I’ve always been curious about how things work and why they sometimes don’t work the way we expect.

That curiosity has taken me through economics and finance, environmental and civic work, and, more recently, deeper explorations of science, probability, uncertainty, and the natural world. Along the way, I’ve become especially interested in the patterns that connect seemingly unrelated things.

That’s largely what I write about here.

My essays often begin with something ordinary a decision, an observation, a story, or a question and follow it wherever it leads; sometimes that means statistics or economics and other times it might be physics, nature, or human behavior. And sometimes it means discovering that what seemed obvious at the beginning wasn’t quite right.

I spent much of my professional life in finance and retirement education and several decades involved in civic and environmental work in the Kansas City area. These days, I’m also continuing my science education and enjoying the experience of being a student again.

I don’t write because I have all the answers. I write because I enjoy the process of figuring things out and because the most interesting questions usually lead to another question.