The origins of trick-or-treating are not entirely certain. Countries throughout Europe have had traditions of costumed revelers traveling from house to house and receiving treats since at least the Middle Ages. Ancient Roman Saturnalia festivals, medieval European mummers’ plays, cakes given ...
Dear Annie: My girlfriend, “Lucy,” and I started dating three years ago, during our senior year of college. After graduating, we both got jobs in the same city where we had gone to school, and we ended up moving in together to save money. Living together was surprisingly easy, as we’re both pretty low-maintenance people. Anyway, Lucy is a good partner. She’s always encouraged me to push myself to pursue my passions. She’s the reason I ended up applying to a dream job even though it was across the country. I never thought I’d actually end up landing it. But I did. I moved ...
The public K-12 school system in the United States has become pervasively shaped by standardized testing. I began teaching mathematics in 2005, four years after the federal law No Child Left Behind was enacted. This law expanded state testing and tied test results to school performance. Most districts changed their curricula to focus more on the content and skills covered on state tests. Many school districts increased their instructional weekly time for English and mathematics, with average increases of 47% for English and 37% for mathematics from 2001 to 2007. To make room for ...
French economist Gabriel Zucman has come to California bearing a familiar French solution to a fiscal problem: another tax. Once based at the University of California, Berkeley, Zucman is back and campaigning for Proposition 40, which would impose an allegedly one-time 5% tax on the net worth of Californians worth more than $1 billion. Zucman, who coauthored the proposition, estimates that the tax could raise about $100 billion and claims that 90% of the proceeds would go to health care. The California Legislative Analyst’s office is far more cautious, saying it would raise only ...
Dear Annie: A close friend, “Jenna,” has a mental illness: She hoards. Her house would be condemned if the health administration were to go there. I can start tracing this behavior back to when she first became a mother and discovered that raising children requires more than just buying them new clothes and getting pictures taken. She worked and had trouble juggling everything. Fortunately, her mother lived next door and helped out a lot — did her laundry and fixed meals for the kids. But then her mother died, and Jenna’s personality began to change even more. She could not ...
DEAR DR. ROACH: Please explain why there are standard tests that we all know we should do as we age, such as a colonoscopy, a mammogram, a skin check, eye exams, etc. But nobody ever says that you should do at least one CT scan or MRI for the deadliest of them all — pancreatic cancer! It’s rarely diagnosed until stage 4! My husband had really bad stomach pain that radiated to his back. Although it only happened twice, we proactively got a blood test and an ultrasound, which were fine. Our gastroenterologist recommended a CT scan, which looked OK, but we weren’t completely ...
