You think your beach towel is just some colourful barrier between your ass and the sand? Wrong. That water-wicking blanket is actually an intricately designed instrument, fine-tuned to provide you with the best possible poolside experience. And here's the thing: It's entirely possible that you've been using it wrong all along. Read More >>

Seinfeld excelled at criticism of the everyday. A few months ago, in a fine essay in the NY Times, Sam Anderson suggested that Roland Barthes was the father of pop cultural criticism and that we are all now cultural critics in the Barthian vein, "decoding everything." Perhaps. But if Barthes gave us serious criticism of popular culture, Seinfeld taught us to be ironic critics of the utterly mundane. Case in point: toilet paper. Read More >>

We learn to lie around age two or three. By the time we're adults, we do it a lot -- at least once a day, and perhaps more like 2.92 lies in 10 minutes, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Psychology. It's no wonder we've been chasing after an accurate lie detector for so long. Read More >>

It's summer, and you're (hopefully) going to get some game. It starts at a bar or a BBQ or your living room—wherever you go to meet a private dance-partner. You get ready to get sweaty, and then, the grab for contraception: "Honey/dude/whatsyourname, can you grab the fish bladder?" Or maybe it's: "Got your reusable sheep intestine?" Read More >>

Tupperware is a bit like Kleenex: no matter the brand, if it’s a plastic container designed for leftovers, you probably call it by a single brand name. That’s because when it comes to designated plastic vessels that can be sealed and then opened and then resealed again, Tupperware was the first. Read More >>

Here's something that might just blow your mind: ketchup—the national condiment of 1896, according to the New York Tribune—wasn't always tomato based. In fact, if it had remained in its early form, we might be spreading fish paste on our burgers (gulp) instead of the tangy tomato-y goodness we presently rely on. Read More >>