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Who owns a state fair that doesn’t exist?

It is important to defend what belongs to you. Trademarks, copyrights, patents. They all do the same thing. They put a fence around intellectual property and warn against infringement. Do not use this logo. Do not reproduce this content. Do not create your own version of this invention. The ability to do any of that requires permission. It’s why Disney will zealously guard its characters. If you use Xerox as a generic verb referring to photocopiers, don’t be surprised if a trademark attorney appears out of thin air. Bayer could explain the importance. Aspirin used to be its ...

The new normal is really abnormal

There’s poison in the air outside my house, a bitter smoke of ashes and hot freeway, and it is keeping us all inside. Yesterday morning, the kids’ summer camp announced that the planned trip to the pool had been canceled. They would do activities indoors all day. “How high can it get?” one of the boys asked, and I admitted I didn’t know. We had gone through a stretch of bad air a few years earlier — also due to invading smoke from Canadian wildfires — and I remembered feeling worried back then, seeing numbers in the 180s. The air quality index for the town today ...

A case for nuclear power

A few years ago, nuclear power looked doomed. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo won applause bragging about closing a nuclear plant “14 years ahead of schedule.” “Why would they applaud?” asks former nuclear engineer Ray Rothrock in my new video. “They shut down New York’s finest source of clean energy.” Rothrock has met with presidents, trying to persuade them to embrace nuclear power, but “nothing was ever addressed.” Until now. President Donald Trump ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to speed up licensing of new plants. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, ...

When policy becomes personal

On Tuesday, Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato went public with some personal news: her pregnancy. The first female to lead the county will also be the first to give birth in office. Her pregnancy brings personal relevance to a policy proposal she introduced in May. “I want to make Allegheny County the best place to raise a family possible, and paid parental leave is a critical piece of that effort. A lack of paid leave keeps workers on the sidelines, slows the economy and holds us back as a region,” Innamorato said in a May 13 statement. But the executive doesn’t ...

We need honesty, not judgement

As the tragedy of Nolan Wells’ death continues to dominate the news, there are so many unanswered questions. Perhaps the most significant one is what his grieving parents shared in a recent interview with “Good Morning America’s” Michael Strahan. Why did their 18-year-old son separate from his friends during their July 4 trip to Horn Island, a barrier island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast? Nolan’s father, Elmore Wonsley, told Strahan, “We always taught him that if you go with a group, you stay with a group. If you go with five, you come back with five. Do not separate from ...

Sham deal with Iran is undone

An early period of World War II was known as “the phony war.” What we may be witnessing now in the U.S.-Iran war is the end of a “phony peace.” The nearly five-month-long conflict has featured a couple of sham ceasefires, each marked by supposed Iranian pledges to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that came to nothing. With the Iranians firing on shipping in the Strait again, Trump has declared the so-called memorandum of understanding signed about a month ago to be a dead letter. After lifting sanctions on Iranian oil and ending the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, Trump has ...