Six contestants left for America’s new idol.  How’s that for a headline this week?  As the Today Show on NBC ran a report of the elimination countdown to American’s new “number one” amateur performer, the screen caption throughout the report blazed, “Idol Worship.”  How clever, but how true!  Except for you and me, of course.

Candle light vigils have become a way of American life, haven’t they?  Columbine, Oklahoma City, September 11, and now Virginia Tech.  And a grieving public that privately wonders when the insanity will ever end.  Anybody know?

What can we learn from “shock jock” Don Imus’ meltdown?  In case you were fasting from the news this week (which isn’t such a bad idea, come to think of it), you know the public furor over the racially and sexually derogatory remarks that nationally syndicated radio talk show host Don Imus made about the Rutgers University NCAA women’s basketball finalists, words unworthy of repetition.  Both CBS radio and MSNBC cab

Millions of bees mysteriously dead!  Something off the front page of the National Enquirer?  Hardly.  It’s a developing news story that spans the nation.  One Pennsylvania beekeeper lost 40 million bees this winter.  Fruit and vegetable growers from California (which produces 80% of the world’s almond supply) to Pennsylvania (which grows the fourth largest apple harvest in the nation) are extremely worried, because the survival of their blossoming crops depends on the

This past week Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow have put cancer into the headline consciousness of America. The wife of presidential candidate, John Edwards, and the president’s chief Whitehouse spokesman, in separate dramatic announcements of recurring cancer, bravely exposed their private battles for health and life to the public. And as a consequence they both have raised the level of our national conversation regarding this shared and dreaded enemy.

Ever wonder where Iceland got its name?  Having just returned from this small volcanic crag amidst the wind-swept north Atlantic (just south of the Artic Circle), I don’t wonder any more!  But did you know that this proud nation of glaciers, hot springs, geysers (a word we’ve borrowed from Icelandic), and active volcanoes is the world’s most literate population, with the world’s longest life expectancy and highest standard of living?  And so you won’t be su

Wonder why the global markets have been gyrating lately?  The answer really isn’t that complicated at all.  It has to do with public and investor confidence.  When traders are feeling secure and confident about the economic and/or political future of their nation or other influential nations, they invest their clients’ capital in the markets.  But when investors become worried or uncertain over developing trends (economic or political or sometimes even ecologi

“Study says lots of students narcissistic”—that was the front page headline on my newspaper this week.  Remember Narcissus from Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection in the water pond?  “Narcissistic” is to be just like him.  Which is why the article begins:  “Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five p

Who likes a dirty windshield! One of the joys about a winter in thaw is the ugly brown spray that the car in front of you splatters all over your windscreen (as our British friends like to describe it). We drove out to Kansas this last weekend to spend some time with our daughter Kristin, whose medic husband has just deployed to Iraq.

“Generation Y’s goal? Wealth and fame.” That headline last month in USA Today caught my eye. “Ask young people about their generation’s top life goals and the answer is clear and resounding: They want to be rich and famous” (1-10-07). And then came Newsweek magazine’s cover story last week: “The Girls Gone Wild Effect: Out-of-Control Celebs and Online Sleeze Fuel a New Debate Over Kids and Values” (2-12-07).