The 2013 Ben Stiller film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a remake of a 1947 Danny Kaye movie of the same name, which was itself based on a popular James Thurber story, first published in The New Yorker in 1939. The enduring appeal of this tale reflects the...

My grandfather entered the Pennsylvania coal mines as a child, and was out of work much of his adult life. Neither he nor my grandmother got much in the way of formal education, and they eked out a precarious living on the poverty line. I can't know what they dreamed,...

Professor James Moriarty had only a brief literary career, but his persona looms much larger than his deeds. Criminal mastermind and archenemy of Sherlock Holmes, the professor is remembered today as the archetypal evil genius. The same penetrating intellect that made Moriarty a mathematical prodigy also made him -- in...

In her new, provocatively titled book, The Smartest Kids in the World, journalist Amanda Ripley tells the story of Kim, a 15-year-old Oklahoma girl who has the good fortune to spend a year going to school in Pietarsaari, on Finland's west coast. Kim is fortunate because she has landed quite...

High on my list of guilty pleasures are the Terminator movies, especially T2, which I just watched again the other day. In a crucial scene in this futuristic thriller, hero Sarah Connor is close to despair in a Mexican desert camp, beaten down by the daunting responsibility of saving the...

It's the holiday season, and we'll soon be decorating our home with greenery -- holly sprigs, poinsettia, maybe a mistletoe, and of course the tree, probably some kind of spruce. We'll have young kids around, and most of this greenery is benign. But some of these plants are toxic, possibly...

Happy hols to you all! It's that time of year
For fruitcake and holly. And I think I hear
Sleigh bells and echoes from a year gone by.
So let's take a tour, just you and I.
A horrid year -- good riddance, you say?
...

The rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous are full of stories, many of them about early drinking days. The vast majority of alcoholics first experimented with drinking as teenagers, and usually for social reasons -- to fit in with their friends, to overcome shyness and feel more comfortable in gatherings, and so...

Anyone who has seen this majestic creature in the wild, nibbling away at the top of an acacia tree, has to marvel at the wonder of evolution. The giraffe's long neck is a perfect adaptation to the animal's natural habitat. Clearly the giraffe evolved this uncommon and helpful trait in...

Search the Internet for "101 Ways to Praise a Child" and you'll find a poster -- actually many variations of a single poster. Some are available to download, or if you want quantities, you can purchase the posters from a discount school supply house, laminated if you choose. Some are...

Nobody likes the taxman. Even those who in principle believe in spreading the wealth -- even they get a twinge of fear at the mention of the IRS, April 15th and -- worst of all -- the dreaded audit. Don't deny it.

That's because the IRS has been pretty heavy-handed...

What do those words evoke for you? For me, because I still have fragments of T.S. Eliot's poetry bouncing around my neurons, those lyrical words trigger the idea of growing old, with all its associated aches and pains and slowing down. Other words might do the same for you --...

Last year, the top 10 percent of American earners took home more than half of the country's total income. The top 1 percent took home a fifth. That's the greatest income disparity ever recorded, and it's getting worse. Indeed, the income of the wealthiest has grown dramatically during the recession...

Nurses and hospice workers say they can smell the final approach of death. Not with sudden death, but with the slow march toward the grave, the body's systems begin to shut down and metabolism changes, so that breath and skin and fluids give off a distinctive odor that signals the...

Consider this scenario: You have been sick for some time, more debilitated by the month, and doctors are scratching their heads. Finally, in pain and exhausted, you find a specialist who figures it out. Your ailment is very serious, but the good news is that it can be treated with...

On his long sea journey back home following the fall of Troy, the Greek war hero Odysseus sailed perilously close to the Sirens. The Sirens were beautiful and seductive creatures who used their enchanting songs to lure sailors into shipwrecks on the rocky coast. Odysseus yearned to hear the Sirens'...

Americans are living precarious lives. Nearly half of all families -- many with homes and cars and jobs -- are one misfortune away from financial disaster. A medical emergency or even a temporary loss of employment could gobble up their meager savings in six months or less. One in four...

I've worked in Washington, D.C. for decades, so I have witnessed a fair number of political logjams, even a few government shutdowns. So I'm not quick to panic when the two parties' leaders stubbornly stake out what are seemingly irreconcilable positions. But I confess that listening to House Republicans this...

One of the most conspicuous failures of the 113th Congress has been the Republican House's refusal to even discuss long-overdue immigration reform, despite the Senate's painstaking work in crafting a comprehensive bill. The Republican leadership knows that its hopelessly divided lawmakers will never come close to agreement on this contentious...

Twenty-four-year-old Shawn Gementera was caught red-handed pilfering letters from private mailboxes along San Francisco's Fulton Street. Mail theft is a serious crime, and it was not Gementera's first run-in with the law. Even so, the judge opted for a lenient sentence -- just two months in jail and three years...