Recently, I realized a dream, a long-held goal to visit Ireland, England and Scotland. My timing wasn't very good because the "Yankee Dollar" doesn't buy much anymore, especially in the United Kingdom or the European Union. But it was a great opportunity and my wife and I enjoyed it immensely.

Not since World War II has the United States had to deal with a combination of so many potentially devastating problems. Unless there is some miraculous intervention from an "unseen hand," it seems the great American experiment – "government of the people, by the people and for the people" – may soon come crashing down in ignominy, adding its fallen glory to the dustbin of history where are found the ruins of the world's great empires.

Why are so many men opting for permanent bachelorhood? Bachelor Carl Weisman, author of So Why Have You Never Been Married?: Ten Insights into Why He Hasn't Wed, surveyed 1,533 unmarried heterosexual men, and came to some startling conclusions.

Hospitals and other inpatient facilities are fighting a new, life-threatening intestinal super-bug, Clostridium difficile, which played a part in approximately 150,000 infections in 2000, and caused nearly 300,000 hospitalizations in 2005 (Associated Press Medical, May 28, 2008). This dangerous germ, which is spread by spores in feces, is said to have contributed to at least 5,500 deaths in the United States in 2004.

Once, as I drove through a part of our city, I was taken aback by the number of tattoo parlors that had sprung up to meet the obvious demand for what some call "body art." Some were upscale storefronts with catchy names; others were seedy looking establishments.