Owning a Nintendo Entertainment System, who could forget the endless nights playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Super Mairo Bros.?  Or how about running around through loops and corkscrews in the Sega Genesis’ Sonic the Hedgehog or using magic and swords in Final Fantasy IV on the Super Nintendo?  Nostalgia is definitely a big factor […]

The Mall in Washington is officially the National Mall and Memorial Parks.  It runs from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, a distance of about two miles.   As I watched the Obama inauguration on CNN, I couldn’t avoid a flood of personal memories of the Mall.  I lived and worked in the Washington, D.C. area at different […]

Drug treatments that raise the “good” high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol do not improve health outcomes, according to a new analysis. But some researchers suspect raising HDL through lifestyle changes may still be effective in treating heart disease.

In a previous post, I compared economists and soothsayers, opining that there isn’t much difference between the two. I used Paul Krugman as an example. He’s firmly (to understate the fact) in the liberal camp. He thinks that President Obama and Congress aren’t going to spend enough money to resolve the economic crisis. Now comes Kevin […]

Human obsession with what is forbidden and why sex and alcohol top the list.

According to the dictionary, a soothsayer is a person “who claims to be able to foretell events or predict the future.”  Wikipedia defines the word as meaning “a person who…predicts the future based upon personal, political, spiritual, mental or religious beliefs rather than scientific facts.” So, what’s the difference between an economist and a soothsayer?  […]

Barry Artiste Op/Ed You know what really, really amazes me? The Death of Common Sense in this Country! Here we have two issues, Trans Fat and Gangland crime, guess which bill goes into Law at Batman Speed?  Doesn’t it just friggin blow you away that the Canadian government both Provincial and Federal can pass laws […]

Italy is a beautiful country. The accents, the people, the architecture; it makes perfect sense why director Michael Winterbottom decided to shoot his film there. The story first develops in the U.S., but quickly moves overseas when a family looses their mother and decides that some change is in order to help with their grief. […]

In general I would say I eat pretty normal food. Admittedly the fruits and vegetables I buy are extraordinary (thank you San Francisco), but they are still just plants that grow out of the dirt in California. I realized recently that what is truly unusual about my diet are the groceries I do not buy.

Khaled Abu Toameh offers his unique perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and shares his intimate experience with it.