Urban legend has it that the average person's attention span has gotten shorter and shorter over the years, and is currently less than the attention span of a golfdfish, which allegedly nine seconds. However, an article in today's Wall Street Journal calls into question such findings. First, with regards to the goldfish - Kirsten Adam, … Continue reading A One-Minute Test to See If Your Attention Span Is Longer Than a Goldfish’s →

Last year I wrote about how Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made the headlines the previous week when he asked a lawyer a couple of questions during oral arguments about a gun ownership case. The reason it was such a big deal is because for the past 10 years Thomas had maintained a strange and often-criticized … Continue reading Doing My Best Clarence Thomas Impression, Again →

"In our system, I think it's better to be an affluent person suspected of trying to blow up a police station than it is to be a poor person who's suspected of much, much less than this." Those are the words of Salil Dudani, a John Gardner Public Service fellow, who has worked on civil rights cases … Continue reading Debtor’s Prisons Still Exist in the U.S.?! →

I've heard of ghost writers; is there such a thing as a ghost reader*? Last May I wrote a post titled "What Morley Safer and I Had in Common". The post was written as a tribute to Safer shortly after his death, and focused on one of his more well-known stories that dealt with modern … Continue reading Do People Actually Read My Blog? →

Since the 1970s, the Villanova Singers, an all male chorus group, has been offering Singing Valentines to that special someone. A lovestruck student can buy a singing Valentine for his or her "special friend", and the Villanova Singers would come to your classroom unannounced and ask if it was OK if they delivered a singing … Continue reading Singing Valentines – A Villanova Tradition →

Did you know that there is an optimal dating strategy for finding your ideal mate? Well apparently there is. The solution uses probability calculus to figure out how to maximize the odds of choosing the best option from a series of dates. First published in 1960 by Scientific American, it has become known as the secretary … Continue reading Love and Math →

The tension is so thick, you could cut it with a knife. Today was test day, and students are feverishly working away, oblivious of how much time they have spent working on this 55-minute ordeal. Suddenly, a voice shatters the deafening silence, "There's 10 minutes left." Thirty pairs of eyes stare at me incredulously, as … Continue reading “There’s 10 Minutes Left”- It’s Funny Every Time (to me at least) →

I hope that you did not read the title of this blog and say, "Wow, that's pretty deep," or "I've often thought the same thing." If you did, then you are, to put it bluntly, not too intelligent. That's the conclusion of a recent article that appeared in the journal Judgment and Decision Making. Titled … Continue reading To Wander the Story Is to Become One with It →