Bad Bad Batz

In one study, [Wiseman] asked subjects to look through a newspaper and count the number of photographs inside. The people who labeled themselves as generally unlucky took about two minutes to complete the task. The people who considered themselves as generally lucky took an average of a few seconds. Wiseman had placed a block of text printed in giant, bold letters on the second page of the newspaper that read, “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” Deeper inside, he placed a second block of text just as big that read, “Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250.” The people who believed they were unlucky usually missed both.

Wiseman speculated that what we call luck is actually a pattern of behaviors that coincide with a style of understanding and interacting with the events and people you encounter throughout life. Unlucky people are narrowly focused, he observed. They crave security and tend to be more anxious, and instead of wading into the sea of random chance open to what may come, they remain fixated on controlling the situation, on seeking a specific goal. As a result, they miss out on the thousands of opportunities that may float by.

Lucky people tend to constantly change routines and seek out new experiences. Wiseman saw that the people who considered themselves lucky, and who then did actually demonstrate luck was on their side over the course of a decade, tended to place themselves into situations where anything could happen more often and thus exposed themselves to more random chance than did unlucky people. The lucky try more things, and fail more often, but when they fail they shrug it off and try something else. Occasionally, things work out.

Another blockbuster post by David McRaney.

TRENTON, N.J. - May 23, 2013 (WPVI) — State investigators say at least one bar in New Jersey was mixing food dye with rubbing alcohol and serving it as scotch.

That’s one of the details released Thursday about an investigation dubbed “Operation Swill.” Twenty-nine bars and restaurants in the state are accused of putting cheap booze in premium brand liquor bottles and selling it to patrons who thought they were buying the good stuff.

Look out, Don. It’s like a mine field out there. The Freehold Fridays is on the list.

(via gruber)

There once were two monkeys, Mike and Patricia, who did everything together we’re told, including get shot into space in May 1952, awake and weightless in the nose-cone of a rocket.

They made it back alive, and retired to the National Zoo in Washington, DC, where Patricia died just a couple of years later of natural non-space-related causes. She was survived by her mate Mike, who lived until 1967.

Let’s spare a thought for Mike in his dotage, a widower, on display at the National Zoo, a government worker until the end, whose memory, primatologists tell us, may well have held thoughts of Patricia and that odd adventure they took one spring day long ago.

So wonderful.

Paul Lukas:

The new Meat for Dummies nomenclature, announced earlier this month and slated to start appearing in supermarkets this summer, is designed to make your local meat case less confusing, in part by using the same terminology across different animals. The term “ribeye,” for example, has traditionally been associated with beef, but pork loin rib chops will now be known as ribeye chops. Similarly, top loin pork chops will now be known as porterhouse chops.

If that sounds like a sneaky way to make pork chops sound sexier and command a higher price point just in time for the summer grilling season, then congratulations! You’ve just learned the first lesson of Meat for Dummies, which is that meat can be rebranded, just like everything else. There’s nothing wrong with this per se (or at least it’s no more wrong than when every other industry does it), but it makes Meat for Dummies feel more like a corporate marketing scheme than a consumer-friendly information program.

I can’t wait for the first time I see “pork t-bone” on a menu, for certainly the courts will find me duly justified for burning the entire restaurant to the ground.

And of course Meathead has an in-depth evisceration, as it were.

This is pretty much the only kind of celebrity news story I appreciate.