The rate at which your heart is beating is one of the most easily-quantifiable, yet informative, attributes of your body. Most people know that your heart rate increases as you strain yourself in some way, but the factors which impact heart rate are numerous. Sleep, activity level, temperature, mental or...

I like beef jerky a lot – especially as a travel food. It lasts a long time, does not take up much space and it is extremely rich in lean protein (so it keeps you satiated).   There are problems, though. A standard bag of beef jerky is about 3.25...

Malcolm Gladwell uses the term “Outliers” to describe people who are exceptional in some way. His point is well made, but at the end of the day we tend to forget that outliers are people who are different. Strange. Weird.     To have unusual success, you need to be...

Blackouts.   Anybody who has ever drank a lot (or been around people who do) knows about this phenomenon. Entire sections of the night can disappear from a person’s memory without a trace. A recent Lifehacker article about drinking and decision-making caught my eye, and one comment in particular claimed...

Staying in shape as a traveler is a challenge: space, time, equipment and money are all of concern. It is hard to strictly manage a diet when you are at the whim of what you can find to eat, and don’t get me started on the extortionist prices charged my...

It can be tough to be happy in bad (or even just unusual) situations. Emotions overwhelm us and threaten to disturb our inner-peace. Yet we can each use the power of spontaneity to be a little happier, even in the worst of times.   Somewhere in the world, Edward Murphy...

This is a guest post by Joel Runyon of the Blog of Impossible Things. As I (Zane) prepare to perform a number of health and fitness related experiments, I asked Joel to share his recent experiences.   Believe it or not, before November 2009, I had never run more than...

We all know what the right decisions are, as well as what the wrong decisions or “cookies” in our life are.  The list of things we each intend to do is a long one: eat healthy, exercise, study and work hard, etc.  What fascinates me is why we so often...

For many years now, US citizenship has conveyed a rather dubious reputation on travelers.  More than a few of us have taken steps to avoid this… sometimes going so far as to sew a Canadian flag on our backpacks.  There was a time that I, like many travelers from the...

Long before the first chemist ever burned his eyebrows off, there were chefs.  No skill lends itself to experimentation quite like cooking (I always wonder about the first person to say “I wonder if I can eat that?“).  You’re already eating two or more times per day… why not take...