Most elevators have some form of a “close door” button. Impatient elevator riders the world over push that button when they want the elevator to get moving. Unbeknownst to them, their button-pushing efforts are useless. The vast majority of building managers and elevator programmers think they know when the doors should close, and have deactivated … Continue reading »
The Irish family planning tragic comedy
As has been widely reported this week, people flew to Dublin from as far away as Brazil to vote in Friday’s referendum on abortion. In 1983 the Constitution had been amended to give a fertilized egg the same right to life as the woman carrying the embryo. Today (Saturday) the majority of constituencies have reported … Continue reading »
Facebook and the humanities: Pondering what would Oedipus do
No less disturbing than the recent news that the personal data of millions of Americans was culled from Facebook by the shady research firm Cambridge Analytica and provided to the Trump campaign, has been the behavior of the masters of Silicon Valley. The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has so far been mostly silent. This … Continue reading »
Overconfidence
Overconfidence is the mother of all psychological biases. I mean that in two ways. First, overconfidence is one of the largest and most ubiquitous of the many biases to which human judgment is vulnerable. For example, 93 percent of American drivers claim to be better than the median,[1] which is statistically impossible.[2] Another way in … Continue reading »
Study: Mom’s pot use doesn’t hurt kids’ future grades?
For the last several weekends I saw the following advertisement (disclaimer: I am a lifelong subscriber and avid supporter of our local newspaper — the San Francisco Chronicle): Of course, being the father of three children, the lower right corner caught my attention: “Study: Mom’s pot use doesn’t hurt kids’ future grades—Fears of maternal cannabis … Continue reading »
Counting all homeless youth today so we may no longer need to tomorrow
The following has been adapted from a forthcoming op-ed publication in the Journal of Adolescent Health, with the permission of the authors and the journal. Somehow we have come to accept homelessness in the U.S., including youth homelessness, as an inevitability of modern urban life. Yet, anyone born before 1980 has lived in a world … Continue reading »
Sex, power and the systems that enable men like Harvey Weinstein
When I first heard accounts of film producer Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior, my mind devised punishments fitting for Renaissance Europe or the film A Clockwork Orange: Cover his face with a shame mask widely used centuries ago in Germany; shock his frontal lobes so that he’d start empathizing with the women he’s preyed on. When we learn … Continue reading »
Stopping college football is a moral imperative
The University of California, Berkeley must stop systematically and irrevocably damaging the human brain. It is unethical. Cal should cease supporting American football. Earlier this year we learned that 110 out of 111 former American football players had evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Early last week we learned that young boys playing American football … Continue reading »
The false media focus on violence: If it bleeds it still leads
On Sunday, August 27, in downtown Berkeley, I witnessed thousands of protesters raising their voices against a planned white supremacist “Patriot Prayer” rally. In my decades as a documentary filmmaker of activism and now an academic studying movements and media, it was one of the most positive, diverse and unifying gatherings I ever experienced. While … Continue reading »
What is your purpose in the face of white supremacy?
Yesterday, I published an essay in UC Berkeley’s Greater Good magazine about how the science of purpose can help explain the rise of white supremacy. Writing that piece led me to explore my own sense of purpose — which the research helped me see is tightly linked to my identity. I am a writer and … Continue reading »
Senate Republicans’ health bill especially hurts the lowest-income Californians
Co-authored by Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center The health bill released by Senate Republicans today would be devastating to low-income Californians and their access to health coverage. While the proposed Senate bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, is largely similar to the American Health Care Act passed by the U.S. House … Continue reading »
Energy drinks are killing young people. It’s time to stop that.
Co-authored by Wendi Gosliner, a project scientist at the Nutrition Policy Institute. Last week, a 16-year-old tragically lost his life after consuming an energy drink, a soda and a latte — drinks routinely consumed by and often intensively marketed to youth — all within a few hours. According to the coroner, the boy’s heart simply … Continue reading »
Gamification for global health
Gamification is popping up everywhere in our daily lives, with applications to management, commerce and health. Why? Because the evidence suggests that it works. Now it’s being studied in an HIV prevention program for young gay and bisexual men.
The sick logic behind the Republican health care plan
The AHCA would not only change how many people have health insurance, it would also affect who has health insurance and at what cost. The bill would make coverage more affordable for those who are younger and healthier—and prohibitively expensive for many who are poorer, older, or have pre-existing conditions, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office
This NIH program is crucial to global health — and its future is in danger
Co-authored with Madhukar Pai, MD, a Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology and Global Health at McGill University in Montreal. A little-noticed cut in President Trump’s proposed “budget blueprint to make American great again” would eliminate the Fogarty International Center, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. That would be a big mistake for the … Continue reading »
‘Does what I study even matter now?’ Yes, it does. Here’s why.
Every once in a while, I have an existential crisis. I question my career, my relevance, my purpose. Why, I ask myself, am I doing research when there are so many more immediately important things going on? Why do I agonize over articles that so very few people read? Who cares about our ivory tower … Continue reading »
Brazil: Zika, Chika, coup d’état
The Brazil Olympic games just ended their two-week run. Cal athletes were well represented, and on Berkeley’s campus we are celebrating Cal student Ryan Murphy’s third gold medal in Rio de Janeiro. Yet, as we cheer on one of our own and take part in the pageantry, we read about the alleged mugging of another Olympic medalist, … Continue reading »
Is protecting public health now a partisan issue?
Congress seems to be unable to come up with funding for an effort to combat the Zika virus. Instead, congressional leaders told the government to use existing funding, so it has been forced to divert hundreds of millions of dollars from fighting ebola. (You remember that Congress was completely frenzied about the risk of Ebola … Continue reading »
Two steps nearer a football-free campus
Eventually, hell has frozen over. Jeff Miller, the National Football League senior vice president for health and safety policy, has told members of Congress that playing American football can lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The NFL has switched from the criticizing the research of medical scientists who demonstrated that playing football can scramble a … Continue reading »
King Henry VIII and the Super Bowl
Henry VIII, famous for abandoning the Catholic Church and marrying six times, liked jousting. Jousting is martial sport where two horsemen in armor gallop towards one another at breakneck speed holding wooden lances. The aim is to strike your opponent and if possible unseat him. Henry was concussed several times, the most severe battering occurring 1536 … Continue reading »