Your correspondent got invited to an “Eve-of-420” bash on April 19, 2016, at a club in San Rafael started by the Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead. At the bar I got into a conversation…
Posts published by “Fred Gardner”
In a tremendous win for Big PhARMA, the American Psychiatric Association has added “Prolonged Grief Disorder” to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder —a list of conditions for which insurance companies reimburse doctors.…
The front-page headline was no April Fool’s Day prank: “Amazon Workers on Staten Island Vote to Unionize.” The Times would devote three days to the story, which took many “experts” by surprise. The Retail, Wholesale…
Soon after the mob occupied the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, the New Yorker published a lengthy, detailed piece by a reporter who had closely monitored the planning of the action and then took part in…
Despite the good-guy-vs.-bad-guy framework so common in fiction, in real life there can be two, three — many bad guys and nary a good guy in sight. Attorney Heather Burke is urging pot partisans not…
Muckraking is an exercise in futility. The exposés get published, the authors may or may not get rewarded for their research and risk-taking, the evil-doers might have to slow down. But in due course the…
Ripped Van Winkle strolling through the hills Known for herb the local pub distills Decided he would just step in and hoist a glass With some conscious members of the peasant class The barkeep was Peter Van DamRecently…
In the spring of 1995, Paul Farmer was in San Francisco to take part in a weekend conference on resurgent TB. This interview —all too timely today— was conducted for the Anderson Valley Advertiser. Paul…
The US government has dropped charges against Dr. Gang Chen, an MIT scientist accused of concealing Chinese affiliations when he applied for $2.7 million in grants from the US Energy Department. Ellen Berry reported in…