About

I’m a freelance journalist based in Portland, Oregon. (B.A.? New York University, just like Adam Sandler.) I’ve written for the Guardian (UK), Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Budget Travel, the Village Voice, the Oregonian, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Believer, and the Associated Press. A feature I wrote on video game testing was Seattle Weekly‘s most popular story of 2007 and recently was named Best Science/Health Story by the Northwest Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The New York Times quoted an article I wrote for Psychology Today.

This blog uses a variety of disciplines to discuss luck.
•Statistically, philosophically speaking: what is it?
•How does culture influence it?
•Does believing in it affect our behavior?
•Isn’t the whole concept of luck just an urban legend invented by Leprechauns to distract us from their destructive drinking binges?
•Isn’t one person’s “What a goal! What talent!” just another’s “He just got lucky”?
•Why do the douchebags always get the corner offices? (and other cognitive biases)
•What kind of friends should an entrepreneur have?

Because organizations, like the New York Yankees or Apple, can be lucky, we know that there’s more to luck than mere psychology. So there we go. Feel free to email me at any time.