Author: Bob Strauss

There are few concepts in the history of economics that have been misunderstood, and misused, more often than the “invisible hand.” For this, we can mostly thank the person who coined this phrase: the 18th-century Scottish economist Adam Smith, in his influential books The Theory of Moral Sentiments and (much more importantly) The Wealth of Nations. Read The Invisible Hand of the Market

With the possible exception of choosing the wrong door and wandering onstage during a full-dress Metropolitan Opera production of Tosca, waiting in a restaurant or bar to meet a blind date is the most exposed, nerve-wracking, humiliating experience a person can have. It’s not just that you have no idea what to expect from your Internet pen-pal or your cousin’s idea of a great set-up. It’s that you’re convinced that everyone in the immediate vicinity—customers, wait staff, random people walking their dogs on the street—know exactly why you’re standing there so meekly and are having a good laugh at your expense. Read Waiting for a Blind Date?

We all know the basics of the food chain: plants eat sunlight, animals eat plants, and bigger animals eat smaller animals. In the world of nature, though, there are always exceptions, as witness plants that attract, trap and digest animals (mostly insects, but also the occasional snail, lizard, or even small mammal). In this article, you’ll meet 12 famous carnivorous plants, ranging from the familiar venus flytrap to the less well-known cobra lily. Read 12 Plants That Eat Animals

There are plenty of exaggerations, myths and outright lies circulating about the so-called Loch Ness Monster—which is especially galling to paleontologists, who are constantly being told by people who should know better (and by overeager reality-TV producers) that Nessie is a long-extinct dinosaur or marine reptile. In this article, you’ll discover 10 fascinating Loch Ness Monster facts, as opposed to myths. Read Facts, not Myths, About the Loch Ness Monster

In just about every dinosaur movie ever made, there’s a scene in which Tyrannosaurus Rex lunges into the frame, opens its tooth-studded jaws at a near-ninety-degree angle, and emits a deafening roar–perhaps toppling its human antagonists backwards, perhaps only dislodging their hats. This gets a huge rise from the audience, every time, but the fact is that we know practically nothing about how T. rex and its ilk vocalized–it’s not like there were any tape recorders 70 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period, and sound waves don’t tend to preserve well in the fossil record. Read How Loud Could Dinosaurs Roar?