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0ba44a1
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To properly engage in magical thinking, I find you have to think of every possible ghastly scenario. That's the only way you outsmart fate.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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5c0633b
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Lightning goes up. It shoots right up from the ground and into the cloud. This what the encyclopedia says in the section on climate and weather. I reread this passage a couple of times to make sure I hadn't gone batty--but no, lightning goes up.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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f0bc3d0
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Probably 90 percent of our life decisions are powered by the twin engines of inertia and laziness.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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f5022bb
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My immune system has always been overly welcoming of germs. It's far too polite, the biological equivalent of a southern hostess inviting y'all nice microbes to stay awhile and have some artichoke dip.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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38f7f26
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Incidentally, I spent some time on the Purell website, where you can find a list of ninety-nine places germs lurk (in-flight magazines, movie tickets, gas-pump keypads, hotel room a/c controls, and on and on). It's hilarious and terrifying. The only place they don't mention is the Purell dispensers themselves. You know they're coated with germs. It's one of health's cruelest catch-22s.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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ab95669
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I figured the government wouldn't let poison flow from the taps. But in general, I'm too trusting of the government. I'm the polar opposite of the Tea Partiers. I have no problem with a nanny state. But in this case, the nanny state has been chatting on the cell phone and ignoring the baby as it plays with matches.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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f5eebd9
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As I was passing this man on the street, he looked at me, snarled, and gave me the finger. What was going through his mind? Does he hate shepherds? Or religion? Did he just read Richard Dawkins's book?
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A.J. Jacobs |
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e523e7a
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You cannot stop religion from evolving.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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cbb0de6
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I know the name of Turkey's leading avant-guard publication. I know that John Quincy Adams married for money. I know that Bud Abbott was a double-crosser, that absentee ballots are very popular in Ireland, and that dwarves have prominent buttocks.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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e1bea94
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Paintings! They're like TV, but they don't move.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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7eafe8c
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On the other hand, if you're too delusionally optimistic, you'll be unbearable. You'll refuse to save money or make backup plans. You'll invade foreign countries and expect to be greeted as liberators. Like everything else in health, you need balance.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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e582690
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The outer affects the inner.
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religion
ritual
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A.J. Jacobs |
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ec734c2
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Here's why I'm a fan of thanking our lucky stars every day: it helps with forgiving yourself your failures; it cuts down on celebrity worship and boosts humility; and, perhaps most important, it makes us more compassionate.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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72e12f2
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After decimating several vegetables, I decide juicing is my favorite form of food preparation. There's something perversely appealing about subjecting an innocent plant to that much violence.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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d57abe0
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So, if weight loss is your goal, and you have impressive self-control, raw food is something to consider.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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9d3e162
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The strange fact that out of millions of people in the world, your mother and father met and decided to get married to each other. And out of the millions of sperm, that the one with your genes was the one that made it to the egg and fertilised the egg. I'll never forget it.
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creation
egg
father
genes
giving-birth
marriage
millions
mother
pregnant
sperm
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A.J. Jacobs |
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c20fa0a
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Images are taking over, and writers are a dying breed. The Norman Mailers of today are reduced to writing pun-filled captions for paparazzi photos. Blogs--which were threatening enough to professional writers--are being replaced by video blogs. We writers need to embraced the Second Commandment as our rallying cry for the importance of words. In a literally biblical world, all publications would look like the front page of the Wall Street J..
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page-106
second-commandment
writing
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A.J. Jacobs |
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55c15ff
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The Bible is so strange, so utterly bizarre, no human brain could have come up with it.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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0cb191e
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Which just goes to prove. Not everybody can be Herman Cappachino. Whatever that means.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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569d6ed
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claque, aka canned laughter It's becoming increasingly clear that there's nothing new under the sun (a heavenly body, by the way, that some Indian ascetics stare at till they go blind). I knew that some things had a history--the Constitution, rhythm and blues, Canada--but it's the odd little things that surprise me with their storied past. This first struck me when I was reading about anesthetics and I learned that, in the early 1840s, it b..
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A.J. Jacobs |
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4a416b4
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On the bright side, my slightly lower IQ means that I probably have worse recall. Maybe I'll soon forget that I have a depressed IQ.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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62fa257
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Studies show that the more you pay attention to your body's statistics, the greater the chance you'll adopt a healthy lifestyle. This idea underpins the Quantified Self movement, in which adherents track everything from caloric output to selenium levels. The mere act of weighing yourself daily makes it more likely you'll shed pounds, according to a University of Minnesota study. Keeping a food journal makes you eat fewer fatty foods, accord..
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A.J. Jacobs |
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db05e05
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First impressions are like South American dictators: overly powerful and unreliable.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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33373e5
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If ever I was going to listen to a string of swearwords sitting next to a ninety-four-year-old, I'm glad that ninety-four-year-old was my grandfather. Not that he swears a lot. It's just that he can take it. And, he is currently laughing so hard that his eyes are watery.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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eded0f6
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I'm not a big scatology fan, unlike my sons, who can amuse themselves for an entire afternoon by repeating the phrase 'crocodile fart.' So I'll spare you from an overabundance of detail in this chapter. This chapter will be somewhat soft focus, like the TV camera in a Barbra Streisand interview.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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6dccd7a
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How do you gag the voice in your head that says, 'You don't have to go to the gym today. There's always tomorrow. C'mon, my friend, it's just one plate of curly fries. Yes, just for you!' (My inner voice reminds me of a particularly aggressive rug salesman at a Turkish bazaar.)
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A.J. Jacobs |
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c7ec5be
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year hasn't been observed since the time of the Temple (The Second Jewish Book of Why, p. 262). The Sabbath year is still observed in some form, but only in Israel (ibid., p. 320). DAY 44 I first learned about the "domino" phrase in the book Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench, a very interesting look at fundamentalism. The history of literalism is actually" --
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A.J. Jacobs |
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37b7234
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Greenberg tells me, "Never blame a text from the Bible for your behavior. It's irresponsible. Anybody who says X, Y, and Z is in the Bible--it's as if one says, 'I have no role in evaluating this.'" The"
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A.J. Jacobs |
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f1c69e8
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I love the way he talks. By the end, perhaps I'll be able to speak in majestic food metaphors like Reverend Richards.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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5123634
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Mrs. Bush answers: "I think you ought to treat your spouse like you treat your friends. You clean your house for your friends, you make sure they're taken care of. A spouse often comes second. So treat your spouse like the friends. Don't just go halfway. If each spouse goes seventy-five percent of the way, it's a perfect match."
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A.J. Jacobs |
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92d108c
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For most of my life, I've been working under the paradigm that my behavior should, ideally, have a logical basis. But if you live biblically, this is not true. I have to adjust my brain to this. You
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A.J. Jacobs |
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038974d
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I thought that religion, for all the good it does, seemed too risky for our modern world.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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c67d51d
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I thought that religion, for all the good it does, seemed too risky for our modern world. The potential for abuse too high.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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8b6087c
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The Bible may have not been dictated by God, it may have had a messy and complicated birth, one filled with political agendas and outdated ideas--but that doesn't mean the Bible can't be beautiful and sacred.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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50027e0
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I've even come to a conclusion that would get me blackballed from ever setting foot in liberal education circles again. That is this: colonialism wasn't 100 percent evil. More like 96 percent evil. Sometimes the colonizing culture actually made moral improvements in the native culture. I came to this conclusion while reading about the abolition of the Indian custom of widow burning. In pre-British India, a man's widow was burned alongside h..
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A.J. Jacobs |
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9825f61
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Reading Encyclopaedia Britannica is like channel surfing on a very highbrow cable system.
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curiosity
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A.J. Jacobs |
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6e617d9
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My growing collection of facts keeps overlapping with my life.
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openness
revelation
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A.J. Jacobs |
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0172fbb
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Cigarettes' cost far outweigh any resulting trimness, just as asphyxiation outweighs the benefits of stretching out the spine when you hang yourself from a shower curtain rod.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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637369e
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The dehydrator blows warm air on your food for hours, sometimes days. It reminds me of the temperature and intensity of dog's breath. So imagine a German shepherd exhaling on your fruit for a weekend.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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4ae6bde
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Step back for a minute. Pretend you're from Mars. From a coldly rational point of view, pedestrian helmets aren't a crazy idea.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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7dfc5b3
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Journalism is an enemy of rationality. What makes news? The unusual and the spectacular, which by their nature distort reality and pervert our decisions. You read headlines like 15 KILLED IN PLANE CRASH IN WYOMING. You don't read headlines like ANOTHER 2,000 DIED OF HEART DISEASE YESTERDAY. This leads to the Availability Fallacy. Our lazy mind gloms on to the most vivid, emotional examples. When we think of danger, we think of hideous plane..
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A.J. Jacobs |
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b521d60
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hand and wrist aches are more common than ever...Wikipedia lists...my favorite, Raver's Thumb, which you can get from repeatedly waving a glow stick in the air (see, kids, ecstasy really is bad for you).
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A.J. Jacobs |
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8dc50ae
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Like God and Duane Reade drugstores, toxins are everywhere.
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A.J. Jacobs |
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cd184b3
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Tyson emails back: "I'm going to tell you the same thing that I told Henry Louis Gates" (Gates had asked Tyson to appear on his show Finding Your Roots): My philosophy of root-finding may be unorthodox. I just don't care. And that's not a passive, but active absence of caring. In the tree of life, any two people in the world share a common ancestor--depending only on how far back you look. So the line we draw to establish family and heritag..
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A.J. Jacobs |