The hot iron stopped generating steam, which meant that it was out of water. But no one really has a special tool for filling it up — at least not nearby– and you really don’t want to unplug it and take the whole hot iron to the sink. What to do? I tried dragging the iron to...

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard,” a “frightened dog,” a “rogue,” and a “gangster.” This is his response to Trump’s having called the “Rocket Man” an obvious “madman.” It sounds like the usual Twitter war. Or think of any other...

Donald Trump has revived his earlier tax proposal that would (it appears) reduce taxes for everyone. The predictable debate has already begun with all the usual posturing. Is this mainly for the rich? Any tax cut worth doing will disproportionately benefit the rich because the rich pay...

There are so many products and services that claim to make you smarter. It’s a huge industry. Get-smart video games and puzzles are everywhere. Websites and apps that promise fast results are booming. I’m a skeptic of the tools being promoted these days, but not of the overall idea. It...

My father was a happy person. But on the first or last Saturday of the month, every month, he was miserable. He would wake in a grumpy mood, say nothing at breakfast, listen to no one around him, and at 10am, would slump into the small wood paneled room he called his office. He would...

Normal commercial life today offers so many opportunities to be charitable. Cashiers remind you to be kind to others at every checkout. It’s pretty great, actually, to see commercial capitalism evolve into a font of philanthropy at the point of exchange. For example, I got a haircut...

To observe that a tax reform primarily helps the rich is supposed to doom it. It should be the opposite: no tax reform is worth pursuing unless it primarily helps the rich. That’s because the current system mainly hurts the rich. It is wildly unfair, discourages wealth creation, and...

In a remarkably frank talk at a Bank of England conference, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund has speculated that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have as much of a future as the Internet itself. It could displace central banks, conventional banking, and challenge the...

This was yet another weekend in which the attempt to repeal Obamacare died, yet again. It is probably the last time it will die, too. Maybe. Or perhaps the corpse will be dug up again before year’s end, flogged, and reburied again. Instead of working for ACA repeal, Trump whipped up a...

I was at a church service Sunday and, during one part, the program instructed people to “stand or kneel.” People did one or the other. I don’t know why people chose to stand or kneel. But no one was upset either way. It was all peaceful and beautiful. I like to think of this diversity of...