“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, / That wants it down,” Robert Frost observed in his poem “Mending Wall.” I am one of those somethings. When the speaker of Frost’s poem wonders what…

In the never-ending battle for LGBTQ rights, two things happened Tuesday half a continent apart.  One made me more proud to be a Wichitan. The other made me less proud to be an American.  In…

In 2021, Kansas Tourism launched the Sunflower Summer program, opening the doors to our state’s zoos, museums, nature centers, and historical sites to Kansas families — for free!  Designed to help young Kansans explore and…

Several years ago, a colleague teaching at Miami University, a large state school in Ohio, kindly invited me to give a talk there. After picking me up at the airport, he suggested that we have…

The $4 billion Panasonic battery factory in De Soto should have been a first-of-a-kind project for Kansas and the Midwest.  In addition to the estimated 4,000 new jobs coming to town, Panasonic and the state…

Universities that toe the Trump administration’s line need not worry of losing federal funding for academic research, said Education Secretary Linda McMahon Wednesday evening. “Universities should continue to be able to do research as long…

In 1951, Richard Garwin was 23, a junior physicist working summers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, home of the atomic bomb that had decimated Hiroshima six years before.  Edward Teller, Garwin’s older colleague at the…

Right-wingers of Wichita want protesters arrested for chanting “86 47” on Saturday.  In a related story, right-wingers of Wichita have abandoned any pretense of respect for the United States Constitution.  The calls for the arrest…

With the filing deadline for seats on local city councils fast approaching — June 2 — it’s time to do some personal inventory. “Do I have gifts that can be of service?” “What do I…

Early Thursday morning, the U.S. House passed the reconciliation bill that will cut hundreds of billions of dollars from critical programs that low-income Americans rely on.   In Kansas, the bill is likely to cost…