By now, we all know the Cliff Notes version of American’s founding: Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the colonists defeated the British at Yorktown and Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Adams and Franklin wrote the Constitution, which the 13 colonies/states ratified enthusiastically. As an antidote to those cliché histories, I read a couple of good books […]
For the last eight years we lived in St. Louis, we had rooftop solar. Ameren paid half the cost, and we got a 30% tax write-off on the rest. The 22 panels only exceeded consumption for a couple months a year. The total savings didn’t pay off the investment. No matter, we did our part […]
Americans, once members of a proudly literate society, read much less than they used to. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Only 38 percent read a […]
You probably have read about increasing reports of violent and potentially life-threatening diarrhea caused by cyclospora in multiple states. Cyclospora isn’t new, but the Trump administration stopped tracking it. “As of July 1, the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) program has reduced surveillance to just two pathogens: salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), […]
Green Mountain College in Poultney VT closed in 2019 due to insufficient funds. Now, a traveling Pentecostal preacher from Florida has announced on Facebook (from Disneyland) that he’s gonna make it into a Christian fundamentalist college in the least religious state in the nation. The whiskey magnate Raj Bhakta bought the campus in 2020 and […]
The U.S. abandoning NATO now doesn’t mean Europe will revert to a 1914 mindset; too many economic, cultural, and political threads have been sewn together in the post-WWII period for it to revert to that arrangement. But it is a distinctly American myopia to think Europe will stand pat, won’t evolve on its own as […]
“In 2017, Roy Moore was accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls, including one who was fourteen at the time of the alleged assault. Nine women came forward. The reporting was extensive and documented. The Republican Party of Alabama endorsed him anyway. The President of the United States endorsed him. He lost by less than […]
My postdoc mentor used to say “We don’t compare ourselves to the worst, we compare ourselves to the best.” Does that aphorism apply in politics? “POLITICO REPORTED ON MONDAY AFTERNOON that Graham Platner’s ex-girlfriend said he “forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections.” Immediately after the story […]
“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Well no shit, Sherlock. We want mandatory safety classes for people, not guns. We want more background checks of people, not guns. We want stricter negligence penalties imposed on people, not guns. If you’re stupid enough to think activists are pissed off at guns, you’re too stupid to […]
A heat dome that covered southern New England finally moved on yesterday. The highs touched 100°F, and with the humidity, the heat indices were five degrees higher. I have a feeling this won’t be the last of it. “The world’s oceans are the hottest on record for June, pushing past records set during the 2023–24 […]