For people who can't work out the basics

Gosh.  Slate finds it appropriate to have a video that argues that slicing a tomato is much better with a serrated knife than a straight edge one.  

I think I might have worked that out successfully by the age of 14.

Anyway, perhaps I have noted this before here, but Victorinox steak knives are a fantastic general purpose knife in the kitchen, and they slice tomatoes very well.

But I must thank Slate for one kitchen idea that I never knew, and it does work brilliantly:  how to boil eggs right.  (You don't really need the ice bath at the end, though.)