Author: Ryan Boyd
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The Disgust Response
When it comes to food, I don’t use the word “disgusting” very much. People like what they like — you might personally dislike something, but like… that doesn’t mean that it’s objectively gross or weird. It just isn’t your preference. But there was one comestible that I used to think was absolutely vile: honey mustard sauce. You…
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Laughter
“Comedy is a very powerful component of life. It has the most to say about the human condition because if you laugh you can get by. You can struggle when things are bad if you have a sense of humor. Laughter is a protest scream against death, against the long goodbye.” Mel Brooks, All About…
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The Bedrock of Human Experience
“Although these points of view do reflect the prevailing empirical climate of our times, they fail to express more than a small part of the value of personal documents for social science. Properly used, such documents anchor a discipline in the bedrock of human experience, make the most of the predilective value of the single…
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On Being a Peer Reviewer, and on Being a Semi-sentient Potato-like Creature from the 6th Dimension
In science, we virtually never deal in absolutes. Especially in Psychology and the social sciences, we are exceedingly careful to acknowledge that virtually every aspect of the mind, mental life, and the human condition is insanely multi-determined, and there is almost never a one-to-one correspondence between Thing A and Thing B. With that context, I…
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All Aboard the Gravy Train
This recipe may seem way less exciting than the vegan pumpkin pie recipe. Like… it’s just gravy, right? Even a so-so gravy is still gravy. Gravy is a sidekick that nobody pays attention to. Gravy, my friends, is never the star. Heck, if the meal is done nicely, you might even skip the gravy altogether. Gravy… who…