Katy Perry's aborted Sesame Street appearance launched a short-lived kerfuffle, but offers a neat allegory for explaining the idiocy of the current political climate. Jon Cummings considers the merits of...
Nothing makes clear the sorry state of civics education in the United States than all of the kerfuffle over mosques and Korans. Here’s all you need to know: If it...
It is a muggy, overcast summer day, the kind of unsettled New Jersey weather that precludes long distance trips. Once, these were the kinds of days local shop owners dreamed...
I admit it. I’m one of the people who loved Liz Phair in the early days and who is confused by the choices she has made. It’s an old and...
U.S. airports will soon be selling more alcohol to raise revenue for cash-strapped local governments, while airlines continue to charge fees for checked baggage and other services. Investigative reporter Robert...
Now is the summer of our discontent … arriving on the heels of a spring, winter, autumn and previous summer that roiled in similar fashion. Americans, it seems, have declared...
The Chicago Blackhawks are one of the great sports turnaround stories. Yeah, they won the Stanley Cup, and we’re all happy about that here in Chicago, but the big story...
Although I have given birth, I don’t particularly like being identified as a mother. Even worse, I hate being called “a mom” by anyone other than my son, because that...
People who give personal finance advice tend to give the same advice over and over. That’s because it works. And one of the most basic ways to start getting a...
On Tuesday CNN’s Larry King announced that he’ll end his 25-year-old talk show this fall, having been beaten consistently in the ratings the past year by his 9 PM cable-news...
Every year Hollywood gives us at least one movie where our world is greeted, confronted or otherwise engaged with forces not of our earth. It’s a fascinating plot device even...
On May 12 the American Civil Liberties Union filed two free-speech lawsuits in Scranton, Pennsylvania, defending citizens who were charged with using profanity by local police. Seven days later CBS...
Americans' loathing for politicians has reached historic levels -- and as Jon Cummings discovered, a squalid local race in one California county justifies their disdain....
Earlier today I received the following press release in an e-mail attachment. It was also posted on the Vatican’s website before mysteriously vanishing just an hour later. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE...
Whenever there’s a corporate scandal, there is going to be an example of ridiculous excess. You can count on it. This time, the excess came from Washington Mutual, you mortgage...
Happy Tax Day! A special shout-out to those of you who are operating under the delusion that your taxes have gone up this year – a belief shared by a...
Over the weekend, the president of Poland died in a plane crash that also killed many of the top officials of the Polish government, in a tragedy seemingly borrowed from...
I am tired of all discussions about diet and exercise. Part of the problem for me is that the math is so incredibly imprecise. We are told over and over...
Three weeks ago the New York Times reported that Mattel is producing Ken and Barbie dolls based on four characters from the hit TV series Mad Men to promote the...
A video that always makes me happy, and violates Viacom’s copyright:
YouTube is taking another round of fire in the ongoing debate about...A couple of extraordinary things happened this past week. One was a big f’ing deal indeed, but the other was a bit more personal. As Sunday night’s Democratic victory on...
Let’s just come right out and say it: most families do not do as good a job as they could with their finances. So why do we hold them (i.e.,...
We’re supposedly just three days away from the final House votes on health care, and still nobody’s sure how it’s going to go. If you listen to Fox News, there’s...
Sick of springing forward and falling back? Ann Logue breaks down the numbers and says Daylight Savings Time is worse than just an inconvenience....
We ’80s kids don’t have a lot to hang on to, so far as social achievements go. It was a difficult decade to grab a hold of. We had pop...
The March issue of The Atlantic has a thoroughly depressing article about how employment might not pick up when the economy recovers. As if that wasn’t enough to send you...
On Saturday, another devastating earthquake hit, in Chile, and that gives us another chance to look at some of the numbers associated with earthquakes and rebuilding. The Richter scale, used...
A recently published report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 26 percent of “millennials,” or young people born after 1980, claim they have no religious...
Cheap Trick, the pride of Rockford, has a new CD out called The Latest. It’s been released through Tunecore , a service that makes it easy for bands to sell...
The most thrilling, and also the most ridiculous, presidential speech of modern times came not from an actual president, but from a fake one. Michael Douglas’ off-the-cuff remarks at the...