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Preparing myself for a busy week of news

Local Columns

I was speaking with a colleague recently who observed I should have a “fun” week coming up. I think our ideas of fun are different. It also could be the age difference speaking, as an increasing number of my colleagues are now young enough to be my kids – if I had any. I don’t know about fun, but the coming week is certainly going to be busy. Some of that already has begun with assignments Friday, which you’ve hopefully, already read about in this edition. Those assignments included attending and covering the Weirton Finance Committee meeting and a special meeting of ...

All those years ago

Letters to the Editor

To the Editor, Bob Seger asks himself in a song, Like A Rock..20 years now, where did they go? I myself like others my age, wonder the same thing. Next year will be my 50th anniversary from Madonna High School… May 28,1976. But doing that time, we grew up with some inventions. Eight track players, reel to reel tape recorders, cassette players, quadraphonic stereos, and calculators. Customized vans, Citizen Band radios, and cable television appeared later on. But as I look back on all the inventions, pay phone booths, Murphys, KMart, Grants, Sears, and other stores/ malls are ...

The economy is the boulder for West Virginia

Local Columns

One of my clients is an excavation contractor. He told me a couple of years ago his business was robust because of a steady supply of what he characterized as “boulders, rocks and pebbles.” When I smiled, he explained how the big, complex, well-paying jobs were the boulders. They made up the baseline of the business, and by doing them, he was able to pay employees, provide their healthcare benefits and take on other projects while investing in better equipment and more supplies. Then, he explained the rocks: the somewhat smaller, but still very important, jobs that consistently ...

Sometimes letting go makes us stronger

Local Columns

There’s a specific kind of silence that settles over a house once your children have grown and moved on. It is a sound I am still trying to get used to. It is not the peaceful silence of a nap time, nor is it the soft, late-night quiet of a household that is finally at rest. No. This is a far heavier silence than any I have ever known. This is an echoing stillness that makes you realize just how much of your identity was wrapped up in the beautiful, chaotic noise of being needed. Once in a while, that stillness becomes so great that it seems as if it stretches clear down the ...

These Nobel-prize-winning economists have a timely lesson for Congress

Local Columns

We live in arguably the most innovative and prosperous era in human history. My lifetime alone has seen numerous technological leaps that past generations could never have dreamed of, including the moon landing, the birth of the internet, and now the rise of artificial intelligence. But this pace of transformation is historically the exception, not the rule — and it may not continue much longer if the infringer lobby gets its way. That’s the lesson to be drawn from last year’s Nobel Prize in economics, which was awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for ...

A cautionary tale on artificial intelligence

Editorials

It may not be Ultron or Skynet as some initially worried, but the latest wave of artificial intelligence technology has not turned out to be a perfect tool, either. In fact, a case out of Wood County Circuit Court reminds us there are big reasons NOT to rely on the technology. A petition seeking an injunction was denied by Circuit Judge J.D. Beane in part because the filing contained inaccurate citations generated by AI. He believed that because it was “riddled” with errors, it was unlikely to succeed. “The Court is left with the conclusion that this complaint was drafted, ...