ROCKFORD, IL—Toilet paper rolls hanging limply at their sides as they stood astonished in front of the home, local teens observed this weekend that their math teacher’s duplex was too depressing to TP...

If you're the president I guess blatant insider trading is quasi-legal now?

Some things don’t ever get old, and I can tell you that publication day for one of your books is one of those things. Today is that day: the new 3rd edition of The Scientist’s Guide to Writing is o…

An awful lot of folks are okay with bribing Donald Trump, his family, and his administration. What will the reckoning look like -- or will it happen at all?

I, too, have received death threats. I, too, have endured attacks from those who feel threatened by science. Yet we cannot submit to the forces of politics and profit. The stakes are too high.

NEW & NOTEWORTHY In a recent editorial, Erica Wehrwein warns that there is a shortage of people well prepared to teach in the disciplines of anatomy (A) and systems physiology (P). Here I elaborate on...

As someone who recently published an essay called "An exam is a moral document," I've been reading various takes on the Brown University cheating-with-AI situation, but I haven't seen many people poin...

Jun 13-19 - a long time coming

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has proposed sweeping rule changes to federal research funding, whose devastating consequences are predicted in a new editorial in the journal …

It is sometimes said that “a budget is a moral document.” In other words, despite common perceptions of a budget as a dry set of numerical tabulations, the corresponding decisions as to how money is c...

Feb 7-13, 2026 - with a paddle

The Commons is an online library for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, organising, advocacy and justice.

The kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by ICE agents was my childhood best friend.

Jan 3-9, 2026 the evidence of our eyes and ears

"A year ago, I went to Copenhagen to write about the political crisis Trump had created over Greenland," Anne Appelbaum said the other day on the hellsite formerly known as Twitter. "Danes told me tha...

An analysis of footage from three camera angles shows that the motorist was driving away from — not toward — a federal officer when he opened fire.