Sunday, September 25, 2011  Don't Second-Guess Your Gut  Anyone
who follows me on Twitter probably witnessed my abject geek-
spasm at the possibility of seeing (as Sarah Laurenson phrased
it) a flaming schoolbus cross the sky, i.e. the UARS satellite
as it flamed out in the atmosphere. Y'see, it was gonna be
passing right over me at the time it was estimated to be due to
bite the atmosphere.  Unfortunately, UARS proved to be a ninja
satellite. No one saw it sneak in. That tricksy metal minx.  But
that's okay; I found something of equal geeky worth to tell you
about tonight!  Wired posted this article about making hard
decisions, which led me to this article about intuitive thinking
The second article mentions some interesting experiments, and
the one I found most intriguing was where they noted that if you
ask people to answer the following: Are these sentences
literally true? -- Some jobs are snakes. -- Some jobs are jails.
-- Some roads are snakes. ...their response times slow down
measurably on the second