I am unusual among the women I know in that I’m not into shoes. I’ve never cared much about how they look, and in recent years all I pretty much wear are tevas, not the most attractive of shoes. Most of the shoes my kids wear come from Payless – and there you get whatever you can find that fits – or my mom gets them for them. So no, I’m not a shoe fiend.
Until now. Today (and today only), Amazon.com is offering brand-name children’s shoes for $10. My kids are in total need of shoes, so, of course, I had to go look. I ended up buying 5 pairs – and I have to say, some of them were pretty cute. This is what I got:
The first two are for Camila and the other three for Mika.
These are sort of cute, but as I was looking at them, I came up upon Toms, which apparently is a company that donates part of its proceeds to poor children in Argentina. Of course, something I like. My god, their shoes are soooooooo cute, though, of course, way, way, way beyond my shoe budget. I mean, I feel bad about having spent $50 in 5 pairs of shoes – imagine on one? or on half a pair? Still, they are cute. Here are the ones I liked the most:
but they have other adorable ones. *Sigh*
Category: Cool Stuff (Page 5 of 9)
Mike was listening to this lecture by behavioral economist Dan Ariely on the hidden reasons we think it’s OK to cheat or steal. Now, I didn’t listen to the lecture, but that answer is pretty apparent: cheating and stealing can give reproductive advantages when done successfully, so a genotype that allows for a moral code that allows you to cheat and steal when you won’t get caught is likely to be selected for. That may or may not be what this guy said, but that’s what makes sense to me.
More interesting is the little story Ariely tells about bandages and pains. Apparently, he was pretty badly burnt sometime in his pants and had bandages all over his body. When it was time to take them off, the nurse told him the best way to do it was to remove them quickly, so he’d have a lot of pain, but for a short period of time. He agreed to that, but then went on to research what was the best way to deal with the pain of removing bandages. He made a series of experiments (I wonder how he got approval to do those, given the amount of pain he must have inflicted on his willing participants), and found out that that was not the best way to deal with the pain of taking off bandages. The best way is:
-Start with the bandages in the most painful areas, so the pain will decrease over time.
-Remove bandages more slowly, lower pain for more extended periods is actually easier to bear than a lot of pain at once.
-Take a break between removing bandages, so you can rest from the periods of pain.
It all makes sense to me, and next time I have to remove a bandage or a band-aid, I’ll try his recommendations.
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