Michael Dobie

Long Island

Columnist and Editorial Board Member at Newsday

Editorial board member, @newsdayopinion, #NYU, #newshaiku, proud grandpa

Featured in: Favicon

newsday.com Favicon

realclearpolitics.com Favicon

sun-sentinel.com Favicon

tampabay.com Favicon

amny.com

missoulian.com Favicon

poconorecord.com Favicon

theinformer.co.nz

Articles

A lesson from Roger Daltrey in dealing with ravages of time

3 days ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

The Song is Over. That famous tune title is also the cheeky name of the upcoming concert tour by The Who — the band's final road trip, its members say. They bade audiences goodbye once before, more than four decades ago, but this one has a heavier air of finality. Perspective comes from lead singer Roger Daltrey, now 81, who told the crowd at a charity concert at London's Royal Albert Hall in March that he was suffering from hearing and vision loss. "The joys of getting old mean you go deaf.
Listening hard for the sounds of silence

1 week ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

We were out in the yard the last couple of weekends, immersed in tasks that were mundane and yet glorious. Weeding vegetable beds. Filling the bird bath. Adding to the compost bin. Replacing the hose that snakes through the raspberries. Pruning the blueberries and blackberries. Planting the rows of peas. Cutting down the ornamental grasses that waved bravely through the winds of winter, making room for the green shoots that now are thrusting forth with the hope of spring. There is joy in such immersion.
Trump administration push for more babies not an easy task

2 weeks ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

It should be no surprise that the Trump administration is exploring ways to convince Americans to have more babies.
Astronomers find new clue in hunt for life in the universe

3 weeks ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

As long as there have been humans, we have looked to the sky and wondered what — and who — was out there, and where it all came from. One who did that ages ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus, proposed that the universe contained many worlds, some old, some new, all with beginnings and ends. In recent centuries, the search for life on other worlds has picked up steam with occasional revelations piquing the probe.
Return of dire wolves is not what it seems

1 month ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

The headlines and TV chyrons delivered the breathless news: The dire wolves had returned. It was kind of thrilling, even if you were not a fan of “Game of Thrones” where the creatures were a baleful presence. The idea that a species that went extinct some 12,500 years ago had somehow come back to life — epitomized by a haunting photo of two young white wolves against a wintry landscape of snow and ice — was intoxicating. Too bad it wasn’t really true.
Trump, Booker, Musk, tariffs: reading tea leaves of an extraordinary week

1 month ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

Well, that was a week. The kind of week that makes you wish you could see deep into the future to learn how history will record it. A blip or a boulder? A particle or a pivot? A fleeting moment in time or something with very long tendrils? It was the kind of week that produced such a whiplash of news that even some ground-shifting election results Tuesday were specks in the rear view mirror by Friday. Which is not to say they ceased to have significance, just that we quickly lost sight of them.
Searching for the signs of spring

1 month ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

Spring has sprung. Or has it? Sometimes it's hard to tell. We all have our own yardsticks. For some, it's the first robin hopping around the lawn. For others, it's the crocuses or daffodils pushing their way up through the slowly warming soil, injecting splashes of color back into what's been a dreary landscape. Baseball is a signifier for others, with the transference of winter to spring marked by pitchers-and-catchers giving way to actual games.
The tale of the doctor in the Bronx and the Gila monster

2 months ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

Have you heard the story about the scientific gold in Gila monster venom? With what's happening in Washington these days, it's a tale worth telling. The best starting point for this decades-long drama is the late 1980s at the VA Hospital in the Bronx. That's where young endocrinologist John Eng, who was treating veterans with diabetes and whose research specialty was peptide hormones, was seeking to identify new hormones whose benefits for human health had yet to be tested.
As Musk runs amok, it's best to play the long game

2 months ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

Get a grip, folks. That’s the best advice I can give — to both sides — as the nation cheers or condemns President Donald Trump’s efforts to remake our federal government. Politics is rarely about the short game. One always needs to look at how things develop over the long term. And, reality check — we’re only one month into this administration.
It's a penny-wise move to get rid of the penny

2 months ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

I can’t remember the last time I used a penny. My best guess is that it was one of those rare occasions when I was using cash at a store and I (or my wife) rummaged through my pockets (or her bag) for one or two pennies to avoid getting back even more pennies as change from a $20 (or whatever) bill. The penny, in other words, has become a device best employed to ward off other pennies. So I was quite pleased the other day when President Donald Trump said he wanted to get rid of the penny.