LATEST BLOG POSTS

Silvia created the course Sustainable Marketing at Columbia. It’s an elective and has become the class at the business school with the most students from other schools at the university. In looking for a guest speaker on sustainable consumerism, she found the New York Times profile on me. She decided to invite me before realizing I’d gotten my MBA where she teaches. Only when we spoke did she learn I[…] Keep reading →

My building has been doing work on the facade, which for some reason meant no residents have been allowed on the roof. The building management told us they projected it to be a five month job. Today marks one year. They didn’t warn as when the day we couldn’t access the roof would begin. They told us it would happen some time. Then one morning they emailed us that that[…] Keep reading →

I confess I haven’t read Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, but I’m working so much on opposing coercion and tyranny, I keep coming across him. I’m trying to learn more about the conditions that led to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Learning history is one thing. Getting inside the hearts and minds of the people acting is another. What values were they acting on or not? If you[…] Keep reading →

I like finding patterns and making mnemonics. I like making acronyms like sidcha, which I use here a lot, and PAID culture, which I use in my book, for concepts I use a lot but that don’t have words for. I create the term doof, which I find life-changing. I write a lot about values that as far as I know approach universal in human cultures, though I’m not an[…] Keep reading →

Word choice matters. Why speak if you don’t want to be understood? It’s not their responsibility for me to be understood, even if I get mad at them for not understanding me. I recently wrote how I was Replacing “sustainability” with “not hurting people” and “polluting” with “hurting people” since “sustainability” is too abstract in many cases, as is the “environment.” I’m not trying to help some abstract environment. I’m[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer: A friend recommended this movie, I think because I’ve been talking about how there aren’t in our environmental situation the “bad guys” everyone thinks. There aren’t “good guys” either. We’re in a system that nobody deliberately created. My book traces the origins of how our system started from people doing things nobody could have expected to lead here. We[…] Keep reading →

Months ago, when I read Adam Alter’s book and hosted him on the podcast, I learned that executives of social media companies often don’t let their children use the services they work for. They know they design them to addict. I recently saw an old friend who works at Facebook. He has two kids. I asked him if he let them use Facebook. He said “no,” with a look of:[…] Keep reading →

I’m approaching one year training for and participating in the NYPD auxiliary police program. I wrote earlier about mustering for the September 11 service. Tonight I walked in the annual memorial service for two auxiliary officers who were killed on duty on this day in 2007. I took this picture as we were starting. Here’s a picture another auxiliary officer took from inside the group. I’m not sure if I’m[…] Keep reading →

Abraham Lincoln talked about a house divided being unable to stand. A Constitution that protected freedom in one place and slavery in another contradicted itself. You can protect freedom only. You can protect slavery only. If you try to do both, that divided house cannot stand. Likewise, you can have a Constitution that protects your life, liberty, and property from me taking or destroying it without your consent. You can[…] Keep reading →