1. Is a cow a silo of option value? A good argument, perhaps, against vegetarianism.

2. The Best Questions For A First Date. Dating site OK Cupid has data-mined the answers given by site users, and has come up with some interesting correlations between personal attributes and seemingly-unrelated questions. The upside is that you can use this to ask innocuous questions to possibly get some insight into a person’s personal attributes that you probably couldn’t normally ask of an acquaintance. For instance, both women and men who like the taste of beer were significantly more likely to say that they were willing to have sex on a first date. Couples who answer these three questions the same way are more likely to stay together: 1) Do you like horror movies? 2) Have you ever traveled around another country alone? 3) Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat? And finally, this question was the best indicator of whether someone was liberal or conservative (at least on a few social issues they compared it with): “Do you prefer the people in your life to be simple or complex?” (two-thirds of people who like complexity were liberals, two-thirds of people who liked simplicty were conservatives). Of course, this all based on correlations. We don’t understand the exact relationships at play here, and not 100% of a given type of person will answer the question the “right” way – but it is still interesting nonetheless.

3. Why do Americans claim to be more religious than they are? Americans report that they attend church much more frequently than Europeans. But when you look at actual attendance figures, Americans and Europeans attend church at roughly the same rates. This article examines the disparity and possible explanations for why Americans report going to church more often than they actually do.