Yesterday, I encouraged people interested in unlearning to "trust but verify" their instincts. One area where this technique might save you some money is to have a friend or loved one give you a blind taste of your favorite (and perhaps expensive) wine or coffee along with that of a lesser brand. Interestingly, a few years ago researchers [...]

St. Louis's Gateway Arch is one of the world's largest optical illusions. It appears to be much taller than it is wide. The reality is that it is as high as it is wide. The problem is that the illusion can't be overcome just by taking another look -- only an objective measurement will do. The [...]

Reading. Most of us do it every day and it is so ingrained from such an early age that it is difficult to imagine that there is another way of doing it. Yet, there is. Last summer, I had the opportunity to sit down with Adam Gordon, the vice president of marketing for Live Ink, [...]

Earlier today I came across a tweet from a person (@riverblindmusic) in New Zealand who said that my post the other day (To Unlearn Learn to Disenthrall) was keeping him (or her) awake as he wrote a new song based on the word. At the time, I thought it was just a cool example of [...]

At the end of yesterday's post on learning to unlearning, I posed the following question: How does one learn a new gestalt? To begin a person must start by unlearning some things. But what things do we unlearn? For our purposes, a good place to start might be to imagine what a course on unlearning what [...]

The most interesting news is often found in the smallest articles. Buried deep inside today's Wall Street Journal is a tiny article entitled Starbucks Tests Stealth Outlet. Apparently, in an effort to boost lagging sales, the mega-coffee chain is conducting an interesting test. It is dropping it's name from a local Seattle store and replacing it with [...]

Like many of you, the bookshelf by my bed is stacked with more books than I can possibly read. As a result, I often find myself reading two or three books concurrently. One of the beauties of this approach is that you can stumble upon serendipitous insights. One such insight just occurred last night. I [...]

Take a look at the picture to the right. Do you see the green and the blue spirals? Amazingly, they are both the same color. (For a detailed explanation read this  article in Discover Magazine.) This optical illusion, which shows how our mind uses neighboring colors to make inferences about other colors, is a wonderful [...]

One of my favorite columnists, Janet Rae-Dupree, had an insightful article in her column in New York Times a while back. In it, she explained the difference between people with a “fixed mind-set” and those with a “growth mind-set.” The difference can be summed up in how a person views the issue of talent. People [...]

Think that video games lead to violence or anti-social behavior? Or that only male teenagers play video games? Or perhaps you are of the opinion that video games have no educational value . Well, think again and prepare yourself to unlearn. I strongly encourage you to read this post which highlights many of the recent [...]