When I was in fourth grade, I designed a bizarre, painful, and deeply flawed experiment for the school science fair. My goal was to test the relative effectiveness of garlic and bug spray for repelling mosquitoes. I sacrificed myself for science and covered one-third of my arm in garlic, one-third in bug spray, and one-third in nothing, then stood outside next to the swampy forest at dusk to tally the bug bites. Even with fake arms hanging off of my project board, dotted with permanent marker “mosquito bites,” I still only took home an honorable mention. Read more

If you’re a new trick-or-treater to the neighborhood, you have no strategy but to try every house. However, once you’ve lived there a few years, you’ve been around the block (literally). You know your different neighbors’ tendencies. You know what kind of candy they’re likely to give out. You know which houses to avoid:
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