When it comes to Cinco de Mayo, the irony lays as heavy as a bowl of congealed day-old queso dip. Thanks to the latter-day marketing machinations of manipulative Mad Men, yesteryear's afternoon of blood and mud is now celebrated merrily with half-priced margaritas and buckets of iced-down Corona.

But if...

It's been called "the quintessential intrastate football rivalry." "Quintessential" -- that's a mighty big word.

But, even if you live in Alabama (like me), you don't need a dictionary to figure out what ESPN was talking about when it anointed the annual bout between the University of Alabama and...

Although the first snap of the 2011 college football season has yet to crackle, pop, or flop, it's not too earlier to declare the most powerful names in the sport.

But not so fast, my friends. I'm not talking about Mark Emmert, Nick Saban, Paul Finebaum, the Fighting Irish...

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced the comprehensive settlement of a series of Endangered Species Act lawsuits with the environmental group WildEarth Guardians.

Central to the settlement was the government's pledge to make, within the next...

To quote Robert Burns (the Scottish poet, not the Oberlin Yeoman letterman from the college's 1948 hoops squad), the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. That certainly happened with my ill-fated effort Friday afternoon in my last post, where I assumed to pin down the top...

So, young college freshman, you're thinking about ditching History 102 this week and catching the opening round of March Madness? Salve any guilt you might be feeling with a quick history pop quiz, courtesy of the eight teams likely to earn top seats in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. It...

Someone once asked me why I write non-fiction rather than fiction. The answer is simple -- the truth is almost always much more hilarious. Or at least stranger than fiction.

Take, for example, Peru's Lake Titicaca, reportedly the highest navigable lake in the world. From what I understand, it is...

Just what is a "humanity?"

Obviously, it must be something. After all, there is an entire national endowment -- the imaginatively entitled National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH -- set aside for it and its ilk. That's the same NEH that currently finds its federal funding at risk in...

Twenty-five years ago, on January 28, 1986, I sat in an AP English class at Killeen High School, outside of Fort Hood, Texas. This was back in the days when people drove Pontiac Fieros and MTV actually played music videos. To have a television in a classroom -- particularly one...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday that it "will take six months to review its options about how to proceed with a proposed expansion of the Cahaba [River] National Wildlife Refuge's acquisition boundary."

The Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge is located in Bibb County, Alabama, and encompasses seven...

On January 4, the United States Environmental Protection Agency rang in the new year by releasing its proposed national enforcement priorities for Fiscal Years 2011 - 2013.

According to EPA, the new priorities are intended to "focus resources toward the most significant environmental problems and human health challenges...

To the general public, President-elect Obama's impending choice of the next Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) probably lacks the sense of urgency or drama of other cabinet selections. But for the regulated community and environmentalists alike, the identity of the next head of EPA is no...

Next week, the long-awaited Hawaii state quarter will jingle and jangle into hands, pockets, and coin purses across the United States. Its inscription will remind Americans that "the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness"; its engraving of Hawaii's historic King Kamehameha the Great will remind them that it...