The White Horse

This might be the most important horse story you read all day, or at least one of the top three.

I know a man who frequently visited Scotland as a child. His extended family there owned a business delivering milk in horse-drawn carriages.

Among the horses in the stable, one was particularly prized by the family: the white horse whose name the man couldn’t recall.

This clever horse had learned his route so well that he could walk it with minimal guidance. He even knew which houses to visit. (I don’t know if he could recite each customer’s order. The man didn’t say.) …

The Most Powerful Swimmer in the Kiddie Pool

A stranger once glanced at the cover of The Tactical Guide to Women and concluded I must be some sort of pickup artist. I understand the misapprehension, but he couldn’t have been more wrong.

I’m the anti-PUA. The matchbreaker. The intimacy Grinch. I’m trying to persuade people to disobey their glands and rethink their relationship strategies — especially those strategies that squander potential and impede a values-driven life.

For example, there’s the strategy of choosing chaotic relationships, in which a capable adult chooses a partner who struggles to manage the minor challenges of daily life. …

Update

I’m a little embarrassed to say it’s been nearly two years since I updated my website, but that’s not due to laziness. Most of my creative energy has gone toward video lately. For starters, there’s last year’s response to the APA’s guidelines for working with boys and men:

…or my video on how men can avoid a particular type of dangerous encounter with volatile women: …

June PsychNotes

You’ll probably get the urge to yawn if you stare at this yawning dog. Why? Because you’re a kind and empathetic person, of course! That explanation, and more, in this month’s thrilling edition of PsychNotes. …

May PsychNotes

Image: Johns Hopkins University.Here’s a little challenge for ya. Take a look at this chart of cognitive biases and see if you can identify two that you’re especially guilty of, and two that you’re reasonably good at avoiding. I suffer inordinately from reactive devaluation and gambler’s fallacy, and I’ve gotten reasonably skilled at avoiding confirmation bias and hyperbolic discounting, when I try. How about you? …

April PsychNotes

Harvesting the spaghetti crop, 1957The first mass media April Fool joke was reportedly the BBC’s 1957 Panorama segment on spaghetti harvesting, for which a cameraman hung “pounds of spaghetti over trees in a little Swiss village” and persuaded locals to harvest the crop. The BBC was inundated with calls. “[T]he majority either wanted to know where they could see a spaghetti harvest, or obtain information to start a spaghetti farm” (Humphrys 1999).

It was a simpler time. Here are some research goodies from last month. …

Men, Never Marry a Misstery

Never Marry a MysteryHey, you wanna buy a car? Here’s my offer: If you give me $50,000 I’ll deliver a vehicle to you next year. Until then, you don’t get to drive it or see it. Maybe it’s a new Lamborghini, or maybe it’s a ’77 Pinto with a tendency to explode.

Any takers? I didn’t think so. No one with a lick of common sense would take that deal, yet I routinely meet men, and more than a few women, who use that method to make a much more important decision: they marry people they haven’t truly gotten to know. Occasionally they get lucky, but more often they deeply regret it. …

March PsychNotes

What is green and pecks on trees? Woody the Woodpickle. (That joke never fails with kids.) Here are some goodies from last month, including studies on woodpecker brain damage, preventing extramarital affairs, and why your brain might not trust certain people. …

February PsychNotes

phrenologistWanna hear a joke? A neuron and a glial cell went to summer camp. When they arrived at the barracks, the neuron demanded the top bunk. “Why should I get stuck on the bottom,” asked the glial cell. The neuron answered, “because I want to have a high resting potential!” (I didn’t say it was a good joke.) Here’s some recent news, starting with the brain’s tiny unsung heroes. …