Dan Ariely was Bob Brinker’s guest on Money Talk last weekend.  Dr. Dan, as Brinker called him, is a professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.     Dr Dan was pushing his new book Predictably Irrational. I am going to give a rough summary of one of Dr. Dan’s experiments for the book that I found interesting.   He gave subjects a simple math test where the subjects would be able to able to figure out the correct answers but he made sure that the subjects did not have enough time to complete the tests. He then tested different variables to measure the impact of cheating.   He had testers tell the subjects that they would be paid $1 for each correct answer. The first group:  Once the time was up, they told the testers how many correct answers they got correct.   On average these subjects reported they got 4 correct. The second group:  Once the time was up, they shredded the tests and then told the testers how many they got right.  They knew evidence would not be there to verify how many they got correct and said they got 7 correct. 

The American Red Cross needs to do two things to attract more people to give blood.

First, give money instead of coupons/shwag/etcetera.  Everyone loves money.  Not everyone loves specific goods.

Secondly, and most importantly, market giving blood as a weight loss tool.  Apparently you burn something like 2,000 calories on average by giving blood.  For a lot of people, that is a day’s worth of food.  Since Americans will do all sorts of crazy things except eating right and exercising to lose weight, such as the cabbage soup diet, you’d think they would also try giving blood every now and then.  I think 2,000 calories is close to one pound of fat (I think one pound is 2,500).  So the American Red Cross should be saying: “Donate Blood - Lose a Pound!”

Hulu.com is the coolest website ever.  On it, you can watch full length episodes of a ton of TV Shows and some full-length movies for free.  They have lots of popular shows like The Office, The Simpsons, etcetera, but they even have one of my favorite obscure shows of all time: Jack of All Trades!  The website just launched today, but based on my test viewing of one episode of Jack of All Trades, it runs really smooth and is very easy to use.  When watching, the only interruption is a commercial once every 10 minutes or so, and the commercials are only about 25 seconds each, which is not bad at all.  I highly recommend checking Hulu out.

Ever wondered what the current US Supreme Court Justices think about legal writing? Want some tips from some of the brightest legal minds of our time? Check out this link, and watch interviews with the current justices and listen to their thoughts on legal writing. Very cool.

If you want to get good fuel economy, sit ten feet behind a tractor trailer.  You barely have to touch the gas.  I just filled up my Toyota Camry and averaged 36 miles per gallon, after driving in tons of wind, and 1/3 of that tank city driving.  I average 36, but if you net out the city stuff and the wind, and the fact that the drive had a net elevation climb of a few thousand feet, I was probably in the mid 40s.  All hail gigantic trucks that get 2 miles per gallon that allow commoners like me to draft off of them.

P.S. I swear it’s safe.  I mean, think about how long it takes a truck to brake.  Even if you’re close to the truck, unless you fall asleep at the wheel you won’t crash into it when it starts to slow down.