WT Columns

Walking home one evening, I came to an intersection. A family and a couple were waiting for the light, the family bantering about crossing against the light. “My knees won’t let me go that fast!” the grandma warned. “Ma’am, I’m with you!” the man from the couple called out with a laugh. “My wife doesn’t understand the knee thing either.”  […]

The American job market just seems to keep rolling on. The recently released March labor market report showing 300,000 net additional jobs in the country was significantly above economists’ expectations. Employers seem to be ignoring concerns about high interest rates, continuing inflation, recession, foreign wars and domestic political uncertainty — instead, they just keep hiring. The key questions are “Why?” […]

“It is difficult to look at the state of American civic life right now and conclude higher education is doing all we can to prepare our graduates for our democratic republic,” UNC President Peter Hans said during a January meeting of the UNC Board of Governors. His remarks were likely prompted in part by proposed legislation from last year’s General […]

I’ve long been bullish on North Carolina’s community colleges. In the past, I’ve praised the system’s cost-effectiveness, its capacity to serve nontraditional students and the impressive labor market returns for associate degrees and other certificates in such fields as industrial technology, home repair, computer sciences and health care. Today, I’ll offer you three pieces of good news about our colleges […]

The story of a new trend should have women who lived through the feminist revolution and efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment up in arms. If not in arms, at least paying attention. The editorial recounts the story of a young Harvard female undergraduate trolling MBA students “hoping to bag a more established male before her fiercest advantage — […]

As most Americans know, the Internal Revenue Service’s deadline for filing 2023 federal income tax returns fell on April 15 this year. Millions of Americans probably waited until the last minute to file those returns, in part because nobody likes doing the paperwork (even if it’s done on a computer with expert assistance) and in part because they dreaded the […]

Good that defensive anti-missile systems worked against Iran’s barrage. Still, two elements were more suited to the playground than to international politics: face and revenge.  One side bombs the other, and the other thinks that without revenge, it will lose face. The Oct. 7 Hamas attack was vengeful, but so was the Israeli government’s doubling down reaction. Where does “an […]

In just the past year, chemical industries 3M, Dupont, Chemours and Corteva paid out billions of dollars to settle lawsuits over the PFAS chemicals used in their products.  PFAS is an umbrella term that includes Teflon, Gen-X, PFOA and other synthetic fluorinated chemicals, mostly unregulated. You can expect more lawsuits, given that these persistent industrial substances have been linked to […]

A few days ago, with my wife and family, I drove along Interstate 77 up into Virginia and turned west on I-81 driving alongside large, luscious, spring-green pastures toward historic Abingdon, home of the Barter Theater.  From there, we made our way to the Washington Springs United Methodist Church in Glade Spring, where my late brother Mike made his home […]

The police department in Winston-Salem uses a commercial product called ShotSpotter, a network of audio sensors and software, to identify possible incidents of gunfire and ensure a faster response to them. Since its implementation in 2021, the system appears to have reduced the number of aggravated assaults and saved at least two lives of gunshot victims who would otherwise have […]

After Israel carried out an air strike on Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Iran made good on its threat to retaliate. After waiting a few days, Iran launched (by Israel’s count) 185 drones and 146 missiles, the first time it has directly attacked Israel.  The Biden administration, having urged Iran to restrain its response, joined Israel in shooting down nearly all […]

If you live in Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia or Utah, you can’t visit Pornhub — one of the most popular “adult content” sites on the internet. In response to state laws requiring “adult content” sites to verify users’ ages and prevent minors from seeing videos of naked people doing you know what, Pornhub told its servers to […]

Academic freedom is declining in 23 countries and has increased in only 10 countries compared to 2022. The United States is one of the 23 where academic freedom is decreasing. The Academic Freedom Index is compiled annually based on five indicators: “the freedom to research and teach; the freedom of academic exchange and dissemination; the institutional autonomy of universities; campus […]

For Terry and Lara Reed, along with countless other N.C. State fans, a final touching tribute from the ACC champion and Final Four men’s basketball team put the cherry on top of magical double Final Four weekend. For Lara, it was a trip with her two daughters to Cleveland to see N.C. State’s women take on eventual NCAA champion South […]

An enormous flash, a mushroom cloud, multi-thousands of human beings dead. We win! Nuclear weapons won’t go away, the cynics — the souls in despair — tell us. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You can’t, as Gen. James E. Cartwright, former head of U.S. Strategic Command, once put it, “un-invent nuclear weapons.” So apparently we’re stuck […]

Caitlin Clark will do great in the WNBA. She can shoot, she can pass and she’s a savvy player. Clark did what no one ever dreamed anyone would do, and that was to score more points than Pistol Pete Maravich, who played for LSU from 1967-70.  Maravich scored 3,667 total points at LSU and averaged 42.2 points per game for […]

Even in the current tumultuous political times, Mark Robinson’s rapid rise from an obscure former factory worker with a rather checkered personal past to the highest-ranking Republican in North Carolina state government has been a remarkable one. Six years ago, Robinson was an unknown citizen with zero experience in public service or politics. Amazingly, however, all that changed overnight — […]