(Roughly) Daily

Still, talking is, more often than not, part of the program.  How to increase the odds that the discussion will be as tasty as the dinner?  Alex Cornell has the key:

larger version here

One of the most complex social situations you will encounter is the 45 seconds that elapse while deciding where to sit for dinner at a restaurant. Your choice should appear natural, unbiased and haphazard if executed properly. Timing is everything.

These 45 seconds determine how enjoyable your next 2 hours will be. Once the pieces start to fall into place and people take their seats, your choices narrow. People sit, seemingly at random, and if you don’t take the appropriate measures, you’re inevitably stuck at the least interesting end of the table.

I have compiled the above infographic to assist you with some of the common configuration patterns…

More at “Musical Chairs.”

* William Makepeace Thackeray

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As we fiddle with our forks, we might recall that it was on this date in 1931 that tables of a different sort became the main event in Nevada, when the economic pressures of the Great Depression (and the opportunity to entertain workers arriving to build Hoover Dam) moved the state legislature to legalize gambling.  But it wasn’t until after World War II, when Bugsy Siegel decided to go (sort of) legit and took control of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, that the Land of Casinos began to glow in the way that, to this day, it does.

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