Columns

He was sitting outside his home on a tiny patio, wearing a fedora and smoking a cigar. He had a portable music player sitting beside him, and he looked as if he was enjoying the September sunshine about as much as anyone could.

As a teacher you get the occasional invitation from a student to attend one of their out-of-school activities. It might be an athletic event (I’d go sometimes) or a birthday party (I’d never go), maybe even a church play or something like that. Anyway, I’d try and go if it seemed important to the kid.

Giving credit where credit is due, former Vice President Al Gore wrote a book 13 years ago called “The Assault on Reason,” but it was mostly a commentary on President Bush’s policies related to the environment and the war in Iraq. More to the point of climate denial was his book written in 2006 called “An Inconvenient Truth,” for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

I had a lot of amazing experiences as a kid and have written about them on this site quite a bit. I was lucky enough to have a father, and several uncles, who were into sports and they took myself and my cousins to games all the time. We’d load up and head to Cincinnati to see the Reds, Bengals and Royals (the old NBA team), to Columbus to watch Ohio State basketball and football games, Columbus Checkers hockey games, and even make the journey to Cleveland for the occasional Browns or Indians game.

Inflation rates are one important indicator of the general health and condition of a country’s economy. Here in the U.S. there’s plenty of complaints about our current inflation but compared with other countries, remarkably, we are in a better place than most at 3.2%. Others?

Cookies! Yeah, I like oatmeal and chocolate chip and sugar, and … well, that’s not the kind of cookies I’m talking about this time. No, this time I’m talking about the cookies on your computer (or phone or tablet). What are they and why are they used? Are they dangerous?

Yeah, I know. Another old guy yammering about the old days. Well, it’s my site and I can yammer all I want. You ain’t the boss of me. I wrote about the pros and cons of technology in my critically acclaimed work “The Pros and Cons of Technology”, and a lot of what you’re about to read relates to that.

According to the Madill School of Journalism (MSJ) at Northwestern University, 2,500 local newspapers have gone under, about one-quarter of all local papers, since 2005.

Don’t let the shy look fool you.

There is a cryptic language in this world, mastered by practiced, glib and oftentimes spellbinding politicians. It’s often used to be covertly ambiguous, or to protect a politician from social backlash. George Orwell once said that the aim of political euphemisms is to protect the speaker from arousing undesirable emotions among voters. A lie for example can simply be dismissed as an “alternative truth.” America has no poor people, just “economically disadvantaged.” Human induced climate change doesn’t exist, it’s just “a natural cycle.”