Many people buy a car (probably their single biggest discretionary purchase) based on slamming a door, kicking a tire and judging the handshake of a salesperson.

We choose a surgeon based on the carpeting in his office and a politician by his hair cut.

During the first week of swine flu vaccines in New York, most parents (more than half!) chose to keep their kids out of the program.

Interviewed parents said things like, "I'm not sure it's safe," and "I wanted to see if it affected other kids..."

No mention of longitudinal studies or long-term side effects. No science at all, really, just rumors and hunches and gut instincts.

This gut-instinct approach served people well for hundreds of thousands of years, but it's pretty clear that it doesn't work in a complex world. Eating salmon at a wedding feels 'safe' because we always have, but of course any professional scientist will tell you that farmed salmon is an ecological disaster. You can't see the problem, so you ignore it.

Audiophiles spend thousands of dollars rewiring the electrical lines in their house with .99999% pure copper, ignoring the fact that the power from the street is in the same old cables. Adding decimal points to our irrationality doesn't change much.

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Looks promising!

A 3d animation created over the course of 5 years documenting the graffiti on the wall outside of Serge Gainsbourg home.

Square off

To square a number like 14, identify the preceding round number — in this case, 10. Since you subtracted 4 to get 10, add 4 to 14 to get 18 and multiply that by 10 (*the round number). Add to that the square of 4: 180 + 16 = 196.

Proof

(x - y)(x + y) + y^2 = x^2

x^2 + xy - xy - y^2 + y^2 = x^2

x^2 = x^2

To find the square of the next number in a series without multiplying: Say you know the square of 12 is 144. Add 12 to 144 and add the next number — in this case, 13 — to find the square of 13: 144 + 12 = 156 + 13 = 169, the square of 13; and then, 169 + 13 = 182 + 14 = 196, etc.

Patrick Conlon/The Wall Street Journal

Are things you need to get done falling between the cracks? Does taking an entire day off seem impossible?

Maybe you need a time-management system.

Many readers seem to think they do, based on the email response to my recent column on the importance of taking time off. Dozens asked me to recommend a time-management method that would help them get on top of their work and home duties. In response, I asked a half-dozen executive coaches to help me pick the most widely used time-management systems—not just software tools or high-tech to-do lists, but behavioral-change techniques that help people get organized, clarify thinking and increase output. Then, I tried out for a week each of the three methods they mentioned most often—including one that involved a ticking plastic tomato.

Followers of the 'Pomodoro Technique' tackle tasks in 25-minute increments, with the help of a kitchen timer.

Of course, a week isn't long enough to reap the full benefits of these methods. Still, I learned a lot from this experiment. Like many people, I am often my own worst enemy in managing my time, distracting myself from the task at hand, or setting myself up for failure by starting each day with an unrealistically long to-do list. Second, the key to getting more important stuff done is often doing less of everything else. And finally, getting control of your time requires a significant up-front investment of mental effort—and, well, time.

'I'm going to tell my son the worst swearword in the world'

"Sometimes the mystery is better than the knowing, wouldn't you say? Sometimes the journey is better than the destination"

This is just so funny!

In the experiment, preliminary results of which were presented last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, scientists allowed one group of rats to run. Another set of rodents was not allowed to exercise. Then all of the rats swam in cold water, which they don’t like to do. Afterward, the scientists examined the animals’ brains. They found that the stress of the swimming activated neurons in all of the ’ brains. (The researchers could tell which neurons were activated because the cells expressed specific genes in response to the stress.) But the youngest brain cells in the running rats, the cells that the scientists assumed were created by running, were less likely to express the genes. They generally remained quiet. The “cells born from running,” the researchers concluded, appeared to have been “specifically buffered from exposure to a stressful experience.” The rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm.

A new toy from Google Labs!