The other day at the gas station, a van cut in front of me in line. I ended up at a pump at the same time as the van anyway, so I wans't terribly concerned. When an older gentleman (65ish) got out of the passenger seat, I laughingly said, "You kind of cut in front of me there, sir." His response? "You weren't in line, and you're dumb!"

Wow. Really? So I went about pumping my gas, and as I thought about it, I figured that they (an older woman was driving) could have made an honest mistake. I went over to say that it was ok if it had been an accident. "It wasn't an accident!," he said as me moved menacingly toward me. Really? Menacingly?

Then the woman got out of the car, walked right up to my face (all 4'10" of her), and gave me the finger. "Go back to your car, a**hole!," she shrilled as she told her husband to stop talking to "that piece of trash." I told him I was sorry for the life he must be living, and I walked away.

She followed me to my car, wrote down my license plate number, and yelled back to her husband, "Ohhhh, and he's a Yankee!!!" As if that explained my 'behavior.' Sorry to tell you lady: that war is over, and the Yankees won, so I guess that makes us all Yankees. Even those of us who are missing some teeth and are filled with vitriol and spite and perhaps demons or turds of some sort. I told her to "have a nice day," and I drove off.

In an unrelated matter, if anyone wants to get me a Taser for Christmas, I wouldn't turn it down.

I noticed an unkempt man on the train this morning. He stood out because I've started to be able to recognize all the regular riders. He was wearing a dirty sweatshirt with the hood up. He looked back at me with bloodshot eyes as I walked past him to my usual seat. He looked troubled. A few stops later, he staggered past me to exit the train, and I briefly wondered where he might be going.

I turned my attention back to the book I was studying, but as the train pulled away, I heard and felt a loud thump, kind of like the noise the wheels of a plane make when they're pulled back into the plane's body after takeoff. "New train noise," I thought.

I didn't think more of it, but a man in front of me pivoted in his seat to look and see what was going on. "Hey!", he said. I turned around and saw the man crumpled motionless on the floor of the train, about a foot behind my seat. He looked dead. He wasn't. He was clutching his skinny left arm and contorted in pain. He hadn't been drunk when he staggered by me before, he had been having a heart attack.

I whipped out my cell phone to call 911. It wasn't on. By the time it had booted up, the train attendant had made his way to us and was radioing dispatch to have the paramedics meet us at the next stop, which wasn't for about 10 minutes because we were in the middle of nowhere, not even near a road. It felt like eternity. He was clearly getting worse. His lips were turning blue. I thought about yelling across the train to see if anyone had an aspirin to give him, but I didn't want to make it worse if he wasn't having a heart attack or was already taking something else.

I led him in some cognitive-behavioral pain reduction breathing exercises instead. His lips lost the blue tinge, but that might have been a coincidence. When we finally reached the next station the paramedics were gruff as they examined him, helped him to his feet, and made their way out of the train. I couldn't see any more as the train pulled away.

The other passengers resumed their usual morning conversations about TV and the weather and what they'd had for breakfast, and the train schedule. I tried to go back to my book. I could only stare at the pages.

I've recently become a firm believer in the idea that sale prices are worthless indicators of something's value. Yes, there are times when you can get discounts on products, but stores don't generally do things for the benefit of their customers. So, when something is marked down from $199.99 to $99.00, it's unlikely that you're actually getting something worth more than $100.00. That being said...

Yesterday Sarah and I went mattress shopping. We weren't intent on buying anything, but we do have two spare bedrooms that we eventually wanted to get beds for. Long story short, I used some negotiation techniques I've been studying. I walked around the store and made the salesman chase us every time he tried to show us something. I offered to buy two if the price was good. I offered to buy a manufacturer's sample. I allowed him to believe he offended me (which got me the manager's discount). I even asked for a better price flat out--and got it--and then asked for a better price flat out again--and got it. All told, we ended up with one high end mattress, one quality mattress, two sets of box springs, two frames, delivery, and setup. Total listed price: $2,000+. Price we paid: $780.

Yet as much as I worked the salesman, I couldn't help but wonder if somehow he was still working me. I'm sure he was.

I've been running a study all day today in a computer lab on campus, and all day, I've felt like I was on some sort of extended caffeine buzz: I've been flitting around like a hummingbird and talking about 2x as fast as I normally do. Me on fast-forward. Me on research.

I guess there's something strangely exhilarating about waiting to see if the results of the study I've designed are going to turn out like I think. Because if they do, in the next few days, I'll have scientifically proven (or maybe 'scientifically suggested' would be more accurate) something about human nature that has never before been scientifically proven/suggested--which is the point of all scientific research, not something special about my study.

Worst case scenario, the data will show that I was wrong, and I'll get some sort of research hangover. I'll deal with that as it comes.

I read a news report today about some research that was recently done investigating the connection between a high fat diet and symptoms of depression. The results indicated that a high fat diet is connected with increased levels of depression, such that those people with more depressive symptoms also tended to eat the highest proportions of fat. The news article suggested that, obviously, a diet high in fat causes depression.

No researcher with even a rudimentary knowledge of statistics would ever contend that the results of this study could even begin to suggest that a high fat diet causes depression (which may or may not be the case, but this research can't prove anything either way); however, the media likes to grab these stories for quick and easy headlines.

Here's a news headline for you: Pirates Cause Global Climate Change. As everyone knows, piracy has been on the rise. So has climate change. Therefore, pirates cause climate change. Right? Right??!!?? But wait, maybe there's a third variable. Maybe there's some other explanation. Maybe depressed people try to make themselves feel better by eating lots of Doritos. What about that? What about that!??

IF ANYONE OUT THERE IS LISTENING, A SIMPLE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO VARIABLES DOES NOT MEAN ONE CAUSES THE OTHER.