Suppose we ran out of antibiotics? Suppose penicillin suddenly disappeared from our pharmacies and hospitals? Suppose the pain suppressants we use for headaches and arthritis, blood pressure medications, and drugs used to treat everything from Alzheimer’s to depression were suddenly no longer available? In a September 19, 2019 report from NBC News, Rosemary Gibson, author of China Rx,
READ MOREThe Boy Scouts of America is filing for bankruptcy. A press release announced the move, citing the need to “equitably compensate victims who were harmed during their time in Scouting.” The statement refers, of course, to the many Scouts who were sexually abused as young boys. Seeking to rectify wrongs and move on in providing
READ MOREInvestors are still being fairly complacent about the novel coronavirus. After the number of new daily cases suddenly shot up to more than 15,000 on February 12 following more than a week of decline, there were some jitters in the markets. With Chinese authorities saying the increase was due to a decision to broaden the
READ MOREThere are many reasons why Indiana Jones became an iconic character after his debut in the 1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark, but one of them is because he is an archeologist and a historian. The contrast between the whip-wielding adventurer and his chosen profession made a beautiful irony, since the stereotype of the historian is
READ MORESocial Security, the primary retirement savings tool and biggest tax for millions of Americans, is a bad deal, critics contend. They argue that mandatory Social Security is a poor investment because it only provides an average annual income of some $17,000. This is a lousy return on the decades of tax payments, critics contend. They
READ MOREUntil Bernie Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1981, he had never held a steady job. Almost 40, he had been “virtually unemployed” his entire adult life. Those who knew Sanders before he was elected mayor say “he was always poor” and lived “just one step above hand to mouth.” Despite completing a
READ MOREIf you have kept abreast of the coronavirus outbreak in China, an influenza threatening to spread to other parts of the globe, you may be aware that some investigators who believed the virus came from a laboratory rather than a wet market were ridiculed for being anti-Chinese and conspiracy theorists. It now seems that events
READ MOREIt has become common to say that the United States in 2020 is more divided politically and culturally than at any other point in our national past. As a historian who has written and taught about the Civil War era for several decades, I know that current divisions pale in comparison to those of the
READ MOREJazz Jennings, star of the TLC reality show “I Am Jazz,” has been sharing her transition story from male to female since she was six years old. Now she is 19, bound for Harvard, and convalescing from last year’s “bottom surgery” – removal of the male bits. The sixth season of “I Am Jazz”, which
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