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March 26, 2008
It all depends on where you look
Writing about four-leaf clovers, Steven Levitt says, "I’ve been looking my whole life and never found one." This reminds me that when I was a kid, my sister Susie and I used to find them in the backyard all the time. We'd also occasionally find siamese dandelions (one stalk, two heads) that we'd put on our older sister's bed to freak her out. Much later, Susie told me that our land was on some sort of former waste dump and so we (along with the clovers and dandelions) were probably being poisoned.
The New York version of this story: several years ago I was standing on the subway platform, and I offhandedly said to my companion, Hey, let's look for rats. We looked, and, indeed, there was a rat. I mean, I knew that there were rats in the subway--I've occasionally even seen them on the platform--but I didn't know they could be summoned at will in this way.
Posted by Andrew at March 26, 2008 9:42 AM
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Comments
Posted by: John at March 26, 2008 10:03 AM.
Interestingly, the rats thing doesn't work in the DC metro. But you can do more or less the same thing by saying "Hey, let's look for Republicans." :-)
Posted by: C. Zorn at March 26, 2008 11:21 AM.
It reminds me of oxalis corniculata, a common plan in China taht looks like clovers. The oxalis corniculata I found were all 3-leaf. When I was a kid, I always ate the stem (which is edible and tastes a little bit bit sour), and played with the pods (the seeds will jump out with just a little press from me, very funny).
Posted by: minyu at March 26, 2008 1:02 PM.
Posted by: ZBicyclist at March 26, 2008 4:37 PM.
I knew a guy in college, Dan, who could spot four-leaf clovers while walking normally. Once, I was jogging across a field with him and he suddenly said "whoa, whoa, wait up", stopped, backtracked a bit, and picked up a four-leaf clover that he had seen while we trotted along. Must be some kind of idiot-savant kind of thing, except he wasn't an idiot (or, for that matter, a savant).
Posted by: Phil at March 26, 2008 8:56 PM.
Zbike,
Maybe my monitor isn't top quality, 'cos I still can't see a bear. In my neighborhood, cyclists are generally easy to spot, however, if one just keeps an eye out for people trying to kill themselves by running stop lights & stop signs. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
Posted by: John at March 27, 2008 8:37 AM.