Teller (the silent partner of the Penn & Teller magic duo) has long had a magic trick called ‘Shadows’ which is really beautiful and no one had seemingly figured out how he did it or if they had did not reveal it. I discussed it a couple of months ago but here it is again. [Read more…]

So, for whatever reason, you want to leak information gleaned in your work to others? Wired gives you some tips on how lower your chances of getting caught.

Remember Snackman, the guy who calmed down a fight in the New York City subway by simply standing between the combatants and calmly eating some potato chips? Well, the New York Times tracked him down and has a profile of him and how the whole episode unfolded. He now has adoring fans and is even receiving marriage proposals.

The last will of a person is usually considered binding on the executors and people sometimes try to ‘rule from the grave’ by laying down stiff conditions that heirs must meet in order to get their inheritance. Putting such conditions always struck me as a bad idea except in the case where the heirs were small children or otherwise incompetent to handle their own affairs, but such requests are almost always obligatory. [Read more…]

I rarely eat out at restaurants and never at the expensive higher-end ones unless I am the guest of someone else. But on the rare occasions that I do go to such places, I am always amused by the wait staff who recite from memory the ‘specials’. It usually goes by so fast and has so many esoteric details about what the dishes contain and how they are prepared that I almost immediately succumb to information overload and cannot keep track. So I usually just listen politely and then order from the menu. I always thought it would be a lot easier to simply print a single sheet with the day’s specials and hand it out along with the menu than have the wait staff memorize and then repeat the same thing hundreds of times a day. It seems such an obvious thing to do that not doing so must be some kind of affectation, part of the ambiance of expensive restaurants that their customers expect. [Read more…]

Here’s a puzzle that more internet savvy readers may be able to help me with.

On March 7, I received the following email with the subject line “Broken link on your page”.

Hi Mano,

I came across your website and wanted to notify you about a broken link on your page in case you weren’t aware of it. The link on http://www.case.edu/provost/UCITE/learning/general.html which links to http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/teachtip.htm with the anchor text of “teaching tips is no longer working. [Read more…]

The report today pretty much supports what was in my post yesterday on the importance of bystanders not being passive.

Children often respond to someone saying something hurtful by reciting “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me”. But it seems like adults are less mature than children because alleged grown ups can be aroused to a violent and even murderous rage simply by being called names. [Read more…]

Some years ago, two friends and colleagues of mine in different academic departments, both divorced, started living together and had children. They did not pretend they were married nor did they advertise that they were not. The female member once told me that since they were not married, she referred to the other person as her ‘partner’. She discovered that when she did so, people assumed that her partner must be female as well, [Read more…]