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I Used To Be A Normal Person …….Author Unknown I used to think I was pretty much just a regular person, but I was born white, into a two-parent household which now, whether I like it or not, makes me privileged, a racist, and responsible for slavery. I am a fiscal and moral conservative, which by today's standards, makes me a fascist because I plan, budget, and support myself. I went to Grammar School and have always held a job. But I now find out that I am not here because I earned it, but because I was "advantaged". I...

Letting go of dread Question: I have serious scrupulosity and have worked closely with several priests. I have been told if I follow their advice, I will go straight to heaven when I die. How can they make this statement? I am in grave doubt. — Name withheld, Cleveland Answer: Since you do not state what the advice is, I cannot comment on that aspect. It is true that no one here, even a priest, can state unequivocally that a person will “go straight to heaven” when they die. The only exceptions might be someone who was baptized moments before...

Across the vast federal bureaucracy, Donald J. Trump's arrival in the White House has spread anxiety, frustration, fear and resistance among many of the two million nonpolitical civil servants who say they work for the public, not a particular president. At the Environmental Protection Agency, a group of scientists strategized this past week about how to slow-walk President Trump’s environmental orders without being fired. At the Treasury Department, civil servants are quietly gathering information about whistle-blower protections as they polish their resumes. At the United States Digital Service - the youthful cadre of employees who left jobs at Google, Facebook...

JERUSALEM — After a year of painful violence — Hamas rockets flying into Israeli communities, soldiers killed and wounded on forays into Gaza — one might have expected the start of a six-month cease-fire with Hamas to be hailed here as good news. Yet what was the front page headline in Maariv newspaper that day? “Fury and Fear.” That says a great deal about the mood in Israel, a widely shared gloom that this nation is facing alarming threats both from without and within. Seen from far away, last week must have offered some hope that the region was finally...

Lead paint in toys. Brain-eating amoeba. Identity theft. Drowning in sand. We know more than ever about the risks all around us. Do we know what disclosing them all is doing to us? I’D LIKE TO SAY that the writing that had the most profound effect on me this year was some classic novel I picked up in my spare time, but in fact it was an Associated Press article. Last June, AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe wrote a fascinating, harrowing story about large holes dug in beach sand that can collapse "horrifyingly fast" and cause a person in the...

AP MEDICAL WRITER WASHINGTON -- Anyone who's ever taken a preschooler to the doctor knows they often cry more before the shot than afterward. Now researchers using brain scans to unravel the biology of dread have an explanation: For some people, anticipating pain is truly as bad as experiencing it. How bad? Among people who volunteered to receive electric shocks, almost a third opted for a stronger zap if they could just get it over with, instead of having to wait. More importantly, the research found that how much attention the brain pays to expected pain determines whether someone is...

Imagine a gun with no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any kind. Now imagine that this gun could fire .308 caliber and .50 caliber metal projectiles accurately at up to 8,000 fps (feet-per-second), featured an infinitely variable/programmable cyclic rate-of-fire (as high as 120,000 rounds-per-minute), and were capable of laying down a 360-degree field of fire. What if you could mount this weapon on any military Humvee, any helicopter/gunship, any armored personnel carrier (APC), and any other vehicle for which the technology were applicable? That would really...

Camus as Conservative: A post 9/11 reassessment of the work of Albert Camus Murray Soupcoff The Guardian -- that last fanatical bastion of English left-wing obstinacy and foolishness -- published a unique book review honouring the latest Penguin edition of The Plague, the enduring fictional allegory of human suffering and sacrifice, written by French existentialist novelist Albert Camus. It was particularly surprising that The Guardian, of all publications, would publish what was really a revised introduction to the latest English-language edition of The Plague, since Camus' unique philosophical and political point of view was always so different from that of...

PARIS, - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday accused countries like France that want much longer arms inspections in Iraq of being "afraid" to take responsibility for a possible war. In an interview with French public radio France Info, he also said Washington already had United Nations authority under November's resolution 1441 to use force even without a second resolution it was now drafting. France, which has a veto in the Security Council, says it sees no need for a new resolution. "It cannot be a satisfactory solution for inspections just to continue forever because some nations are...