Almost 10 years ago I was flying to a psychology conference for my work and I picked up a book called The Power of Habit while changing planes at LAX. I learned something in that book almost as valuable as anything I learned at the conference. Author Charles Duhigg told the story of a Procter […]

Growing up in D.C. in the ‘60s and ‘70s, my parents took me with them to marches, rallies, and demonstrations against the U.S. War in Vietnam. Note that I do not call it the “Vietnam War.” For my parents, I think they saw it as an extension of the lessons of the Holocaust: that we […]

Our Humanist Society of Santa Barbara followed other organizations in moving to Zoom meetings during Covid. But we do now have occasional social gatherings. At one such gathering recently I talked to a member who said she “hates Zoom” and will only attend in-person events. I realized that she did not understand the concept of […]

We hairless apes are notoriously bad at estimating probabilities. I plan to write more about other such “cognitive biases.” For example, if you see several coin tosses coming up heads, do you think that the odds go up for the next toss to be tails? Assuming a fair coin, the odds for each toss are […]

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 […]

“Everyone is basically the same” is how many of us were raised. The intention was to see our commonality, rather than our differences. But, what if we truly see the world in very different ways? It’s as if we are alien species, trying to live together. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has tried to help us […]

Intel Corporation founder Gordon Moore died on March 24. Moore helped pioneer the development of the silicon chip at the heart of our modern electronic world. But his greatest contribution may have been “Moore’s Law” – his observation in the 1960s that transistor counts on a chip were increasing exponentially, the count doubling every two […]

The recent failures, negotiated bailouts, and buyouts of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic Bank, and Credit Suisse are a reminder of how life is different for different classes of people. “Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor” is how Michael Harrington described it in his 1962 book, The Other America. Detroit […]

Communities all over California are struggling to meet a mandate to build more housing. This dates back to a 1969 “Housing Element” law, now in its sixth round. The current mandate is for 3.5 million new units by the year 2025. The state is far short of meeting that goal and local governments face penalties […]

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 […]