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Home burns during Palisades fire in Los Angeles County, California, Considering California’s vulnerabilities to both earthquakes and wildfires, what are the benefits and drawbacks of continuing to use wood in construction? The Palisades fire in Los Angeles County, the Eaton fire in Altadena and Pasadena, California, demonstrate the need for building codes to be updated […]

In an era where the very fabric of American identity seems under siege, the promise of a Trump-led Golden Age isn’t just a political slogan; it’s a clarion call for a return to the principles that once made this nation the envy of the world. With “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) as its battle cry, […]

It’s “mid-respiratory season,” when hospitals see an uptick in patients with serious complications from influenza and other viruses. In just the last few months, more than 10,000 people in the U.S. have died from RSV, influenza, and Covid19. The threat is particularly acute for those already most vulnerable to disease: babies. Welcoming a baby any […]

Cattle get a bad rap in public discourse on agriculture’s carbon footprint. However, many of those arguments assume that everything that cows eat has been grown exclusively for that purpose and has been shipped great distances. That’s just not the case. Most dairy farmers are taking actions that reduce contributions to atmospheric carbon. On the […]

I have always been struck by the fact that in the English language there is no verb for sexual behavior that is not cold or scientific (e.g. mating, copulating, conjugating, etc.) or crude. This is strange because verbs are by definition doing words and sex is the most doing-ist of all things you can do. […]

Vice President-elect JD Vance raised eyebrows recently by hosting Daniel Penny at the Army-Navy football game. Penny, a White man and former Marine, was acquitted this month for fatally restraining Jordan Neely, a Black man who threatened the lives of passengers on a New York subway. Social media dubbed the killing “George Floyd 2.0.” and […]

Since the December 4th murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan, there has been widespread denunciation of the positive responses to the killing and the man accused of the crime, Luigi Mangione. The Washington Post editorial board condemned excuses or celebrations of Thompson’s demise as signs of a broader “sickness,” that reflects “an ends-justify-the-means sentiment that is […]

When former NFL player Michael Vick was named head football coach at Norfolk State University recently, reactions were swift and polarized. His 2007 conviction for dogfighting continues to shadow his career, and many question whether someone with a felony conviction should hold a position of leadership. However, Vick’s story raises important questions about rehabilitation and second chances. […]

If we don’t scale back on classroom technology radically now, we risk turning high school kids like me into a bunch of attention-deficit zombies. It’s just another day in my junior-year English class. At the front of the room, our teacher is talking about Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel “Persepolis,” which tells the story of a […]

The Trump administration’s approach to climate change marked a significant departure from previous U.S. policies, creating a contentious landscape for environmental action. Consequently, this period demands substantial effort in identifying and exploring the clash between the administration’s policies and the urgent need for climate action, highlighting the strategies local leaders and communities can adopt to […]