Detroit Free Press

There were tears at a funeral, and cheers at a hockey game. There were stocks that fell, and stocks that rose. ...

My parents were in Australia last week when the world went crazy. They called my home upon hearing the awful news that four planes had been hijacked by terrorists, and two had been crashed into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and one in a field in Pennsylvania.When I returned their call, the Australian hotel receptionist said they were out. He asked whether there was a message."Yes," I said, "tell them Mitch, their son, is fine, and all the people we know in New York are OK."

As the stories mount from the survivors, almost all of them horrific, we hear of an eerie darkness in the middle ...

The new war began with pictures of smoke, mushrooming smoke, billowing clouds of smoke, smoke that rose above the busiest skyline in the busiest city in the busiest nation in the world, yellow smoke and white smoke and a deathly shade of gray smoke. Smoke filled with jet fuel, with the debris of airplanes, with the shattered glass of two of the tallest buildings in the world, with the charred flesh of victims, smoke filled with what used to be a uniquely American attitude, one that said, "We are safe here, we are the biggest, the richest, the proudest, so we are the most secure."

He is a hockey player who isn't playing hockey. He has a huge contract, but he hasn't been paid in years. He is ...

It's back-to-school time, friends, and that can mean only one thing: lawsuits.This one comes from the Houston area, where a mother felt compelled to explore legal action after enrolling her child in kindergarten only to find that -- gasp! -- the school had a dress code.One of those dress code limitations -- along with no ripped clothing, no halter tops and no gang-related items -- was no earrings for boys.For girls, earrings were OK.Therein lies the problem.

Twenty years ago last week, IBM gave birth to the home computer.It's been downhill ever since.Oh, sure, our speed is up. Our efficiency is up. We can talk to people in Thailand with just a few keystrokes. And any patient who has ever needed medical information will swear by computers and the Internet.But in so many ways, computers in our homes have changed us forever. The human price we have paid over 20 years?Let me count the ways.