The title of this blog says it all.   On Facebook, our data doesn’t belong to us.  Ditto our “authorial rights” according to information scientist, Amelia Acker at the University of Texas at Austin.  (“Preservations Acts,” by Nora Caplan-Bricker Harper’s Magazine, Dec.

One of my computer gurus ran into trouble with his machine recently.  For two days, he bent over it, wondering what went wrong inside its “little black box.”  He finally fixed the problem, but  isn’t certain why it occurred.  I shouldn’t laugh because I depend on this guy�

The beginning of a new year is a good time to take stock of the human race.  Frankly, I’m surprised we’re still around, having been in one conflict or another for the past 2000 years.   Beyond that, we spend a good deal of time thinking about money and are willing to gut the pl

The woman was screaming into the phone.  “How about I tell you what’s under…  my sink and in my medicine cabinet and you tell me how to use it.” (“Alias Jane,” by Cindy Wolfe Boynton, MS, Fall, 2018, pg. 39.) She needed an abortion and she needed it soon.  The year was

Here’s a surprising comment I discovered in a magazine, recently. “Research across industries shows that while there’s a modest correlation between grades and job performance the first year out of college, after a few years, the difference is ‘trivial’” (“Straight A’s

In my freshman year in college, I discovered The Communist Manifesto was on my reading list.  After years of hearing the book was pure evil, I gasped.  A few pages into the material, however, and  I learned what I’d been told was nonsense. What’s wrong comaraderie?  Coca-Cola

A few days before Christmas, I sat down to lunch with a friend of many years who is religious.  He’s aware I’m an atheist, but that gives piquancy to our conversations.   As we were sitting amidst holiday decorations, he seemed unable to refrain from saying, “I don’t know h

Every holiday, I shop for children’s toys. I have no off-spring and, therefore, no grandchildren. I shop because my mother started the tradition years ago and she expects me to continue it. So, the day after Thanksgiving I found myself browsing through a local store, wandering past