The following was originally printed at The Vertex on December 28, 2009.

Last Thursday morning, my younger sister had a baby boy, thus transforming me into an uncle and my parents into grandparents. There were a couple things that surprised me over the past week or so, even though these...

The first time I heard of Arcade Fire was at a U2 concert during 2005's Vertigo Tour when U2 used the band's hit "Wake Up" as their intro music at the start of the show. (They were also an opening act for a part of that tour.)

The first time...

A story that trickled in as we headed into the weekend was confirmed late yesterday afternoon as reports indicated that NBC would once again be reshuffling its late night television schedule with the cancellation of the disappointing Jay Leno Show. But it seems that this is not yet...

For the third straight year, Mark McGwire's name appeared on the ballot for admittance to the Baseball Hall of Fame. For the third straight year, he didn't come close to getting in. It was only a few years ago that he was a mortal lock to be enshrined in Cooperstown....

Reports yesterday indicated that the Washington Redskins would announce this week, possibly as early as today, that Mike Shanahan would replace recently fired Jim Zorn as the Redskins' new head coach. Ordinarily, retaining a coach with a resume as impressive as Shanahan's -- he has an overall career...

This article originally appeared at The Vertex. It has been reprinted here with the permission of the author.

The New York Jets are in the playoffs. The team that had been left for dead and considered done by their fans, the media, and even their own...

My feelings about Pearl Jam can be summarized in eight simple words first uttered by Ben Harper when he appeared with them for a couple of songs at Madison Square Garden in 2003: "This is the greatest band in the world." That title is not one I would use lightly...

Unless you've been on line for and unpacking your purchases from some Black Friday sale for the last two weeks, by now you have probably read, watched, and heard more than you ever cared to about Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the Virginian couple who crashed the White House state dinner...

Completing a week that featured a whirlwind of activity and intense negotiations, sources inside the New York Yankees organization revealed late last night that they will be holding a press conference this morning to announce that they have acquired the rights to the Florida Marlins' 2003 World Series Championship. This...

The grim news came down yesterday for Chad Pennington and the Miami Dolphins: Pennington's shoulder injury will cause him to miss the rest of the 2009 season. Normally I would rejoice at the prospect of the rival Dolphins losing their starting QB for the season, but Pennington is a player...

I am a Jew and my mother is a Jew. Her mother and father are Jews whose own mothers and fathers (and sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles and cousins) were murdered by the Nazis because they were Jews. I am a Jew whose entire childhood and adolescence was...

I have a good friend who is pursuing a Ph.D. in Bible at an Ivy League university. Often times, we discuss the authorship of the Bible, specifically, whether its books were written by one or multiple authors, and whether modern biblical scholarship can be reconciled with the belief in divine...

My weekend was marked by the sneaking suspicion that I had lived it several times before. I do not refer to any of the principal components of my daily life, which took their usual twists and turns in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol I consumed. Rather, I am...

There is a scene at the very end of "The Candidate," a 1972 film starring Robert Redford as Bill McKay, a dark horse Senate candidate, in which, moments after being declared the winner, McKay pulls his campaign manager, Marvin Lucas aside and genuinely and plainly asks him, "Marvin ... What...