Do you roll your eyes or get angry when you hear the words “thoughts and prayers”? This is an expression increasingly associated with the gun lobby trying to force us to accept endless mass shootings. But it is also an example of magical thinking. Does anyone think that their thoughts or prayers have any actual […]

“Government shouldn’t pick winners” is the constant refrain from the “free market” crowd. Except when they want government to pick their chosen winners. “President Trump has ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to ‘prepare immediate steps’ to stop the closing of unprofitable coal and nuclear plants around the country” was the lede of a June 1, […]

“Don’t Drink and Drive: You might hit a bump and spill your beer.” This bumper sticker is a perfect microcosm of our ape brain absurdity. The same absurdity of using phones while driving. When a friend first told me about a new law banning texting while driving, I thought it was a joke. “Are they […]

As I write this, the Republican Party is holding the entire world hostage. The immediate issue is the “debt ceiling.” The threat is very real. If the debt ceiling is not raised, the U.S. government could default on its loans. This has never happened before. The debt ceiling is about repaying money that has already […]

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” This quote by George Bernard Shaw provided the title of a wonderful film about the heroic life of Ralph Nader, An Unreasonable Man. How do you respond when you […]

Soon after I was first elected to the Sierra Club board, a fourth-grade teacher invited me to speak to her class. I came prepared with a list of questions, rather than a speech. I asked the class to imagine a car that runs on an unlimited source of energy that never runs out. And to […]

“There is nothing new under the sun” comes from Ecclesiastes 1. It is a warning that all worldly efforts are futile. That all seeming progress is erased in history. For most of human history, progress really was not a visible thing. People used the same stone tools for thousands of years. Life was a subsistence […]

In recent years, it has become a ritual for Republicans to threaten to shut down the government and crash the U.S. economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. This is like finishing your meal in a restaurant and refusing to pay the bill. These childish tantrums are in direct violation of the 14th Amendment: […]

Over a year ago, I wrote an article “Wrong but Interesting?” wherein I noted that an idea can be wrong but still valuable for generating new ideas. In that article, I noted an example of an idea that I found wrong, and also not interesting: That “everything is vibrations.” I love the Beach Boys song […]

Work/life balance is one part of Utopia that I just wrote about. In Praise of Idleness was a collection of essays published by mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1935. In one essay he noted, “Owing to the productivity of machines, much less work than was formerly necessary is now needed to maintain a tolerable […]