Microsoft founder Bill Gates gets all the credit via e-mail for writing a list of “Rules Kids Won’t Learn In School,” but some guy named Charles Sykes actually wrote it.
That reminds me of “The Bill Of No Rights,” another popular piece of Internet lore that was wrongly attributed to a state lawmaker in Georgia instead of [...]

I’m a Philadelphia Phillies fan — and only a casual one at that since the heyday of Mike Schmidt, Larry Bowa and yes, even, Pete Rose in the 1980s — but it’s still neat to be living near Washington as the Nationals prepare to move into a new stadium.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Internet. The coarseness, the utter lack of humanity, that it spreads through our culture is one of the reasons I hate it.

Grandpa Tumblebug used to be in the oil business in West Virginia, and I spent some time during the 1980s working on the wells with my uncles, Gary and Howard. I remember many a time hearing them fret about oil prices plunging from the $30- to $40-a-barrel range to not much more than $10 a barrel.
Now it’s [...]

You could make a tidy profit by melting pre-1982 pennies and selling the copper, but the government won’t let you. Some folks want to change that. I wouldn’t mind because I’ve been collecting 1982 copper pennies in a tin for years. It was a momentous year in coinage history during my lifetime.

The town dump as social club.
Which reminds me: Friends of ours years ago told us about a spot at the county dump where people gathered to root through the cast-offs of others. The shelter even had a name: “Too Good To Be Trash” — and in some cases it was.
Our friends found a grandfather clock [...]

Sexual promiscuity begets sexual disease.

Bear Butts: That’s one thing wildlife experts found among the more than 1,900 photos taken by cameras set along the Appalachian Trail in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

The prison doors flung open: “About 3,800 inmates now imprisoned for possession and distribution of crack cocaine could be freed within the next year” if the U.S. Sentencing Commission makes its relaxed sentencing guidelines for crack-related crimes retroactive.

Smoking may be hazardous to your career.

While fishing as a child, I can recall times when I washed in nothing but dirty creek water to get the bait and fish germs off my hands before scarfing down a sandwhich. Those good ol’ days came to mind as I read that today’s obsession with antimicrobial soaps and other cleansers may lead to a generation of super germs that are [...]

Thanks to Ohio State’s loss, WVU jumped to No. 5 in most polls and to No. 6 in the Bowl Championship Series.

A wannabe hemp farmer from North Dakota: “You could smoke a joint the size of a telephone pole, and it’s not going to provide you with a high.”

Hunting and conservation: America may not be able to afford to save wildlife and their habitats without the people who see the animals as prey.

Bad news for Guatemalan adoptions and an appeal for a new frame of mind: ”Congress, the State Department and the human rights organizations that purport to care for children should similarly reject the notion that children in other countries must at all costs be kept in their communities of birth.”

One-hundred miles per gallon from a Lincoln Continental? Sixty mpg from a Hummer? Anything is possible for Johnathan Goodwin, the “Motorhead Messiah.”