“My sense is, you’ve got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved”.  President Obama’s words sum up many conflicts between two people that lead to acting “stupidly”. Read More

We were quick to look at the Gates Affair through the lens of race. To bring things fully into focus, we need a second lens—that of rank. Read More

I'd like to start this blog with a prediction: in a few years and with some historical perspective, I predict we will realize that the first decade of the twenty-first century produced the most profoundly far-reaching scientific revolution in history. Read More

The recent arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. reminds us of Alexis de Tocqueville's prediction nearly two centuries ago that the eventual end of slavery would be the start of a protracted and bloody struggle in America driven by the engine of racial inequality. Read More

If we just blame the economy for these events, we might gloss over the fact that not everyone who experiences a financial loss or sudden unemployment kills his family and himself. Read More

As a researcher of dog behavior and cognition, I tend to be asked two kinds of questions from both academics and nonspecialists. Read More

Tools are there to be used. It doesn't matter if they're conventional or unconventional. If something works for me, I'll use it. Likewise, if something works for you, use it. Read More

In my last post, I pointed out that testosterone fuels the reckless sexual and aggressive behavior of young men and other male vertebrates. Recent research is closing in on sex hormones (androgens as well as estrogens) playing a very similar role for women.The female hormone estradiol (a key estrogen) plays a role in dominance communication and physical aggression among primates. Read More

This is the fifth and final post on the cognitive behavioral approach to treating insomnia. Sleep hygiene involves following simple rules designed to promote better quality sleep so as to enhance daytime functioning. Poor sleep hygiene relates to a number of habits that can have a detrimental effect on sleep. Read More

What would it mean to be able to genetically engineer happiness? Could it be that with the discovery of the right genetic hot spots, a rosy outlook would be as easily attainable as vitamin-enriched corn?Yoram Barak, a researcher with Tel Aviv University in Israel, hopes so. Read More

Consider what happened when male monkeys were paired repeatedly with the same females (who were always in the mood, thanks to daily hormone injections). Monkey heaven, right? Read More

Last week's arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates continues to be a story with legs. There's no shortage of angles on the saga, from the question of to what extent does race influence our daily perceptions to the political matter of whether a sitting president should be commenting on local law enforcement issues. And so the debate rages on, whether or not some people are comfortable with it... Read More

That's what it does to you sometimes. Loneliness. It messes with your head. And that's what I am. Often. Lonely. An isolation borne of my geography. My far-flung African outpost living. (But you can be lonely anywhere my friends in London and New York remind me impatiently: it's not an accessory exclusive to a remote lifestyle, you know). Loneliness unhinges you. Read More

Friends have beers together. Can Officer Crowley and Professor Gates pretend to be buds? I wonder how the conversation at the White House will go down. ----------- President Obama - Welcome, Officer. Welcome Professor. I am glad you both could make it to DC though I understand why you took different flights here. Professor Gates - Thank you for having us, Mr. Read More

In his inaugural speech of 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation as it was being consumed by what is now known as the Great Depression. One of his most memorable statements from that now-famous speech is, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." What you may not know though is the full context of that declaration: "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Read More

Do you freak out when you lose your mobile phone signal? Do you get stressed when your Internet goes down? Are you mortified if you have to use dial-up to access your email? If so, you may be suffering from "Disconnectivity Anxiety" (I'm talking to you Doug and David!). Though not an official psychiatric disorder, I see it as a growing problem in our "gotta be connected 24/7" culture. I define Disconnectivity Anxiety (DA) as: "a persistent and unpleasant condition characterized by worry and unease caused by periods of technological disconnection from others." Read More

Twin Loss: The Annual Convention   The Twinless Twins Support Group International (TTSGI) was founded in 1984, by Dr. Raymond Brandt. Its annual conventions allow dozens of twins to share their life stories with those who fully understand the nature and level of their grief. Read More

In the New York Times Magazine for Sunday, July 26, 2009, Pamela Paul presented a thought-provoking article, whose title asked: "Why Can a Lesbian Couple Be Foster Parents to Older Kids But Have to Fight to Adopt a Newborn?" This article told a poignant story of family love and loss, and touched on a number of important issues about adult rights and children's needs. Read More

I told Sue that it was great that she has become so much more aware of when she’s tempted to eat standing up. For example, this past week, unprompted by me, Sue made the decision not to eat at her kitchen counter. Read More

I hear this every week, sometimes twice a day: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." No, it isn't. Read More

Do you race after what you want, huffing and puffing, as if a Spanish bull is charging you? Or is your style more the "sit back and let it come to me" variety? People boost their mojo simply by becoming aware of how they approach situations, not just mentally, but physically as well. Read More

The "second-choice husband" is a sort of consolation prize awarded to--or seized by-- a woman who cannot win the man she truly or originally desired. The second-choice husband is a stand-in, a substitution for the "real thing."According to researchers, the strategy often backfires. "The wife is pretty, impulsive, competitive with other women, and not very sexually interested in her husband," argue psychologists. When one partner is more attractive or sexually motivated than another, obviously the relationship becomes unstable. Read More

Is the light always on inside the fridge? This odd question has - surprisingly - much in common with my first Zen Question "Am I conscious now?" You may remember that the more I asked the question the more slippery it felt. Or you may have been meditating on this question yourself and found the same peculiar effect. Read More

If we accept that innovation is going to be the lifeblood of the economy, then we also accept that we need to understand how people create new ideas. When we think about what ideas are, we assume that ideas are things in our heads. But, it is funny what happens when people really start talking about ideas. Read More

Those of you who know or follow me surely realize that I'm not exactly a guy with a lot of spare time on his hands. Yet, I just launched a second blog devoted to short entries (mostly a paragraph with an accompanying link) to document the fact that gullibility is bad for your health Read More

Would you believe that chimpanzees have sex for "money"? The parallels within human society could be significant. Throughout nature, only humans appear to use money so it may seem counter-intuitive that our use of money has an animal parallel. We care about money almost instinctively, which is strange for something that is quite new to evolution. Read More

Sociality is at the heart of human existence, a fact that has been acknowledged as far back as Aristotle. Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs were among the first in the twentieth century to develop theoretical perspectives on the topic, but only in the last half-century has sociality been subject to vigorous theoretical and empirical study. Read More

My family left Lebanon and moved to Canada in 1975 under the persistent threat of being executed (as a result of our being Jewish during the astonishingly brutal Lebanese Civil War). I am not talking about being stopped by a policeman and questioned perhaps inappropriately in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If any one of endless militia found out that we were Jews, we were guaranteed one outcome...death. How is that for intolerance? A bit rougher than the "horrifying and unfathomable racism" faced by Dr. Henry Gates, the "oppressed" Harvard professor.  Read More

Ever wake up and it feels like your mind woke up but your body didn't? Now that's a nightmare in real time, and it can happen to anyone. Read More

One of the many things I learned from reading Susan Pinker’s excellent book The Sexual Paradox:  Troubled Boys, Gifted Girls and the Real Difference Between the Sexes is the phenomenon that Pinker calls the “imposter syndrome.”  According to Pinker, many highly accomplished women suffer from the feeling that they are imposters and they do not belong where they are and they don’t deserve Read More