Psychology
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On fire myths and the origin of knowledge
EDIT 5/4/2018: a finished essay based on this research was published here. If you’re writing about conflicts between religious and scientific worldviews, there is absolutely no reason why you’d be forced to write about fire. But, c’mon… fire is cool. Eventually you probably would. While researching myths about the origin of fire, I realized that…
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On killer line breaks.
Tracy K. Smith’s poetry collection Life on Mars is excellent, combining bursts of science-fiction weirdness with totally non-speculative emotional clarity. If you chance upon a copy, you might try flipping to her poems “The Museum of Obselencence,” or “Sci-Fi,” or “My God, It’s Full of Stars,” particularly the fifth strophe of that last one; those are…
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On Jon Krakauer’s Missoula
I am obviously thrilled that Jon Krakauer’s Missoula has been getting so much press. There are still a wide variety of pernicious misperceptions out there, and Krakauer does an excellent job of addressing them in a very accessible format. I hope lots of people read his book, and, like Nicholas Kristof, encourage their friends and…
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On burial rites … and a meaningful life.
And now… a super-cheerful essay to celebrate my 32nd birthday! If you’re writing about conflicts between religious and scientific worldviews, eventually you get stuck writing about death. Within many religious frameworks, inevitable death lurking somewhere down the line doesn’t alter the meaning of the life that comes before it. I’m typing this essay during the gap…
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On secular humanism.
After no more than three pages of Philip Kitcher’s Life After Faith, a sentence gave me pause. “Secular humanism begins, after all, with doubt.” I had never heard the phrase “secular humanism” before arriving at college. The first time was two months into fall quarter my freshman year, sitting in the dining hall near the…
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On justice (an essay for Z).
“In Egypt, we are all about justice. Justice, justice, justice. Where ever you go, people are in the streets. There are tanks.” I was crouching in front of a swingset, gently pushing my daughter back each time she arced forward to nearly kick me in the head. Z was standing beside me, talking politics. It…
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On autism and vaccines.
Let’s get one thing out of the way first, shall we? Vaccines don’t cause autism. If you’ve got a kid with a standard operating immune system, you oughta get that sucker vaccinated. If you yourself have a standard operating immune system, and you’re considering living in a place where certain diseases that you aren’t immune…
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On violence against women (part three): rape, evolution, and the dangers of partial truths.
This is third in a series. Read Part 1 and Part 2. Were you sired by a jerk? Don’t worry! You can still be good! I’m mostly familiar with two theories addressing the question, “Why do men rape?” One comes from feminism, like the thesis put forward in Brownmiller’s Against Our Will: violence against women…
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On Linda Tirado’s Hand to Mouth (until devolving into senseless tangents about cash transfers as medicine, the U.S. criminal justice system, work as exercise, and flawed science).
As long as you think feeling angry is fun (does it say awful things about my personality that I do?), Linda Tirado’s Hand to Mouth is a fun little book. Unlike Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, Tirado’s main focus isn’t analyzing why people are poor — she states, bluntly and in my opinion correctly, that the…
academic doublethink, academic science, Alia Crum, An Investigation of Exercise and the Placebo Effect, at-will employment, bizarre data interpretation, court fees, Dixie Stanforth, economic injustice, Ellen Langer, Emily Willingham, Evil Dave versus Regular Dave, Exercise and the Placebo Effect, flawed science, Hand to Mouth, hotel cleaning as exercise, John Oliver, Linda Tirado, low-wage work, Mindset matters, municipal fees, On the Run, overcriminalization, police abuses, poverty, psychology, replication crisis, scientific studies that can’t be replicated, speeding, The New Jim Crow, Tirado, traffic laws, Walter Scott, work as exercise, worker protections
Frank Brown Cloud 