Lori Falce Columns category, Page 3

Medicine advances at a remarkable rate, with each new advance building on the discoveries that came before it. Today’s immunology and microsurgery and miracle drugs wouldn’t be possible without the anatomical, imaging and pharmaceutical innovations of the last century. There are entire branches of medicine that didn’t exist just a...

Famine is supposed to be like earthquakes and tidal waves — an unstoppable force that happens through no one’s fault. No one conjures a drought from thin air. No one causes a blight on crops. Other than that one time in the Bible, a plague of locusts was not a...

The easiest way to rally people to your cause can be to focus on the way it affects children. Hunger in a foreign country? Show starving children. War in a foreign country? Show the youngest victims. Everyone does it. Health care? How does it impact children? Education? Easy one. Show...

I love shopping. Not just picking out the perfect shoes or a great dress. I like grocery shopping. I like vacation shopping. With PowerBall and Mega Millions both in spitting distance of a billion dollars, I’m doing quite a bit of fantasy real estate shopping right now. I don’t care...

If you go on TikTok today, you are going to see a lot of the same things that pop up every day. The “For You” page is a tab on the app where the things that interest you are funneled. The app’s algorithm notices that you engage with cooking demos...

There’s a lot of debate about what kids should learn in school. What needs to be prioritized? Should reading, writing and math still be the tent poles, or is science and technology where the focus should be? Do we need the arts? What about life skills like balancing a checkbook...

Mitch McConnell is in his last term as GOP leader in the U.S. Senate. The Kentucky legislator made the announcement Wednesday. “One of life’s most under-appreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell said. The implication, obviously, is that he does recognize...

Last week, comedian Jon Stewart returned to his chair at “The Daily Show.” He will occupy it again one night a week leading up to the November elections. It’s a move that was championed by fans and by many on the left. Stewart has long enjoyed skewering conservatives, and Trevor...

My friend Caroline lives in Kansas City. She was excited leading up to the Super Bowl. She has three boys and a husband, and she’s an enthusiastic supporter of her community, so a giant football event with her crowd on the national stage was right up her alley. Throw in...

On Wednesday, a Michigan jury found Jennifer Crumbley guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of four students at Oxford High School in 2021. She was found guilty despite never firing a shot. She didn’t load a weapon. She didn’t aim. She wasn’t even at the school when it happened....

Opinion journalism is sometimes dismissed as not actually being journalism. Sometimes it’s reviled as the problem with today’s news consumption. There is fair criticism there. There certainly is a lot of opinion out there, and a lot of it fills the most prominent spots on cable news channels or the...

Pittsburghers — like most Pennsylvanians and, well, people in general — are not really fond of change. Ask for directions, and you are likely to be given turns based on businesses that aren’t there anymore. A fair number of people still talk about Three Rivers Stadium, let alone Heinz Field,...

I am not a fan of Iowa. I’d like to say it’s nothing against the state of Iowa, but that would be a lie. As someone born in Minnesota and raised in Pennsylvania, I hold both Iowa and New Jersey in the same kind of thinly veiled contempt. Very thinly...

The question of Christmas stockings has been quite the topic on social media lately. They have become more than just big, fake socks that hang over the fireplace, or from the railing by the stairs, or are placed artfully by the tree. For some, they have become a symbol of...

I am thinking a lot about my holiday budget right now. My son’s gift pile will look smaller than it has in Christmases past. That’s not necessarily because the amount I have set aside for presents has gotten smaller but because the individual cost of his gifts has gone up...

My inbox is jammed with emails about Ozempic. The drug, generic name semaglutide, is an injectable used to treat Type 2 diabetes. Combined with diet modifications and exercise, it has seen effectiveness in lowering or stabilizing blood sugar for those patients. That’s important to me. I’m not diabetic, but my...

On Wednesday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson spoke about his misgivings over efforts to expel U.S. Rep. George Santos, R-New York. It’s been a complicated line for the Republican Party, Johnson and former speaker Kevin McCarthy to walk since the Santos saga of untruths and criminal charges has unspooled...

Black Friday is the start of the holiday shopping season. It is an all-out assault on gift-giving that begins before the turkey is even cold. Actually, it often starts when the turkey is downright frozen as Black Friday deals start to be shared online weeks early and some stores give...

There is a difference between ethics and the law. But that doesn’t mean the two don’t coexist. Laws are codified rules that spell out what can happen, what should happen, what circumstances might change that and what the consequences are for stepping outside those lines. But ethics? Ethics are trickier....

On Wednesday, after the dust had settled on the 2023 general election and people were analyzing the ups and downs and wins and losses, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania went on Newsmax to discuss his disappointment. Republican Rick Santorum once was a leading voice in the party and had...

We get the reminders around this time every year: Don’t forget to turn your clocks back. They come, of course, because Sunday is the end of daylight saving time, that effort to trick ourselves into having longer functional days. Benjamin Franklin first proposed it in 1784 as a way to...

I am known among my friends for my common response to times of pain and trouble. I will cry with them. I will hold their hands and hug them close. But, more than anything, as my friends are scattered across the map, I light candles. As the product of a...

I often lament the way people try to harness language like a horse that just needs to be broken in an attempt to solve a problem rather than addressing the problem. Take the vocabulary surrounding people with developmental delays and other challenges. The words we have used over the years...

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not new. The bombs falling and the hostage taking and the outright murder are this week’s problem, but the enmity is as old as the sands in this disputed land, despite Israel being just 75 years old and Hamas only 35. Could we...

The first Speaker of the House of Representatives was the son of a German immigrant. Frederick Muhlenberg was born in what would later become Montgomery County. He was a theologian and statesman. He served as speaker of the Continental Congress in 1780. He signed the Bill of Rights. And in...