No matter how many laws we pass, no matter how hard we try to keep people safe, bad things will happen.

Only one of the seven dwarfs is Happy, which humorously tells us that many people are not. 

I’m surprised more unhinged individuals aren’t flipping out in this political environment.

Venomous reptiles, bugs and marine life have notorious reputations as dangerous or life-threatening creatures, but all can be sources of new classes of drugs capable of treating diabetes, autoimmune diseases, chronic pain and other conditions.

Although known as "white ants," termites are not ants and their relationships with other insects remain unclear.

Remember the good old days when conservatives cared about debt?

In 1994 a good friend of mine was totally mistreated by a congregation, which for me was the final straw. I quit going to church.

Elephants indeed are large, leathery, lumbering and loveable, a reminder of what prehistoric animals were like. But there is more to elephants than alliteration.

I have to be honest. I haven’t really thought a lot about township government throughout my career in the newspaper business.

Two were thrown in the dust of the American stage on Sept. 27. People gathered with stones in their hands, ready to support their side and destroy the other.

The website for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization,  states that the term "hospice" can be traced back to medieval times when it referred to a place of shelter and rest for weary or ill travelers on a long journey.

I try not to spend too much time in front of the TV, but every once in a while I catch a program worth viewing.

Wow, that whole Supreme Court nomination mess went off the rails, didn’t it?

Mary Louise Lowe has been fighting for life and the rights of the unborn for just under 45 years, when a Right to Life group was formed in Kosciusko County.

It is almost impossible to believe, but there are approximately 100 trillion micro-organisms (most of them bacteria, but also viruses, fungi and protozoa) living in the human gastrointestinal tract.

Following are a few observations on current topics in the news.

I usually don’t make predictions with regard to politics.

Children have been abused and targeted by priests, pastors and leaders. High-profile men in houses of worship have used their power to be sexually inappropriate with women. They are without excuse; their sin puts children and women in horrible situations.

When I was much younger, it was not uncommon to purchase leeches at the local drug store and use them to treat a black eye. Modern medicine in the United States would generally find such use archaic and abhorrent. Not so in Russia.

If you commit crimes, you should be punished.

Finding the body of a person who died 5,300 years ago would be most rare. But it happened in 1991 when a group of hikers found a frozen corpse and his belongings in the mountainous border between Austria and Italy. 

Bees evolved alongside the flowering plants, and their most remarkable traits all developed in the context of that relationship.

The last column I wrote appeared in the Times-Union on July 19 — the same day an EF3 tornado went through the center of my hometown, Marshalltown, Iowa, causing massive destruction.

The Doomsday Clock was conceived by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons.

Even in the 21st century, when medical discoveries abound, the pancreas carries an aura of mystery.