One of my favorite magazine subscriptions, The Week, an aggregate publication which pulls the very best articles from around the world to create their own multi-sided editorial arguments recently re-ran a very interesting article written by Gina Piccalo for LA Magazine.

Keep the toilet seat down... ...is a lesson I learned as a child, and have always followed through on. But, recently I learned there is an even higher standard some want me to live up to. The desire to keep the lid itself down when company is over as an aesthetic choice, to avoid "Here's our bathroom, and there you'll see the inside of our toilet you can utilize after dinner if you wish." Now, I always thought the lone reason of someone's desire to keep the toilet seat down was so a woman wouldn't fall in. But, if you're one of those people who have a preference for "keeping the toilet seat down", do you really mean the lid, too?

So, after yesterday's post, I feel comfortable throwing out an idea that without it, you could probably lock me up for. I visited my dentist's office twice in the past week. The first was to repair two cavities. I was slightly anxious about the appointment, but as I walked in the building, this anxiety evolved into an overall feeling of grossness. All in all, the appointment ended up fine. One week later, I was there again for a routine checkup. Not anxious at all. I knew I wouldn't be facing a drill. But, the second I walked into the building, the anxiety returned and the walk to their office felt like a death march. So, before yesterday's video and before I became aware of the seemingly self-awareness of every particle that makes up my body, I would have attributed this to a conditioned response. My past feelings of dentist visits created this anxiety in my system. But now, I wonder if there is something more to it? Can my body pick up on the anxiety that others have had, simply being in this building, and does that cause a response in mine?

When you have 5 free minutes, I encourage you to watch this thought-provoking video clip. It's a wonderful animated clip designed to explain entry-level quantum theory to children. And it will mess you up. I was directed to this film clip based on the discussion of the double-slit experiment in the new TV show, Flashforward, and which we talked about it heavily in a recent episode of our FlashForcast podcast about the show.

If I was hiring a CEO for my company, my ideal pay setup for him would be that he would receive a progressive amount of stock options based on the company's EPS stock performance growth 10 years down the line. So, no concentration on short-term market trickery to cash out early. But only a CEO who increases the long-term value of the company would be paid, and if successful, could be paid mightily. Is there any way that politicians could be incentivized in a similar way?

What do you think about the idea of a gas station that sells only non-Saudi oil? If that was their branding differentiator, if they promoted it as an act of both patriotism and an act of peace, would you want to fill up there? And would you be willing to pay any more per gallon to do so?

People often think of Romeo and Juliet as the ultimate love story, but with the poor casting of modern adaptations, we sometimes forget that in the original play, Juliet is only 13 years old.

I've done this for as long as I can remember. I assume my mother or father did this, and I inherited it from them. So now, when I'm driving in a construction zone, and there's a construction worker with a yield/stop/slow sign directing traffic, I always give them a little half-wave. Do you do this? And if so, why them and no one else?

#17. Andrew Johnson