In her column that I wrote about the other day, Gail Collins said, “Jessica Valenti... worries that in the real world, young men are spending so much time watching pornography on the Internet that they will never be satisfied … [Read more...]

Once again, my blog-writing module has been activated by an article in the New York Times, this one called, “Warning: Habits May Be Good for You,” by Charles Duhigg. The main focus is on the way that  a benevolent woman, Val … [Read more...]

Gail Collins has a great article in the New York Times, today, as usual, which takes off on her discovery of a pop-culture phenomenon: a series of books with a teenaged girl as the heroine and a vampire as the hero. The … [Read more...]

I have talked and written about our human tendency to form in-groups and out-groups, but an article in The New York Times brought home how little it takes to differentiate “us” from “them.” In the experiments described, all … [Read more...]

I can’t guarantee the authenticity, but Genghis Khan is supposed to have said, “The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in … [Read more...]

It began innocently enough. I had eaten a fiesta salad with chicken at the Burrito Shop after a leg workout at Gold’s. (Sorry, folks, but my flirtation with vegetarianism only lasted a little over a month. About a chicken a … [Read more...]

I recently had the unfortunate experience of saying something to a friend that she found inappropriate. Hopefully that lapse of sensitivity will make me more vigilant in the future—I have no wish to cause other people … [Read more...]

I’ve been a fan of Susan Blackmore since I read her book, The Meme Machine, several years ago. She recently gave a TED talk called “Memes and ‘temes.’” In writing about the talk on her web site, she said, “Earth now has three … [Read more...]

I was in the kitchen, making my morning half-cup of coffee, and found myself thinking about a conversation I had had with Leon a couple of days ago. We had talked about our relationships with our biological families, and … [Read more...]

There have been some interesting convergences lately. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, who I wrote about a couple of months ago, is back on the New York Times “Most emailed” list. In an article written about her, “A Superhighway to … [Read more...]