Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Harper 2015) contains interesting new ideas, but many of those ideas are weakened by a pervasive conscious—or more likely, unconscious—theistic perspective. Harari seems unable to... Read More

I began thinking about this after reading Azeem Azhar’s essay, “The Unraveling of Fictions,” which examines how arrangements such as employment, credentials, and expertise lose their organizing power as technology changes what is scarce. Such... Read More

I spent many years studying the behavior of the endangered western red colobus monkeys in The Gambia, the smallest country on the African mainland. Like many anthropological researchers, who shared their days with our very... Read More

As I get older, I can see from the vantage point of time that my youthful dalliances brought me closer to who I am today. Case in point, in the early 1980s I went to... Read More

Remember when Cracker Barrel changed their logo and the CEO got fired? I’m trying not to have that happen to me. But when I look over our new website - which launched around the first... Read More

My mother died this year. I wanted to say something at the grave when we buried her remains. Others were already going to say the Kaddish, a Jewish prayer traditionally recited by mourners. I was... Read More

This piece was awarded first place in the Humanists of Greater Portland's annual essay contest for high school seniors seeking funding for post-high school education.  Every day reminds me how much we rely on tiny... Read More