If you’ve been reading this column for a very long time you might be familiar with Mr. Bingle, whose arrival at Castle McKay was heralded by a 2014 column in this space. At the time he was a bouncy, and…

Norm Macdonald abided by the first rule of show business: he left the audience wanting more. His death on Tuesday, at 61 and with no forewarning, shocked. Macdonald, diagnosed with cancer nearly a decade ago, suffered in silence. He obliquely…

In a way, writing is the most important part of my day job. That may sound odd to people who know me, given that I went to medical school and became a pathologist. For those not terribly familiar with my…

My father-in-law, Bob Baillie, a wonderful man and maybe the best storyteller I ever knew — in a way that only an Aussie could be — was not one of the lucky few. It started with “dry mouth” and an…

There will be much still to learn when COVID-19 has passed. Books will certainly be written questioning the knee-jerk authoritarian response from most governments. Opinions championing a more modest approach to future pandemics are already emerging, even as this one…

Rush Limbaugh announced yesterday that he has been diagnosed with lung cancer. He used the modifier “advanced,” which does the seemingly impossible thing: it makes the word “cancer” sound even more ominous than it already did. Just hearing the word…

Breast cancer kills 39% fewer women than twenty-five years ago. Prostate cancer kills 52% fewer men, the American Cancer Society announced last week. You can thank new technologies that detect cancer early and defeat it for many of the lives saved….