A significant number of people are getting sick from a parasite that is likely linked to a food or water source. Yuck. I know I want no part of that. But it raises a bigger question: How do we know what information—and which sources—we can trust? It seems to be getting harder to separate ...
I've decided to keep writing this column. A few weeks ago, I convinced myself that it was time to quit; walk away from the world of writing and publishing. Not because writing stopped bringing me joy. No, writing helps keep me steady, my mind exercised. It was the publishing part that was ...
The French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr knew what he was talking about when, in 1849, he coined the phrase "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." (The more things change, the more they remain the same.) It has been repeated and attributed to different people, but he appears to have ...
The war with Iran that never really ended is back on. Like everybody else, including the Trump administration and the Iranian regime, I have no idea how it will end. But it eventually will, and how it will be remembered will matter enormously. Politics is about many things, but whether you ...
"I cannot tell a lie," young George Washington supposedly told his father when asked if he'd cut down a cherry tree. That there was no tree and George never said those words hasn't impeded the myth that holds otherwise, popularized by one of Washington's early biographers. Ever since, ...
In 2023, for every public dollar spent on the education and care of a school-aged child in Michigan, only 23 cents were spent on a preschooler and just 8 cents were spent on an infant or toddler. This new data from the Center for Early Learning Funding Equity’s latest Shortchanged Project ...
