My post on mixed handedness generated a lot of interest, and I said I’d return to that topic after I had learned more about it. It turns out there was far too much information to put into a post, or even a series of posts. So I’ll be releasing it as an ebook in the near future.

One thing that surprised me was how astonishingly hard it is to get reliable information on whether certain famous people are left-handed, right-handed, or mixed-handed.

What often happens is someone hears that so-and-so is left-handed, so he puts that in a book without checking for any evidence, and before too long it ends up on a million web pages. It’s kind of annoying when you’re just trying to find the truth.

Here we see 6 famous people who regularly appear on lists of southpaws, despite the notable distinction of not being left-handed. (Thanks to Chris McManus for bringing these people to my attention in his book Right Hand, Left Hand.)

Billy the Kid

First on the list is Henry McCarty, AKA Henry Antrim, AKA William H. Bonney, AKA Billy the Kid. He’s been the most famous southpaw outlaw since Paul Newman played him in the 1958 western “The Left Handed Gun.”

It’s actually understandable that we always thought he was left-handed. After all, we only had one photograph of him, and it showed him with a pistol on his left hip, steadying a rifle with his right hand.

The problem is that we only had blurry copies of the original photo. After discovering the original more than 100 years after his death, we found that it was made using a technique that reversed the image.

Furthermore, the original was clear enough that we could see that the buttons were on the wrong side of his vest, and his belt buckle was backwards. The corrected version appears above, showing Billy’s pistol on his right hip.

Pablo Picasso

We only had one picture of Billy the Kid, but we don’t have that problem with Picasso. Actually, we have thousands of pictures of Picasso, and plenty of videos as well. The only problem is, he isn’t using his left hand in any of them.

Albert Einstein

You’ve probably seen this picture before, with Einstein writing on the chalkboard right-handed. He may very well have been mixed-handed, but he sure wasn’t left-handed.

James Michener

Pulitzer Prize winner James Michener was once nominated by Southpaws International as one of their southpaws of the year. He wrote to them to say that the only thing he used his left hand for was occasionally scratching his right elbow.

Bob Dylan

If Bob Dylan were completely left-handed, you’d think it would be easy to find a picture of him playing a guitar that way.

However, he may have been mixed-handed. In David Hepworth’s 1986 interview with Bob Dylan, Hepworth noted that Dylan autographed his album with his left hand.

Benjamin Franklin

The confusion here comes from Benjamin Franklin’s essay a petition of the left hand. It’s written from the point of view of a left hand, complaining about how he’s treated differently from the right hand. But is that enough to mean that Ben was left-handed?

The portrait above was painted by Mason Chamberlin, from life (i.e., in person) in 1762. Ben Franklin is shown holding a quill pen in his right hand. I have to think that the artist wouldn’t go to the trouble of reversing the image since the model was right in front of him, and Ben would surely have noticed had he done so.

At any rate, there are many possibilities between completely left-handed and completely right-handed. Take this handedness test to see where you fall on that continuum.

Do you know any other right-handed “southpaws?”

For more handedness myth-busting, check out my ebooks Ambidextrous (for right-handers) and Ambisinistrous (for left-handers).

I always thought winning the Nobel Peace Prize was a big deal. After all, this is a prize that even Gandhi wasn’t good enough to win.

Barack Obama was nominated for it less than two weeks after his inauguration. The committee voted for him while he presided over two wars that have lasted longer than World War II. And he actually won the award on the day we bombed the moon. I don’t know where to start with what’s wrong with this.

The problem with handing out Nobel Peace Prizes like tic tacs is that it cheapens the award for the people who really earn it. You know, the people who actually do something for peace, like Martin Luther King, or Mother Teresa, or Nelson Mandela, or the 14th Dalai Lama.

It’s entirely possible that Obama will earn it in time (ending these two wars would be a nice start). But even so, wouldn’t it have been better for everyone, Obama himself included, to at least wait until the end of his presidency, instead of hoping he’ll earn it someday?

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In other news, the price of How To Be Rich And Happy has been dropped from $97 to $47. For people who have already bought it, don’t worry – Tim will be in contact with an offer to make it right.

Gordon Gekko has often been misquoted as saying “greed is good.” He did technically say “greed . . . is good,” but that snippet leaves a lot of the meaning out. Let’s look at what he really said:

“The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated…The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

Greed isn’t the right word because it’s an extreme version of what he’s really talking about. The opposite extreme is apathy, and both extremes are bad.

I’m not sure what a better word would be. Desire? Ambition? Drive? Mojo? Life force? Evolutionists call it selective advantage. Academics call it a thirst for knowledge. Economists call it rational self-interest.

Whatever you call it, it’s not bad. Surely there’s plenty of room between one extreme of preying on innocent people, and the other extreme of being a spineless jellyfish.

I’m bringing this up now because I just saw Michael Moore’s new movie, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” While I liked it, I thought it was far weaker than “Sicko” and “Fahrenheit 9/11.” I totally agree with him about all the corruption at the top, but I disagree with him about what’s happening at the bottom.

We see several people in the movie being evicted from their homes. Is it sad? Yes. Being poor is awful, no question about it.

But while I saw people who weren’t happy about their situation, I didn’t see anyone taking personal responsibility for it, or coming up with a plan for how they’re going to fix it. They just think they deserve to stay in their house whether they’re making the payments or not.

Their logic seems to be “I’m poor, therefore someone should give me a free house.” If it were me, I’d be thinking “I’m poor, therefore I better make more money so I can pay for this house.”

One family looked out the window as several police cars pulled up to their house to evict them. But they refused to open the door for them. Instead, one family member called the Sheriff and said they weren’t going to resist, but the cops were going to have to break the door down.

I actually found this guy more offensive than the “condo vulture.” He thinks he’s Gandhi in a noble fight of nonviolent resistance? No, he’s just a jerk who’s wasting the cops’ time and causing someone else’s property to be damaged.

To be fair, we didn’t get any information about how all these people ended up like that. There could have been tragedies that put them in that situation through no fault of their own. (Though minor economic fluctuations such as this recession are far from being tragedies.)

But there were hints that they became homeless only through absence of greed, for lack of a better word. Thinking that money is evil isn’t going to help. If you’re not making enough to pay the bills, then you have to either reduce your bills or make more money.

Are there no jobs where you live? You might have to move. Does your occupation no longer pay well? You might have to change fields. Do you not have any skills that employers want? You might have to develop some. This might not be fair or convenient or what you wanted, but it’s sometimes necessary.

When I got laid off in the dot com bust, I had to move to where the jobs were, learn new skills, and take a big pay cut. Did I want to do that? No, but it was a lot more constructive than sitting around in an area with no jobs, waiting for Michael Moore to put me in a movie.

And if I had stayed, I certainly wouldn’t have claimed the right to live there without paying for it. I would have sooner starved to death than default on my mortgage.

One person in the movie says there are only two kinds of people: the ones who have nothing, and the ones who have everything, with no one in between. Where is he getting that from?

I’d guess that almost everyone who’s reading this post is in between. The ones who have nothing sometimes truly lack the ability to move up, but usually they just refuse to evolve.

If someone doesn’t want to have moderate greed, I think that’s their right. But they have to accept the consequences of the path they’ve chosen.

Michael Moore says capitalism is the enemy of democracy. But the problem isn’t capitalism itself, just the kind we have.

Most people are outraged that the top 1% makes as much money as the bottom 95%, but that’s not the problem per se. If they create that much value, they should make that much money. Why should the people who don’t create any value make as much money as the ones who create a lot?

However, the problem is that the broken system allows some of the top 1% to make that much money without creating that much value. In fact, some of them destroy value.

And some of them have gone to jail for it, but many more are still out there and up to their old tricks. Why wouldn’t they keep doing it, if they have no sense of ethics and no one’s going to stop them?

Moore says the top 1% fear the bottom 95%, because they have 95% of the votes. But he says they won’t take back the country with their votes, because they believe that if they keep working hard, they’ll be in that 1% someday.

I don’t know where he’s getting that from. Why would anyone think they’ll magically jump up like that? No, the problem is that there’s no one to vote for. No one stands for eliminating corruption because being a politician requires being all caught up in it.

True capitalism doesn’t guarantee that everyone is equally good at the game, just that we all get to play by the same rules. And while there should be a safety net to help people stay in the game when they’re down on their luck, we don’t want a system that fixes everyone at the same level. Eliminate greed, and you eliminate progress.

Moore unwittingly gives us an example of the good kind of greed: Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine. He did a great thing and didn’t patent it for personal gain, because he didn’t need the money.

But while he wasn’t greedy for money, his greed for a cure is what made him work hard enough to find it. He wasn’t the kind of guy to sit back and wait for someone to hand him a cure, or buy him a house.

Evil people are often obsessed with money, but that doesn’t mean that money is evil. It’s just a resource, and it works for its owner.

When good people refuse to play the game, that just means that only the evil people will have it. Isn’t it better to see it in the hands of people who will use it well? That’s why we need a healthy dose of the good kind of greed.

I usually roll my eyes whenever I see a title containing the word “rich.” That goes double for the word “happy.” So why on earth would I use both the words “rich” and “happy” in a post title? Because this is about the new book How To Be Rich And Happy by Tim Brownson and John Strelecky.

I know, a title like that makes you want to ask “What the hell were you thinking?” (It’s actually my first question to Tim below.) But this is actually a book of substance and not hype. Instead of writing a normal review, I thought it would be better to interview Tim about what being “rich and happy” means.

But very quickly, here’s what you get. This is an electronic book delivered to you by instant download, but its 218 pages have the look and feel of a “real book.” It contains a tremendous amount of information, a great variety of material, and it keeps things fun. You can download the first three sections for free, and it’s backed by an amazing 12 month money-back guarantee.

It also includes:

- #1 Best Selling author John P. Strelecky’s inspirational book “Life Safari.” John’s works have been translated into nineteen languages and been best-sellers around the world.

- Tim Brownson’s critically acclaimed book – “Don’t Ask Stupid Questions, There are no Stupid Questions.”

- Access to an ongoing library of video tutorials in which John and Tim explain the exercises and findings in How to be Rich and Happy.

Update 10/9/2009: Due to numerous complaints, the price has been dropped from $97 to $47. However, it no longer comes with the two additional ebooks.

Go check it out now. Well, if you can wait a bit, read my interview with author Tim Brownson first.

Hunter: First things first, Tim – there’s no way we can avoid talking about the title. You know you were setting yourself up for ridicule by calling it “How To Be Rich And Happy.” If your book were a kid on the first day of school, it would be the one with a bowl haircut, the latest pocket protector with the memory expansion pack, and a t-shirt with a bullseye labeled “aim fist here.”

I’ve noticed that a lot of the fluffy self-help books use certain trigger words in the title to magnetically pull people in. The problem is that often there’s not enough substance inside to make it worthwhile. And readers find that an irresistible title has made them buy a book containing nothing but recycled platitudes and sales pitches for overpriced workshops.

So, when I heard that your upcoming book is titled “How To Be Rich And Happy,” well, let’s say it’s a great credit to your reputation that I didn’t immediately vomit in terror! But while I was mocking the title for the first few pages, I have to say that by the end of the book I was actually a fan of the phrase “rich and happy.”

Tell us about rich and happy. What does that mean to you?

Tim: Relieved to hear you didn’t vomit in terror, that wouldn’t be a good thing. Interestingly enough my reaction to the title was very similar to yours. When John told me he was planning a book called “How To Be Rich and Happy” I barely managed to control my mirth, as I was about to drive off the first tee.

If I hadn’t known John I would have dismissed it out of hand. Even when he sent me the draft I didn’t even read if for over a month, but when I did, I thought, wow!

The title will definitely raise a few eyebrows and some people will think it’s a scam to help me and John get Rich and Happy, but we’re prepared for that.

The point is we couldn’t think of a better way to describe what we were doing and to go all coy and bashful because we were worried about what others would think wouldn’t have served anybody. And at the end of the day who doesn’t want to be rich and happy?

Hunter: I’ve known you through your blog for a long time, but I hadn’t heard of your co-author John Strelecky. How did you decide to write it with him? What do you each bring to the table?

Tim: How I met John is really weird. I had a copy of his book “The Why Café” and wanted to ask a question. I shot him an e-mail and he responded with a reply almost immediately saying “let’s meet for breakfast.” I thought, “What the hell is this nut job talking about?” I had no idea he lived only a mile down the road, he could have been anywhere in the U.S. for all I knew!

That was over 3 years ago and we became good friends sharing a very similar outlook on life. His book “The Big 5 For Life” is one of my favorite business books of all time and one I’d encourage anybody to read.

So as I was reading the draft of the book I kept thinking “I want in on this project!” So I asked him if he’d consider letting me co-author and he said yes. Easy when you ask!

In terms of what John brings to the table. He was a very successful consultant and independently wealthy by the time he hit his early 30’s. He’s also had a lot of experience living the Rich and Happy life and spends upwards of 6 months per year traveling because that’s what he loves to do.

I’ll let you judge what I bring! A funny accent maybe?

[Hunter's comment: Tim is being a bit modest here. You can read more about him on the About page of How To Be Rich And Happy.]

Hunter: Your book’s introduction is bound to remind people of Napoleon Hill’s classic Think And Grow Rich. That’s a book I enjoyed very much, though like most classics, it’s sorely dated. In what ways would you say your book is similar to TAGR, and how is it different?

Tim: John loves TAGR and I am more ambivalent toward it probably because it is so dated now and I can’t remember it that clearly.

There has been a conscious effort by us both to make this a process that people can follow easily. We did 6 or 7 rewrites in the last 3 or 4 months to make sure the book “flowed” for people. In that way I guess it is a bit like TAGR. I actually received a DM on Twitter from one of my own favorite authors in the UK, a guy called Michael Heppell saying he thought it was like TAGR for the 21st Century.

[Hunter's comment: Darn, he stole what I was going to say in my testimonial! ]

The differences are tricky because it’s about 4 years since I read TAGR, but I have no recollection of the importance we place on values and understanding what your own core values are. I could be wrong on that though because I have read one or two books in the meantime.

Hunter: Who is your book meant for? If you come across a burned out lawyer who just can’t take another day of work, a single mother who dreams of the day she can spend more quality time with her kids, and an aging idealist who never figured out what he wants to do with his life, who are you going to recommend your book to?

Tim: Are you ready for a huge cop out? All of them! Because what we do starts at the level of identity and ascertains what drives somebody at an unconscious level it can work for literally anybody that applies the formula to their life. Obviously the path will be different for different people, but I would be lying if I said it would benefit one type of person more than another and that is quite deliberate.

Actually scratch that, it will benefit anybody that is actually prepared to do what is necessary. Anybody thinking of buying it and hoping they will get Rich and Happy purely by reading it, is in for a huge let down and I’d advise them to save their money. One of the positive side effects of the price is we know we’ll get a higher than average percentage of people doing the work.

Hunter: I know you’re an NLP Master Practitioner, but my knowledge of NLP is pretty much limited to what the acronym stands for – neuro-linguistic programming. Does your book teach any NLP techniques, or is that something you need to hire a high-priced shrink for?

Tim: LOL, not many high priced shrinks use NLP although some of the processes are starting to be picked up and move into the main stream.

There is plenty of NLP in there although it may not always be visible as NLP to the casual observer. There are some obvious techniques like anchoring, reframing and using submodalities to help the reader change their subjective experience about an event and there is also some subtle use of language patterns designed to get people to do the work!

Hunter: Many parents tell their kids they can grow up to be president if they put their mind to it. Is that true?

Tim: On a local level I think it’s perfectly true. However, on a global level it obviously cannot be true, there is only one President. I think it’s important to encourage kids to believe anything is possible within physical reason.

I much prefer clients that come to me have outrageous goals than puny simple goals that will probably happen by default. The latter have usually had their dreams knocked out of them as kids by constantly being told to, “be more realistic” As one of the chapters says, “realism is for accountants,” and in my opinion it stifles creativity and kills hope.

Hunter: How do you know your formula can work for someone who is sincere in their desire to apply it? Don’t we all vary dramatically in our strengths, interests, assets, connections, opportunities, etc? So how can there be one formula that works for everybody?

Tim: Because the formula is dynamic and will vary from person to person. Our starting point is to say “Look, we don’t know what Rich and Happy means to you. We don’t know what your core values are and we don’t what your belief system is like. However, we can show YOU how to find that stuff out and start to lay the foundation for moving forward.” What we do that in my experience a lot of self development books don’t do, is explain how this stuff works and we back up a great deal with a lot of cutting edge medical and scientific research.

Not only that, but it’s the blueprint I use with clients so I have first hand experience of knowing it can work across all types of people.

Tim Brownson is a Life Coach out of the UK but now living in Florida and with clients all over the globe. He runs the blog The Discomfort Zone where he takes a light-hearted, left field approach to self-development and refuses to take himself too seriously.

His latest book How To Be Rich And Happy is now available for the bold and daring.

“Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
‘Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain’t been there before.”

- Shel Silverstein, “Put Something In,” A Light in the Attic

Yesterday was Shel Silverstein’s birthday. He died ten years ago, but his words live on.

Think of what you can do today to put something silly in the world. Then tell us what you did.

Hot off the press, it’s Jonathan Mead’s free ebook The Zero Hour Workweek. Boy, the workweek keeps getting shorter and shorter, doesn’t it?

Actually, the zero hour thing means that when you love what you do, work doesn’t feel like work. Jonathan says that he can no longer tell whether he’s working or playing. How cool is that?

What’s inside: how he gained over 10,000 blog subscribers, became a regular writer for a top 50 blog, and created a full time income online. And then, of course, how you can do the same with what you love to do.

He also includes case studies of Danielle LaPorte, Chris Guillebeau, Glen Allsopp, Nathalie Lussier, Cody McKibben, and Charlie Gilkey. It’s hard to imagine someone not liking this ebook.

Erica Douglass recently released her free Blog Success Manifesto, where she shares thirty tactical tips to help you gain your next 1,000 subscribers in record time.

These tips certainly seem to have worked for her, taking her to 4,000 subscribers in 18 months. Even better, she did it while posting on average just once every 10 days.

I’ll be honest, there’s a pretty significant risk that you’ll be so mesmerized by the beautiful layout that you won’t be able to actually read the ebook. But assuming you can break that spell, you’re bound to pick up at least a few tips you haven’t heard before, no matter what level you’re at.

One of her tips that I implemented immediately was the “Tweet This” plugin. You’ll see the button for it below, replacing the old one that I didn’t like. She also has good tips for finding an angle, blog design, writing content, promotion, email lists, and more. Did I mention it’s free?

P.S. While you’re at it, you can read my own tips on how to get more blog subscribers.

Erin Pavlina has an ebook out called 10 Ways to Raise Your Vibration in Under 10 Minutes. It’s free, but you have to sign up for her newsletter “Spiritual Wisdom for Conscious People” (you can unsubscribe at any time).

It’s a very quick read, with 10 tips you can put into practice right now to “raise your vibration.” If that sounds too mystical for you, you can substitute the phrase “put yourself in a good mood.”

Are you feeling depression, anxiety, fear, anger, guilt, gloominess, shame, grief, apathy, or helplessness? If so, you’ll learn ways to instantly trade all that in for strength, happiness, vibrancy, cheerfulness, delight, elation, euphoria, hopefulness, lightheartedness, and peace of mind. (Wow, the thesaurus is sure getting a workout!)

After reading When Logic And Intuition Fail, someone asked me about a related paradox you may have heard about.

Let’s say you drive to work at 40 mph, and come back at 60 mph. What was your average speed?

It’s natural to think your average speed was 50 mph, but it was actually 48 mph. It would be 50 mph if you spent the same amount of time at both speeds. But since you’re spending more time at 40 mph than you are at 60 mph, your average speed has to be less than 50 mph.

If you’re driving to the beach, you might try to hold steady at 60 mph. But you won’t be able to stay exactly at that speed. You’ll sometimes be going a little faster, and sometimes be going a little slower. Even if the fast periods perfectly cancel out the slow periods, your average speed will still be less than 60 mph.

If you use cruise control, you not only save effort and gas, you also save time. That’s what slow and steady (emphasis on the steady) does for you.

And it’s one reason why you’re more productive when you do things at a steady pace, instead of slacking off and trying to make up for it later. It’s better to put your efforts on cruise control.

Seth Godin recently posted a wonderful brainteaser in Not so good at math:

Let’s say your goal is to reduce gasoline consumption.

And let’s say there are only two kinds of cars in the world. Half of them are Suburbans that get 10 miles to the gallon and half are Priuses that get 50.

If we assume that all the cars drive the same number of miles, which would be a better investment:

• Get new tires for all the Suburbans and increase their mileage a bit to 13 miles per gallon.
• Replace all the Priuses and rewire them to get 100 miles per gallon (doubling their average!)

Would you believe that you save more gas by putting new tires on the Suburbans? Because that’s the right answer.

What’s great about this problem is that it seems so simple, but the result is so astonishing. Even after you know the answer, it’s still hard to get your head around it.

Seth’s point was that we’re not wired for arithmetic. True, but I think what this problem really shows is that we’re wired for making faulty assumptions about numbers. It’s not our arithmetic that fails us in this case. It’s our logic and intuition that do.

How to solve it logically

In 6 Ways To Improve Your Telecommunication, Zack Grossbart shows a simple way to solve the problem by using pictures and plugging in real numbers. He crunches the numbers for one Suburban, one Prius, and a specific number of miles for the commute.

That’s one way I might have done it. Another way I might have done it is by flipping the miles per gallon (1/mpg) to get gallons per mile. When you want to see how much gas you’re burning, the relevant metric is gallons.

As you can see, upgrading a Suburban saves 2.3 times as much gas.

How to solve it intuitively

OK, we know how to arrive at the answer. But how can we resolve the paradox? How can getting 30% more mpg possibly be better than getting 100% more mpg? Here are two ways to understand it intuitively.

1. Consider a more extreme version of the problem.

You own a Hummer that gets 5 miles per gallon. You also own a futuristic supercar that can drive across the country on a single drop of gas. Would you rather get 1% better mileage on your Hummer, or 1,000,000% better mileage on your futuristic supercar?

Don’t turn this into a problem of comparing one percentage against another. There’s no point in upgrading the supercar. The percentage you improve it by is irrelevant, because nanodrops of gas don’t matter. But any improvement on the Hummer is huge because it burns a lot of gas.

2. Consider a reworded version of the problem.

All the Suburbans in the world burn 83% of the gas. All the Priuses in the world burn 17% of the gas. Which model should you upgrade?

When it’s phrased this way, the answer is obvious. The wording of the original problem distracted you from what was really important. Of course, problems aren’t always nice enough to phrase themselves in the way that is most convenient for you.

Why doesn’t common sense work?

There are several reasons why it’s so easy to be led astray.

1. We fail to spell out our objective. The wording is critically important, because it’s easy to solve the wrong problem.

Are we trying to maximize the mpg of the average car? No. (If we were, we should upgrade the Prius.) Our goal is to minimize the total amount of gas burned by all cars. So focus on that.

2. It might seem strange that we’re not trying to maximize the average miles per gallon. Isn’t that the same as reducing the total amount of gas burned? Well, it would be, if there was only one car. But averages can be tricky.

If we upgrade the Suburbans, the average car would get (13 + 50) / 2 = 31.5 miles per gallon.

If we upgrade the Priuses, the average car would get (10 + 100) / 2 = 55 miles per gallon.

55 is more than 31.5, so upgrading the Prius means burning less gas, right? It might seem like it should work that way, but there is no mathematical law that says so.

Looking at the average isn’t enough – you need to look at the distribution. Here are three pairs of cars, each pair averaging 10 mpg. The greater the variance within each pair, the more gas is needed to drive a fixed distance.

That’s what we get when we keep the distance fixed and look at how much gas we need, which is what we have to do for this problem. But just for fun, let’s keep the amount of gas fixed and look at how far we can drive with the same cars.

Is that surprising?

3. Reciprocals (mpg vs. gpm) are confusing. We’re trained to think in terms of miles per gallon. But gallons per mile is actually a much more natural unit to work with when you’re looking at how much gas you’re burning.

The Suburban gets 10 mpg, and the Prius gets 50 mpg. The Prius gets 400% better mileage (mpg), but it burns 80% less gas (gpm), so you have to be really clear on what you’re talking about.

The differences between reciprocals get more pronounced when you approach a singularity. 0/1 is very different from 1/0, which is what caused the difference in the previous two charts.

4. We’re told that there are equal numbers of Suburbans and Priuses, and we subconsciously think they should therefore be treated equally. But we need to discriminate. The Suburbans are burning 83% of the gas in the world, so they need to be given more weight. It doesn’t matter how many there are, only how much gas they’re all burning.

Of course, what people should really be doing is trading in their Suburbans for Priuses.