“Florida teen fatally shoots masked intruder who turned out to be his father” — that’s the headline at a Washington Post news item that I have access to until I blow through my monthly allotment of views. Sounds like the sort of article you’ve seen before:  a shooting of a person that was believed to be an intruder but really wasn’t.  A son sneaking in because he didn’t want Mom & Dad to know just how late he was out,... Read more
Yeah, my husband was the photographer here, on an off-day on his business trip, but I thought these turned out nice enough to share. Read more
1.  Yes, once again, half the country is saying “we need common-sense gun legislation” and the other half is saying, “stop being so vague; what you want it a large-scale ban on private ownership of guns, and we won’t let you.” This time the gun-control side is much more willing, in fact, to speak of places like Australia and the UK, with their gun confiscation programs, as models, as Obama did in his recent speech; at the same time, the... Read more
Shooting.  Bad.  Again. Yes, someone’ll work out a graphic that says that mass shootings aren’t increasing in frequency; it only feels that way.  And someone else’ll say that this never would’ve happened if it weren’t for Gun Free Zones.  And yet another person will say that there are more deaths in Chicago on a day to day basis, just not as dramatic.  There’ll be arguments about what, if anything, could be done to stop it, and, most likely, a discovery... Read more
To begin with, a great many retirees just don’t have enough saving for an annuity to make any sense.  If your account balance is small, you’ll need all your cash for rainy-day type expenses, whether it’s medical bills, car repairs, or literal rainy day home repairs; if your account is large, the only question is how much you leave your heirs.  But for other retirees, an annuity purchased from their 401(k) could provide them with the predictable income, and protection... Read more
More on retirement.  Yes, I’m taking a break from the Pope, presidential politics, Planned Parenthood, the refugee/migrant crisis in Europe, etc., and revisiting an issue that’s actually related to my professional field:  retirement readiness. The other day I shared some pretty appalling data, that an exceedingly small portion of American workers nearing retirement age have anything like the amount of savings they ought to have in order to retire at a standard of living resembling their pre-retirement lifestyle.  The data has... Read more
Just thinking through some things, in a geeky, yet wholly data-free, sort of way. Stage one:  the Cruise Ship stage.  You’re healthy, energetic, and want to make the most of the time that you now have.  You go on cruises or play golf, or drive out of town to visit your adult children, or are even that sort of grandparent who does a healthy amount of babysitting if the grandchildren live in town, taking them to the McDonald’s with the... Read more
You see a commercial on TV for a new immunotherapy medication.  It doesn’t promise a cure, not even a chance of a cure for some patients.  It says it “may help you live longer.” And the name sounds familiar, and you dig back into your friend’s status updates, and you see that, in fact, it’s the same medication that was featured in an article she shared, about the treatment her husband is receiving, though for kidney cancer rather than the... Read more
Figuratively, of course. But it’s kind of fitting, isn’t it?  Planned Parenthood’s abortion providers dismember unborn babies.  And that’s precisely the solution to the current debate about Planned Parenthood. Wesley J Smith proposed this back in July, so this isn’t truly an original idea here, but his suggestion never got any traction, so it bears repeating: Planned Parenthood should be broken up into discrete pieces in the same way ATT was once dismembered. The new organization could be strictly prohibited from... Read more
From ebri.org, that is, the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a table on actual savings, by workers and retirees, as reported in a 2014 survey.  “Workers” included survey respondents ages 25 and up, and “retirees” included respondents of any age who said they were retired, so of course you’d expect younger respondents to have less savings, and older retirees to have spend down a lot of savings, but: 52% of workers have less than $10,000 in savings, and 60% have less... Read more
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