Kenn Adams’s story spine is a wonderfully simple and flexible backbone for creating or analysing stories. I learned it from Dan Klein at Stanford as a fun improvising game: standing in a circle each person in turn takes on the next step of the story spine making up what happens. You’ll effortlessly produce some fascinating and amusing stories. We would extend the middle section as many times as felt natural to lead to the climax. An optional extension to the original spine was to add a final step of stating the moral of the story.

I have found the story spine very useful for coming up with on the spot bedtime stories. Also a fun game at the pub.

the second rule of improv: be spontaneous

Watch Dan Klein in action at TEDxReset 2014

The story spine

That classic thing: tomatoes are really a fruit — well, a whole lot of other vegetables are technically fruit too. I do find this way of thinking of it helpful:

Fruit — ovaries developed from the flowering parts containing seeds. They’re basically what grows where the flower was.

Vegetable — other edible parts of a plant. So basically, anything else, with a handy list being: leaves, roots, stems and flowers.

So this makes tons of other common vegetables actually fruit, including peas, avocadoes, cucumbers, eggplants, bell peppers and more. And corn and raspberries are still rather complicated.

Some other fruit and veg sketchplanations:

what’s the difference between mandarins, clementines, satsumas and tangerines?

Fruit vs vegetable

Together, and with the help of a small bowl of water, let’s save millions of perfectly good eggs from being thrown away using the egg float test. Egg shells are very slightly porous. Over time, air seeps into the shell making it lighter than it was, and, when it is old and no longer good to eat, it floats. Hence, the egg float test.

Here's how to test your eggs. Carefully, place an egg into water taking care not to crack it, and watch. If the egg:

…sinks to the bottom and sits on its side, then it’s fresh and good to eat.

…sinks to the bottom but perches on its end, then it’s good to eat, but should be eaten soon — it’s been around long enough to get enough air in it to start lifting it off the bottom.

…floats to the surface, then it’s old and likely no longer good to eat.

Word is that it’s not a good idea to wash eggs well before you plan to use them as it removes a natural membrane coating on them called bloom that protects the eggs from bacteria. So best to only wash them when you’re ready to eat them.

Now, does anyone know of an equivalent test for avocadoes?

The Egg Float Test