In the past, most visitors to the Louvre museum in Paris went straight to its main attractions: the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace and, of course, the Mona Lisa, who smiled at packed crowds through bulletproof glass. Less prominent objects required a marathon walk down dingy, unmarked corridors. Even then, weary art pilgrims might find their treasure locked behind a placard listing its hours as 'very irregular.' Too often the Louvre defeated its guests instead of inspiring them.

One of the most successful Black inventors following the Civil War was Elijah McCoy. McCoy's basic invention, a 'drip cup,' ended complaints of waste and cost by making it unnecessary to stop and restart engines to lubricate them. McCoy opened the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company in Detroit, Michigan, to develop and market his inventions. He worked with such intensity from 1873 to 1899 that he received 25 patents for different types of lubricators. The confidence inspired by the reliability of his lubricating devices was such that the phrase 'the real McCoy' was coined to describe machinery that contained the McCoy device, and this phrase became a part of the English language.

One of the most successful Black inventors following the Civil War was Elijah McCoy. McCoy's basic invention, a 'drip cup,' ended complaints of waste and cost by making it unnecessary to stop and restart engines to lubricate them. McCoy opened the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company in Detroit, Michigan, to develop and market his inventions. He worked with such intensity from 1873 to 1899 that he received 25 patents for different types of lubricators. The confidence inspired by the reliability of his lubricating devices was such that the phrase 'the real McCoy' was coined to describe machinery that contained the McCoy device, and this phrase became a part of the English language.

Columbia University Business School professor Sheena S. Iyengar once conducted an experiment in which she set up a tasting booth with a variety of exotic gourmet jams at an upscale grocery store. Sometimes the booth had 6 different jams, and sometimes it had 24 different jams on display. Iyengar wanted to see whether the number of jam choices made any difference in the number of jams sold. Conventional economic wisdom, of course, says that the more choices consumers have, the more likely they are to buy, because it is easier for consumers to find the jam that perfectly fits their needs. But the researcher found the opposite to be true. Of those who stopped by the 6-choice booth, 30 percent ended up buying some jam, while only 3 percent of those who stopped by the bigger booth bought anything. Why is that? Because buying jam is a snap decision. You say to yourself, instinctively, 'I want that one.' And if given too many choices, if forced to consider much more than the unconscious is comfortable with, the buyer becomes paralyzed. Snap judgments can be made in a snap simply because there are not that many options to choose from.