A short tribute to an all-too-common American experience and bootstraps. — You add up the numbers again. Maybe you missed something and the second or third time you do the math the deficit will be smaller or magically transform itself into a surplus. It doesn’t. Considering your vices, you imagine having enough willpower to cut back on them and enter the…

Is our comfort level getting in the way of our flourishing? — In his 1969 book, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, the late psychologist Carl Jung wrote, “I have observed that a life directed to an aim is in general better, richer, and healthier than an aimless one, and that it is better to go forwards with the stream of…

Well intentioned efforts to remove distasteful or troublesome content may make us feel good, but it’s not helping the fight against bigotry. — In 2017, English teacher Christina Torres wrote in defense of teaching To Kill A Mockingbird. She was writing in response to a Mississippi school district’s decision to stop using the book in class on the grounds that the use of N-word made some students “uncomfortable.”

Trying to find a sustainable sweet spot in a community that depends upon visitors. — If you want to see how the act of observation changes the character of the object being observed on a macro scale, Moab, Utah is a good place to start. …

Machines are a means to an end. We are end unto ourselves. — Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have been getting a lot of press. A software program designed to produce art using a few prompts from the user won a digital art competition in Colorado last year, creating quite a buzz. …

Another example of either/or thinking gone wrong. — There are few people as vocal and committed to the argument against free will as Sam Harris. He frequently revisits the topic on his podcast, and he has published a short book outlining the case against it as he sees it. Harris and others are strong determinists. In his 2012…

Same debate, different decade. — A slightly edited excerpt from the Travels With Zeus blog originally published by the author in July of 2011, during an earlier debt ceiling debate. Zeus and I followed our usual routine this morning. After making myself a cup of coffee, I took him out for his morning pee and…

If the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) is any indication, not much. — The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently fined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormon Church) one million dollars for using shell companies set up by its wholly owned investment firm, Ensign Peak Advisers, to hide nearly $40 billion in assets. …

When we rely solely on the quantifiable, we often miss what’s truly important. — In the excellent PBS docuseries Vietnam, a veteran of the war interviewed for the program bemoaned the American government’s focus on the body count as an indicator of military success. …