Opinion

Life's mysteries unfold in odd ways, don't they? The Wall Street Journal reports that churches by the thousands are signing up for a service to do to us what corporations and other private groups have done for years – select their targets based on specific, revelatory and actionable data that you might have thought was your own darned business. Feeling blue? Marriage going down the tubes? The big algorithm in the sky can pick up on that based on your search history, and it might send you an ad for a lovely cruise.

Here’s a fun fact I just read it in new book called The Blue Zones Challenge by Dan Buettner. Most New Year’s Resolutions last for 4-6 weeks. Then people go back to their old habits. So, there are two ways to approach this problem. You can do what the experts who follow the people who live the longest suggest and make meaningful changes in sustainable ways, like changing your environment, support group, etc. so that your every move becomes measurably better.

It turns out that birds are not real. Just check out the billboards, T-shirts, social media postings and the messages on a truth van touring the country. Birds are actually government surveillance drones that recharge themselves by perching on power lines right over our heads. That explains a lot. The fact that Twitter has a little bird as its symbol should tell people everything they need to know about the powerful forces at work.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For decades, Bob Dole wouldn't talk about the war wounds that left him with crippling disabilities.

I begin this column with a confession. We journalists are reluctant to report about ourselves because under journalism ethics, a reporter should avoid covering something in which the reporter has a conflict of interest.