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Recently I've learnt how to tie my shoelaces. Or, to be clearer, relearnt. I need to explain, of course. In an idle moment—of which, naturally, I have many—I found myself watching the three-minute TED video, http://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_how_to_tie_your_shoes.html. It answered a conundrum for me; I couldn't previously understand how people could avoid needing to use double bows in tying their shoes. This video demonstrated something that is probably familiar to anyone who has done any stitching: that there are two types of bows you can do when tying your shoelaces: a strong one and a weak one. Interestingly, you can tell which one you do in two ways: if you do the weak one without a double knot, the lace falls apart in minutes, but also it lies along the axis of your foot. The strong bow falls across the foot. …