LATEST BLOG POSTS

The average American watches 5 hours of TV per day. Many fly or drive around for fun. If we want to pollute less, will we lose the ability to enjoy ourselves? I’ve written before how Vincent Stanley‘s commitment to turn off his computer Friday mornings and Nicola Pirulli‘s walking me through The Spodek Method led to me turning off all my electronics and practicing singing daily. Since starting, I’ve missed[…] Keep reading →

I exercise on a five-day rotation between lifting, resting, and cardio so months with 31 days give me an extra rest day to experiment. This time I decided to try to recapture my nearly five-year-old achievement of 5,000 meters in 20 minutes on the rowing machine, which means averaging 2:00/500m for 20 minutes. A well-trained man in his 20s or 30s could do it easily. A serious competitor might not[…] Keep reading →

I’m increasingly calling out that recycling is a scam. When I go out to pick up my daily litter, if I see something recyclable near a recycling bin, I’ll put it in recycling, but nearly always the litter in question never needed to exist and makes life worse, like a soda bottle, chips wrapper, or other doof container. If I stumble on a situation someone else created that creates litter,[…] Keep reading →

I didn’t think of how small my building’s elevators were when I bought a sofa after moving into my current apartment. It didn’t fit. The deliverymen tried to bring it up the stairs too. They made the first landing, but couldn’t make the turn to go up the next flight. They had to take it back. I ended up paying a $300 restocking fee plus big tips for the deliverymen’s[…] Keep reading →

Alexandra’s commitment illustrates a result I keep finding. People who have acted to live sustainably the most already find new ways to act more than people who haven’t. People who haven’t done much, or acted for extrinsic reasons like an article suggested “one little thing you can do for the environment” instead of intrinsic, say they can’t think of anything. I conclude that reducing polluting is skills you learn, not[…] Keep reading →

A topic making among the most headlines these days are digital mobs and their justice reacting to what people say. I’ve touched on it somewhat in this podcast and on my blog and I feel the risk teaching at NYU, which has kept me from expressing myself as openly as I could in the past. Another way of looking at this phenomenon is that we have become more vigilant about[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday, walking south along the Hudson River, I saw a guy running sprints on a pier. The temperature hovered around 50F (10C). It had rained on and off all day and was raining then. He was alone, running sprints in the rain. I call that commitment where no one would know if you didn’t glorious. I was out on my daily walk to pick up litter. I was taking a[…] Keep reading →