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Moral metrics: Are corporate algorithms becoming our new moral authorities?

Columns

You check your credit score before applying for an apartment. Your fitness watch tells you whether you slept well enough. A workplace dashboard measures your productivity. Parents can buy devices that track their baby’s breathing and heart rate while they sleep. Increasingly, numbers tell us how we are doing. These systems promise something appealing: clear feedback about whether we are behaving well. They appear objective, neutral and data-driven. But they also signal a deeper cultural shift, as algorithms define what counts as virtuous behavior. In other words, we are living in ...

Dear Annie: Biting my tongue over husband’s bad habit

Columns

Dear Annie: My otherwise extremely well-mannered husband, “Ted,” has developed an unspeakably disgusting habit, and I need help addressing it. The backstory: About a year ago, there was an accident involving Ted, his brother and a couple of our nephews, which resulted in Ted losing five visible teeth. Our dentist removed the broken teeth and installed partial dentures. Ted has a very low pain tolerance and has had a difficult time adjusting to them. As a longtime denture wearer, I’ve told him that it takes time and that he needs to ask the dentist to adjust the partials if ...

Dear Annie: Kids’ privilege has distorted their perspectives

Columns

Dear Annie: My spouse and I chose to raise our kids in a neighborhood with excellent schools and a strong sense of community. The downside is that it’s also a very affluent area, and many of the families around us are far wealthier than we are. We work hard and live comfortably enough, but we can’t provide the kinds of luxuries that some of our children’s friends take for granted — brand-name clothes, international vacations, new cars at 16 and the latest electronics. Lately, our kids have started acting embarrassed about what we can’t afford. They complain that their friends ...

Lessons from the Vietnam War for Iran

Columns

We Americans are an impatient lot. If we must engage in warfare, we would prefer it be wrapped up in weeks, not months, and certainly not years like World War II, Korea and Vietnam. In those wars we had the draft, so more Americans were engaged in fighting and watching their progress, or lack thereof. Today, while recruiting numbers have increased in our all-volunteer military, the taste for war among the public has declined. One of President Trump’s positions that attracted voters was his promise to end wars, not start new ones. Granted, any candidate running for president can ...

Democrats be warned: Trump knows your weak spots

Columns

Sure, the “No Kings” marches drew millions rightly protesting Donald Trump’s assaults on our democratic institutions. But Democrats must dig deeper and ask how Trump could actually win another term after trying to overturn the 2020 election results with a violent attack on the Capitol. It wasn’t as though most Americans adored him. Gallup’s approval rating for Trump on election eve was a sad 46%. Trump carried the 2024 vote by playing the Democrats on three issues that aggravate even moderate Americans. They are open borders, the demonization of law enforcement and racial, ...

Taking probiotics after antibiotics to avoid potential problems

Columns

DEAR DR. ROACH: I read your recent column about a person who was refusing antibiotics due to a fear of a Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) recurrence. I am interested in your thoughts regarding people who take probiotics to restore a healthy gut biome. Relatively healthy people ingest probiotics to maintain good digestive health. Shouldn’t people take probiotics after taking antibiotics, especially after experiencing such a drastic condition like C. diff? Good gut health, including a proper gut biome, is critical to overall health. There are numerous published, peer-reviewed ...