I am female. I put soap on a washcloth and rub it on my body, then rinse well. Once out of the shower or bath, I use body lotion. I am frequently told that I smell good and/or delicious, so I'm pretty sure I am doing it right. :) If you have dry skin, use lotion or look for a soap that is milder. I have a lot of allergies so I use Ivory, which doesn't have a lot of extra perfume and no colourants or other additives. You can also use small-batch artisanal soaps, which are risky if you have allergies but may be less drying because a lot of them are superfatted and/or made with goat's milk and that sort of thing.

I don't like bath poufs because they feel weird and are gross over time. I own a loofah gourd, which I use when I feel particularly needful of exfoliation, but mostly it's the washcloth for me. Basically it's going to be what kind of texture you like to feel, as far as what you use for scrubbing (a lot of people use their hands, but I don't feel clean enough if I do that), and product wise, use what makes your skin feel good.

For hair, go get a good haircut from a good stylist. If you are paying less than $30 in most markets you are getting a dreadful haircut. I routinely expect to pay $70 for a haircut because I have thick curly hair. If you like what the stylist does, ask them to recommend products and show you how to use them. If you do not, wait till it grows a bit, try another stylist. Ask your friends and coworkers where they get their hair cut. If you have a male friend who always looks particularly well-groomed, ask him who does his hair. This is how most people find stylists.

Thank goodness, because I was starting to wonder whether I should be worried about Ben Goetzel's AGI project. This puts my mind at ease, at least for a while.

TL;DR: Help me go less crazy and I'll give you $100 after six months.

I'm a long-time lurker and signed up to ask this. I have a whole lot of mental issues, the worst being lack of mental energy (similar to laziness, procrastination, etc., but turned up to eleven and almost not influenced by will). Because of it, I can't pick myself up and do things I need to (like calling a shrink); I'm not sure why I can do certain things and not others. If this goes on, I won't be able to go out and buy food, let alone get a job. Or sign up for cryonics or donate to SIAI.

I've tried every trick I could bootstrap; the only one that helped was "count backwards then start", for things I can do but have trouble getting started on. I offer $100 to anyone who suggests a trick that significantly improves my life for at least six months. By "significant improvement" I mean being able to do things like going to the bank (if I can't, I won't be able to give you the money anyway), and having ways to keep myself stable or better (most likely, by seeing a therapist).

One-time tricks to do one important thing are also welcome, but I'd offer less.

With probability 50% or greater, the long-term benefits of the invasion of Iraq will outweigh the costs suffered in the short term.

I was including the Federal Reserve Board in "economists". Forgive me if that was a mistake.

Let me be more concrete: I suspect that the Obama stimulus plan won't accomplish anything positive, not because of any particular flaw I could name, but because the models they are using to organize their understanding of macroeconomics are just wrong - somehow or other.

The amount of chaos here seems so great - so many things going differently than predicted, so many plans failing to have their intended constructive effect - that I suspect a chaotic inversion: it's not chaos, we're just stupid.

Hm. Upvoted for an honest answer and lack of dissembling. Let's make it harder.

You have a button. If you press the button, you will receive a (free!) delicious pie, and a random child will be tortured for one year. No one will ever know there was any connection to you, and you can even erase your memory so that you won't feel guilty about it afterwards. Assume you like pie. Do you press the button?