Judging a book by its cover
It’s tempting to guess personality traits from a person’s face, and novelists sometimes will give a character facial features that supposedly indica...
Author: Mary
Existentialism and hope
This essay from Robert Solomon in the Chronicle of Higher Education (paywalled) argues against the popular perception of existentialism as a pessimistic philoso...
The human race(s)?
A week or two ago I ran across a news item from Scientific American about how genetic differences between ethnic groups are probably accounted for by difference...
What happens to your first language when you learn a second?
If you immerse yourself in the early stages of learning a new language, you might start to lose your grasp on the old one for awhile; this phenomenon has the de...
So what are you optimistic about?
Every year Edge.org asks a variety of smart people a thought-provoking question and posts the brief essays they write in response. The question for 2007 is R...
Thinking meat celebrates the holidays
When I was a child, one of the things I loved best about Christmas was the music, particularly the old hymns and carols. I didn’t care very much for Rudol...
Using psychology to improve transportation
Twice a day I have to cross a freeway bypass on foot; I’ve been doing this for over seven years so I’ve developed a technique for (and an attitude a...
Proud to be a human today
At Harvard, a Report of the Committee on General Education was released to faculty recently, and although I haven’t been able to find the report online ye...
Book review: Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness is not about happiness so much as it is about why our pursuit of happiness so often has disappointing results...
Speaking in tongues
Twenty-five years ago, back when I still went to church, I fell in with a group of Catholic charismatics. I hadn’t even known there was such a thing; I wa...