Kent Hendricks

Here are some of the most interesting things I learned this year:

1. Employees who use Firefox or Chrome have a 15% higher retention rate and report more satisfaction at work than employees who use Internet Explorer or Safari. This is because they’re less likely to accept the default way of doing things.

2. Doctors are 14% more likely to diagnose a child with ADHD on October 31, not because there are more kids with ADHD, but because the kids are excited to go trick-or-treating.

3. It takes nine out of ten Americans to agree on a policy in order for it to have a 50% chance of being approved.

4. When men feel their masculinity is threatened, they are 24 percentage-points more likely to want to buy an SUV. They are also willing to pay $7,320 more than non-threatened men for the same vehicle.

Here are some of the most interesting things I learned this year:

1. Every iron object made before 1200 BC came from meteorites. (“Bronze Age iron: Meteorite or not? A chemical strategy”)
2. Santa’s reindeer are all female. Male antlers don’t start growing antlers until February, so any reindeer with antlers hauling goods on Christmas Eve wouldn’t be male. (FDA)
3. Cookie Monster eats approximately two dozen cookies for every Sesame Street episode filming. The cookies are baked at the home of Lara MacLean, and the ingredients—pancake mix, puffed rice, Grape-Nuts, instant coffee, with water, and black glue for the chocolate chips—are optimized to explode into crumbs without getting stuck in Cookie Monster’s fur. The last human to eat the cookies was Adam Sandler, in 2009. (“Nom Nom Nom. What’s the Deal With Cookie Monster’s Cookies?”)
4. Costco is responsible for 50% of all cashew sales in the world. (“Costco Clothing Is Cheap. WSJ Readers Love It. But Is It Actually Good Value?”)

Here are some of the most interesting things I learned this year:
1. In 1992, Southwest Airlines and Stevens Aviation resolved a trademark dispute with an arm wrestling match between their CEOs. (“Armed and Dangerous: The Malice in Dallas”)
2. Women are 1.8 times more likely to think the office is too cold. (“Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequity in thermal comfort”)
3. By the time the Saturn V rocket clears the launch tower, it has burned 4% of its fuel. (“Rockets, SpaceX, and the quest for reusability”)
4. In 1800, it took 10 minutes of human labor (harvesting milling, etc.) to produce one kilogram of wheat. By 2021, it took only 2 seconds, a decline of 99.7%. (How the World Really Works)

In 1925 the Utah Idaho Sugar Company built a factory in Bellingham, Washington that produced sugar from beets. Previous attempts to build a factory in 1923 and 1924 failed because not enough farmers grew beets. That changed in 1925, and this is the first of a series of articles explaining why. The Utah Idaho Sugar […]

In June of 2022, the synod of the Christian Reformed Church will consider the report and recommendations of the Committee to Articulate a Foundation-laying Biblical Theology of Human Sexuality, or the Human Sexuality Report (HSR). The full report is here (the recommendations are found on page 148), and the Executive Summary is here. Most classes, several […]

Here are some of the most interesting things I learned this year: The healthier version of Quaker’s Apple Cinnamon Instant Oatmeal claims to contain 35% less sugar, but that’s only because the packaging is smaller. The sugar-per-unit is the same as the oatmeal in the regular-sized package. (“Quaker Oats boast 35 percent less sugar, actually […]