“Public” and “toilet” don’t go together, except when they must. And that “must” is the moment we’re not home – when we need to go and can’t hold it in any longer.

Only then do we face the predicament of having to perform a deeply private...

I’ve spent an awful lot of time in Roman sewers – enough to earn me the nickname “Queen of Latrines” from my friends. The Etruscans laid the first underground sewers in the city of Rome around 500 BC. These cavernous tunnels below the...

Bathroom safety has become the next battle for transgender students on college campuses across the nation.

Often referred to as “bathroom desegregation,” calls for safer bathrooms have inspired “shit-ins” at California Polytechnic and San Diego State, where...

When I was an elementary school student, schools in my hometown administered IQ tests every couple of years. I felt very scared of the psychologist who came in to give those tests.

I also performed terribly. As a result, at one point, I was moved to a lower-grade classroom so I could...

One of the 17 presidential candidates recently said, “I can write a tax code in three pages.” Carly Fiorina isn’t alone among her fellow 2016 presidential contenders in advocating tax reform and simplification of the tax code. But none is quite so ambitious....

The Islamic State, or ISIS, as well as other terrorist groups, use the internet – and more specifically, social media – as a public relations outlet. They release their public campaigns through...

In response to the terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut, NATO should invade ISIS-held territory with the goal of creating two semiautonomous, predominantly Sunni Arab regions under restored Syrian and Iraqi sovereignty.

This would be difficult...

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, political leaders have lined up to denounce the acts as inhuman and uncivilized, unworthy of our day and age.

French President Francois Hollande denounced them as “a barbaric act,” while President...

Perusing a passage on the Civil War in a high school student’s history textbook in Texas might leave you wondering if black Americans were ever enslaved and if there really is any truth to anti-black racism at all.

A natural question is, are these textbooks...

I’m in a parking lot in Menlo Park, California, with Tesla owner Darrell, part of my recent sojourn to the Bay Area to research the culture of electric vehicles.

His bright orange Roadster convertible draws admiring glances from...