Russ Roberts has a fascinating video by a great storyteller about why Van Halen had a contract in the 1980s that put a high penalty on having brown M&Ms in the dressing room. I’ll leave the reader to watch it.

The story reminded me of one my cousin, a math instructor at a Texas community college, told me. In recent years, he has had more and more difficulty getting students to read the syllabus at the start of the quarter. So in the middle of the syllabus, he has a statement that any student who stands up in the first class of the semester and yells “Hotdog” will get one point towards his final grade.