Columns

How did we survive Looney Tunes?

Is the world finally coming to grips with the wrongs I endured as a child growing up in the 1970s? I came of age before 24-hour cable news channels sensationalized childhood abductions and made every parent in America terrified that their kid was likely to become the next victim.

We ought to have a Baileyville

You have probably never heard of G. W. R. Bailey, but his thinking and influence were crucial to the decision of where lots of people in south Louisiana live.

Believe it or not, money isn’t the key to happiness

Get this: A study by McGill University has found that more money does not necessarily make people in low-income countries happier. I like more money as much as the next guy, but that does not surprise me.

Have you remembered your pets in your will?

Sure, it made the rounds of the “News of the Weird” columns when a Nashville businessman left $5 million in a trust fund for his beloved border collie Lulu. But such gestures aren’t as eccentric as you might think.

Speech standards must be applied the same to all

I was once fired by an employer because they did not like the way that I tweeted. They had no problem with the way that other people at this same enterprise tweeted, they just didn’t like my own flavor of rhetorical panache.

So far, Biden is all gloom and no sunshine

Say what you will about the personal and political failings of Donald Trump, at least he was an optimist. Along with being a cheerleader for America, he talked positively, sometimes when he shouldn’t have, and he could always see the sunshine. President Biden is the exact opposite.

Roses are red, snow is white…

As we found out again this year, in south Louisiana we are more likely to have a White Valentine’s Day than a White Christmas. Records show that most of our substantial snowfalls over the last century or so have been in February.

Spring training and the grapefruit nickname

Baseball fans got good news earlier this month — or at least as good can be expected during COVID-19. Major League Baseball approved a plan to go forward with Spring Training, also known as the Grapefruit League.

Product recall notices: Friend or foe?

The relentless airbag recall notices concerning my mother’s old truck have progressed from a mailbox-clogging nuisance to a grim reminder that our unresponsiveness has felled more trees than Paul Bunyan in his prime.

It’s too late to turn down the temperature

One of my favorite allegories is the one about the frog in the pot of water, who got used to the slowing rising temperature of a warming pot and ended up boiled to death. In some ways, I feel as if society has been on the menu for quite some time now.