Did Bill Gates waste a billion dollars because he failed to understand the formula for the standard deviation of the mean?
"If for random reasons a few geniuses happen to enroll one year in a small school scores jump up and if a few extra dullards enroll the next year scores fall. Thus, for purely random reasons we would expect small schools to be among the best performing schools in any givenyear. Of course we would also expect small schools to be among the worst performing schools in any given year!"

  How bathroom posture affects your health
"We were not meant to sit on toilets, we were meant to squat in the field. When it comes to hemorrhoids — a painful swelling of the veins in the anal canal that affects half of all Americans — new research suggests that you may want to get your butt off the toilet."

  German modal particles
Das ist vielleicht ein großer Hund! ("That's quite a large dog!")

  Westerners vs. the World: We are the WEIRD ones
"If you're a Westerner, your intuitions about human psychology are probably wrong". Most of the world is much less altruistic in cooperation games, and even responds differently to visual illusions.

  Learning to Be Me by Greg Egan

  The William
"The William is a new concept for an electric, touch screen stove-top."

  older links