Some people look for problems; others look for solutions. The problem, to me, with people who look for problems is that they can get good at it. When you’re with them, you may find yourself surrounded by problems you never would have found otherwise. What I like about people who look for solutions is that they find them. When you are with them, you tend to enjoy yourself, unaware that[…] Keep reading →

The following statement has become a personal guideline since I first came up with it. It’s served me well. Don’t look for blame but take responsibility for making things better to the extent you can. You can always find someone to blame if you want. Blame is fundamentally about the past, which you can’t change, and judgmental, which repels people. But the main issue is that when you blame someone[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, by Jen Sincero: You’ll hear in an upcoming podcast conversation with a Nobel Peace Prize holder, Erika Frank, that she and I riffed on our complementary ways of living more joyfully sustainable. I commented that she reminded me of a book I see in bookstores a lot but haven’t read,[…] Keep reading →

Continuing my series of responses to the New York Times’, The Ethicist, without imposing values, here is my take on today’s post, “Should a Teacher at a Sketchy College Help Recruit Students?” I am a professor at a university that has experienced serious financial problems in the last five years. As a result, our university has brought in a number of “consultants,” many of whom work largely for for-profit universities.[…] Keep reading →

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times column, The Ethicist, looking at the consequences of one’s actions instead of imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, “Should a Friend Have Been Told That His Date Was H.I.V. Positive?” More than 30 years ago, five years or so into a world shaped by AIDS, I had two friends. One of them, “Dean,” was[…] Keep reading →

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times column, The Ethicists, looking at the consequences of one’s actions instead of imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, “Do We Have to Send Our Kid to a Bad Public School?” My wife and I are an interracial couple living in Oakland, Calif. We are both first-generation college graduates for whom solid public-school educations made[…] Keep reading →

Here are the results of doing the exercise from this post, “An exercise in knowing your beliefs; so you can change them.” for a week. I wrote beliefs down each day, then put them on a file on my computer. I didn’t keep track of what order I wrote them in, so the numbers don’t mean anything. I just use them for reference. I’m including my word-for-word results to show[…] Keep reading →