It took me forever to read this post on the Freakonomics blog. Bill James, baseball guru, answers all of your questions. He's got an interesting way of shooting down some stupid questions.
Also, in reference to Malcolm Gladwell's fascinating article from a recent New Yorker, in which he discusses the multiplicity of brilliant ideas like calculus, here is a zombie survival guide. A couple guys and I TOTALLY set up a zombie preparedness plan on the wiki at work a year and a half ago.