As an educator, I am a firm believer in supporting local school districts. As an ex-collegiate athlete, I see the positive benefits that school athletic programs bring to districts, players, and even students who do not participate in sports but have a reason to be excited about their schools. Many of us are also concerned that we’ve gotten our priorities mixed up on these issues. A case in point appeared i ...

Good or bad, we have lost Halloween. Yes, we’re still buying candy by the bushels, but from what I hear most people are hoping that few kids will show up at their doors so that they can have the treats to themselves. I used to do the same thing – buy the stuff I liked. As I got to the bottom of the candy bowl I would skimp on the handouts, hoping there would be one last KitKat or Reese’s Peanut Buttercup fo ...

I wonder if anyone still gets surprised when they hear about get-rich-quick schemes such as those pulled off by Bernard Madoff and Tom Petters. Junk bonds, the S&L scandal, dot.coms, pyramid schemes, etc. These newly discovered Ponzi schemes are just a continuation of greed in the US (and, of course, we’re not the only country with these periodic epidemics – or is it a global pandemic?). Surveys show th ...

The dogs got me up at 5 a.m. this morning. They obviously don’t read the newspapers, or they would’ve stayed in bed. Here’s the news that greeted many of us as we started the weekend. Around a thousand flu deaths this year, and it’s not even November (and no discussion that factors such as poverty and overcrowding play a major part in the spread and virulence of diseases such as influenza). President Obama ...

It’s nice to know that as we enter the Twenty-First century that we’re returning to a simpler way of life. Back to a place when rats were allowed to run amok spreading diseases, Popes led armies into battle to prove that one could truly love thy neighbor, men were simply men, and women were simply women. This is so much better than what we had around the end of the Twentieth century. We still had things to ...

I recently saw a political cartoon that portrayed President Obama making a statement on television that he had failed to stop a meteor from rocketing towards earth and that we would all be vaporized. At the end of the bar was a white person with a "Right Winger" t-shirt cheering another failure of the Obama Administration. This was on the same day in which a report stated that a Louisiana Justice of the Pea ...

I used to think that Vitriol was some kind of heart or arthritis medicine. A recent report from Yahoo! stated that vitriol was being used to sell politics, and I thought since many of our politicians in DC were old that this was helping them stay at their jobs -- ease the pain in their joints, keep things up in the air, help keep the ol' thumper ticking. Whatever it took to keep them at making our country a ...

Unfortunately, I like to eat.  I mean, I really, really like to eat.  And, I like to eat some of the stuff that everyone tells you is not good for the body, soul, mind, or planet.  I'm changing my ways, or at least trying to, partly because the last few years I've spent looking at how food risks are communicated to the public.  First, let me assure you that our food supply in the US is not bad. Yes, there a ...

As a new guest blogger, I thought it might be helpful to provide a brief background on myself before I start writing pieces that are more substantial. Jacqueline Kaltz, a Humanities, Pre-Law student at Michigan State will be joining me from time to time. I thought it might best to start with some of my own assumptions about what makes life worth living. As someone trained to both use and despise the scienti ...