We all remember the Access Hollywood bus tape, which was a major political scandal that broke in October 2016, just weeks before the presidential election. In 2005, Trump was riding on an Access Hollywood bus with host Billy Bush, heading to tape a segment for the show. They were wearing microphones and having what they thought was a private conversation, but it was being recorded. Trump made crude comments about women, including boasting about being…
Colds and flu are both respiratory illnesses caused by viruses, but they differ significantly in severity, symptoms, and timeline. Cold symptoms include a gradual onset over 1-2 days, a runny or stuffy nose (main symptom), sneezing and mild cough, a sore throat, little to no fever, and mild fatigue. By contrast, Flu symptoms are a sudden onset (you can feel fine in the morning and terrible by evening), a high fever (100-104°F) with chills, severe…
Anger is a basic human emotion characterized by feelings of displeasure, hostility, or antagonism toward someone or something perceived as threatening, frustrating, or unjust. It’s one of the fundamental emotions that all humans experience, alongside joy, sadness, fear, surprise, and disgust. Physiologically, anger triggers the body’s “fight or flight” response, releasing stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Heart rate and blood pressure increase, muscles tense, and breathing becomes more rapid. People may experience a rush…
In 1983, 42 years ago, I was sent by my bank to work on the downtown trading floor, in a building named BT Plaza, which sat next World Trade Center 2. I used to call it the shortest 40-story building in the world…because of its next-door neighbor. Not to be too dramatic or foreshadowing, but it is also the building that in 2001 got a 17-story gash down its northern side from the collapse of…
This morning, after a few chores, I was sitting on the bench beside my driveway, talking on the phone with one of my expert witness partners. The call was all about the existing six cases I have on my current docket and the three new pending ones that could start any day now. The topic of those cases suddenly went from back burner to front burner in my consciousness as I’ve worked to unplug my…
As I have mentioned in previous stories, I am scheduled to head off to New York City on Sunday for a trial in which I will be giving expert testimony on a case that started in the middle of 2022 and which I have put about 330 hours of time on since then. This is the case that I was contacted about in mid July and told to start preparing for trial due to start…
Yesterday we had a few family and friends over for a small (15 people) Labor Day Barbecue. This year more than ever before, I am acting as the grill master for these events and we have been offering up a blend of burgers and hotdogs. I have tried CostCo burgers and sausages, Omaha Steaks burgers and sausages and, this time, Von’s Pub-Burgers (with cheese, bacon and, sometimes, jalapenos) as well as their standard mild Italian…
My first memory of television was in 1958 in my grandfather’s house (we called him Dodo, which is the Slovak version of Gramps). We were living there while my mother regrouped from divorcing my father and leaving California, where we had been for a year in Santa Monica. On Saturday morning, with my mother and sisters off shopping in the metropolis of Ithaca and Dodo out puttering in the barn or nearby fields, I was…
My youngest son, Tom, just turned thirty yesterday. I was never terribly overwhelmed by turning thirty, forty, fifty, sixty or even seventy. I don’t tend to connect myself to my age very much even though I never deny my age, nor do I even try to hide it. I just don’t seem to care one way or the other for some odd reason. Everyone else seems to attribute much more significance to age and birthdays,…
I have mentioned several times that I have been a founding member of the news service Puck since it began in 2021. Puck is an American digital media company who’s coverage aims to cover the ‘four centers of power’ in the United States: Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Washington, D.C. and Wall Street. The company was founded by Jon Kelly (former Vanity Fair editor who created The Hive), Joe Purzycki (co-founder of Luminary), and Max Tcheyan, and…