A while back, I wrote a blog post that discussed how people in the past predicted the future, and I promised a sequel. Here it is, with another sequel to follow. Back in 1895, several prominent newspaper editors were asked to speculate on what newspapers would look like in the …
Congratulations, Joe Biden. New Census Bureau numbers show that a record 1.8 million illegal immigrants are living in the United States since you gained access to the White House. What does that mean? Well, it means we are seeing a surge in the ratio of foreign-born to native-born residents, reports …
Today, I am reposting a commentary I published a while back about socialism. As we rush toward the 2022 midterm elections, I can only hope that the infatuation some Americans have for the failed system called socialism has subsided. We shall see. Please read on. We are hearing a lot …
At the request of a faithful follower, today I am re-posting a column that appeared a while back in The Economist, one of the U.K.’s most prestigious magazines. Written by an unnamed foreign correspondent, it takes a sardonic and self-effacing view of foreign correspondents by suggesting that Harry Flashman, Victorian …
And now for something completely different. When I was teaching journalism at the University of Illinois, I used to get on students for using, or I should say, misusing words—especially slang or words that have no business being in anybody’s vocabulary—especially university students. I created a list of those words …
Sometimes a picture or a meme can express our feelings better than words. Sometimes it takes both images and words. Here then, are a few images and words that I will wager express what a lot of us are feeling these days of $7 per gallon gas (at least here …
Because a portion of my blog is dedicated to writing, from time to time, I like to post about the English language. So join me for a few English grammar lessons. Not to worry. We aren’t going to diagram sentences here. Do you remember doing that in elementary and middle …
Let’s think a bit about laws and how they impact our lives. First, there are laws made by human beings. Those laws are often ignored and broken. Then there are laws of predictable constants, laws of physics, and laws of nature. These are essentially immutable. But there are also laws …
The following column appeared in my local newspaper a while back. It is well-written and thought-provoking—two areas that I like to focus on in my blog, so I am sharing it with you today. The author is Joel Kotkin, executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. You can …
The other day a front-page story in the New York Times grabbed my attention like few others. The headline read: “At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?.” The answer, readers learned, was not the students but the award-winning professor who taught the class. To quote the …