It's a rough month in Washington. We're coming up to Thanksgiving and it's a push to find something to be thankful for. A meaningful health-care bill might just do it, as might a way ahead in Afghanistan, or the closing of Guantanamo Bay.

Failing these things, what else would...

Blog written by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler *

An invisible web of intricate social relationships influences us all. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives chronicles how human behavior, emotions, and attitudes spread in "real world" social networks examining how internet connection...

At lunch-hour on Pender Street in Vancouver last summer, I went AWOL during the first incredibly tedious day of Robert McKee's three-day story seminar. I walked into Macleod's,* a used bookstore of the old school, one replete with signed first editions no one buys.

Time stopped.

Macleod's has plenty...

In 1985, robbers broke into the home of John Kondrads, a retired Australian Olympic swimmer. The thieves took 16 medals including the gold medallion Konrads was awarded for winning a grueling 1500 meter race at the Rome Olympics in 1960. The swimming champion missed all his medals, but he never...

At the UN, pressure is mounting for a breakthrough during "Climate Week," an intense period of pre-Copenhagen meetings which kicks off in Washington on Thursday and Friday with a ministerial-level gathering of the world's 17 largest carbon polluters.

Next Tuesday, UN chief Ban Ki-moon will host a climate summit in...

Forget about their inefficiency and indifference after Hurricane Katrina -- FEMA seems to be making new mistakes.

The country's largest agricultural producer, California's Central Valley is a 400 mile long, 18-county inland fruit and vegetable patch that is now suffering more than any other American farming center during the current...

The Pacific Walrus inhabits the regions of the Chukchi Sea around the Bering Strait. Like the Polar Bear, Pacific Walruses are a pagophilic (ice-loving) species whose livelihood and well-being depend on sea ice as a platform from which they dive to the ocean floor of the continental shelf to retrieve...

With everyone focused on the tiniest green shoots of economic recovery, on health care or on why it is not okay to shout 'liar' at the president, few people have had time to keep up with events in the natural world. And yet this is the year -2009- when climate...

Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears have been behaving themselves recently, so Vanity Fair, a magazine named for the foremost representation of social ambition in the English language, has just published excerpts of Levi Johnston's forthcoming book-length account of what? Himself, I suppose; how he became marginally involved, albeit briefly, in...

Last week, in a New Yorker piece called "A New Page," print conservationist Nicholas Baker's objected strenuously and eloquently to the Kindle eReader. In the main, he doesn't disagree that the era of the eBook is coming, and even confesses to having read an eBook or two. He simply doesn't...

Obama's trip to Canada seems to be paying off. A quick learner, all the American President needed was a day in "true north" to come to some very sophisticated conclusions.

To negotiate the complex moment in race relations initiated by the arrest of his friend Professor Henry Louis Gates...

The challenge of climate change that now confronts mankind has one of two possible outcomes: we will either take a large step up or we will fall down. Humanity's dominion over the earth will end and this ending may well prove definitive or, on the other hand, we may develop...

The patient survived a suicidal fall off the Golden Gate and is now in intensive care. The bleeding has stopped, but there is massive internal damage and during the next year surgeons will amputate most of remaining limbs including $1.4 billion from the Californian prison system, $4.7 billion from its...

Despite many admirable qualities (including ferocious loyalty, universal indignation at injustice and healthy contempt for politicians) Canadians generally are not very generous or warm people. They also have a poorly developed sense of humor which is why our best comedians -- wacko Jim Carey, for example -- leave for America....

Some white-haired seniors I know were Vietnam activists back when they had real teeth. They moved to Canada from Chicago after the summer of 1968. I was 15. When we met, they showed me how to make and eat brownies.

Here's what they remember about tear gas and demonstrations:

How fast can you say, e - lec - tro - phor - e- tic?

Come September about 60% of American college textbooks -- including most freshman texts -- will be available from Amazon.com in cheaper, portable Kindle editions. Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos reports that Kindle editions now account for...

Over Christmas of 1988 my wife and I drove our junker north along the beautiful, winding coastal road from L.A. to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur to attend a workshop while also trying to make a baby. If you're a wuss like me, North is a good way to...

Few people have noticed, but the competition over e-Book formats between Google-Sony et al, and Kindle-Amazon has introduced two tiers into the emerging market for electronic books. Google is now going to make all of its 1.5 million titles in the public domain available in various formats, establishing it as...

Back in the '80s, I went out with a girl who was in love with pop. I met her at a party and felt a distinct stirring in my loins, but I was a melancholic writer and she was a fashionista -- very trendy.

As superficial as a disco...

Blessings and Peace upon the courageous people of Persia from your devoted admirers in democracies around the world.

It's my impression today that the leaders of your current government are now quite worried, but also quite eager to stop appearing indecisive.

They have outlawed your demonstrations,...