If You Are Inspiring, Your Holidays Will Be Too

Mile-long shopping lists, work fatigue, cranky relatives and demanding children means it’s natural to feel stressed out at the holidays. But Deepak Chopra says you can change it all just by changing who you are in each situation. Find out how!

We all know the complaints: family grievances, stressful shopping, never enough time to get everything done, fatigue and collapse. Therapists brace themselves for the holidays as depressed patients become more depressed, addictive patients become more addicted and winter grayness casts its pall.

Published in Oprah.com

The Perils of Skepticism (There Isn’t Any)

If you’ve ever used Google Alert, you know the jolts it can deliver. Whenever anyone in the blogosphere decides to blow a poison dart your way, Google is happy to deliver the news, along with the more positive mentions, of course.  Most of my stinging darts come from skeptics. Over the years I’ve found that ill-tempered guardians of scientific truth can’t abide speculative thinking. And as the renowned Richard Dawkins has proved, they are also very annoyed by a nuisance named God. (more…)

India Comes to the White House, All At Once

I never expected to see so many faces of modern India as I saw Tuesday night. The White House’s state dinner, its first of the new administration, honored Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. It was every sequin and silk cravat a glittering and sumptuous affair, as the media has made it out to be, Yet in the midst of it all I sensed the first sprouts of a new level of understanding and partnership between India and the United States, something not achieved in all the ceremony of the President’s China visit. There, the smiles of the Chinese were backed by ruthless self-interest. Here one felt a basis of true warmth. (more…)

San Francisco Chronicle: Sarah Palin — Fooling None of the People All of the Time

Last fall it seemed as if Sarah Palin would light a fuse and cause a social explosion. Behind her beauty-pageant smile lurked the shadow, the dark side of human nature. Her tactic of appealing to the worst impulses of the electorate had a long history in the Republican Party. Indeed, Palin inherited the selfish, mean-spirited values of another politician with a gleaming smile, Ronald Reagan.

(more…)