I come from pretty strong religious roots. One of the things that was impressed upon me as a kid was that if I were ever faced with a difficult situation that was out of my control, I should pray. This was a way to keep me hopeful in times of strife, or in times of [...]

You’ve probably seen umpteen numbers of e-mails that start something like this: I am making this contact with you on behalf of my colleagues after a satisfactory information we gathered from an international business directory. My colleagues and I are members of the Contractor Review Committee of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). I have [...]

As a species we can’t seem to tolerate incomplete pictures. We can’t accept that the ruddy, pitted and incomplete landscape of experience and knowledge is beautiful in its own right, full of potential and possibility. The extent of reality we currently know about is a mere drop in the ocean when compared to the questions [...]

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America is a funny and poignant book examining America’s obsession with positive thinking. In it Ehrenreich not only details her own experiences with the positive-thinking movement, but delves into its history and evolution. The book begins with Ehrenreich’s diagnosis of breast cancer in 2000 and her personal [...]

Those of us who believe we are familiar with Charles Darwin often think of the quiet man who went about his work with little fanfare; a man who was so gracious that when Alfred Wallace sent him a manuscript that seemed to anticipate Darwin’s own evolutionary theory, he arranged a joint reading before the Linnean [...]

You don’t have to spend too much on time online before you run into conspiracy theorists who claim dubious forces are manipulating the world’s financial systems. They say the system is unfairly set up to make it impossible for the average person to be successful. Believers in this conspiracy would do well to remember the [...]