Mud Bowl I had a friend once, in junior high school, liked to play football, and was playing a game with some friends during the rain. He accidentally swallowed some mud, maybe thought he’d eaten some bugs or something, everybody, including him, thought it was pretty funny. Then a few weeks later he […]
Self Sabotaging Magic
Circus Theory In the circus, they have trapeze artists whose job it is to flip around up in the air, so people can watch this and be entertained. But to maximize the enjoyment of these tricks, they must provide a safety net for the trapeze artists. Without a safety net, the trapeze artists […]
Evil Alien Democracy
Debt Is Life I read an article by this economist named Richard Duncan. He said that ever since world war two, every time the debt has not expanded more than 2%, the U.S. economy has gone into a recession. This means out economy is not only dependent on debt, but it’s dependent on […]
Vampire Parasite Nation
Vampire Bats Vampire bats have a highly regulated collection of social instincts. One of them is the capability of doing each other favors, and remembering who has done favors for whom. They’ll go hunting, some will come back with blood, some won’t. The ones that don’t get any blood will borrow from […]
Reversions To The Mean
Moving Averages Stock charts are a fascinating combination of technical and mathematical specificity and human psychology. One one hand they can be a very accurate representation of a company’s health. On the other hand, they are a pure expression of human psychology. One way to look at a chart is to compare the day […]
Slippery Slopes of Terror
Drug Dealers If you are a drug dealer it would be fairly easy to continuously get new customers. The first thing you would do is give somebody free samples. The free samples would be something that makes him feel very good. Anything that makes a human feel very good is something that human will […]
Poison Snakes And Unintended Outcomes
Funeral For A Friend I saw friend a couple of days ago and he was just coming back from a funeral. I asked him who died. He told me, and it happened in an accident that was in the news a few weeks ago about a building that had collapsed. When I first saw […]
Master Criminal Fish Story
Old Pier There is a pier that’s very old in my neighborhood. It has a restaurant at the end but it hasn’t been open for a long time and it’s almost condemned but I still see people occasionally on the pier fishing. There’s this one old guy that I’ve seen a while fishing. I’ve […]
Reversions To The Mean
Camping Is Fun I’ve always liked camping. I’ve always liked different kinds of camping. When I was very young I joined Boy Scouts and that’s where I first learned all about camping and how you can do it in its various forms. When I was in college me and my friends used to go […]
We’re All Gonna Die
Book Club Lately I’ve been going to this book club. I like going to book clubs because the people that you meet at book clubs are usually more intelligent than the average person and usually have some very interesting conversations at these book clubs. The reasons I like the conversations you have at book […]