Category: Behavior

  • Nothing is ever meant to be

    The difference between stories and real life is that stories make sense. We humans love stories. We love to tell stories, and we love to consume stories even more. “Tell me a story!” little children command. Whether our stories are sweeping novels like Anna Karenina, a sweeping collection of TV series like more than a half…

  • Analog Lives in a Digital World

    What makes things special, memorable, satisfying often has less to do with the things themselves than with the context where we experience them. Some mysteries are eternal. If the Coyote can afford all those expensive items sold by the Acme Company, then why doesn’t he just visit a desert KFC to eat plumper poultry than…

  • Trust is Analog

    A handshake is worth a thousand Zoom calls. This has implications for going back to the office, building corporate culture, and democracy. You’re on a short elevator ride with one other person. Neither of you speak, but you get a lot of information. Does the other person politely keep a distance? Make momentary eye contact?…

  • Apple, Alaska Airlines, Taco Bell & Sweetgreen: the Trouble with Subscriptions

    Two recent articles caught my eye about a new vogue for subscriptions for products that are typically transactional.  The first has a misleading title: “Apple Is Working on a Hardware Subscription Service for iPhones” (Bloomberg, March 24th) is misleading because the planned service actually covers all Apple hardware software.  In last Tuesday’s episode of The…

  • The Nature of Human Thought: “Stop Trying to Make ‘Fetch’ Happen.”

    One of the enduring mysteries of everyday cognitive life is why some things pop into our minds.  Today’s example for me happened while I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes. Out of nowhere the line, “Gretchen, stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen. It’s not going to happen” from the classic movie Mean Girls came to…

  • Listen to me on this week’s “Laugh Your Cry Out” podcast!

    I’m delighted to share that I’m the guest on this week’s episode of “Laugh Your Cry Out with Joey Dumont,” a podcast about (and I’m quoting here) men’s mental health and masculinity [seen] through the lens of fatherhood, politics, and the world of business. Our enjoyable conversation has a mediocre book as its point of…

  • Wearing a mask is like wearing pants

    To the people who think that wearing a mask infringes on their liberties, then how do you feel about pants? If a nudist demanded to be able to, ah, let it all hang out in Starbucks, plopped down next to your table, and then claimed that his or her liberties were being trampled if you…

  • Technologies of Grief

    When a family member dies the script is clear: you scramble the jets, cancel your appointments, lean on a friend to watch the dog, and get there. For me, that means getting to Los Angeles from Portland.  My aunt, Marlene Meyer, my mother’s sister, died on May 15th. She was 86, vibrant, still working as…

  • It’s time: subscribe to your local paper; turn off your ad blocker. We did.

    We live in Portland, and a few years back we let our subscription to the local paper, The Oregonian, lapse because we just weren’t reading it regularly.  Then came Coronavirus, and suddenly I found myself checking the OregonLive home page daily, multiple times per day. It didn’t take long for the penny to drop: we…

  • Have this talk before your kid gets a phone: digital parenting tips #1

    (This is the first in a series of practical tips about parenting in the digital age.) Parents of adolescents worry about when a kid should get her* first smartphone. It’s a legit worry. On the plus side, smartphones connect kids to a vast world of information, resources, entertainment, and community… and that’s the down side,…