High on most checklists for ensuring a long and healthy life is being married. Marriage is said to bestow protective health benefits, such as low blood pressure and better cholesterol numbers. But does putting a ring on it confer the same well-being to all married couples or even most? No, according to a recent study […]
Froma Harrop
Posted inOp-Eds
Let’s have a little respect for Bernie Sanders
Hardly a week goes by without some demand for an apology populating my inbox. I have never apologized for two reasons: The usual one is that I’m not sorry. The other is that calls for an apology have become an irritating tactic in American political discourse, a kind of bullying. That doesn’t mean I haven’t […]
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Terrorists don’t walk around wearing signs
Terrorism is not going away. We saw that in the closing of the Los Angeles schools after what was deemed a “credible” threat. The threat turned out to be not real, but with the country under heightened alarm, local authorities have become hyper-vigilant. That was 650,000 students sent or kept home. When a good piece […]
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Climate agreement brings a measure of hope
“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Those were Winston Churchill’s words of battle-weary comfort when World War II started decisively shifting in the Allies’ favor. They could also be applied to the climate accord just reached in Paris […]
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Democrats could pick off Trump supporters
They support activist government. They’re not socially conservative. They resent big money in politics. And if you administered a truth serum, they would probably say nice things about Obamacare. These are blue-collar supporters of Donald Trump. Democrats would do well to ask themselves, “Why aren’t some of them ours?” I say “some” because a good […]
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Stop tying terrorist attacks to unrelated issues
Traumatic national events often lead promoters of various causes to attempt a product tie-in. The terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, was no exception. The agendas may be worthy of support, but trying to Scotch-tape them onto only vaguely related circumstances comes off as phony. This is done across the political spectrum, but in the […]
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Pfizer has prescription to counter feds
It’s one thing for Pfizer to renounce its U.S. citizenship, moving its official residence to Dublin, Ireland, as a tax dodge — all the while continuing to run the business in the United States. That disgusting tactic happens to be disgustingly legal, thanks to our indolent Congress and its failure to fix the corporate tax […]
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Mall-ification of America made shopping a bore
First there was “Black Friday.” Then there was “Cyber Monday.” The holiday shopping markers plod through the calendar like a procession of Groundhog Days. The big difference is that Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog sometimes offers surprise. Will he see his shadow this year or bite his handler? The latest retailing news predictably relates the change […]
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Are you happy, and how would you know?
Like many others, I can’t resist academic studies on happiness. They often come up with persuasive reasons some seem to be happier than others. I’m always on the lookout for pointers. That said, there’s no happy-mometer to push under someone’s tongue to measure contentment with scientific confidence. So some skepticism is warranted. Of course, the […]
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A tale of two rerrors: Paris and New York
Like most people, I’m thinking of the terrorist trauma in Paris, though with a somewhat different perspective. I was in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and my thoughts go in this direction: What is the future of cities in which psychopaths have killed crowds of bystanders? In New York, the future as we’ve known […]