ArcaMax

"How many people said the word 'cigarettes' today?" I asked my wife, Deborah.

"Or 'book of matches,'" she said.

We were trying to figure out how America ended up with a net loss in words spoken.

A serious magazine called "Perspectives on Psychological Science" says we speak 28% fewer words every day. According to these folks, in 2005, we ...Read more

What is the death count under Donald Trump? We're not talking about loss of life in his war with Iran. We're not talking about natural deaths by aging or unpreventable diseases. We mean Americans who die because they refuse safe vaccines that Trump or his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., questions or discourages.

A recent occurrence ...Read more

Gavin Newsom is a case study of why not to run for president. For starters, his wife is the target of a Justice Department investigation, which he claims, with reason, is entirely political. And now his personal life is coming under the microscope.

The latest has to do with an affair he had 20 years ago that was a colossal exercise in bad ...Read more

Does becoming a billionaire turn one into an insufferable jerk, or is that an innate quality they bring to the position?

Big-name billionaires -- Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg -- literally flaunt their irrepressible jerkism, but the disease seems to inflict their entire class of uber-rich corporate royals. Its telltale symptoms are not their ...Read more

Researcher Katie Edwards has dedicated her career to reducing violence among LGBTQ+ and Indigenous youth, building programs that help young people feel safe and supported. Josefina Navar, deputy director of HOPE Fair Housing, works to help families across Illinois access safe and stable housing. Adam Odsess-Rubin helped found the National ...Read more

At my age, I shouldn't care so much whether the Boston Red Sox win or lose, let alone permit my daily mood to rise or fall accordingly.

It's only a game. It's supposed to be a pastime (according to AI, something that "helps make the hours pass pleasantly when you are not working"), not an obsession. There are 162 games a year and letting your...Read more

The Democratic Socialists of America use people of color as fashion accessories. Sure, they put black or brown faces on ballots, and they talk a big game about racism. But black and brown voters are not choosing their candidates. The DSA national membership chooses, and it is 85% white.

Look at the crowds. In October 2019, Reps. Alexandria ...Read more

"Ending the Backlash on LGBTQI+ Issues" is the title of the report out this week from the respected liberal think tank The Center for American Progress. As you might expect, the Center report urges Democrats to stand firm in supporting transgender soldiers and gender-transition care. But when it comes to girls' sports, it's not what you think....Read more

If Republicans get their way, McCarthyism will be back -- and here to stay.

Leading the race to the soggiest pits of ethical crud, as usual, President Donald Trump repeatedly calls Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated primary winners "hardcore, godless communists" after DSAers swept the New York elections last month.

Ideologically, ...Read more

My son was furious when I picked him up from day camp, slamming the door when he got in the car. He had been downgraded from a "yellow" swimmer to a "red" swimmer. He hadn't forgotten how to swim. The YMCA had simply changed its policy.

My son loves to swim. He likes donning goggles and swimming underwater, not to mention perfecting his ...Read more

My cat, Jack the Cat, is looking a little worn.

He's 11 years old, and he's diabetic, and he was getting two shots of insulin a day, but he went into remission and there was great joy in the house.

Still, we keep an eye on him. In the last few weeks, he's had a glucose monitor attached to him twice and had blood drawn. Because of this, he ...Read more

"A Face in the Crowd" is the prophetic 1957 movie about a charismatic drifter "discovered" in an Arkansas jail. The face belongs to "Lonesome" Rhodes, a scoundrel whose folksy act catapults him to national prominence. "Lonesome" (Andy Griffith) abuses women, but the crowd only sees a lovable spinner of down-home yarns. He deflates after ...Read more

So far, the number is $37.5 billion. That's how much we've spent so far on the war against Iran.

What have we got to show for it, other than lost American lives?

What could we do with that money at home?

I'm not even up to those questions yet, because $37.5 is just the start of the story. The administration has also requested up to $90 ...Read more

Since the Fourth of July celebration of the nation's 250 years was a bust, let's look at the next anniversary, noting when a Puritan governor declared that we would be as "a city upon a hill" in 1630.

Almost 400 years later, in our summer of desperation, that's a quaint notion.

Massachusetts Bay Colony leader John Winthrop reached for a ...Read more

Executives climbing the corporate ladder to the top seem to lose IQ the higher up they get.

That might explain why John Deere's top corporate bosses have imposed an astonishingly stupid policy on America's farmers. For years, they've decreed that while a farmer "technically owns" a tractor or other John Deere product, the owner is prohibited ...Read more

Time-honored wisdom holds that if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. The explosion of venom, vitriol, vandalism and violence against Jews since Israel was attacked by genocidal killers on Oct. 7, 2023, begs the question: Is what certainly looks like anti-Semitism something other than anti-Semitism? ...Read more