Med students panic their first year when they learn all the diseases. It's not until the second year that they learn the cures.
A few weeks later, I’m in a fluorescent-lit classroom in Chelsea awaiting the start of the official Mensa test. I’m sitting next to a guy who’s doing a series of elaborate neck stretches, like we’re a...
Back to the books. The world’s largest bell was built in 1733 in Moscow, and weighed in at more than four hundred thousand pounds. It never rang—it was broken by fire before it could be struck. What a...
Cigarettes' cost far outweigh any resulting trimness, just as asphyxiation outweighs the benefits of stretching out the spine when you hang yourself from a shower curtain rod.
Eating fruits and vegetables is vaguely logical. Get sleep. Don’t live in the most polluted parts of the world. Don’t smoke. Don’t do unsafe things like skiing and hang gliding, which are inconceivabl...
EcclesiastesThis is a book of the Old Testament. I don't believe I've ever read this section of the Bible - I know my Genesis pretty well and my Ten Commandments (I like lists), but I'm hazy on a lot...
Ezekiel and his fellow prophets have become my heroes. They were fearless. They literalized metaphors. They turned their lives into protest pieces. They proved that, in the name of truth, sometimes yo...
For most of my life, I’ve been working under the paradigm that my behavior should, ideally, have a logical basis. But if you live biblically, this is not true. I have to adjust my brain to this. You
Greenberg tells me, Never blame a text from the Bible for your behavior. It’s irresponsible. Anybody who says X, Y, and Z is in the Bible—it’s as if one says, ‘I have no role in evaluating this.’ The
Here’s why I’m a fan of thanking our lucky stars every day: it helps with forgiving yourself your failures; it cuts down on celebrity worship and boosts humility; and, perhaps most important, it makes...
I had been avoiding the D-word. But the kids cut right to it. My boys are well aware of death. My twins finish every story they make up with the same phrase: Then everyone died. The end.
I've even come to a conclusion that would get me blackballed from ever setting foot in liberal education circles again. That is this: colonialism wasn't 100 percent evil. More like 96 percent evil. So...
If ever I was going to listen to a string of swearwords sitting next to a ninety-four-year-old, I'm glad that ninety-four-year-old was my grandfather. Not that he swears a lot. It's just that he can t...
In the Odyssey, our craft hero demanded that his sailors tie him to the mast so that he wouldn't take a dive off the starboard side when he heard the alluring singing of the Sirens. You shouldn't trus...
It’s joyous, he says. If I save someone from breaking a commandment, it gives me a little high. He pumps his fist. I never took drugs, but I imagine this is what it feels like.
On the other hand, if you're too delusionally optimistic, you'll be unbearable. You'll refuse to save money or make backup plans. You'll invade foreign countries and expect to be greeted as liberators...
Pain is annoying and unnecessary, like getting an e-mail in all caps. It's like a six-year-old who alerts you every fifteen seconds that he wants Hungry Hungry Hippos for his birthday. Yes, I understa...
The Bible's it's better to give than receive was not the raving of a lunatic. It goes back to a recurring theme that I've found in almost all my experiments: behaviour shapes your thoughts. My brain s...
There's a beauty to forgiveness, especially forgiveness that goes beyond rationality. Unconditional love is an illogical notion, but such a great & powerful one
Why should we always try to be true to our natural selves? What if our natural selves are assholes? Stalin was true to himself
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