Has the U.S. Become an Anti-Scientific Nation?

On Sunday night our book club met to discuss Richard Dawkins’ Greatest Show on Earth. While I had a bit of difficulty with his style of writing, the data Dawkins presents in explication and support of evolution is exhaustive. Even with such overwhelming evidence, he reports that a full 44% of Americans surveyed in 2008 do not believe that [...]

Psychology & Climate change: Risk perception

Note: This article is my once-in-a-while exploration of human behavior and climate change. While it is in no way related to health care, it may be directly related to health.
The cold temperatures across the nation this week have had some individuals scoffing at the notion of global warming. On the other hand, most scientists explain [...]

APA & Climate Change: What psychology can do

I sat down Monday morning to write this week’s blog post. I was intent upon writing about American Psychological Association’s (APA) recent report on climate change and what the psychology community can do about it. I had previously glanced at the executive summary of the report and was excited to learn what the entire report recommended. Unfortunately, [...]

High Tech/Low Tech: Energy Use Balancing Act

[Disclaimer: A few weeks ago I wrote about some of my concerns about climate change and indicated that I would write about this subject semi-regularly. As professionals in the field of behavior change, we have at our fingertips many resources that can affect the behavior of individuals and groups in many realms of life...responsible environmental [...]

Clean Sweep, Fresh Start

I have never been quite sure why, but Fall has always felt like the beginning of the year to me. Perhaps its because I was born in September. Or maybe it has to do with the start of the new school year. My Jewish family and friends would say that it is the beginning of [...]

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: E.C.E. 101

Last night we had the pleasure of meeting with the members of the book club to which we belong. This is a group of lively, energetic, intelligent, articulate folks who manage to bring varied and wonderful perspectives to everything we read and discuss. This time, we read Thomas L. Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need [...]

5 Clues That Its Time for a Vacation

          On Friday of this week, I get to start an 8 day vacation. Sometimes, I am not ready for vacation. I have often said that it is harder to get everything ready to leave (both work and home) than it is just to stay and keep on plugging away. I know that it is [...]

Decision Making 101

Last week I mentioned the scholarly book,  The Rise of Homo Sapiens: The evolution of modern thinking, written by our friend Fred Coolidge and his colleague, Tom Wynn. This week’s read has been a popular book (also about the brain and cognition) titled How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer.  Both books focus on the executive functions of the brain. The [...]

Bike MS…and fundraising for healthcare

We just returned from bicycling 125 miles over the course of a weekend to raise money for the Central Florida chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Seth has been doing this ride or one for the North Florida Chapter since 2001 and I have joined him for all or part of the weekend of riding on four [...]

Remote Health Services: Will behavioral health be a player?

A couple of weeks ago, I read with interest a discussion on a Psychology listserv about telephone and other remote consultations. Florida psychologists tend to be pretty conservative about telehealth and Internet psychotherapy; after all, it is difficult to apply the same standards to remote interventions as to face-to-face contacts when psychotherapy is the product.
The [...]