California homeowners are struggling to find insurance against wildfires and other natural disasters, as the state chases insurance companies away, and as the California Insurance Commissioner fails to hold...
I recently retired after decades on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz, including 10 years as chairman of my chemistry department. Like many scientists, I’ve spent my career on problems that don’t yield to slogans: building evidence, testing claims, revising conclusions. Universities work when that ethic governs campus life. But across the […]
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently unveiled a map of the city’s “Immigrant Enclaves,” and the backlash was immediate. The map celebrated dozens of neighborhoods, from Little Palestine and Little Pakistan to Little Yemen and Koreatown, but it ignored iconic Italian, Irish, and Jewish communities that have long defined New York’s immigrant story. The omissions […]
I’m 41, and I still shed a tear if American sunscreen gets in my eyes. It stings, smells, and no wonder American parents struggle to get their children to put it on. It doesn’t have to be this way, and people in Sydney, Athens, and Saint-Tropez have known this for 25 years. European sunscreen provides […]
Among the signs of civilizational collapse are sinking fertility rates, a culture that promotes the postponement or abandonment of the pursuit of family life, and the release of a widely acclaimed movie that denigrates marriage itself. “One should always be in love,” reads the quote by Oscar Wilde that opens the rancid new comedy-drama The Invite. […]
For centuries, philosophers from Socrates and Augustine to John Rawls have asked, “What is the good life?” Now, CNBC has come up with the answer: Apparently, it is abortion, childcare, and voting without photo identification. Who knew human flourishing aligned so perfectly with Democratic Party priorities? CNBC’s pronouncement on what constitutes a good life comes […]
The video game industry hates you, which is why the near future will require you to constantly pay extra to enjoy video games that you will never be allowed to own. Sony, the maker of PlayStation, announced that it will be ceasing the production of physical game discs by 2028. All PlayStation games going forward will be […]
Last month, Nashville’s mayor filed legislation to condemn a piece of private property. Often, condemnations are used to allow governments to acquire land to build roads or schools. But in this case, the condemnation was intended to stop a data center. A company had a lawful contract to buy the land, the zoning fight wasn’t […]
It turns out that conservatives’ direst fears about the new Little House on the Prairie remake — Ma is a sex worker! Pa is trans! — were overblown. Still, Netflix’s eight-episode production is strangely unreal, like a two-legged horse or a pitchfork with no tines. A sanded-down work of historical bowdlerization, the show reimagines Manifest […]
In 1975, not long after I left the New York City Department of Investigation, a city building inspector accepted a $50 cash envelope to overlook a code violation. He was corrupt. In 2024, a hedge fund manager donated $10 million to a super PAC supporting the senator who then blocked legislation that would have cost […]
Something happens to me when I travel. I become a magpie. At home, I’m fine. At home, I am, if anything, a little severe about stuff — I don’t need it, I don’t want more of it, the drawers are full enough. But put me on the far side of an ocean, wandering a foreign […]
Amnesty International has come to embody everything wrong with self-styled human rights organizations. Instead of defending freedom of expression and fighting prejudice, it is targeting and defaming Christians. On July 8, Amnesty International released a report titled “A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the U.K.” The document categorized dozens of Christian charities, pro-life groups, […]
