Columnists

Here’s a great question from a Texas reader: “Why is the pizza round, the box square, and the slices cut into triangles?” This is a complicated question for me. In...

My friend Debi asks, “Why do they call the little candy ‘fun sizes?’ Wouldn’t it be more fun to eat a big one?” Wow, Debi, what a flavorful question. Let...

The American image of Spain is Andalucía: the home of bullfights, flamenco, gazpacho, and pristine whitewashed hill towns. This southern part of the country feels more quintessentially Spanish than perhaps...

A June 29 Associated Press/NORC finds that 85% of Americans — including 92% of self-identified Republicans and 78% of self-identified Democrats — say “things in this country are headed in...

If you’re like me, your life can be divided into two time periods…BCP (Before Cell Phones) and ARD (After Rotary Dials). Yeah, back in those ancient times a phone was...

Do people today really have shorter attention spans? Well, it appears that because multiple messages bombard us daily, we mentally “delete” those we don’t currently need. (This explains why some...

Güzelyurt, in the region of Cappadocia in rural Turkey, is a town that has changed little over the centuries. Exploring it, I hike steeply down into a ravine, winding through...

Strolling through Copenhagen, I come upon a parade: ragtag soldiers-against-conformity dressed in black making their way through the bustling, modern downtown. They walk solemnly behind a WWII vintage truck blasting...

What’s the real meaning of the fairy tale about Goldilocks? To be frank (although Frank is not my name), “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” is more confusing than a stop...

Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, the US government is finally — well, probably, kinda sorta — ending its lost war with Afghanistan, drawing down its presence in Iraq, and...