It’s hard to displace a global economic crisis from headlining the news, but the pigs did it. A variant of the H1N1 flu virus, associated in our lore with the 1918 flu pandemic, has jumped species and infected humans. There are reported deaths (though numbers and details vary wildly) and cases appear to have spread globally. Read More

Donald Trump's comeback is one of the most dramatic of all time—as well as one of the most visible. According to a well-known anecdote, one day when he was $1 billion in debt, he pointed out a homeless man to his daughter and said, "See that bum? He has a billion dollars more than me." The Guinness Book of Records lists him as having the biggest financial turnaround in history. "In the early 1990s, I owed billions of dollars and many people thought I was finished," says Trump. "I refused to give in to the negative circumstances and I never lost faith in myself. I didn't believe I was finished even when the newspapers were saying so. I refused to give up. Defeat is not in my vocabulary." Read More

I play bass and sing in jazz combos.  Unlike rock, where band members stay together for years if they can stand each other, jazz gigging is more like pickup softball games.  You get a call asking if you can make some café gig and if you can, you’re often meeting fellow players for the first time while setting up for the show. Read More

I went to see the movie Duplicity a while back. That's the one starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen as spies who get involved in corporate espionage. The movie is not brilliant, but it is fun. Part of the fun comes from scenes of rapid-fire dialogue between the stars. Read More

Dr. Dan Ariely wrote a very interesting post yesterday about business education, its value, and how he proposes to increase its value and utility. I especially like the epigraph by Derek Bok.David Brooks published an interesting column in today's New York Times about the qualities that make a good C.E.O. His conclusions, however, were different than Dr. Ariely's. Read More

In a recent study published in Intelligence, Rosalind Arden and her colleagues found significant correlations between men's intelligence and the quality of their sperm (concentration, count, and motility). This puts a whole new twist to the idea that some mating behaviors that women engage in are instantiations of their shopping for good genes. Read More

Can interacting with women make men stupid? A hot off the press article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology may finally shed some light on a question I, and I'm sure many others, have been wondering for quite some time now. Read More

I think there are two reasons that people aren't as "zesty" as they could be. One reason is that they have acquired misinformation about the emotion of shame. The second is that they don't have enough information about shame.Why is accurate information about shame so important? Because unnecessary shame creates so much pain in our lives. Read More

Welcome to my new blog! This is just the first of many entries to come on the subject of depression and its effective treatment. I intend to regularly draw your attention to the fact that despite the popularity of the notion that depression is only about brain chemistry gone awry, in reality there are many factors contributing to depression's onset and course. Read More

The Flash of Insight, The Grand Gesture, The Rousing Speech, The Last Straw. All of these are doppelgangers of The Big Thing, which too many of us wait for to come along and change our lives. The secret is, of course, that it's not coming. Worse, by waiting for The Big Thing, you could let the little things that make life rich, and accumulate into the important experiences of your life, slip away. Read More

Cindy Chupack had been married two years when her husband told her he was gay. Though she felt like a failure at the time, the years of loneliness and dating that followed provided the material that led her to become a writer and producer for Sex and the City. "It felt like a huge curse and it was lonely," says Chupack. "But what I'm most proud of in my life was Sex and the City, and it never would have happened had I stayed married, and had he not been gay, and had that not been my backstory." Read More

The tank tops are on, the shorts are tight, the skirts and short... summer's coming and we're baring our bods in hopes of snaring some fun summer love or more. Not only are we looking at each others biceps, thighs, chests and faces, we "sense" each other too—with our noses. What are our noses telling us? Read More

Even given the current downturn in the economy, a survey shows that people are willing to give up a surprising amount of their own comfort to save money to insure the happiness of their pet dog. Read More

I am a big advocate for joint physical custody. If at all possible, I want children to spend a lot of time - and have good relationships - with both of their parents after a separation or divorce. But there are several problems and potential pitfalls with joint physical custody. Read More

Derek Bok, the 25th President of Harvard, famously said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” What we need is more business education, not less. Read More

 Is invasive parenting here to stay? Read More

In his science fiction classic, The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov foresaw the emergence of a powerful new scientific discipline: "Psychohistory." Does psychohistory exist as a scientific discipline today? If so, what is it like? Read More

No matter how hard I worked to provide right answers, or how devotedly I tried to jump through hoops, some looked at me with unbridled contempt. I overdid it; I wanted too much. Understand this: it is not that I wanted too much of it--but that I wanted it too much.I was too eager, too needy. So they pushed me away.  Read More

In our society, job titles have come to define who a person is. By defining yourself by what you do rather than by who are you can put yourself in emotional jeopardy. By losing touch with who you are, coping with life transitions, such as job loss, can be even more difficult. Read More

In response to my recent posting on teaching an older child how to fall asleep on her own, a reader wrote:Recently, our 6 year old has started to have a very difficult time falling asleep. He actively tries not to, complaining that sleep is boring and that he doesn't know how to go to sleep. Advice?   Read More

The latest issue of Bioscience Hypothesis contains an article by Dr. Read More

 It seems that there is a common principle in life - flexibility = health. But beyond that, integration across time-scales is key too. When parts of ourselves become disconnected to other parts in time, dis-ease (imbalances) may occur - as those parts become isolated and stagnant. Read More

Michelle Obama took the stage and reminded a graduating class and a national audience of the positive power of friendship in our lives. Justice David Souter grabbed the flag of work-life balance and planted it in the ground of single people's lives. And to all of the people chattering about what an odd duck this lifelong single man is, he said, in not so many words, "bite me." Read More

Adolescent dating has a lot to teach about what treatment it takes to create and manage a healthy socially attracted relationship. Parents need to help with this instruction. Read More

The idea that words have unique powers for good or evil goes way back to the dawn of history and perhaps even before that. Who know what early humans may have muttered as they painted on the walls of their caves? We do know that, all through recorded time, the incantation was part of every prayer and every spell. If you just got the words right, there would be no limit to your power. Read More

There's a catch to Pfizer's offering a year's supply of Viagra to the jobless—a "downside," as it were, to all the jokes circulating about its "stimulus plans." Read More

Lauren wrote to ask if this is what Disney is teaching our daughters. I know it's tempting to blame all of the irrational, loathsome, impossible images of girlhood and women that we fend off like swarms of gnats every day - I fear this one may be on me.(Because I'm the Mom, most things are, indeed, my fault.) This actually might be. Read More

It is perfectly apparent to us that our depressed friend's life isn't completely hopeless, but when we try to tell him that he has reasons for hope, he feels invalidated and frustrated. Is it possible for both him and us to feel heard? Read More

 Quite often, lovers confront some kind of obstacle that prevents them from fulfilling their passionate love. Should such lovers be passionate or patient? It seems that in different circumstances, either characteristic could be essential and it is up to the lover to recognize the circumstance and behave passionately or patiently. Read More

In dismissing the need for a magazine for singles, an editor at Forbes said that it is easy to get to the state of singlehood. That's true. I can (and I do) choose to be single. Anyone can. But I cannot be single in the same way that you can be married. My status as a single person is suspect in a way that a married person's never is. I get asked why I'm single; you don't get asked why you're married. I cannot be single with the same presumption of a life well lived. I cannot be single with the same material benefits and protections as you can.  Read More