Do you remember the telephone game? Back in first or second grade, the teacher, desperate for a way to kill off a midwinter afternoon, would line us all up and whisper a story into the ear of the child at the head of the line. The story would slowly pass down the line and the […]
It was October 17, 1985 and I was a young newspaper reporter sitting in a room full of dairy farmers at the Grange Hall in Almond, New York. A couple of professors were down from Cornell University for Biotechnology Day. They were going to explain the latest dairy wonder drug, bovine somatotropin, or bovine growth […]
Thomas Jefferson’s sex life was in the newspapers again last week. The New York Times ran a piece in which Mr. Jefferson’s stalwarts said they had reviewed the recent DNA evidence and had profound doubts as to whether Mr. J did indeed have a sexual relationship and children with Sally Hemings, whom he owned. History, […]
Among other things, the beginning of the year is an appropriate time to do some counting, to make an assessment – are we doing better or worse than we were at this time last year? A month ago, a small story in the New York Times about AIDS fit that category. AIDS is not the […]
Car Trouble
This week, I’ve got car trouble. Not your usual kind of car trouble, but late 90s, end-of-the-millennium, fin de siecle, progressive commentator car trouble. I’ve got a problem with my electric car. I don’t have one. That’s my problem. I know electric cars are a joke just about everywhere but A) – Southern California, where […]