Brainstorm

In a recent post I argued that free will is an illusion. Even if I convinced you, why does the illusion still work?

The psychology of viral emails.

Plus: Is it against the law to jinx a baseball team?

That's not how the coroner's report will list it. But the murder of a student at Indiana University-Purdue, the first act of violence in the 40-year history of the Fort Wayne campus, may well be the first documented case of death from helicopter parenting.

There's one magic trick we are fooled by consistently, every day. It's so convincing that most people don't even believe it's a trick, and even those who do are STILL fooled by it. What is it?

Lad mag Maxim is more of a guilty pleasure than a go-to on what's what, but they still raised a kerfuffle recently when they ran a review of an album they couldn't possibly have listened to. And it's a perfect specimen of BS in journalism. But wait, have I committed the same sin?

It's lacrosse season. My teenage son is certainly gung ho about it, schlepping his equipment to and from the field by foot and never missing practice. I tell myself that exercise and fresh air are essential to a growing boy.

Parents, like lovers, must always negotiate a fine line between nurturing and controlling. But in the past decade, they've stepped way over the line into controlling.

There are two kinds of vacations: the kind where you’re trying to actually do something—explore a foreign country, see the sights, climb the mountain, learn to scuba dive/ski/blow glass, and the kind where you do nothing at all—you lie out on a beach, read the paper by the pool, or simply slowly decompose in front of the TV. In the movie Office Space, when asked what he would do if he had a million dollars, the antihero replies, “Nothing. I would relax, I would sit on my ass all day… I would do nothing.”

Quality childcare-it's what every parents wants for a child and it's in such short supply, especially in the nation's major cities.

What do Barack Obama and televangelist Benny Hinn have in common? Take a look: