I write a lot about cold showers. They may sound crazy, but bear with me and you may find them more helpful than you could have imagined. After taking a few in Shanghai because the water took five minutes to warm up that I couldn’t stand wasting, in December of 2013, I took thirty days of cold showers. I can’t tell you how much the discipline, dedication, and so on[…] Keep reading →

An article stating that “taking one flight emits as much as many people do in a year” led me to post the following on the site that linked to it. I thought it captured my feelings on flying since then. Learning information like this finally led me to take responsibility for my actions that affected others. I challenged myself to go one year without flying. Like everyone, I have family[…] Keep reading →

Part 1: College personalities not so unique In college, I remember meeting many classmates who seemed unique. I couldn’t imagine anyone else like them. Thirty years later, I’ve seen people like each. Over and over as college classes turn over every four years. I’ve also seen them grow up to become like everyone else. There’s some variation, of course, but the differences aren’t that great. Part 2: My high school[…] Keep reading →

I don’t mean to make light of the freedom people fought and died for, but I reached an empty inbox for the first time in I don’t know how long today and it feels like freedom and liberation. Here’s a screen shot of my mail reader: Launching Initiative put my inbox count into triple digits, including many detailed messages about complicated relationships. But July 4 is about freedom and I[…] Keep reading →

I met some friends in Central Park today — teammates I went to college nationals with in 1989 — to throw a disc around. I started walking there from my place in Greenwich Village just past noon. We tossed until about 3:30, then I went food shopping (at the 4th Street Coop), and walked home from the Lower East Side. It was in the low 80s and sunny. I put[…] Keep reading →

Last year I went 72 hours with only water. I’d read and heard chatter about “intermittent fasting,” not knowing what people meant. The more I looked into it, the more I found most people chattering didn’t know what they were talking about so I ignored it. Then a friend told me about two benefits he experienced — not read about or imagined, but experienced. He said The first meal after[…] Keep reading →

What happens when, say, mostly men write and judge laws on abortion or mostly whites write and judge laws affecting people of color? What do you think about a system that underrepresents, say, women in STEM fields or government offices? Do you presume there is something broken in the system? I got an email about an NYU document: The Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Prison Industrial Complex,[…] Keep reading →