Breaking News

An immodest Proposal for Trump

You may wonder why President Donald Trump is doing everything he can, day by day, to destroy faith in democracy in little and large ways, on the job day and night. I have an answer that will presently be revealed. It involves a modest proposal. Here in the capital, our hearts are hurting ...

Republicans must shine the light of freedom to stop the socialist scourge

How can anyone escape the irony that in this year, as we celebrate 250 years since the signing of the American Declaration of Independence, the principles of that declaration are being widely challenged? When Americans should be basking in the light of our hard-fought-for freedoms, standing ...

“You may also like”—algorithms and addiction

Some of you are digital subscribers of The Alpena News and are reading this column on your cell phone. Imagine that! You can read your hometown newspaper while you are out of the county or country! Technology is truly something! This week, I Facetimed a friend in Australia. Not only did I ...

What bank ATMs teach us about AI

New inventions and technologies, from the lightbulb to the farm tractor to the automobile to the laptop computer to Uber drivers, cause serious job market disruptions. They also cause a backlash, as horse and buggy operators, cab drivers, video rental stores and typewriter makers inevitably predicted chaos and job losses. Artificial intelligence will make life much better and healthier for most people, but it will bring massive disruptions too. What will happen to the people whose livelihoods are jeopardized by what ChatGPT or Claude can do faster, cheaper and better? It is a fair ...

Class act: A president who knew right from wrong

"Don't it always seem to go," Joni Mitchell wrote decades ago, "that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?" Last week's Senate passage of legislation authorizing new sanctions against Vladimir Putin's Russia was much-ballyhooed, but much ado about little: The most meaningful ...

No price too high for evading back-to-school shopping

In the pantheon of parental duties, shopping for school supplies stands alone. At the tripart crossroads of "least enjoyable," "most expensive" and "least negotiable," it is an intrinsic part of life in late summer, and it has been since I was a kid in the Cretaceous era. I remember it much ...