Mitch Clarke's column
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Senators chip in to defeat Big Brother The big news story of the week comes from the Georgia General Assembly, where senators have taken an unprecedented step to protect us from privacy-invading governments, covert corporations and - if you believe science fiction movies - space aliens. The Senate, by a 47-2 vote, passed a measure that would make it a misdemeanor to implant someone against their will with a microchip, electronic sensor or some other tracking device. |
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Good ol' fashioned common sense is elusive With all due apologies to anyone this column may resemble, we've become a nation of idiots. I don't think I'm being too harsh. This has been a subject of study of mine for some time. I first started thinking about this a few years back when that woman sued McDonald's because its coffee was too hot. She had bought a cup of coffee at the fast-food restaurant's drive-through, then placed the cup between her legs as she drove off. |
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Train your new puppy before it trains you January, as it turns out, is "National Train Your Dog Month," which is probably a good idea because lots of people probably got dogs for Christmas and now, a month later, the dogs are probably taking over the house. I suspect you probably know someone in this situation. I do. |
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Bite brings fever and chills, but no superpower I thought I had the flu. You might have seen in the papers that the flu is going around, and I had all the classic symptoms — high fever, chills, muscle aches. |
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Can't 'bear' the cold weather? Hibernate instead Bears, as it turns out, may be the smartest of all the animals in the animal kingdom. At the first hint of cooler weather, bears partake in a large feast to build up their body fat. Then they cuddle up in a cave or in a hollowed tree, safe from the hazards of winter, and they sleep until the spring thaw. |
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Please don't drive while you're reading this column Every now and then, a story crosses the wires that we journalists like to call "no kidding" stories, only we don't use "kidding." We use a four-letter word that rhymes with "hit" and can't be used in a family newspaper. We use this colorful expression for stories whose conclusions are so patently obvious that we wonder why anyone bothered to conduct the study or the poll that led to such conclusions. |
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Try a new way to keep your 2010 resolutions A few years ago, I came up with what I thought was an ingenious way of dealing with that annual exercise in futility, the New Year's resolution. I decided that I no longer was going to make resolutions like losing weight or exercising more or any of the other things I'd just end up failing at by Feb. 1. |
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Making a Christmas list isn't an easy thing to do One of the most often asked questions this time of the year is one that I don't have a good answer for. "What do you want from Christmas?" |
