Republicans recently announced their tax plan and are hoping to turn it into law before Thanksgiving. While details are in flux, it would likely eliminate the estate tax, lower the top marginal rate and slash corporate rates, producing, in sum, what the president has dubbed a “gigan...

Almost all of us have a friend or relative who has battled breast cancer, and that is in large part because the disease is so common. One in eight women has a lifetime risk of being diagnosed with the disease. Breast cancer causes about 15 percent of...

College sports fans probably weren’t surprised to learn that the University of North Carolina (UNC) had been engaged in academic fraud for decades. In this particular instance, students,...

The FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice have been fighting against easy, widespread public access to encryption technologiesfor 25 years. Since the bureau’s dispute with Apple in 2016 over access to the encrypted iPhone of one of the two people who shot 14 victims in...

For the Golden State of California, 1960 was a golden year: It was a time of rapid development, when the state chose to use its tax revenues to fund magnificent freeways and other infrastructure.

Part of this massive development was a system of public higher education – a model that put...

Who gave the world the idea of the California Dream?

One way to answer this question is: “Who didn’t?” Millions of people today and in the past imagined California before ever going there – or without ever going there at all. Their collective vision...

For all of their complaints about it, Americans care about public transit. Surveys show that large majorities support public transit initiatives. Nearly three-quarters of Americans approve of using tax dollars to fund transit initiatives. Every year new transit-focused ballot...

In 1978, the year I graduated from college with a degree in economics, most voters in my state chose to turn their backs on the “California dream.”

Not unlike the American dream, California’s iteration focused on...

Our old friend Saccharomyces cerevisiae – the yeast that’s helped people bake bread and brew beer for millennia – has just had its sex life upgraded.

Bioengineers at the University of Washington have reprogrammed the mating habits of this single-celled organism,...

November 2 is All Souls’ Day, when many Christians honor the dead. As much as we all know about the inevitability of death, we are often unable to deal with the loss of a loved one.

Our modern-day worldview could also make us believe that loss is something we...