I illustrate the aphorism thusly: at the drive-thru this afternoon at Burger King, I was given too much change ($7.00 – $6.12 ≠ $0.93, even in my world of half-learned arithmetic), so I gave the extra nickel back to the cashier; when I get home, I find out that I ended up with a Whopper, complete with green crap that might have been lettuce in a former life, instead of a BK Double Stacker, which doesn’t come with that crap on it, and has tasty bacon to boot.

Now, given the whole Schrödinger’s cat business, if I’d not have given the change back would I have ended up with the meal I was supposed to get? Probably not, since the receipt also listed the Whopper instead of the BK Double Stacker… but we’ll never know, especially since I didn’t look at the receipt until after I returned the nickel.

Jacob T. Levy advises academic job applicants thusly:

Under no circumstances is “Microsoft Word” a skill worth listing on your C.V. Neither is Power Point or Excel.

Unless you’re a certified sys admin, under no circumstances is any version of Windows or a Mac operating system a skill worth listing on your C.V.; it means “I know how to turn my computer on.”

And—really, truly—under no circumstances is your ability to e-mail or to operate a web browser a skill worth listing on your C.V.

These things aren’t just weighted at zero. They make you look ridiculous.

Tyler Cowen links a blog whose mission I can wholeheartedly support… and not just because my experience with the Duke IRB made me decide to kill off the experiential learning part of my methods course.