Lori Falce Columns category, Page 5
Lori Falce: Titanic loss prompted change. So should Titan’s
The Titanic often is thought of as the quintessential example of a shipwreck. It isn’t the only boat to sink. It isn’t the only ocean liner to meet a watery end. In fact, the famously “unsinkable” sunken ship was part of a family of three identical sisters of the White...
Lori Falce: Court’s job is to find justice. Finding forgiveness isn’t as easy
The justice system is an odd balancing act. It must be impartial, yet it weighs more than just guilt and innocence. It also takes into account harder-to-quantify qualities like remorse and regret, grief and loss — and perhaps the hardest of all, forgiveness. We are told to forgive and forget,...
Lori Falce: Where there’s smoke, there’s wildfires — and serious questions to answer
Problems can get out of hand when you decide they don’t affect you. Maybe it’s because you don’t have the time or the money or the ability to do anything about them at the moment. I get it. That’s why my mail accumulates on the passenger seat of my car...
Lori Falce: Synagogue shooting trial spotlights a horror that hasn’t changed
Everyone sees terrible things every day. We just see them from a safe distance. We see people die in horror movies in ways that make you question the sanity of the person who wrote the script. Television serves up the kind of fictional crime dramas that are a staple of...
Lori Falce: PTSD, kids and the schools where tragedy happens
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental health condition that arises for people who have been through events that are a tragic shock to the system. Just like an old injury to a bone can flare up when a wrong move or the right weather tweaks the spot and makes the...
Lori Falce: The ironic Venn diagram of Montana and China
I love a Venn diagram. You know, those charts made of overlapping circles that show what different spheres have in common? Take Democrats and Republicans, for example. The two parties have tons of differences that could make them seem miles apart on everything from taxation to regulation to immigration. But...
Lori Falce: Feinstein and Santos need to choose a new adventure
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and U.S. Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., don’t have a whole lot in common. Feinstein will turn 90 next month, three months before the next-oldest member of Congress, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. She is the senior senator from California, holding her seat since 1992. Only Grassley...
Lori Falce: Judicial reform is about accountability, not retribution
There is a difference between accountability and retribution. Accountability means you are subject to the consequences of your actions. You back into a car in the parking lot, you pay your deductible and probably see your insurance premium go up. You miss your credit card payment and have to pay...
Lori Falce: Emmett Till accuser has died, but her legacy should live on as a cautionary tale
Carolyn Bryant Donham died on Tuesday at 88. It was possible for Donham to live a simple, respectful and respectable life in the Mississippi Delta area where she was born. She could have gone about her world with no one ever knowing her name. Instead, her name will forever be...
Lori Falce: The truth about surviving childhood
Almost every day on Facebook or Twitter or some other social media outlet, I see a version of it. Sometimes it’s just a quick one-liner from a friend. Sometimes it is dressed in a funny meme. Often it is a long passage shared by a relative who I know does...
Lori Falce: Chatting with ChatGPT opens eyes on AI, journalism
The impact of artificial intelligence is a hot topic. Everyone wants to know what AI means for their industry and their jobs — including journalists. We all know that innovation is amazing. It helped us reach the stars and travel the globe. It lets you play amazingly detailed games on...
Lori Falce: Is the law one size fits all or not?
Covering court gives you a unique perspective on how the criminal justice system works. More specifically, it gives real insight on how it does work versus how it should work. Those might seem like the same thing. They are not. It’s a topic that is getting a lot of attention...
Lori Falce: In the game of life, we keep swinging and missing when it comes to gun violence
I wanted to write about the Pittsburgh Pirates today. That was the plan. I was going to take the opportunity to poke the management of the hometown team with a sharp stick as we prepare to embark on what I predict now, at the end of March, will be yet...
Lori Falce: Is it too late to limit TikTok?
It seemed so innocent at first. I downloaded an app. It was the thing all the kids were using, and it was raising a lot of questions in parenting circles. Was it OK for tweens? Was it dangerous? Should it be limited? Should it be nixed entirely? I’m not a...
Lori Falce: St. Patrick’s Day and the legacy of Ireland
Ireland has given the world a lot. There’s whiskey, which is probably enough of a reason for many to celebrate all on its own. But it also was an Irishman who was credited with introducing to Europe the idea of hot chocolate. For Catholics, there’s the sacrament of confession, which...
Lori Falce: The problem with the word woke
I hate the word woke. Let’s be clear. This is not a conservative hatred of an agenda. It is not a liberal hatred of the right’s reaction to that perceived agenda. It is, however, a loathing that exists on a number of levels. Allow me to explain. First — and...
Lori Falce: National divorce? Marjorie Taylor Greene has it all wrong
One of my favorite movies as a kid was “The Parent Trap.” Not the Lindsay Lohan one — although that was good, too. No, I was a fan of the old-school Hayley Mills version that came out when my mom was a kid. I found it doubly entertaining because my...
Lori Falce: Next train disaster is inevitable
The terrifying thing about East Palestine’s train derailment and the spill of chemicals into land and water and air isn’t just the twisted wreckage or the flames or the absolute pillar of black smoke that rose from it all. It isn’t the social media videos speculating about dangerous residue in...
Lori Falce: Why can’t Hollywood find real fat people?
I love Brendan Fraser. Throughout the 1990s, I loved him in good movies like “School Ties” and “Gods and Monsters.” I loved him in bad movies like “Encino Man” and “Dudley Do-Right.” I flat out adored him in “The Mummy.” And so I was thrilled with the resurgence of his...
Lori Falce: Politics, tribalism and cheering for the Philadelphia Eagles
This is one of those times when it’s really hard to practice what I preach. Politically, I am all about middle ground and doing what’s in the common good. When it comes to sports, I am the radical fringe that doesn’t just want to win. I want to wage war...
Lori Falce: Bad actions hurt good police and all communities
Tyre Nichols was 29 years old the day he was stopped by police officers in Memphis. Body cam videos released by the police department showed an agonizingly long process that led to his death. He was dragged from his vehicle. He was beaten and Tased and pepper-sprayed. He broke free...
Lori Falce: The impossible mission of classified documents
Perhaps I have been misled by a lifetime of movies and television. I have always been under the impression that top secret documents were kind of hard to access. Maybe I didn’t think you needed to drop down from a harness like Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible” to access a...
Lori Falce: We all need a little help with our bootstraps
My bootstraps have gotten a solid workout over my life. That’s impressive if only because I rarely wear boots. As a rule, I wear flat black dress shoes with bottoms far too slick for Pennsylvania snow or rain. They have frequently led more to spectacular falls than impressive rises. But...
Lori Falce: Why are college girls victims of violence?
College girls and homicide shouldn’t go together the way that they do. Maybe we should blame serial killer Ted Bundy for the way murderers and coeds have become so linked in the American consciousness. Maybe we should blame slasher flicks that make sorority houses and dorm rooms the location of...
Lori Falce: Whataboutism and the pain competition
Whataboutism got a lot of attention during the past few elections. It’s the tendency for someone to deflect the question about one thing with a counter about something else. Ask a politician about a sex scandal, get a return query about why his opponent did another shady thing — whether...
