With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
An Atheist's View of Religion
Religion is one of the few remaining barriers to humanity's advancement at this time. Perhaps it had a purpose once, when we were all closer to apes in mental development, but we're not anymore. We are living the Reign of Man. We're effectively Gods here now...
1st Journal Entry to My Son
Putting an entry into my now 11 yr old son's journal today, I noticed the first:
09/02/99
Hi E. First, I want you to know how much I love you...
Between What Is Said and What Is Heard
On our drive from school the other day my teenage son told me a classmate had offered him a joint. I'd been preparing for this moment, staging it in my head for years, ready with my bag full of allegorical stories of my reckless youth...
The New Rules of Social Networking
Every social network site, every group on their sites, and most update and wall posts now have a ton of RULES. --Don't talk about politics, social issues, religion or anything that really matters...
The Toxicity of Deception
Got pulled over for speeding our first day on the big island of Hawaii. Unmarked SUV flashed his headlights before swinging a U and coming after me, and I wouldn't have pulled over had he not turned on that distinctive blue light only cops (and L.A. psychopaths) have...
Boy Scouts of Faith-Based America
I picked up my 11 year old son from his Friday night Boy Scout meeting last week. On the way home he announced he was never going to advance to Eagle scout, as we'd all hoped when he decided to stay in scouting and bridge' from Webelos...
On Being Fat
On the plane coming back from Hawaii, the guy seated in front of me was easily over 300 pounds. He bulged over the armrests on either side of him. When he leaned his seat back, it came back so far it was virtually in my face. A teenage boy of equal girth sat next to him and crowded the small Asian couple on his left...
What Religion Are You?
When I say I'm an atheist, the very next question most people ask is: Well, what were you raised? What were your parents? Human beings. Somehow that answer isn't good enough...
The Folly of Perception
I've been on the outside looking in since I was a little kid. Failing to assimilate, I worked at cultivating unique and different. After achieving this coveted perception, I no longer wish to possess it...
Selling Children
My 11 year old son came home yesterday and told me he had learned something new at school. At his [advanced] age, he told me confidently, kids start to smell bad because they get grown-up hormones, and therefore they need deodorant...
What Is Genius?
Went to the Jelly Belly Factory on a field trip with my daughter's 2nd grade class. The young man assigned to escort us on the tour misquoted a brilliant saying by one of my favorite icons...
The Good Life
To escape the bickering, and whining, and needs and desires and everyone's demands, I took our dog for a walk on a quiet fire trail near our house...
5 Golden Rules of Driving
In Defense of Road Rage II Well, it appears too many of you out there still aren't paying attention. I tried this once, civilly, but clearly very few heard me. So, one more time not so nicely, though I'm hoping more direct and easier to follow...
Going Viral
Netflix ran a million dollar competition for anyone who could make their Recommendation Engine ten percent better than it was. A software developer friend recently expressed with awe and humility the high-caliber talent that competed for the Prize, from university professors to AT&T Labs engineers, close to 10,000 contestants representing thousands of teams participated from all over the world...
Doing Mass.
I'm a native Californian, and the idea of moving from my homeland was inconceivable. I was born and raised in paradise. The weather along our more than 3,000 miles of tidal coastline is spectacular practically every day. The Sierra Mountains are our border sentinels, over 14,000 feet at their peaks, stretching 400 miles long of pristine wilderness to world-class resorts. Ski after brunch and be tanning, running, hiking, biking on the beach by the afternoo--from mid-October through early June. Ask me my religion, and I'll say I'm Californian...
Making a Difference
Typically on Sunday mornings my husband and I share articles from the New York Times. He'll often read me pieces while I prepare breakfast or visa versa, and we'll discuss the ones that pique our interest. The year end edition of the Sunday Magazine runs detailed obituaries on a handful of famous and infamous people who died that year. Though many are well knownactors, x-presidents and the like, some are more obscure, but they all share one thing in common. They all had [at least] 15 minutes of fame...
The 5 Percent Factor
I had a conversation with my former financial advisor when the markets were crashing in June of '08. I asked him to give me an estimate, his best, ostensibly educated guess when the market might turn around or at least stabilize...
On Dying
It's getting to the point where I'm rooting for people to kick than hang on for dear life. I watched my Uncle Eddie struggle with MS for 25 years. The last five were a horrific testament to the corrosive power of the disease on the body and mind, and may never have been witnessed if not for the medical community's efforts to extend life...
United We Stand?
It was early November in 2001, two months after 9/11, when I went down to the end of the cul-de-sac to meet the new neighbors. We had just moved into San Ramon a few months earlier ourselves, a semi-upscale San Francisco suburb in the east bay. It promised good public schools, and gave the impression of a safe, friendly environment in which to raise our children...
Tattling on Twitter
For the longest time I just didn't get the point of Twitter. What could one possibly communicate in 140 characters, including blank spaces? I joined seven months ago, prodded by my publisher. Twitter was about building a following, an emerging viral marketing tool for writers she assured her authors...
Why Do You Write?
I sat on the floor in the back of a bookstore in old town Pasadena perusing the selections. It was Saturday, late afternoon, another sunny day in L.A. I didn't notice the store owners hustling everyone out the door and they didn't see me in the back on the floor. After a while I picked a book I liked, got up and went to pay for it. The store was empty except for an old man sitting at a large desk awkwardly placed in the center of the main aisle. It blocked my way to the checkout so it was impossible to ignore him...
Missing My Period
My period is six days late. I check throughout the day, hoping, but my old friend isn't coming. There was a time when I would have been ecstatic it was late, gotten a pregnancy test and peed on the stick anticipating the plus sign. And there were times I would have been horrified I may be pregnant, too afraid to take the test while anxiously waiting for my period to start. But today there is a quiet sorrow, like mourning a loss. It's possible I'll never see my period again. Menopause has taken my friend and is robbing me of my youth...
Is It Cheating?
My mother died of cancer five years ago. Watching her slowly wither, and watching my father mourn even before she died exposed the darkest side of love--losing it. Months before and after her death I found it necessary to pull back from the world, internalize instead of connect, afraid of the bond that comes with sharing, scared of caring too much...
In Defense of Road Rage
Contrary to popular psycho-babble, drivers who experience road rage generally are NOT unstable, volatile, controlling or psychotic. It's true, we're angry. We have a right to be. Otherwise good drivers experience road rage for one simple reason--bad drivers...
A Case for Suicide
I'm scared of everything all the time. I live like I'm not, but I am. On the outside I act like most everyone else. I have a family, a job, and most days are filled and hectic. I wrap myself in the kids, in my writing, my marriage, and though there is joy and wonder, fear is always looming, and suffocating...
Four Simple Steps to a Better Relationship
The first year of my marriage didn't go according to plan. The creative, smart, strong man I thought I married appeared as the jobless brat who refused to take on consulting while he toyed with his latest algorithm instead of engaging with me...
About Face
I got her at the pound on my 26th birthday, a Shepherd-mix with a perfect black diamond dead in the center of her tan forehead. She was just seven weeks, not yet ready for adoption. I lied to get her out. They found her in the San Fernando hills and thought she was feral, but I told them she was mine and I'd lost her on a hike up near Mr. Wilson...
The Future Out of Time
I woke from the nightmare at 5:45 a.m. I knew what was coming. I knew it wasn't just a dream. The flip clock on my dresser illuminated my room with a deep red glow. Soft click: 5:50. It's coming. And I couldn't stop it...
The Terrorist Within
Strong winds shake the plane and rain sheets off the wings and streaks down the small windows as we sit on the runway waiting to take off. The 737 engines ramp to a high pitch roar. My five year old daughter sitting next to me suddenly grabs my hand as our plane accelerates, faster and faster down the runway, throwing us back in our seats...
Losing It
She walked to the bank every Friday to deposit her social security check. She'd been doing it on her own for a long time, since her husband of 49 years died of a brain tumor ten years back...
Looking For Cancer
I'm scared out of my mind. It's not unexpected. I've been waiting for the news for years. Still, when I felt the tenderness in my breast a month ago I passed it off as a pulled muscle from weightlifting. I still tried to ignore it last week--told myself my breasts were just swollen from my impending period. But my husband felt it too during sex the other night. He moved the lump under my skin with the tips of his fingers, clearly troubled, and I had to stop pretending...
Chemically Sane
I haven't always been mentally ill. I've always been on the fringe of the norm--the glass wall between me and humanity kind of thing, but I didn't feel myself start to fragment until my mid-twenties...
On Aging
I'm sitting in my car waiting for the light to change watching an old woman cross the street. She's hunched over and it looks like her slow pace pains her. Her short, poofed platinum hair reflects the sunlight and does not move with her motion. She scares me. Old scares me...
Technology and Choice
I was 17 weeks pregnant, with my first baby, when the results of an amnio told me that the wanted child I was carrying was not healthy. I have always been pro-choice, and never considered it a moral dilemma to terminate a fetus with severe Down's Syndrome, or other life threatening, or debilitating abnormalities...
Raising Kids Without Religion
My husband and I are the ONLY parents I know raising our children without any religion or even religious identity (as in claiming to be part of a culture without studying its practices). We're both devout atheists and I use the term devout with purpose...
How Men Are
(Journal entry to my daughter: 6/2/08) So I have this lump in my throat as I start to write this. I want to cry, for the 'Thousand Slights' you'll suffer. I want to shield you from that pain. But I can't. And it makes me feel helpless and small, and scared. I love you, Jessie. You were in the playroom when I came in yesterday night after shopping. You were building with Magnatiles, this beautiful amphitheater structure. Dad and Ethan were playing Stratego on the kitchen table. At first I thought the scene was good and you were happy down there on your own. But as I put the food away, I noticed your face, I saw your sadness, and as I write this I can't stop my tears...