While “selective perception” can be a problem, it’s often very much of a necessity, because every day we’re all confronted with so much stimuli that we actually have to filter out what doesn’t suit our needs in order to carry out our lives sanely.  

I recently read an a...

When I was a young man, I knew an old man who used to say, ‘The more I see of some people, the more I like my dog.’ Years later I learned that this saying wasn’t original to him, but that different versions of it have been ascribed to well-known writers of the past. An...

Before recorded music, it was common for people to sing with others in public places, such as in a tavern or in a pub. Songs that were sung could be twenty verses or more, dealing with work, battles, buildings, ships, heroic deeds and such. Public sing-alongs gradually...

In Poor Richard’s Almanac, Benjamin Franklin wrote: “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” His point being that as a general rule it’s not possible to keep a secret, for once shared it’s likely to get out. “Dead men tell no tales,” is another saying that m...

As a writer of detective fiction, Raymond Chandler is known for being more interested in the atmosphere he was creating than in the tale he was telling. In Chandler’s novels, the voice of his atmospheres-laced-with-a-story is Philip Marlowe, the streetwise detective-pr...

Public opinion and freedom of the press recently came up in a conversation I had with a good friend. After our discussion my curiosity got me hunting up noteworthy quotes on these issues ascribed to well-known people of the past. From these I selected two quotes on eac...

Imposing order on chaos seems to be a deep-seated need in humans. So too, making the complex simple; or at least having the complicated made simple for us. Thus, the important role played by those writers and video-makers who turn technical information into something r...

Research now indicates that the “old saw” about bartenders and hairdressers performing the role of “shrinks” is not just a tired cliché nor merely anecdotal. According to studies done by a Harvard sociologist, far more people than you might think will open up to strang...

My grandmother used to tell her young grandsons that she could pin a glass of water to the wall. It seemed that each one of us in turn asked to see this marvelous feat performed when she offered to show us. When we got up close to the designated wall, my grandmother dr...

I used to toy around with my mom’s portable typewriter when I was a kid—when she’d let me, that is, which wasn’t often, and not for very long. I asked her more than once to teach me how to type, but she insisted I should wait until I was older so that I didn’t pick up...