Category: General Interest

Items of general interest – for mass consumption

Useless body parts

This webpage has a fairly comprehensive list of all body parts that are now useless. Some time in our evolutionary past, they were useful, but are now just sitting around, waiting for evolution to get rid of them. For example:

ERECTOR PILI:
Bundles of smooth muscle fibers allow animals to puff up their fur for insulation or to intimidate others. Humans retain this ability (goose bumps are the indicator) but have obviously lost most of the fur.

See full article. Blogging about it because some things you just need to know for no good reason…

Scott Adams’ Golden Happiness Ratio

Scott Adams has an interesting theory on how to be happy – something I totally agree with:

I have a theory that you can predict how happy people are and perhaps how successful by their ability to tolerate imperfection. The Golden Happiness Ratio is about 4/5ths right, also known as “good enough.

Once you achieve about 80% rightness, any extra effort is rarely worth the effort. People who can’t stop until they get to 100% are usually stressed to the point where they can barely function. And don’t expect them to do much multitasking.

See full article.

What makes a restaurant successful?

Scott Adams, who is a very smart guy, and who just happens to own a couple of restaurants, has spent some time analyzing what makes a restaurant successful and writes this post. Excerpt:

When asked about the most important factor for a restaurant’s success, experts often pick lighting. Your first inclination is to laugh that off as absurd, because you’ve probably never made a restaurant decision based on lighting. But if you look at the restaurants that are doing well without being Italian or Mexican or tax cheats or a chain, they generally have excellent lighting. Everything, including your date, looks better with the right lighting. And that can be enough to make you remember the food and service as being better than they were. I pay attention to restaurant lighting, and find it a far better predictor of success than food or service. (I’m working on my restaurant’s lighting too.)

I assume you are not going to start your own restaurant, but nevertheless, it is interesting to read what how that business works.