Author: Lance Garrison

Algorithms have become far too good at telling us what we think we already know.

Watery eyes, a stuffy nose, sneezing: How long these symptoms last can be a clue to what’s causing your congestion. Is it a cold or a sinus infection?If it’s a cold virus, you may find yourself close to a tissue box for several days. Most of the time, colds get better on their own in 10 days or less.Colds bring on a nasty mix of symptoms that can really wear you down. They can include:  Antbiotics won’t work if a virus is what’s causing your symptoms. Photo credit: Getty Images Because the common cold is a virus, antibiotics won’t help.…

To the Editor:Re “Schumer Chides Leftists Abetting Antisemitism” (news article, Nov. 30) and “What American Jews Fear Most,” by Chuck Schumer (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 30):Senator Schumer’s resolve to take a strong public stand against antisemitism is laudable, particularly when the scourge of hatred toward Jews is reaching a fever pitch. The Senate majority leader’s felicitous and poignant plea, both on the floor of the Senate and in the Opinion section, was notable for its moral clarity and forceful denunciation of the wanton antisemitism pervading every segment of our society.Furthermore, the urgency with which he conveyed how dangerous this conflagration…

It’s hard to walk a block or finish a morning coffee without encountering some system that attempts to tell you what to read, what to buy, how to lose weight or prevent dementia or tweak your decisions in other specific ways. My watch constantly buzzes with “relax reminders.” The number of calories appears next to every menu item at fast-food restaurants.These experiences are the result of a concerted scientific effort to understand and adjust human behavior — “nudges,” as the legal scholar Cass Sunstein and the economist Richard Thaler call them, that push us gently to make preferred choices. The…

Last month the federal government announced a proposed settlement agreement in the class action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of immigrant parents who were wrongfully separated from their children at the border under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy. On Dec. 8, a federal court will hold a hearing and consider whether it should grant final approval of the settlement.If approved, the settlement would provide families with some temporary benefits such as work authorization, short-term housing medical assistance, including behavioral health services. It also would provide them with an opportunity to apply for permanent immigration status…

As the number of people killed in Gaza has exceeded 14,000, according to Gazan health officials, Israel faces worldwide condemnation for its offensive, which was paused last week. Israel insists that it is doing all it can to protect civilians, given the complex urban environment it is fighting in, the embedding of Hamas in the civilian population and persistent missile strikes.But Israel must do more to address the suffering of Palestinians, now and after the war ends.In the short term, Israel should pay compensation to the families of the dead in Gaza and treat the injured. In the future, it…

Alfred Hitchcock explained the nature of cinematic terror with a story about the bomb under the table. People are sitting around a table having a mundane conversation about baseball when — boom! — a bomb goes off, instantly killing everyone. You’ve momentarily surprised the audience.But what if, Hitchcock asked, we are shown beforehand that the bomb is there?“In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the secret,” Hitchcock explained to his fellow director François Truffaut. While everyone is just sitting around chatting, the viewer wants to shout: “Don’t sit there talking about baseball!…

Mr. Kissinger was not uncomfortable with that dynamic. For him, credibility was rooted in what you did more than what you stood for, even when those actions rendered American concepts of human rights and international law void. He helped extend the war in Vietnam and expand it to Cambodia and Laos, where the United States rained down more bombs than it dropped on Germany and Japan in World War II. That bombing — often indiscriminately massacring civilians — did nothing to improve the terms on which the Vietnam War ended; if anything, it just indicated the lengths to which the…

I know all the warnings and caveats about polls taken a year before an election. But much of the recent polling on the 2024 election is still frightening and disconcerting.We shouldn’t be here. We have a president who, on the whole, has had a successful first term and has capably performed the principal function for which he was elected: to return the country to normalcy and prevent more damage being done to it by his predecessor.That president, Joe Biden, will almost certainly be running again against Donald Trump, a former president facing a mound of legal troubles born of his…

Hey, it’s election season! Think about it: A year from now, we should know who the next president is going to be and …Stop beating your head against the wall. Before we start obsessing over the candidates, let’s spend just a few minutes mulling the big picture. Really big. Today, we’re going to moan about the Electoral College.Yes! That … system we have for actually choosing a president. The one that makes who got the most votes more or less irrelevant. “The exploding cigar of American politics,” as Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice called it over the…