Is it better to be safe than sorry? When it comes to early screening and self-exams for breast cancer, the answer is simple: yes. When the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force announced its new guidelines last week for routine screenings, I was alarmed by its position. Reports say that the task force recommends women establish baseline mammograms at age 50 instead of age 40, and follow up every two years rather than annually. And, it says breast self-exams do no good and women shouldn't be taught to do them. Say again, please?

Additionally, the task force is comprised of a “government panel of experts,” yet I... More

The words Bob Gibson doesn’t pop up in many football conversations, and it’s not because he shares the same first and last name with that baseball pitching great.
Gibson, an offensive coordinator, left the National Football League in 1978, never to return. Or, to put it more accurately, he was tossed out, all because of a single play that went horribly wrong.
As the furor over Bill Belichick’s season to send his New England Patriots, up 34-28 against the Indianapolis Colts, out on fourth-down-and-two inside its own 30-yard line with two minutes left, spread early last week, I ended up thinking about Gibson.
You... More

Marijuana is only one of many things that have been prohibited in America. So was prize-fighting. So was alcohol. So was gambling.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is a national organization comprised of present and former cops and lawyers and judges who know that none of those previous prohibitions worked. And neither does the prohibition against marijuana. (Visit leap.cc.)

Central New York LEAP spokesman Peter Christ, a former Tonawanda police captain, spoke as a guest of the local Libertarian Party Oct. 17, at Liverpool Public Library. About a dozen attended.

One by one, Christ... More

Thousands of people help set new marks for the Guinness Book every year, the day after Thanksgiving, by emptying Clinton Square in record speed after the downtown Christmas tree lighting ceremony. This year the folks at the Hanover Square Association hope a good number of those people will tarry a bit one block over. They are sponsoring a storefront window design contest that extends the bounds of Hanover Square to the tip of the Atrium in City Hall Commons, south a block on Warren Street and perhaps west on Washington Street down to the copy center at the corner of Salina Street. The folks at the Association hope that debuting the... More

The truth hurts, as it is often messy and confusing. Hiding from it, as counterproductive as that sounds is often a whole lot easier – not necessarily over time – but for the time being, “yeah, it works.”

Some people conduct a whole life pretending that their truth doesn’t exist. I even do it from time to time. I put facts away that I can’t deal with. Away? Bury them in my psyche, so much so I don’t even remember burying them.

I’ve noticed recently that the difference between the political far left and the far right is dealing mainly in the issue of the hard truth. I’m not taking sides, rather taking... More

Maybe the surprise engagement softened us up, but I prefer to see it as further evidence of the enduring power of rock’n’roll. Local music fans will remember when WAER’s deejay Eric Cohen used the main stage at Jazz Fest to go down on one knee. Last Friday night another enterprising young man engineered the same thing during the closing credits at the early screening of Pirate Radio in Albany’s Spectrum Theatre. As snapshots of the couple flashed onscreen and the live Black gospel choir planted in the audience burst into the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love,” he popped the question. Coming up the aisle as the crowd for the next... More