The Atlas

I was recently talking to a high school sophomore about her favorite subject in school (World History) and why (her teacher was talking to them about buying lab-created diamonds vs. natural). "Ah!" I said. "He was making a point about Blood Diamonds!" Yes, she agreed. To which I replied, "Yep. History was always my favorite subject, too. Almost all important lessons are clearer through history."

If there is one thing that I get asked advice about more than anything else it is this: How do I give feedback to someone who may not have asked for it? In other words: Tell me how I can tell someone they are making me crazy in a way that is both professional and doesn't make me feel like a schmuck.

One of those things I've been wanting to do for a long time is take improv classes. Aside from my indelible conviction of my own hilarity, the reality is that one of the things I get most frustrated with myself about is thinking of the perfect response to something after it's too late to use it.

Likeability is a nasty topic, and one that I truly resent. For starters, what constitutes being likeable? And how do you measure that for a single person, much less a group of people, all of whom have different definitions and standards? Even worse, what happens when we have decades of evidence that shows us that people generally apply different standards and expectations of 'likeability' to men vs. women, people of our own race vs. a different one, cultural differences and foreign accents?

Your email boxes are undoubtedly full of emails this week reminding us of all the things we have to be thankful for. And reminding us that the act of being thankful is sometimes important to help us feel grounded enough to in our own fortunes to be reminded of that one, truly horrible thought: it could always be worse.

As I was writing my vows to exchange on the beach at sunset last night, I kept finding myself thinking about all of the mistakes I made the first time I got married. A list, I assure you, that is too long and mortifying to share -- ranging from cowardly decisions to unchecked ego. But in the process, I realized there were some vows I needed to make to myself before we stood in front of an officiant and exchange leis with each other in front of my beloved Pacific Ocean.

One of my favorite topics is neurolinguistics. Aside from my general fascination with how the brain processes information (and what it means to how we function on a daily basis), growing up in a trilingual household always made this topic seem obviously important to me in a way that single-language environments seem to take for granted.

When does the act of planning shift from being useful and valuable, to being compulsive and self-indulgent?