How do we free ourselves from conventional, erroneous, views of who we are as human beings, and develop an identity based on the realities of science? Everyone believes in science, at least implicitly, when they step on an … [Read more...]

I have written about love here, and talked about it in Bare Brains, as a perhaps necessary inducement to human reproduction, created by evolution, of course. That kind of description is not conducive to romance or poetry, … [Read more...]

A few years ago, Eve named one of my subpersonalities “Mr. Fussy,” and sometime after that, another one got the name of “Mr. Beaver.” (I explained my tendency to turn off water faucets behind her as due to sharing with … [Read more...]

I was getting ready for bed last night—turning down the covers, getting my foam wedge sleeping pillow out of the closet—when I realized that the bed-prep module of my brain had chosen an inappropriate option: it was spreading … [Read more...]

Last night I dreamed I was at a gathering of some kind at the beach, only there was no beach visible. We seemed to be next to the main Oakland Post Office, and I was standing at the back of the crowd, with a speaker on the … [Read more...]

I was walking home from dinner at Tres Cantaros last night when I noticed a penthouse I had never noticed before on top of a six-story apartment building. It looked like it would have great views of Lake Merritt, downtown … [Read more...]

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my wife’s traveling with another guy, and the reaction of a conventional friend who asked, “Are you OK with that?” At the time, it didn’t occur to me that she might be talking about … [Read more...]

Tom Clark of naturalism.org asked if I would give my version of how I came to have a naturalistic world view: initial impact, unfolding, consequences, etc. That, in fact, is what I’ve been talking and writing about for 15 … [Read more...]

To quote from my last post: “Wade Davis, an anthropologist... said that the 6,000 languages spoken on the planet... offer 6,000 answers to the question, ‘What does it mean to be human and alive?’” My immediate interpretation … [Read more...]

Love, romance, and meaning are ideas made possible by language, but language can describe things that don't exist, and ask questions that don't have answers. I’m nibbling away at Peter Pouncey’s “Rules for Old Men … [Read more...]