In addition to cat videos, a favorite social-media meme is portraying faces in everyday objects. They’re always good for a smile. But everything in this world has a name and imaginary faces are no exception. This phenomenon has been labeled pareidolia — “the illusory perception of meaningful patterns or images of familiar things in random
The world runs so much better on trust. Unfortunately, according to a 1990s study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the average human tells up to two lies a day, Yet try as we might, no one can tell for sure when someone is lying. Not that we haven’t tried. Psychologist William Moulton Marston,
Anyone who has ever had a mortgage knows about compound interest. And hopefully, you know enough to take advantage of compounding when you save. If you’re not familiar with how compounding works, consider the Rule of 72 — To calculate the time an investment will double, divide 72 by the interest rate. For example, If
I’ve always thought Congress would do a lot of good if it would simply make stupid behavior illegal. In that spirit, have you ever heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and dissident during the Nazi era who, when viewing what was happening around him, decided that stupidity is worse than evil. Think
What is your approach to happiness? This subject came to my attention recently thanks to the cover article in the Jan 16-23 issue of Time magazine. This special section, entitled “The Happiness Revival Guide,” includes a brief article “Catastrophizing Doesn’t Have to Be Catastrophic” by Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania professor and coauthor of
The older I get, the more time becomes important. (This leads to some interesting discussions with middle school students when I think they are wasting their time, but that’s another subject.) So I was intrigued by the article “The Biggest Wastes Of Time We Regret When We Get Older” by Kristin Wong (https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-biggest-wastes-of-time-we-regret-when-we-get-older?). It sounded
When you are asked to improve something, how often do you think about additions? For home renovation, isn’t it always what you can add? Or for business brainstorming sessions, which new projects to take on? But there is a case to be made for taking away. Sometimes we can do better by removing, streamlining and
Have you ever felt you needed to make a decision, but you really didn’t feel up to it? And whenever you’ve felt that way, your decisions don’t turn out well? You may be onto something. We simply don’t function well under certain conditions, like when we’re tired or hungry. That’s when you’re most likely do
In the 2015 Pixar animated feature Inside Out, Riley had five emotions — Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. Cute, but is that all? How many emotions do we really have? According to “The Benefits of Emodiversity” by David Brooks in The Atlantic (www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/benefits-emotional-diversity/620629/?), there are more. A lot more. For example, the Japanese have age-otori,
I had signed up to substitute teach yesterday and today for an English/language arts teacher at the middle school. While I was working another job earlier in the week, he made it a point to come find me. In order to teach his eight-graders, I was going to have to prepare, so he gave me
