What little I know about how to entertain, I learned from my dear friend Janice. She has always, for me, exemplified Castiglione Cool.
Unlike Salamanders, People Come Together for More than Just the Mating Season
Sex is inextricably bound up with a web of relationships that make particular forms of human social life possible. To claim that human sexuality in an ahistorical fashion is at best naïve; at its worst, it’s pseudoscience.
Wrapping Yourself in the Flag (of Science)
I’m not anti-science. I’m just anti-bullsh*t.
The Lost Art of Aphoristic Reading: A Review of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes
If there’s one thing the chattering classes can’t stand about Nassim Nicholas Taleb, one thing they’ll never forgive him for, it’s this: he’s written a book of aphorisms in the 21st century with an Athenian shopkeeper in mind.
In Praise of Facebook
Attacking social media is all the rage among the cool kids these days. This involves a great deal of hypocrisy. Studies have shown that many of those who rail against social media use it often.
Scrabble, Ecstasy, and Fertility Clinics
Are we pushing the limits of human nature or trying to figure out where they might be?
Dear Teacher, You’re Not As Good As You Think You Are
You might even suck if your students are already 95% educated on DAY ONE.
Hypocrisy, Despair, Faking it, or Giving up — the Choice is yours, Dude
We need goals. But if these goals are much too far out of reach—if they are (for most, if not all) unattainable—then they force us to choose between hypocrisy and despair, between faking it and giving up. ––– “You know, I can trust a cynic, and a con man, but I can’t trust a hypocrite.…
How to Deal with Difficult Dudes and Demanding Dames
Bossy people make the trains run on time. So my problem isn’t with difficult people so much; it’s with control freaks who desperately need to have power but don’t know what to do with it once they’ve got it.
The Problem with Google Maps: Do All Men Perceive Time the Same Way?
We experience time, like space, in a fluid fashion. Ten minutes in the oncologist’s waiting room can feel like four hours, while four hours chatting with a friend can feel like ten minutes.
Are you a ‘Tell It Like It Is’ Guy?
A well-meaning desire to be honest—and “tell it like it is”—can easily become little more than a convenient rationalization, used to condone cruelty, and justify a despicable desire to hurt and humiliate others.
Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way
Then the loud lemming leader of the passive pack said to the lemming blocking the path to the cliff: “Look, buddy, lead, follow, or get out of the way!”
He was a Gay Man
When you deprive language of its freedom to be somewhat slippery, squishy, and imprecise, you deprive it, as well, of its talismanic power to illuminate the world around us.
How God Went Global Via Jonah
The takeaway message of The Book of Jonah is this: my god—the sky god known as Jehovah—is no longer a local god found on Mount Sinai. My god’s going global!
How to Deal When Your Man Feels He is Losing His Mind or Memory
Never attribute to malice or ill-will that which can be readily attributed to heartlessness or carelessness.
A Letter to Mr. Expert
Open societies have always been mainly societies of dilettantes and generalists: societies of soldiers who can write half-decent poetry, shopkeepers who moonlight as amateur entomologists, and stay-at-home parents who can talk intelligently about foreign policy.