Recently the health insurance company Aetna announced that starting in 2017 it would no longer be selling policies through the Affordable Care Act exchanges in several states because it was losing too much money. Curiously, though, one of those states … Continue reading
Pediatrician and medical school professor Aaron Carroll discusses the causes of high infant mortality in the United States relative to other developed countries. Some proposed explanations don’t appear to be supported by research. For example, it doesn’t seem to be … Continue reading
To many people it seems self-evident that the purpose of a primary election (or caucus) is to let the members of a political party choose their party’s nominees. If so, it pretty directly follows that primaries ought to be closed … Continue reading
This election season there has been some discussion of open versus closed primary elections, with a movement among conservative Republicans in favor of closed primaries and among progressive Democrats (notably Sanders supporters) for open ones. This got me curious about … Continue reading
George Manbiot’s succinct August 3 piece in The Guardian takes note of how well-to-do fossil fuel interests continue to promote misinformation about global warming in news coverage. As most of us are well aware, last year was the warmest ever … Continue reading
The parts compose the whole. The whole comprises its parts. That’s a useful pair of words, but unfortunately “comprise” has come to be used as a sort of redundant synonym for “compose.” In fact, nowadays one probably encounters the verb … Continue reading
It doesn’t seem that it’s been as long as it has since I last posted here. As I mentioned some time ago I’m dealing with a serious illness in my family, and that’s taking up a lot of my time. … Continue reading
A lot of people don’t especially care about grammar, usage, and style as long as they get their message across. If you’re one of them, just ignore me when I go off on the subject. A lot of this stuff … Continue reading
A few weeks a couple of friends of mine asked me for some investment advice about their retirement savings, and if I’d known about this video I would have just told them to watch it. I highly recommend it. Link: … Continue reading
In the following very short video American writer John Green shows a little of what life is like for young people in the Zaatri refugee camp on an arid plain in northern Jordan near the Syrian border. The camp was … Continue reading