When asked, most individuals will describe themselves as better-than-average in areas such as leadership, social skills, written expression, or just about any flavor of savvy where the individual has an interest. This tendency of the average person to believe he or she is better-than-average is known as the “above-average effect,” and it flies in the face of logic… by definition, descriptive statistics says that it is impossible absurdly improbable for a majority of people to be above average. It follows, therefore, that a large number of the self-described “above average” individuals are in fact below average in those areas, and they are simply unaware of their incompetence.
It seems that the reason for this phenomenon is obvious: The more incompetent someone is in a particular area, the less qualified that person is to assess anyone’s skill in that space, including their own. When one fails to recognize that he or she has performed poorly, the individual is left assuming that they have performed well. As a result, the incompetent will tend to grossly overestimate their skills and abilities. A few years ago, two men from the Department of Psychology at Cornell University made an effort to determine just how profoundly one misoverestimates one’s own skills in relation to one’s actual abilities. They made four predictions, and executed four studies.
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If there truly is some extraterrestrial Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy it would undoubtedly list a total solar eclipse as one of the sights to see while taking a break from probing Earth’s natives. Total solar eclipses, called totality for short, are pretty rare here on Earth; a casual observer might see only one or two during their lifetime. 
There is a small town in Pennsylvania called Ashland where Route 61’s northbound traffic is temporarily branched onto a short detour. Exactly what the detour is circumventing is not immediately clear to travelers, however few passers-by pay it any mind… a detour is nothing unusual. But anyone who ignores the detour and ventures along the original route 61 highway will soon encounter an abrupt and unexplained road closure. Beyond it lies a town filled with overgrown streets, smoldering earth, and ominous warning signs. It is the remains of the borough of Centralia.
Thanks to my parents’ genes, I simply do not grow facial hair. I never have, unless you count microscopic stubble in the same ranks as a full beard. It certainly makes me a little jealous, especially when there are groups around promoting goodwill and happiness through the growth of a beard. So imagine my surprise when I found out that facial hair has had a much more troubled history than I first imagined.
There was a time when comic books were just that – comic – with the likes of Mutt and Jeff and Mickey Mouse. But by the mid-1930’s new comics with characters like Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon which were filled with adventure and a little violence started to appear. With the arrival of Superman in 1939 the funny papers just weren’t funny anymore. And to some they were getting steamy and way too rough.
Way, way back in the yesterday of yon, man sought to eke out his pitiful existence among the prehistoric rocks of the world. Whilst rummaging among the rubble for a bit of scrumptious sustenance, it was quite possible that, in turning the corner of a large boulder, he would meet something unexpected and potentially dangerous, like a saber-tooth tiger, a woolly mammoth, or his mother-in-law. All, or any, of these could have produced a life saving mechanism in the human body known as “acute stress response” or the Fight or Flight response.
During World War II the Allies actively recruited the inception and development of new and unique weapons. They knew that innovation and creativity would be the juggernauts of the war. Ideas from making bats carry incendiary devices to the A-bomb were pursued, but perhaps none were as hugely ambitious as the aircraft carrier Habbakuk.