With the frenzy of inauguration day fulfilled and the twilight-zone foibles of the last eight years in the rearview, it's tempting to forget that one of the central messages coming from the nascent Obama administration is about sacrifice. True, it has been couched in aspirational language: a difficult journey, a...

2006 was a banner year for the environmental movement. Primed by An Inconvenient Truth's trip to the Oscars, nearly every magazine on the rack devoted a cover to 'the new green era.' Industries far and wide, unaccustomed to the prospect of self-regulation, scrambled to put their green credentials on display:...

Recently, a friend sent me an Amazon.com link to a book called The alli Diet Plan. Written by Dr. Caroline Apovian, director of the Nutrition and Weight Loss Management Center at Boston University Medical Center, the book is full of helpful recipes specifically designed to "maximize your results from Alli(tm),...

By now the tale of George Allen's 'macaca' comment has all but vanished from the public discourse. It has become little more than an election-year parable, a conservative spook-story. The news cycle has trundled on to bigger and better gaffes; Michael Richards said the n-word, Alec Baldwin verbally abused...