetsam?
The ship was on its way from Crete to Rome when a ferocious storm struck. At the mercy of gale winds and violent waves, the ship was perilously close to sinking. The crew were forced to do the only thing they could to try and save it: lighten the ship enough to give...
Why Is George Washington’s Face on the Purple Heart?
The history of Memorial Day, like most histories, depends on who’s telling the story. Histories of all kinds are told many different ways. Accuracy varies, too. When it comes to wartime, history is written by the victors. In most cases, the winners are the good guys...
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall
A mirror image is the reversed copy of any reflected likeness, where left is right and right is left. Narcissus fell in love with his mirror image when he saw it reflected in a pool of water. Unable to tear himself away from admiring his great beauty, he died there....
Thank God and Greyhound You’re Gone
“Oh, thank God and Greyhound you're gone. That load on my mind got lighter when you got on. That shiny old bus is a beautiful sight, with the black smoke a-rolling up around the tail lights. It may sound kinda cruel but I've been silent too long. Thank God and...
Warning!
Red flags have long been used as warnings of immediate, imminent and potential danger. The warning is signaled by the combination of color and movement. These days, to red-flag something is to draw attention to a dangerous situation. In auto racing, a red flag means...
What Is a Boondoggle?
Summer camps have long used handicrafts to keep kids busy when they're stuck indoors on rainy days. For many years a popular camp craft activity has been to make braided neckerchief slides, bracelets, and lanyards for whistles and pocket knives from colorful strips of...
What Is Cloud Nine?
Most people accept made-up explanations for word origins without even thinking where they came from. Thank goodness you’re not one of them.
How to Be a Psychic
Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in our developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of primitive superstition.
Do You Have Expert Eyes?
Right now, even as you read this, you are missing the vast majority of what is happening around you. You are missing the events unfolding in your body, in the distance, and right in front of you. You are ignoring an unthinkably large amount of information that...
Why Do Women Wear Makeup and Perfume?
Why Do Women Wear Makeup and Perfume? Shouyang, a Chinese princess, fell asleep under a plum tree. A flower petal landed on her forehead and left a purple imprint that was thought to enhance her pale-skinned beauty. Ladies of the court were so impressed that they...
Who Invented the Laugh Track?
Test audiences who watched (and heard) the version with the laugh track thought the show was funnier than those who saw the one without it.
Are Owls Really Wise?
"Every little swallow, every chickadee, every little bird in the tall oak tree. The wise old owl, the big black crow, flapping their wings singing go, bird, go. All the little birds on Jaybird Street love to hear the robin go tweet tweet tweet." Rockin’ Robin was...
Where Did the Tooth Fairy Come From?
Most people in the USA know when small children lose baby teeth, they are told to put them under the pillow and when they wake up next morning, the Tooth Fairy will have left something for them. The tooth “disappears” the same way Santa “appears” - while the children...
Why Do They Call It Pickleball?
Covid-19 got more people outdoors. Pickleball was easier to play than tennis and took up less space. The country went overboard for pickleball.
MBA Final Exam True or False ?
Two weeks ago I published the course outline distributed to MBA students at the University of the West Indies Graduate School of Business. You can take the 10 question true or false part of the final exam now, click here to go back for a refresher, or click here to...
MBA Final Exam: 10 Multiple Choice Questions
If you read last week’s article, you might be ready to take the multiple choice section of final exam. If you missed it or if you want to better your chances of passing the exam, please click here to go back and read or reread the course summary. Otherwise, start here...
Are You Smarter Than a Guinea Pig?
Some time in this century, a few of the world’s leading MBA programs realized students were being taught plenty about business but nothing about human behavior. They knew a growing body of evidence was showing clear linkages between management practices based in the...
Where’s My Get Out of Jail Free Card?
Imagine yourself in charge of a halfway house for felons just released from state and federal prisons. Your agency’s mission is to provide counseling and support services that will help these criminals find - and keep - jobs, adjust to life outside the walls, develop...
How Do You Manage Your Supply and Demand?
Florida is one the busiest vacation destination states in the USA. Most come for the ocean, beaches and warm, sunny days. Many of the more than 130 million tourists who come to Florida are golfers. Combine these numbers with the many year-round residents who golf and...
The Okay Corral?
John Montgomery had a barn, stables and blacksmith shop in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881. He named his outdoor horse pen the O.K. Corral*, never knowing it would become the historical site where Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers shot it out with Ike and Billy Clanton...
National Bobblehead Day
January 7 is National Bobblehead Day. Early versions were called wobblers, bobblers, nodders, and head-shakers and had a head connected to a body by a spring so it would bounce around. The most popular were cats. In 1842 Russian author Nikolai Gogol described a main...
The Best Way to Learn Something Is to Teach It
The best way to learn something is to teach it. You have to take what you know (and what you think you know) and put it down in writing. You have to organize it in a way that it makes sense to others. Psychologists and psychiatrists have their own version of having...
What Management Principles Do You Believe In?
100 years ago was the age of industrialization in the USA. Manufacturing jobs employed many millions of people to make cars, furniture, radios, airplanes, tires, telephones and appliances. These things had long been made by hand, but were now made in mechanized...
The Camel’s Nose
One cold night in the desert an Arab was warm inside his one man tent, asleep. His camel gently poked his nose in and said it was so cold outside, perhaps his owner would let him get just his nose warm. Groggy and not seeing the harm in that, the Arab said okay...
Walk or Don’t Walk?
Research should be providing the fact base that points companies in the direction of likely success. Instead, it stands at the corner of walk and don’t walk, selling maps to the stars’ homes. Business research today churns out mountains of misinformation that send...
3 On a Match
You’ve seen it in dozens of films, mostly in black and white. Somewhere outside in the dark of night, three guys take out cigarettes. One of them strikes a wooden match. The match flares up from the phosphorous in the tip and then settles down to a steady yellow...
How Can You Always Win?
The desperate young husband was at the roulette table gambling what little money he and his wife had left. It was his only chance to earn enough money to get them out of Vichy-controlled Morocco to Lisbon and from there to the United States. But the trip from...
The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease
The best way to get your problem dealt with is to get the facts in the hands of the decision-makers.
What’s Really Big and Really Small?
When we landed on Wake Island, I got a taste of the vastness of the Pacific Ocean very different than the one I got flying high above empty water for hours. Wake Island is a two square mile dot in the ocean 2,300 miles west of Honolulu and 2,000 miles east of Tokyo....
Why Do You Think Your Dog Does This?
That quizzical look on dogs’ faces when they cock their heads at an angle always makes for a great photo. A story on the science.org website says that when dogs cock their heads like this, they are doing more than just being cute. A first-ever study that looked into...
What Does Get Your Goat Mean?
In the film Seabiscuit, the trainer tried to cure the horse’s nervousness by putting a goat in the stall with him to keep him relaxed. Seabiscuit grabbed the goat by the neck and threw it out of the stall. The trainer tried again with a horse named Pumpkin and a...
Why Are People Sick of Managers?
People are sick of managers. The news is full of people not going back to their jobs and managers are a big reason. Commutes are seen as what they are - huge chunks of unproductive time to get to and from work so a hall monitor can loom over you and take attendance....
How Did You Choose Your Dog?
In 1859 English naturalist Charles Darwin returned from a five-year voyage with his soon to be famous conclusion that humans and apes had common ancestors. His ship was named The Beagle. Genes had not been discovered yet, so Darwin knew nothing about them. But he...
Why Did So Many Companies Change Their Names?
Frank Woolworth opened a store in Utica, New York in February of 1879. It failed three months later. He tried again in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He used the same sign he brought with him from Utica: Woolworth’s Great Five Cent Store. That store was also a failure....
Sam Ryder’s Cup
In May of 1921 a small group of American professional golfers travelled to Great Britain by steamship. Upon arrival a friendly competition was proposed and a 10 man team match was held at the Kings’ Course at Gleneagles, located in Auchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland,...
I Took the Garbage Out Last Time
Social scientists often get inspiration from day to day occurrences. They notice something, realize they’ve it seen before, and want to know more about it. So they do research, sometimes observational, sometimes surveys, and now and then both. Back in the 1970s, two...
A Closer Look at Tomatoes
Who picked them, who shipped them, who delivered them, and who put all those little stickers on every one of them?
What Does a Hand-Rolled Cigar Have to Do with Labor Day?
As with many holidays, the idea behind the celebration is lost. Today, most Americans see Labor Day as the end-of-summer, back-to-school holiday.
Who Said O-Tay, Panky?
Lying and the ability to detect lies are related skills. Knowing when someone is lying comes in very handy in poker games when an opponent is trying to steal the pot by bluffing. Did you know good bluffers are better than lousy bluffers at detecting when someone is...
Nothing to Sneeze At
The Law of Unintended Consequences says that the actions of people, businesses and governments always produce effects that were not anticipated.
Don’t Read This Warning!
People who like to avoid shocking discoveries, who prefer to believe that society is just what they were taught in Sunday School, who like the safety of the catchphrases of what Alfred Schütz has called the “world taken-for-granted,” should stay away from sociology....
Sex Education
What are three things that AT&T, Boeing, Citibank, Del Monte, Estee Lauder, Ford, General Mills, Hilton, IBM, Jaguar, KFC, Lowes, Macys, Nokia, Office Depot, Pepsi, Quiznos, Ryder, Subway, Time-Warner, UnitedHealthcare, Verizon, Walgreens, Xerox, Yum Brands, and...
What Was the Bobo Doll Experiment?
Monkey see, monkey do?
Try This Unbeatable $5 Customer Retention Strategy
For $5, I bought a watermelon at a small upscale Italian bakery/deli near me where I buy just-baked bread every week. When I cut into my watermelon, it was more white than red and was filled with the whitish ropy strings we are used to seeing when we carve pumpkins. I...
There’s a Hole in the Bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza
A woman named Liza asks a man named Henry to fetch a pail of water. Henry says he cannot because there’s a hole in the bucket. Liza, a practical woman, tells Henry to fix the hole. Henry asks what he is supposed to fix the hole with. Please click on the link here to...
Who Was Colonel Mustard?
What can the game of Clue teach us about sampling?
Do You Know What This Is?
Five men who had been born blind listened to the stories told by travelers who came their way. After hearing about strange creatures called elephants, they argued amongst themselves. Looking to resolve their differences, the men went to the palace to learn the truth...
A Closer Look at Ketchup
In the early days of bottled ketchup, unscrupulous manufacturers would buy up tons of spoiled tomatoes for pennies.
It’s Like Comparing Apples and Oranges
Everyone knows that apples and oranges are more alike than different. After all, they’re both fruits that grow on trees and tend to be round and of a size that fits nicely in the hand. So why do we use the term “that’s like comparing apples and oranges” to illustrate...
What Is Corporate Social Responsibility?
Johnson & Johnson’s act of putting customers’ safety above corporate profits remains a model for outstanding corporate crisis management.
Who Was The Oracle of Delphi?
In 800 BC, near a town named Delphi, a Greek shepherd saw his herd of goats behaving strangely near a deep crack in the ground where steamy vapors were rising from the hole. When he came to take a closer look, he inhaled the fumes and began to have strange visions of...
What Is Posh?
Elegant and fashionable people from high social classes are called posh, which was Victoria Beckham’s choice (when she was one of the Spice Girls). Posh is also the name of a pedigreed cow that sold at auction for a record-setting £262,000. The owner said the name...
What kind of office are you going back to?
The first cliques most of us encountered were in school, where the cool kids hung around in one bunch, the jocks in another, and so on. I pronounced it “clicks” for years and then someone told me it’s “cleeks.” Whichever way you say it, cliques are small groups that...
Who Can You Turn To?
Vowing I wouldn't quit until I was done, I locked myself in the house and didn't come out for two weeks. If I wasn't sleeping, I was writing nonstop until I had finished what I was willing to call my best draft of a graduate thesis on job satisfaction for Indiana...
Who’s Been Naming Our Cars?
Hundreds of car companies have gone out of business, most in the earliest days of automobiles Did you know the beer company Anheuser-Busch once built a car? Or that a company named Apple Automobile built a car in 1917? Alcoa, the aluminum company built a car, as did...
Why Is a Little Learning a Dangerous Thing?
Lake Wobegone is the fictitious central Minnesota town “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” It was the setting of a long-running radio variety show, several novels, and a feature film. The radio show A...
What Can You Learn From an Admiral?
The grey-haired, steely-eyed Admiral on the bridge of the flagship, leading a fleet of heavily-armed warships into battle, pointed toward the rising sun and said “Set course at 107.25 degrees.” NO, HE DIDN'T! He said “Take us out, Skipper,” because Admirals don’t...
Rule of Thumb
Back in the days of not so Merrie Olde England, the law allowed men to beat their wives, children, horses, and anyone unable to defend themselves. As the folk tale goes, the Rule of Thumb law stipulated men could use only sticks that were no larger around than their...
Why Do Conversations Drag On?
Why Do Conversations Drag On? A team of Harvard researchers led by Adam Mastroianni and Daniel Gilbert conducted two experiments to investigate the dynamics of two-way conversations. In the first, they surveyed 805 online study subjects about their most recent...
How Much Do You Know About Goldilocks?
Goldilocks went for a walk in the forest. She came upon a house and knocked on the door. When no one answered, she walked right in and saw three bowls of porridge. Hungry, she tasted the porridge from the first bowl. "This porridge is too hot!" she said, and tried the...
Why Are Owners of Luxury Cars Such Jerks?
Narcissus, the son of a river god, was known for his beauty. One day he saw his own reflection when he went to drink from a smooth-as-glass pool of water deep in the forest. Smitten by his own pretty face, he fell in love with himself. When Narcissus leaned down to...
Fat Homeless Jaywalkers Programmed to Die
Would you ride in a self-driving car that has been programmed to sacrifice its passengers to save the lives of others?
Another Myth About Steve Jobs
What is overlooked by most is that Jobs believed research was very good at many things.
A Lousy Strategy
In 2015, McDonald’s was congratulating themselves on the success of their brand-new All-Day Breakfast because same-store sales had risen 5.7%. They deliberately avoided mentioning how the confluence of more than a dozen things contributed to that small increase. Only...
Why Do People Use So Much Jargon?
One of the most strategic military sites in the world, the Rock of Gibraltar guards the only entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. For centuries it was much fought over by Carthaginians, Moors, Romans, Phoenicians, and Barbary Pirates. When...
Why Your Company Is Stuck In a Rut
Governor-general and city builder Grigory Potemkin built fake villages along the banks of the Dneiper River to impress Russian Empress Catherine the Great during her journey to Crimea in 1787. The structures would be secretly disassembled after she passed and...
What’s HR Up To Now?
Long before automated resumé screening, a friend complained long and loud about how every time he needed to hire someone to work in the office, the phone would ring all day. Most of the applicants who called about the job were not the kind of people who had resumés or...
How to Cheat on Exams
Forbes called Chegg a superspreader of cheating when they found more than half of college students admitted they used Chegg to cheat. The problem exploded when Covid-19 moved students out of the classroom and out of sight of the teachers during exams. Chegg has nearly...
Who Is the Ugly American?
William Lederer and Eugene Burdick wrote a fictional novel called The Ugly American.* The title refers to the world's belief that typical Americans are insensitive to the languages, customs, traditions, religions, and backgrounds of peoples of other lands and...
NGOs and Feasibility Studies
NGOs and Feasibility Studies It was the thirteenth day in a row the temperature was over one hundred degrees. The air was so heavy and wet it was like we were wearing it. I was riding with Joe Hudson in his rusted Chevrolet. On its last legs, it had no A/C or shock...
What’s the Truth About Radon Gas?
Radon tourists pay to sit inside decommissioned gold, silver, and uranium mines. They inhale radon gas and drink radon water because they believe radon gas helps the human body heal itself.
Whaddya Say We Shoot the Messenger?
More than 2,000 years ago in Greece, a playwright named Sophocles wrote about strong-willed, highly principled characters who encountered seemingly insurmountable ethical problems. Sophocles' interest was in individuals who would not compromise their principles, even...
What Choice Would You Have Made?
Eleven years after Charles Lindbergh was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, Douglas Corrigan took off from New York in his plane and headed for California. He landed in Ireland, claiming he lost his direction in the clouds and his compass had...
Old Lang Sign
Old Lang Sign The words to the song millions sing at midnight each December 31st are said to have been written by Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. Burns refused to take credit for the song, saying it was merely an old poem he discovered. Encyclopaedia...
Inquiring Minds Want to Know
The Merry Mailman television program debuted on Secaucus, New Jersey’s WOR-TV in 1950. The host was Ray Heatherton, a former bandleader and singer. Ray and his sidekicks Chick and Milt entertained studio audiences with games, songs, stories, magic tricks, skits,...
Can You Focus 100% of Your Attention for 60 Seconds?
As you watch this one-minute video of people passing a ball back and forth, count the number of times the people in white pass the ball. CLICK HERE TO WATCH IT NOW The video you just watched was created by psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris They...
Ask For It By Name
McDonald’s aimed its advertising at parents for many years before someone got the idea to advertise directly to their kids instead. Their notion was that the children would relentlessly pester their parents to take them to McDonald's for Happy Meals, visits with...
Awesome!
When the clerk at my grocery store asked if I found everything I was looking for, I said yes and she said “Awesome!” In the time it took her to scan my dozen items and take my payment, she said awesome seven more times. I don’t know about you, but I believe awesome...
What Is Top-of-Mind Awareness?
The important part about unaided recall is that people are remembering on their own – with no clues, hints, or prompting.
How Agile Are You?
When people ask me if I've ever done agile research, they say "AGILE" as if it should be capitalized, underlined, and in italics. Their emphasis implies it is something quite new and mysterious. My response is to say I’ve been recommending agile research since long...
Veterans Day
Nearly three million military personnel served in Vietnam. Tragically, more than 300,000 of those brave troops were killed, wounded, or captured and sent to prison camps.
Who Really Invented These Things?
The person credited with an invention is not always the inventor, but rather the one who first filed for a patent and/or made the invention practical.
A Closer Look at Payday Loans
Two categories of regular readers are marketers who use research and people who conduct the research marketers use. Both groups often ask how to tell the difference between good information and bad. Because most research is privately funded for competitive purposes...
The 80/20 Rule
When interviewing study subjects, researchers hear many of the same themes and comments repeated, as you can easily imagine. No one liked how cassette tapes snarled, for example, and everyone hates long wait times. The temptation for impatient researchers and study...
The Shell Game
In a shell game, three walnut shells are moved about swiftly and onlookers bet on which one the pea is under when they come to rest. It’s not actually a game at all - it’s a swindle con artists control through sleight of hand and illusion to fleece the mark (the...
What is Bilateral Asymmetry?
Our world is full of underlying messages that operate on subconscious levels and trigger unintended consequences.
What Is Your Company’s Strategy?
The only thing constant is change, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. He who hesitates is lost, but look before you leap.
A Closer Look at Humans Since Alley Oop
When I created a special course for MBAs, I began by giving my students a whirlwind tour of humans since Alley Oop*, following the arc of human history in Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. Then I introduced them to people they had never...
Jingles
Andy Devine was a college football player who moonlighted as a professional footballer, using an alias (Jeremiah Schwartz) in order to maintain his amateur status. His father operated a hotel and his mother was the granddaughter of the first Navy officer killed in the...
Hoarders
Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s aunt Edith Bouvier lived in a 28-room house with 300 cats. The home was so cluttered that 26 of the rooms were uninhabitable, leaving Big Edie and her daughter Little Edie to live in only one bedroom. When sanitation workers...
Dirty Little Secrets
Ron Sellers at Grey Matter Research wrote me recently, saying “The attached report is probably the most important thing I’ve done in the insights industry.” Teaming up with Harmon Research, Grey conducted an online survey and wrote a report called Still More Dirty...
The Calm Before the Storm
Most of us know brainstorming is the technique of stimulating creative thinking by unrestrained and spontaneous participation in group discussion. That’s what advertising executive Alex Osborn of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn had in mind when he coined the...
What Do You With Lemons?
The average American generates between four and five pounds of waste each day, which adds up to more than 33 tons in a lifetime. Only one-third of it is recycled. Concerned about these numbers, a municipal government commissioned us to study household recycling. The...
Translucent vs. Transparent
When people do the same sort of thing while away from work as they do while at work, they are said to have taken a busman’s holiday. In London in the 1800s, horse-drawn “carriages for everyone” were called omni-buses. The driver and the conductor were called busmen....
Why Are Employee Surveys So Awful?
When asked why their companies conduct employee surveys, executives almost always answer in one of these two ways: “We’ve always done it that way,” or “I never thought about it.”
9 sweepings from the online dustbin.
Every week I read thousands of stories, articles, and news releases. From the practical to the curious, from the ironic to the absurd, here are 9 items that caught my eye. The headlines are mine. As if the real ones aren’t bad enough. Taiwan’s Songshan Airport...
Apprentices, Journeymen, and Master Craftsmen
When companies demand faster and cheaper research, they get studies that take too many shortcuts and cut too many corners to be of any significant value.
Would You Rather Eat a Bowl of Sand or a Bowl of Gravel?
The problems with political polling are the same as the problems with any kind of surveying. Data scientists know every survey can go wrong three different ways: How the data are collected, how the data are corrected, and how the data are interpreted.
How to Choose a Mentor
Headed off to the Trojan war, Odysseus asked a trusted friend to stay behind in Ithaca and watch over the upbringing of his son, Telemachus. Odysseus chose the best person he knew to prepare his heir to handle family responsibilities while he was away. It was a good...
5 Ways to Get Ahead of the Customer Curve
“Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” Media mogul Ted Turner said it, and so did General George S. Patton, but they weren't the first. That was Thomas Paine, the revolutionary whose 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense, called for American independence from Britain....
What Do You Do When You See a Wet Paint Sign?
The wilder and more ridiculous the claim, the more solid the evidence must be.
What Are Voodoo Statistics?
Lee Lantz was a seafood merchant who found a mild and flaky fish that tasted great. Its name, Patgonian Toothfish, was as unappetizing as its looks. It was an ugly human-sized fish with a mouthful of menacing teeth. He couldn’t change its appearance, so he made up a...
R.I.P. Focus Groups
The father of the focus group despised how his methodology had been hijacked and bastardized. Robert Merton said “Focus groups are supposed to be merely the source of ideas that need to be researched.” They were meant to be no more than a jumping off point and a...
I Yam What I Yam
The tired and worn-out phrase “It is was it is” is sometimes a diversionary tactic deployed to convince us there is no action that can be taken.
Which Line Is Longer? The Müeller-Lyer Illusion
Sign up to look at old things in new ways, see the commonplace in greater detail, and hear complex subject matter explained in simple, conversational language.
Employers Say New College Grads Can’t Think
Studies show most college students claim to have the skills and qualities employers are looking for today. The same studies show employers saying students aren’t only wrong, but really wrong.
Service with a Smile
When I was a rookie bartender working my way through college, I found a grizzled veteran who agreed to teach me how a master craftsman does it. One day I asked him the name of the guy seated down at the end of the bar. “Amigo," he said. “No, no, what’s his name?” I...
Canary In the Coal Mine
Friends who know my statistical background have been asking what pandemic numbers I watch, so I thought you might want to see how we make our own reports for the places that interest us by using a simple spreadsheet with only a few numbers and only one formula...
Turtles All the Way Down
Long before the Europeans came, the Iroquois tribe lived across most of New York, Pennsylvania, and Eastern Canada. Like most societies, they had a creation story. “They swam to the Great Turtle, master of all the animals, who at once called a council. When all the...
What would you have done?
I was once asked to oversee data collection for a survey sponsored by one of the world’s largest and most well-respected Non-Governmental Organizations. The data collected would be used by the C-suite to develop goals and objectives and allocate time, people, and...
A.I. and T.P.
You've seen and heard many stories about toilet paper shortages. The stories seem real because shelves are empty. The reason shelves are empty is not due to any real scarcity (factories make more than enough for everyone), but instead to several very different things....
Every Management Strategy Is a Guess
At a crossroads, they made some very different strategic moves that generated $100 million dollars of bottom-line profits in the first year. Eighteen months prior, every senior manager but one believed the ideas would ruin the company.
I Can See Clearly Now
One of the joys that came my way from serving many years in the research trenches around the world was having a front row seat to history. In hundreds of investigations of all sizes and shapes, I got to see up close how decisions got made and how things evolved over...
What’s Wrong with Open Floorplan Offices?
Instead of feeling closer, open floorplans make employees feel distant, dissatisfied, and resentful. Research shows the loss of productivity is twice that of private offices.
Chain of Custody
Evidence is defined as the available body of information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or untrue. Chain of custody is a legal term for the rigorous procedure that is to be followed and documented when evidence is collected, held, transferred,...
Methodology Is Not the Study of How Methodists Do Things
The toughest part about planning and conducting really top-notch consumer and market research is having to figure out what the real puzzle is before solving the obvious one.
Money for Nothing
We passed the entrance to this market research facility several times because we had automatically assumed we would come upon their roadside sign. No sign and not even a street number, just the rusted oil drums and concrete rubble you see in the photo. This got me to...
What Color Is Your Parachute?
A friend gave me a book called What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers, and I changed careers.
How Much Does Research Cost?
When someone asks "How long is a piece of string?" or "How big is a house?" you know the only right answer is "It depends." How much does research cost? Same answer. We cannot say how much research costs any more than we can say how much a car costs until we’ve asked...
Where Does the Average Person Go More Often – the Library or the Movie Theater?
People who want to sell you something or prove their point are prone to showing you only statistics that support their argument, and not the information you need to make better decisions.
Brothers and Sisters, I’m Allergic to Bad Information
Labels should clearly define every study’s relevance to specific business problems, the effectiveness of its design, how the results will be used, and where it fits into the big picture, including strategy and the development of new high-demand products and lucrative markets.
What Can Mickey Mouse Teach Us About A.I.?
As a kid, when the arm was down at railroad crossings I would pay close attention to the freight cars as they went by. I made up a game where I held as many of the six-digit railcar I.D. numbers as I could in memory with the goal of finding consecutive numbers amongst...
Can You Name the 5 Things We Do In Elevators?
Undergraduate grade point averages are the first thing doctoral programs look at and my application would have been automatically binned if they had Artificial Intelligence scanners in those days, but it was 1977 and they didn’t. The Indiana University Sociology...
We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges
Instead of paying for meaningless certificates, badges, how about sponsoring some actual learning with real value?
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
What's Wrong With This Picture? A new study shows that people who go to museums, art galleries, the theater, and concerts live longer than those who don’t. The researchers, professors of psychology and epidemiology, described in detail their study's methods, sample,...
What Are “Dear Abby” Statistics?
Dear Abby statisics deduce a cause-and-effect relationship even when there isn’t one, especially if it serves their purposes.
Dreck the Halls
Young Moderns have had it with the dreary old decorations of the past and think it’s time to move on. One great way to make your Christmas yard display stand out is by featuring an inflatable Hidden Valley Ranch bottle, a Taco Bell sauce packet, and a giant bag of...
A Boomer Apologizes: It’s All Our Fault
We were the first to have a gen-name. Now everyone has one and some have two. Regardless of what they call themselves, our term for the latest group at front and center of deciding everything for everybody else is Young Moderns. Nitpickers will say hey, what about the...
I’d Rather Be Tased Than Read a Book
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Do You Rely on Others for Your Information?
He had created a culture where his senior staff would rather throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars than tell the emperor that the entire kingdom has no clothes.
Gulliver’s Troubles
As Daniel Kahneman says, “We’re blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know.”
Whistleblower’s Secret Guide for Executives
Gatekeepers tamper with your research every time they touch it.
Veteran’s Day
United States Air Force 1966-1970. Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Alaska, Okinawa, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam. Welcome home.
Why Is It Called a Dunce Cap?
Witch hunters made evildoers wear hats shaped like church steeples to draw down God’s grace for one final shot at redemption.
Third Anniversary
This is the third anniversary of LetsTakeACloserLook.com. Here is where I've written and published more than 150 articles, usually on the topic of misinformation and often involving items in the news. To those of you who have been loyal readers all along - thanks for...
Garbology
A recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control says the United States is experiencing "an epidemic of lung injury” and “use of flavored e-cigarettes by youths has become a serious concern.” Anyone who has seen or heard current events knows both these...
What Happened To the Gold Rush?
What Happened To the Gold Rush? The great California gold rush began when sawmill builders found gold in a stream bed in 1848. Headlines in newspapers around the world told tall tales of gold lying on the ground just waiting to be picked up. Hundreds of thousands of...
People have lots of friends. People are lonely. How can this be?
You know how you hear one story that makes a lot of sense and then you hear another that also makes a lot of sense but you’re bothered because taken together they don’t make any sense at all? Me, too. I examine research studies than most, and because they have...
A Closer Look at Bowdlerizing
In The Guardian, Issy Sampson described rap music as society’s lurch toward infantilism. His? Her? (but certainly not Their) many examples included language that disgusts most people. The British daily published every bit of it unbowdlerized, as is their policy....
Scientists Say Sugar, Fat, and Salt Are Good for You
At least that's what bought-and-paid-for scientists say. The Not-(Directly)-for-Profit International Life Sciences Institute was created forty years ago by Coke, Pepsi, General Mills, and others, all companies with less interest in Life Sciences than in influencing...
“Dick Pic” Study Shows Who Sends Them and Why
NOTE: "dick pics" is the colloquial term used in scientific papers, online publications, and Europe, where news outlets take casual coarseness like this n stride. The first academic study on dick pics has been published. Its objective was “to explore men’s...
Hurricane Screams Down Upon Boca Raton!
Hurricane Screams Down Upon Boca Raton! Several friends from elsewhere called to see how I was faring with the monster hurricane making the news across the country. After twice explaining the disconnect between what they were being told and what was actually...
Take this one-question A.I. I.Q. test
Question 1. How many jobs will Artificial Intelligence destroy? A. Futurist Thomas Frey says one billion. B. McKinsey says 800 million. C. McKinsey says 400 million. D. The International Federation of Robotics says zero. Why such different answers? Frey’s prediction...
I’m creating a very different self-learning course.
Until now, there has been no one place people can go to learn how to avoid misinformation traps. I intend to provide just that. What makes me think I'm qualified to take this on? Two things, thanks for asking. As a hands-on behavioral scientist for hire, I rode herd...
Guess how many people want this app.
Use it and the food you order costs more, takes longer to arrive, isn’t what you asked for, shows up cold and messy, and you have to go outside and get it no matter the distance or the weather? Probably none, when I put it that way, but the real answer is millions. No...
How to predict the future with two lines.
We assembled a team of bright people with different backgrounds. We included insiders and outsiders. On the table were a stack of index cards, a dozen Sharpies. Our subject was residential yards, which we defined as the open spaces within the boundaries of the lot...
How To Use a 2×2 Matrix To Change Your Life
When it comes to planning and decision-making, too many people rely on complicated procedures and detailed statistics when there is an excellent tool that is easy to use and requires no math at all. How To Use a 2x2 Matrix To Change Your Life The 2x2 matrix is a great...
The seemingly most-qualified people to set the compass for your company’s long-term strategic direction are actually the least-qualified for the job.
The strategy team had zero experience in their client's particular industry. The actions they proposed were so outrageous that the insider experts unanimously predicted the sacred brand would be irreparably damaged. After weighing the opinions of his doomsaying...
Is your company making the same huge mistake as Apple?
I am an unabashed fan of Apple’s tech support. In my experience, theirs is the finest in all the land by a wide margin. When I submit a request, they call me within two or three minutes. It’s nice that their tech reps are invariably pleasant and courteous. What’s even...
A Grubby Little Con Game
The most common ad testing research waits until the very last moment to do the fastest and cheapest research possible. Paid study subjects are shown an ad that has been slickly produced and is ready to go. The only purpose of this research is to make sure the...
Airlines Doomed, Study Says
Readers have asked me to demonstrate how I go about reading a study. We don’t use privately-funded studies as examples, so I’ve been waiting for something interesting to show up in the public domain where we all have free access to the information. A little background...
What can your business learn from NASA’s Challenger disaster?
Volume of ramp is 1920cu in vs 3 cu in for test. If you saw those exact words, would you have cancelled the Challenger launch because conditions were dangerous and the likelihood of failure was high? Me neither, and here's why. Westerners read from top to bottom and...
Why Is So Much Market Research Like 100-year-old Sausage?
In the late 1800s, the United States were transforming themselves into an industrial society. Millions moved to the cities to work in the new factories, where conditions were unimaginably wretched. Sociologists, reformers, and people concerned with social injustice...
How to Scrape Most Customer Satisfaction Research Off Your Shoe
How to Scrape Most Customer Satisfaction Research Off Your Shoe The senior officer wanted to talk about his Customer Satisfaction data. He had been reading reports and got to wondering how much he could count on the purported accuracy of the information he was...
How Did Businesses Waste $3 Billion on Surveys?
Get someone to take a look at your operation and tell you where you are doing well, where you need improvement, and where you need to be doing something entirely different.
How Did Businesses Waste $2 Billion on Focus Groups?
If your gatekeepers and research providers haven’t told you these essential truths about focus groups, they’re either withholding crucial information from you — which is bad, or they’re unfamiliar with the facts — which is also bad. You lose both ways
Why Is Most Market Research Bullshit?
A few weeks ago, I posted an article about how people use lies and trickery to con us into believing untruths. It referenced two University of Washington professors who are teaching students how to defend themselves in a course named Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning...
Let’s Have Dinner at the Gas Station
Amazon’s recent announcement of a category-changing Whole Foods shop-eat-entertain design strategy was big news because they took the usual way of thinking about grocery stores and radically redefined it. Paradigm shifts occur when we dramatically change our beliefs...
The Food Hall Experience
Mental Floss’ Leigh Raper has very strong feelings about the Sherman Oaks Galleria (mall) food court, featured in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She says it represented ”the teen ideal of community, freedom, and independence.” It is good to remember this was...
Calling Bullshit
University of Washington professors Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom say the world is awash in bullshit and they’re tired of it. This is why they designed a class called Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World. Their aim is to teach people how to think critically...
Shocking New Study Turns the Parachuting World Upside Down!
Movie buffs know that army paratroopers shout Geronimo! as they jump out of airplanes. As the story goes, they do it because it’s what the famous Apache chief yelled when he bravely leaped his horse from a high cliff into the river below to evade the hot pursuit of...
When To Schedule Your Parole Hearing
In one famous study, judges approved parole in about one third of the cases they heard. But as with most averages, the proportion did not hold steady hour after hour throughout the day. As a matter of fact, prisoners who appeared before judges early in the day were...
March 32nd
No one knows how April Fools’ started. One story says it began during the First Century, when court jesters and fools told Roman emperor Constantine they could do a better job of running the empire. Amused, the emperor allowed a jester to be king for one day. Another...
Is Your Job the Next to Go?
Desk Set is a 1957 movie starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Tracy is an expert hired to modernize a television network's research department. When the employees find out powerful new computers are coming, they are afraid they will lose their jobs to...
Why Do We Steal Things from Work?
Psychologically, knowing no one is watching makes it easier.
Who Invented the Drive-Thru Window?
Drive-thru windows account for two-thirds of fast-food sales.
Tree-to-Toilet Pipeline
Thanks to decades of marketing, including 21 years of Mr Whipple squeezing the Charmin, the United States leads the world in toilet paper usage. Americans, who make up 4% of the world’s population, use 20% of the world’s toilet paper. Fortune says the $31 billion...
Why Is Starbucks a Pseudo-Third Place?
Why Is Starbucks a Pseudo-Third Place? Say the words cracker barrel and most Americans think of the chain restaurant and gift shop. Cracker Barrel Restaurants and Country Stores were designed to evoke the friendly, homespun character of general stores from the 1800s,...
Where Nobody Knows Your Name
Travelers are leaving their hotel rooms and heading for the lobby for a couple of good reasons. One is that the ever-smaller rooms have no space for tables, chairs, or desks and so are less comfortable than ever before. Another is that the lobby is now a happening...
The Wisdom of Amarillo Slim
Although it is unlikely professional gambler Amarillo Slim ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, he was more than familiar with the concept. A Hall of Fame poker player, Slim liked to point out that “If you don’t know who the fool at the table is, it’s you."...
What Are Your Chances?
We have to make an effort to get the full picture, especially when marketers don’t want us to have it. Most of us have seen the NordicTrack ads on TV where Jane lost 20 pounds and we can, too. Few of us have read the fine print in the footnotes. The information there...
Not Meant to Be Taken Literally
TrueCar operates a consumer-facing website that promises to help car buyers find the best price. Their TV ads feature a glasses-wearing, bearded, regular-guy pitchman oozing authenticity. He tells us that by seeing TrueCar data on what other buyers paid, we can see...
Brainstorming
Novelist William Styron wrote in Darkness Visible that “depression is a true wimp of a word.” True depression, he said, swallows its victims entirely and is so overwhelming that a better word for it is brainstorm, not as it is currently used to mean some burst of...
The 3-D Experience
In 1999, Star Wars was in theaters, Space Invaders was in arcades, and our team was crisscrossing Europe and Asia, testing mock-ups of what would one day become tablet computers. The main attraction of our prototypes?They were a new category on the power-mobility...
What Is the Unvarnished Truth?
The unvarnished truth is unadorned reality and clear-eyed perspective, with depth, authenticity, and sincerity.
2 Million
Newspapers everywhere have picked up the Associated Press story on predictions of 2 million people in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Who is behind that forecast? In The Curious Science of Counting a Crowd, Rob Goodier says “when turnout implies clout, politicians and...
A Sense of Purpose
Purpose-driven brands take stands on issues linked to human or planetary betterment. Instead of merely touting their products, they talk about social and environmental impact. Forbes says when brand owners add purpose to the equation, they are seeking a deeper...
Sorry, Charlie
Fox News Network’s Alexandra Deabler says the canned tuna industry is in decline because younger generations want their foods trendier and less-processed. Andy Mecs, VP of Marketing for Star-Kist, takes that explanation a step further, saying “A lot of millennials...
Artificial Intelligence and Online Dating
Millions of Americans have used online dating services. These days one in five romantic relationships begin online. What was once considered the act of a desperate loser is now seen by three out of four InterWeb users to be a practical and efficient way to meet...
Brain Drain
Nearly half of American smartphone owners say they can’t live without it. I guess not, when on average, Americans check theirs 85 times a day. Everyone* knows that using smartphones is a distraction. But few know that even when we turn them off, they continue to...
