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  • Immeasurable

    I have lately discovered in myself a kind of sympathy with a certain flavor of religious belief and practice, which, when approached from a very particular angle, I find relatable, even laudable. To be clear, I don’t mean religion in the sense of unquestioning belief in absurd cosmological claims or even magical thinking about some…

  • Upsight

    It might just be that there’s nowhere else for me to be. I’m just here. I’m in this place, at this time, with these people, and under these circumstances.  I have so many ideas about a better, more fulfilling, less strained situation that I might have wound up in, or that I imagine I would…

  • Emulating Abed

    Abed Nadir from the show Community is, apparently, supposed to have Asperger’s syndrome, though it’s never stated explicitly in the show (I’m only on season 2 so maybe there’s more coming). As a newly-minted Aspie, I can’t help but look to his portrayal as a means to better understand myself. Of course I know that this…

  • The End of the Innocence, the Wolf at the Door

    I don’t want to glorify the recent past, and certainly not the crimes, both legal and moral, of the George W. Bush administration. It is difficult to overstate the damage done by that regime, the horrors of which persist in the form of various gaping, oozing wounds around the globe. Their manipulation, circumvention, and neglect…

  • This Situation is Awkward, and I Can’t Stand Being In It

    I don’t know how to react to it, and I’m worried that I may not feel enough at the time to make the right sorts of expressions on my face. How am I supposed to look? Am I supposed to tear up? Eugh. The situation is awkward, and I can’t stand being in it. This…

  • Impact Without Agency: On the Peculiar Character of 2016

    The skeptic in me – the one whose rationality was inspired by Carl Sagan, the one that must force himself to be politic when talk of God, psychic abililities, or superstitions come up, the one whose actual job is to be the voice of an entire skeptics’ organization – knows, for certain, that there is…

  • In a Dark, Confusing World: Carl Sagan, 20 Years Gone

    Ten years ago today I wrote a piece about the impact Carl Sagan had on my life, commemorating what was then the tenth anniversary of his death. Today, obviously, Carl Sagan is 20 years gone, so I’ve dusted off the original piece to see if it still holds up. It does. Every word of it remains…

  • On Trump and Dying

    Postulated model for the series of emotions experienced by electorally defeated voters to the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump. Stage 1 Something must have gone wrong with the voting process. Recounts of close states will reveal that the vote had been tampered with by the Republicans. Or the Russians. Or both. There’s no way America…

  • The Electors’ Moral Duty

    I am entirely opposed to the Electoral College as a means of choosing the President of the United States. I proudly worked for an organization that had repeal of the Electoral College, replacing it with a national popular vote, as one of its three or four prime reasons for existing. But that’s what we’ve got…

  • Hereafter, in a Better World Than This…

    This is a song I wrote in 2006 for a production of As You Like It that suddenly felt rather appropriate for this moment. So I thought I’d sing it for you all. The old world we knew is falling away; It’s proven difficult to accept. And I had been feeling like I’d lost my…

  • What We Told Our Kids Today

    Our two children, our 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, were very enthusiastic about this election. From the beginning, they’ve shown an enormous amount of genuine curiosity about it, and became quite emotionally invested. Of course, that’s because their parents were too. We certainly knew that a Hillary Clinton presidency was not a foregone conclusion, and…

  • The Long Climb Up to Zero

    I’m on my way back from CSICon, the skeptics’ conference put on by my organization, which took place in Las Vegas this year. One of the presentations was by Anthony Pratkanis, who introduced us to the phenomenon of “altercasting,” wherein a person can elicit desired behavior from others by adopting, and implicitly assigning, particular social…

  • Unavoidable Ambience

    I admit it. When I walk through an airport (which I’ve done quite a lot of in the past couple of weeks), and see almost every pair of eyes staring at a phone or tablet screen, I get the feeling that something is wrong. It bothers me. This is of course absurd if you know…

  • The Alpha, the Omega, and the Google

    Rumor has it that Google is set to recast itself as a full-fledged smartphone maker, with the expected introduction of its new “Pixel” phones on October 4. I think I understand what they’re up to. To quickly catch you up, Google has for years offered up phones under the Nexus brand, but these were devices…

  • Quirky: Adapting for Asperger’s at the Expense of Sincerity

    Coming to terms with being a 38-year-old man with Asperger’s, having only been diagnosed a few weeks ago, has naturally lead to reexaminations of my behavior. The first things I’ve focused on have been those aspects of my personality that put me blatantly at odds with the rest of the species, such as my extreme…