“Are you crazy?” “You’re kidding me!’ “You can’t possibly believe that!” “I just don’t get her at all!” In the past week, how many times have you said that you just don’t understand somebody—an acquaintance, family member, co-worker, or maybe a politician?  It can be really frustrating.  And if you’re in the same room with them, you can bet that...

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI in the biz) are hot topics.  Businesses want to know how to recruit and retain diverse employees at every level.  Churches across the spectrum from Catholics and Episcopalians to Muslims, Baptists to Jews, Presbyterians to Latter Day Saints are offering workshops encouraging inclusiveness. Nonprofits are...

Forty percent of unarmed people shot and killed by police officers are Black, even though Black men make up 6% of the nation's population.  http://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/12/fact-check-more-whites-shot-by-police-in-2015-than-minorities/ When statistics on employment, educational attainment, home ownership, and income are disaggregated by race,...

mariafabrizio.com/ Comedy Central's Jon Stewart makes his living turning the news into jokes.  But on the day after the racial massacre in Charleson, he said he had no jokes to tell.  As he put it, "I didn't do my job today, so I apologize.  I got nothing for you in terms of jokes and sounds, because ofwhat happened in South Carolina.  And maybe...

  Most of us think of our favorite holidays as times for the family to get together in celebration, love, and harmony.  But in many U.S. households, “just beneath the refined veneer of the best dishes and silverware, some politically polarized family members will be sitting at the table, just lying in wait for a perfect moment between the turkey...

How will we know when a computer can actually think?  If you’re an artificial intelligence programmer, you watch the results of the Turing Test, a yearly competition that pits humans against computer programs designed to carry on a conversation.  The rule is, if a program can fool 30% of the judges after five minutes of conversation into...

       You’ve just been promoted to supervisor, and you want to build a good relationship with your manager.  “What can I say to help her trust me?” you wonder.  “How can I tell her I’m the best pick for this job?” Or you’re ready to get back into the dating scene.  You know some places to meet potential dating partners, but you’ve never been...

The face of the young woman next to us on flight 815 was glowing as she told us she was heading home to spend the holidays with her family.  It was easy to imagine the same excited glow coming from my granddaughter as her Facebook postings tracked her eager wait for her mom and sister to arrive for the weekend. The other side of family...

“I love you, but I wish you’d change your underwear more often.” “I love you, and I wish you’d change your underwear more often.” More than 30 years ago, family therapist Virginia Satir wisely called attention to the important difference between these two statements.[1]  The “but” in the first one effectively cancels out the “I love you,” to the...

Has my experience ever happened to you?  I'm in a workshop at a national conference with a group of mostly strangers.  The leader predictably asks us to participate in an icebreaker that, unpredictably, is interesting and novel.  I converse for a couple of minutes with a pleasant guy taller than me whose name is vaguely familiar. The feeling is...