Logic & Reasoning
The tendency to perceive shapes, especially faces, in random visual stimuli.
What is visual pareidolia?
A popular anthropological theory offering an explanation as to why our ancient ancestors ventured down from the trees to feast on fermented fruit.
What is the drunken-monkey hypothesis?
9.8 m/s2 (9.8 meters-per-second squared, or 9.8 meters-per-second, per second)
What is the average acceleration due to gravity on Earth?
A noun meaning "almost an idiot."
What is a naffin?
This variation of the "shell game" is performed with three tented playing cards, is impossible to win, and is a favorite of criminal gangs throughout the world.
What is three-card monte?
The subconscious muscular action responsible for the movements of dowsing rods, planchettes, and other pseudoscientific or spiritualistic paraphernalia.
What is the ideomotor phenomenon?
The collision and syncretic fusion of ideas, food, flora, fauna, language, disease, technology, religion, etc. resulting from contact between the Old World and the New.
What is The Columbian Exchange?
15 psi (pounds-per-square inch), also known as 1 atmosphere
What is the average air pressure at sea level?
This artistic, cultural, and literary movement, which arose out of response to the madness and devastation of WWI, seeks to tap into our subconscious by—according to co-founder Andre Breton—"[resolving] the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality."
What is surrealism?
The tendency of a mark (victim of a con) to give undue weight to "hits" while either forgetting or minimizing "misses" on the part of the fortuneteller or fake psychic.
What is the Forer Effect?
("P.T. Barnum Effect" is also acceptable)
The belief that "hot" and "cold" streaks occur within statistically independent phenomena, and that a long run of bad luck must therefore soon be followed by good luck.
What is the gambler's fallacy?
While her exact origins are unclear, this translator for Hernan Cortes (and later the mother of his child), was an Aztec girl of possible minor nobility who'd been sold into slavery to the Tabascans.
Who is La Malinche?
Frank the Rabid Weasel’s average velocity if he runs 50m in 25 seconds.
What is 2 m/s?
This clever manipulation of language, beloved by advertisers everywhere, ensures that the larger, generic unit of measurement will always be perceived as bigger than the smaller, specific unit. Thus we have 60 Minutes (which sounds a lot more fast-paced and captivating than One Hour) along with flat-out absurdities like the "Double Quarter-Pounder" (as opposed to an "Eight-Ouncer") to convey a massive, juicy burger.
What is the generic determination rule?
The grandaddy of all carnival cons, this truly insidious "game" strings a mark along by adding ever bigger prizes while simultaneously raising the cost of each play. Caught in the desperate cycle of the sunk-cost fallacy, a single victim may lose thousands of dollars.
What is the razzle-dazzle?
A favorite of those making non-falsifiable arguments (e.g. aliens were responsible for building the pyramids, masked reptile-people occupy positions of power), this strategy seeks to continually shift the burden of proof, making it effectively impossible to defeat them in a debate.
What is moving the goalposts?
Written by clergyman Heinrich Kramer, and despite repeated criticism from Church authorities, this book is largely responsible for the massacre of countless alleged heretics—80% of whom were women, and who the author asserts are "defective in all the powers of both soul and body," and "evil as a result of nature because she doubts more quickly in the faith."
What is the Malleus Malificarum?
(The Hammer of the Witches is also acceptable.)
The distance from the center of the Earth to the center of the Sun, equivalent to 93,000,000 miles (and approximately eight light-minutes).
What is an AU (Astronomical Unit)?
As demonstrated in W. Somerset Maugham's Appointment in Samara, this literary technique juxtaposes an EXPECTED outcome (i.e. successfully cheating Death by fleeing to Samara) with a surprising and COMPLETE REVERSAL (Death had been planning on meeting her victim in Samara the whole time).
What is situational irony?
This classic short-con takes advantage of the mark's greed, leading him to purchase a supposedly rare purebred dog (in fact a worthless stray), from its original owner so that he can sell it at a huge profit to an interested third party (the third party is, of course, secretly in partnership with the dog owner and has no intention of actually buying the dog). Both confidence men later split the money and the mark, hundreds of dollars poorer, is stuck with a dog no one wants.
What is the pedigree pet scam?
The phenomenon responsible for the fact that an exceptional performance (in athletics, academics, etc.) is usually followed by a poorer one, or that a terrible performance is usually followed by a better one. More generally, average characteristics cluster toward the middle of a bell curve, while exceptional ones (whether "good" or "bad") thin out as they approach the fringes of a data set.
What is regression to the mean?
(The Sports Illustrated jinx is also acceptable.)
The phenomenon behind countless tragic (or at the very least highly undignified) episodes in human history, including the Witch Craze, the Dancing Plague of 1518, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, the Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962, and America's own Satanic Panic of the late 20th century.
What is mass psychogenic illness?
An engineer on the V-2 rocket program and member of the Allgemeine SS, he was smuggled into the United States as part of Operation Paperclip, after which he served as director of the Marshall Space Flight Center and chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle.
Who is Werner von Braun?
According to this hypothesis, for something to be funny it must always fulfill three requirements: 1) An expected social, physical, linguistic, cultural, logical norm is threatened. 2) The threat must be ultimately harmless, either because the characters are unsympathetic or no lasting damage is done. 3) Both 1 & 2 must be perceived simultaneously. Humor must therefore be neither too tame nor too risqué.
What is the Benign Violation Theory?
This California city -- now, in the 21st century -- offers permits at a cost of $100 so that practitioners can legally "[persuade] or [procure] another to transfer, pledge, give or deposit anything of value by means of astrology, augury, card reading, clairaudience, clairvoyance, contacting spirits, crystal gazing, divination, handwriting or character reading, life reading, magic mediumship, necromancy, numerology, palmistry, phrenology or the reading of other anatomical features, seership, or by any occult, mystical, psychic or supernatural means," as well as by "making or selling a charm, talisman, potion or other magic thing, or anything purporting to be a magic thing."
What is Lafayette?