Be prepared to be appalled — Alison, the Garrulous Glasgewian, suggested I write one of these tell-all essays. I had a hard time coming up with ten things about myself that I haven’t already revealed in my writing. You know what that means, right? Since I’ve already tapped out the good and the bad, the only…

And it's no surprise that most of them make fun of women — After this year's Oscars kerfluffle, some people are demanding the abolition of insult humor, especially that which mocks someone's challenges or physical appearance. Others say it's a tradition rooted in the antics of the court jesters of old speaking truth to power and everyone needs to lighten up. Here are…

The devil came for the actor last night, but then Smith won — The Oscar snooze fest just got interesting again thanks to one actor’s onstage assault of another. At this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, best actor nominee Will Smith responded to a joke comedian Chris Rock made about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, mounting the stage and smacking him, not playfully but…

Surprising facts about what makes you a more likely victim than others — I got a call the other night from my 20-something son in California. ME: “Hey, what’s up?” SON: “My car was stolen.” ME: “Again?!!!” You heard that right, folks. This isn’t the first time my son’s been an auto-theft victim. He’s had the same car stolen twice from precisely the…

You may know their names, but do you know their compelling life stories? — You’ve probably heard of Mata Hari, Tokyo Rose, and Lucrezia Borgia, even if you’ve never opened a history book. Many women who made a mark on history live on in the popular imagination. They show up as characters on TV shows, movies, and even Bugs Bunny cartoons. Their lives are…

Is it possible people aren’t interested in positivity? — In January, I became aware that many of the most popular stories on Medium were negative. People love to write essays about how wrong everything is: the environment, the economy, politics, attitudes, polarization, racism, genocide, drought, corruption, health care, etc. But unfortunately, some of the top writers on this platform…