There are not a lot of nightclub shootings in Winston-Salem.Most years, for example, there are none.But an incident outside the Red Rooster nightclub in February 2007 was anything but an acceptable loss.

I'm on a low-carb diet. That's kind of a misleading term. We're all on some kind of diet whether we're trying to lose weight or not.

The US economy is a complex and wonderful thing, an imaginary matrix of theoretical dollars that circulate like blood cells even to society's extremities, a collective that enables us to swipe debit cards, borrow large sums, cash checks and pay bills over the internet or telephone.

Oh no. It's happening already.I knew, somewhere deep in my cynical soul, that it would come. Eventually my fiancée Kitty and I would stop ranting about the surplus population and our own selfishness, and give in to fear of mortality and the desire for our name and will to live on.I just didn't think it would happen so soon.

Last week the Food and Drug Administration decreed that cloned livestock - cows, pigs and goats, but not sheep - are perfectly safe for human consumption and may be allowed into the US food supply, a conclusion based on seven years of research.

Man, do we wish Hunter were around to see this.We're talking about Hunter S. Thompson, of course, our patron saint, or at least what passes for a patron saint in the godless environs of the newsroom.

I am well aware that Jim Longworth is entitled to an opinion. How he formulates that opinion is a different story altogether.

Maybe I've been watching too much college football. Perhaps my expectations are too high. But even in our current writer-starved era, the Iowa caucuses make for pretty poor television.For an hour now, I've been stealing glances at the big-screen television stationed in the corner of the Forsyth County Democratic Party's Burke Street headquarters. Whenever the camera cuts away from Keith Olbermann, MSNBC treats the viewer to live footage of caucuses in action!

The staid state of Iowa proved itself capable of surprise last week when Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee rose to the top of their respective parties.

Each generation of music technology comes in its own package of sentimental associations. Cassettes were an evolution on the portability and freedom of the eight-track, with the advantage that songs could be mixed and matched in homemade mixed tapes.

During the holiday season many of us go out searching for the perfect gifts for loved ones or cross our fingers in hopes that we'd get what we really want. But in December in Los Angeles a 17-year-old girl and her family had Christmas wishes of a different kind.

Being the first of my friends to get knocked up has been a learning experience for me. I've not really had any buddies to bounce ideas and thoughts and feelings off of, so I was pretty unprepared for a lot of experiences that have happened during the past eight months. Sure, there are books and websites for advice but it's completely different when you experience it for yourself.

Being the first of my friends to get knocked up has been a learning experience for me. I've not really had any buddies to bounce ideas and thoughts and feelings off of, so I was pretty unprepared for a lot of experiences that have happened during the past eight months. Sure, there are books and websites for advice but it's completely different when you experience it for yourself.

This county is no more awash in illegals than it was at another time "awash" in Italians, Irish and Germans. If it is awash in anything it's in racist and dangerous rhetoric contrary to the highest principles on which it was founded

Everybody loves a pregnancy scandal, and last week we got hit with a couple of big ones. Had we not had a presidential election looming in the next year, the big story might be the announcement by Nickelodeon network personality Jamie Lyn Spears, 16-year-old sister of faded pop star Britney, that, to paraphrase Madonna, she's keeping her baby.

It's been said that children don't know their mortality, therefore they take risks and perform stunts that most adults would never attempt. Recently I was visiting friends in Winston-Salem and was pushing their 6-year-old son on a swing behind their home. He kept begging me to push him higher. While I was standing there worried he might fall out, he completely startled me by jumping out and taking flight to the ground.

Two weeks ago I accompanied one of our writers to a presidential caucus hosted by Vernon Robinson. You know, Vernon Robinson? The former Winston-Salem City Council member who erected - without asking anyone's permission first - a granite slab with the Ten Commandments and Bill of Rights engraved on it in front of city hall?

Last week in the North Carolina heartlands the sun shone brightly and the air smelled sweet; dried out lawns took rejuvenating gulps of sunshine and warmth and we all got to turn our heaters off, if only for a few days.