So, how are we holding up? Are you dug in? Working out of the house? Trying to be productive while watching the kids? Do you provide an essential service and have to brave the threat of illness head-on? Or are you in a high-risk group and even more wary of exposure than the rest of us?...

This week, my wife mentioned that a coworker of hers uses the word “normalcy” when speculating about the prospect of someday ending our current closure of schools, restaurants, churches and other social gatherings. Although the grammatical construction is a bit suspect, the word couldn’t possibly be more appropriate for our times...

I was reminded this week of an old saying that is known alternately as the “Chinese Curse” or sometimes, the “Chamberlain Curse.” As the Chinese Curse, it is believed to be an English translation of an expression found in Chinese literature dating back to the 17th century. ...

Well, folks, we have had another busy week. Consequently, there are a few housekeeping items to be addressed. I should begin with an apology to my friends in the aviation community. As you are aware, the 737 Max is Boeing’s problematic “stretch” airliner. The term, “Supermax,” on the other hand, is a slang term for a super-maximum security prison. The 737 Supermax that I so cleverly referenced in last week’s article is, as they say, “not a thing.”...

Well folks, it’s been quite a week. The contradictions and surprises just keep coming. Last week ended with Joe Biden on the ropes and predictions that Bernie Sanders would sweep Super Tuesday. That didn’t happen. As expected, Biden had a good showing in South Carolina, but he got to work cutting deals with Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to drop out and endorse him. ...

In the German language, there is a wonderful word that, until recently, I thought had no equivalent in English. “Schadenfreude” (shaa·duhn·froy·duh) is described in the Oxford dictionary as “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune.” As it turns out, we do have an English equivalent in “epicaricacy,” but that’s just not as catchy. ...

This week, the Boy Scouts of America filed a Chapter 11 petition in the Delaware bankruptcy court under the saddest of circumstances. The bankruptcy applies to the national organization and not to local councils, and although official statements from the organization insist that they intend to continue operations, national recruitment numbers have been down...

I haven’t been feeling well this week, so I’ll keep this one short. This article will come out on Valentine’s day, and I want to seize the opportunity to say a few things that need to be said. The holiday, in theory, is named for a third-century Roman priest who distinguished himself by ministering to persecuted Christians. He is remembered for paying a significant price for that political mischoice, was sainted, and a feast day was established in his name...

Hey folks. It’s been a busy week. We had the Superbowl on Sunday, the Iowa Primary on Monday, the State of the Union on Tuesday and the impeachment vote on Wednesday. It’s really too much material to work with, so instead, I would like to address something that our friend Dick Trail addressed in these pages on Tuesday...

There has been much discussion in the business press lately about “Fintech,” or the rapidly emerging financial technology sector. Fintech describes a broad, loosely defined spectrum of financial services, all of which are offered over the Internet. Basic banking services like loans, credit, and debit card accounts and peer-to-peer point-of-sale payment processing are offered along with traditional ancillaries like insurance products, brokerage accounts, and advisors. ...

I have an awkward relationship with social media. On one hand, it helps me stay in contact with friends and family from different parts of the world, and from other times of my life. At the same time, I am convinced that social media doesn’t always bring out the best of us. ...

Vaping: On December 20 of last year, the minimum legal age to buy and use tobacco products, by smoking, chewing or using one the newer e-cigarette vapor products, was raised from 18 to 21 by the US Congress and signed into law. The popular reaction on social media was generally negative. ...

Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who was the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Truman administration once famously said that “Politics stops at the water’s edge.” If recent events are any indication, those words deserve to be inscribed on the side of a mountain, right next to bigfoot and the Easter Bunny...

As much as we might expect a lull in the news cycle during the holidays, it’s been a tough week. An incursion into our embassy in Iraq, a rash of antisemitic attacks in New York and a thwarted mass shooting in Texas have still failed to drown out continued bickering in the impeachment saga. The light spot in the news has been the unexplained drone show taking place in the midwest, but now that’s beginning to upset people too...

So, everyone reading this article must fit into one of two options: Either you accept the doomsday predictions of Greta Thunberg and Al Gore, or you are a “climate denier.” Those are your choices. I’ll wait…. Well, I don’t care for those options. First, I believe that the climate is changing. The NOAA Global Climate Report for 2019 tells us that the ten warmest years on record have taken place since `1998, and thus far this century, our average surface temperatures are up 1.7 degrees from that of the 20th century. As government bureaucracies go, I like NOAA. I trust them, so yes, I agree that as a general rule, the climate is warming. I think that the second criterion for being a “denier” is a belief that human activity can’t affect climate. I’m no climatologist, but I have spent hot summer nights in both the city and in the country, and I know that concrete and asphalt retain heat, which makes the cities a few degrees warmer. If we humans are good at anything, it’s pouring concrete, so based on that alone I would conclude that we have made at least some impact on climate. Please scratch me off on your denier list. Does that make me a Green New Deal guy? Let’s hope not. I prefer “Open Minded Skeptic.” When Al Gore released his slideshow movie back in 2006, I watched it as any dutiful citizen should, and I took notice of the slide which graphed evidence of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) in the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution against rising temperatures. I’m an old econ student and got it immediately. Carbon went up the graph at a 45-degree angle, and so did the temperature. It doesn’t get more clear cut than that, right? Anyone who managed to sleep through sixth-grade science class and escape with a passing grade knows that correlation is not cause. Suntan lotion sales peak in the months of June, July and August. So do shark attacks. Think about it. As an old ham radio guy, I am also aware that the sun works on 11-year cycles of peaks and valleys, and throws fits from time to time. Mr. Gore’s graph didn't mention the sun. Nor did it consider seismic activity (remember that hot ball of molten metal that we are all standing on?). The graph didn’t complicate things. It was just two jagged lines side by side. Not too hard for us to figure out. Mr. Gore’s graph left out a few other things that I think I understand, like the jet stream, ocean currents and moving fault lines He also left out some stuff that I wouldn’t begin to understand. Are you aware that Wichita Eisenhower airport changed its runway designation because of a shift in magnetic north? You are probably aware that the moon’s gravity influences tides, but did you know that it is moving 3.78 cm away from us every year? I was a kid in the 1970s. I can remember when folks used to toss fast food trash out of moving cars without much thought. Then we had this great, iconic television commercial featuring a native American with a teardrop leaking down his cheek. The reference was to fast food trash, but the real victim was cigarette butts. Until then, cigarette butts were recognized as nature’s bounty; an excusable but a necessary evil. Not trash, just something we step over without notice (sort of like dryer sheets in my house). For the environmentalist movement overall, I would say this: There is a famous line in the movie “Jerry Maguire” where Rene Zellwigger looks at Tom Cruise and says, “You had me at Hello.” Well folks, you had me at clean water and clean air. You didn’t need to invent a crisis to get me on your side.. I don’t need a contrived emergency to motivate me. Let’s put in INCENTIVES to further develop renewable energies to a point where they are economically competitive without penalizing currently successful business models. I have never played with wind power. I helped my son with a science fair project where we split water into hydrogen on a small scale. That was cool, but I have had the privilege of sitting at a campsite in a national park and listening to the radio on solar power. That’s cool. That’s magic. I did that 30 years ago. We aren’t ready to scale renewable fuels up yet. We just aren’t there yet, but someday we will be. Until then, I think it’s in our best interest to offer tax advantages to those who wish to research and develop renewable fuels, but penalizing existing successful and necessary business models is ridiculous. Sorry, Al and Greta. I’m no climatologist, but I damned well know a political agenda when I see one. I care about the environment, but I’m not going to allow you to define what that means to me

This week, the U.S. House and Senate passed a bipartisan bill and sent it to the President for signature. I could stop right there and we would have the proverbial “man bites dog” story, but I’ll continue. The “2020 National Defense Authorization Act” covers appropriations you might expect, like ships and aircraft, construction costs, operating expenses, military personnel, and healthcare. ...

I once made the mistake of referring to my political views in a social media post as being “centrist.” That was a mistake I won’t make again. Centrist is, I now know, not a nice word. According to my peers, a centrist is a wishy-washy invertebrate; an indecisive person without purpose; a weak cup of coffee who wishes to please everyone. In short, centrists are not well regarded...

As Christmas nears, and we prepare for the flurry of activity that surrounds it, a couple of random, holiday thoughts come to mind. Gift giving is both a joy and a burden. In some cases, budgetary restraints prevent us from giving as much as we would like and at other times, we find that the loved ones we value the most want for nothing. Sometimes, the selection of an appropriate gift at any price can present a challenge...

Santa Clarita, Duncan, Oklahoma, Fresno…. With several dead, and hurting, law enforcement officials are still in the process of unfolding the why and the how. So far, speculation supports crimes of passion, possible gang activity and the angst of a grieving teenager. ...