Three years ago, we noted the dumbification of America was accelerating as SAT scores hit record lows. It appears the need for the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too has never been greater as Bloomberg reports that students in the high school class of 2015 turned in the lowest critical reading score on the SAT college entrance exam in more than 40 years, with all three sections declining from the previous year. The mean score on the math portion of the SAT, 511, is the lowest since 1999. … Continue reading →

This commentary was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 20, Number 3, Pages 83-89, Fall 2015. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Public Law 89-97, the Social Security Amendments of 1965 that created Medicare and Medicaid. I graduated from medical school that year. Over the last 50 years the federal government has become increasingly involved in medicine, functioning both as a third-party payer and patron of biomedical research and clinical trials. [1] And starting 25 years ago, modern medicine has come to adopt a new type of probabilistic medical thinking named “evidence-based medicine.” [2] Healthcare spending … Continue reading →

Investors suffered financial losses in recent weeks as stocks globally came under pressure in August and had their worst month in the last three years. In one of the most volatile trading periods since the global financial crisis, August saw a massive $5.7 trillion erased from the value of stocks worldwide. No major stock market was left unscathed and the risk of financial and economic contagion became evident again. There are growing concerns internationally that in the event of another Wall Street or global stock market crash and a new systemic crisis – a Eurozone debt crisis or another  Lehman … Continue reading →

You’ve arrived at the campsite with your friends and some cold beer in the cooler, only to realize you left the bottle opener at home. Lucky for you, that’s no problem — you’re a master of improvisation. Use any of these 9 MacGyver-esque tricks to open a bottle whenever you find yourself without an opener. Want to share your thoughts on this article? Send us a tweet or join the discussion on Facebook! Illustrations by Ted Slampyak

With Labor Day upon us, newspapers across the US will be printing op-eds calling for a mandated “living wage” and higher wages in general. In many cases, advocates for a living wage argue for outright mandates on wages; that is, a minimum wage set as an arbitrary level determined by policymakers to be at a level that makes housing, food, and health care “affordable.” Behind this effort is a philosophical claim that employers are morally obligated to pay “a living wage” to employees, so they can afford necessities (however ambiguously defined) on a single wage, working forty hours per week. … Continue reading →

ANTIOXIDANTS are for anti-aging. They help to retard the aging process, lower cholesterol levels, decrease risk of atherosclerosis, protect against heart disease and stroke, reduce risk of all types of cancer, slow progression of Alzheimer’s, suppress tumor growth, detoxify carcinogens, protect eyes from macular degeneration, defend the body from pollutants, and protect against COPD (pulmonary disease). Antioxidants PROTECT against oxidation which is a result of normal metabolism. Free radicals are created when the body uses oxygen.Free radicals become DANGEROUS when they accumulate and cause damage to the cell walls and also to the genetic coding of the cells. When the … Continue reading →

Dear President Xi, On September 3, your country is hosting a commemoration of the end of World War II on the 70th Anniversary of the day recognized as its termination in the Asia-Pacific.  You have invited both me and President Abe of Japan.  We both have chosen to refuse – just as we refused to attend the earlier commemoration of the defeat of Fascism in Moscow last Spring. As you very well know, Jinping, if I may use your given name, this makes the United States look pretty mean spirited.   And to put it plainly, your cooking up these events … Continue reading →

There is a growing sense across the financial spectrum that the world is about to turn some type of economic page. Unfortunately no one in the mainstream is too sure what the last chapter was about, and fewer still have any clue as to what the next chapter will bring. There is some agreement however, that the age of ever easing monetary policy in the U.S. will be ending at the same time that the Chinese economy (that had powered the commodity and emerging market booms) will be finally running out of gas. While I believe this theory gets both … Continue reading →

I received an e-mail from Congresswoman Diane Russell (D-Maine) urging me to sign a petition opposing Republican efforts to cut government support for Planned Parenthood. “STOP the war on women and Planned Parenthood,” she intoned. “Don’t cut a dime in federal funding for Planned Parenthood.” This e-mail was followed by one from the “liberal” organization, MoveOn, asking me to contribute money to its efforts to resist the “anti-choice militants” who seek to take away this “vital women’s health resource.” There are so many ways for intelligent minds to respond not only to the crude reasoning of these appeals, but to … Continue reading →

For 150 years the American Lincoln cult denied what it called a “rumor” that, after a string of devastating battlefield defeats, Abraham Lincoln in 1862 offered command of the U.S. Army to an Italian mercenary named Giuseppe Garibaldi.  The “rumor” was proven to be true, however, when an Italian historian named Arrigo Petacco discovered in an Italian archive a faded letter from Garibaldi to King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, telling the king of the offer (See Rory Carroll, “Garibaldi Asked by Lincoln to Run Army”). Garibaldi was Lincoln’s first choice to replace General George McClellan, long before Ulysses S. … Continue reading →

Mass hysteria is a term used to describe the situation in which physical or psychological symptoms appear en masse, spreading rapidly throughout communities, and occasionally across whole cities and countries.  During an outbreak, afflicted individuals may experience uncontrollable laughter, fainting, fits, dizziness, muscle weakness, or any number of other symptoms that do not appear to have any physical cause. Cases of hysteria have been reported all over the world for centuries and provide a fascinating insight into the complex nature of human psychology. The term ‘hysteria’ derives from the Greek word ‘hystera’ meaning ‘uterus,’ and is generally attributed to the … Continue reading →

Legend states that he fought his major battles across Britain, sat at the Round Table and handled the sword Excalibur. But a British academic claims King Arthur was a general rather than a monarch in the fifth or sixth century, who fought his battles in southern Scotland and northern England. Basing his findings on a Latin work written in the ninth century by a Welsh monk, Andrew Breeze from the University of Navarre in Spain also believes Arthur lived most of his life in Strathclyde. He told MailOnline: ‘Arthur really existed – he’s as historical as Queen Victoria. He really … Continue reading →