The Fifth Column

Myth 1: The doctors all thought Alfie would die as soon as he was taken off the ventilator.  No, the doctors did not all think he would di...

Everyone is interested in making Alfie Evans the poster boy for their personal cause. The causes range the gamut from decrying the entrenche...

One in 4 children living in the U.S. in 2016 had at least one parent who was born outside the U.S., according to a study released Wednesd...

According to the World Bank: Cities are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Half of the  world’s population lives in cities, ...

Jews count days as beginning at sundown because that's what Genesis says, "Evening came and morning followed, the first day" ...

There has recently been much brouhaha about the Italian journalist Scalfari's mis-reporting of Pope Francis' words. Scalfari is 93,...

The Congregation for Divine Worship issued the document Paschales Solemnitatis in 1988 which states: "59. On this day [Good Friday],...

My son sent me an interesting piece from Chronicle of Higher Education about  what a modern scholar thinks the university shoul...

The Ten-Second Fast A lot of people want to test themselves during Lent by learning how to fast. That is a laudable endeavor. But not ever...

Everyone goes on about how chimerical socialism is. The defenders of socialism always insist that it has never actually been implemented any...

Several years ago, I wrote a column explaining why math is an important subject . In it, I pointed out that the actual content, that is, the...

Many people, including Pope Francis, rail against wealth inequality. From an economic perspective, it is not at all clear why. Wealth inequa...

This is a popular meme floating around the Internet. Sometimes it picks India, sometimes Egypt, but the idea is the same. The US pays 84 ti...

My daughter read this Huffington Post story, and asked me what the big deal was about IQ tests. Here's what I told her. What you are ...

In ancient times, any country conquered by Rome had to pay tribute to Rome. These vassal states had to spend their own resources to build up...

Libertarians, the political teenagers who want to have their cake and eat it too, always complain about government over-regulation and the...

The left lionizes homosexuality, trans-sexuals and the whole LGBTQwxyz thing but is happy to label heterosexual interactions (men chasing w...

Liturgy, it is said, is the life of the Church. The word itself means "work of the people." It originates in pagan Greek practice,...

Ask for a description of cryptocurrencies, and the reply will always involve the phrase "it's a distributed ledger..." They sa...