The name Norman Morrison appears often as a hushed aside in discussions of self-sacrifice, a footnote in the history of the Vietnam War.

On November 2, 1965, Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker from Baltimore, drove with his one-year-old daughter, Emily, to Washington, D.C. In protest of the war,...

While on my way to my polling place in North Carolina this morning, I passed a large sign that said "vote your Bible, not your wallet."

The sentiment should have shocked me, at least a little, but instead, it merely made me shake my head and circle the block for...

I spent the weekend watching the feeding frenzy over Sarah Palin from the safety of the boat. I decided to bide my time, stay out of the water, let the frenzy die down, and wait until last night to see what her weapon of choice would be when she finally...

All writers remember the formula that allowed the Greeks to take Troy: one mock retreat, a little Trojan posturing, a whole lot of drink, and, of course, a giant wooden horse with thousands of soldiers in its belly. It's classic, but cliché, a story of subterfuge leading to great success...

Last fall, my mother gave me a stack of aprons that my grandmother wore in the 1950s. The colors have faded, but the patterns are still lush; the fabric is threadbare, but still sturdy enough to put up with splatters of sauce and dollops of dough. I now wear those...

While in Iceland last October, I had the privilege of meeting with "Professor Hydrogen," or Dr. Bragi Árnason, a professor of chemistry at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík, who is spearheading the movement to transform Iceland into the very first hydrogen-powered economy.

For Iceland, he said, the...

Last night, I attended a talk called "Why Liberal Values are Moral Values" by The New Republic's Editor-At-Large Peter Beinart at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. According to Beinart, liberals have four core beliefs - freedom, democratic capitalism, interdependence, and family values. What it all boils down to, said...

It´s Sunday, the final day of Airwaves, and Reykjavik has emptied of tourists as quickly as water poured from a pitcher. The streets are all still today, the shops shuttered and dark, and, after a week of loud music, crowded venues, and late late nights, it seemed only natural...

By day, the city of Reykjavik, Iceland is quiet, almost ruminative, going about its business with a dutiful and elegant sense of purpose. Tourists stroll the streets sipping coffee, swinging their shopping bags like children; stoic natives thread through them, intent on getting to work.

Under...

It´s 10:30 p.m., and I´m packed into a club called Gaukurinn on the west side of town, cheek to cheek with hipsters in skinny pants and ruddy-faced fans screaming for the next band, and I feel like by getting here, I´ve accomplished the social equivalent of tackling Everest. The line...

Google Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and you'll get over 4 million hits. Page after page of links relate breathless gossip about Brangelina, their fervent denials of involvement during Brad's breakup with Jennifer Aniston, wedding plans, Jolie's lesbian lover, and - surprise, surprise - quite a few mentions of the...

Dear Yoko,

You told the papers you'd be home today with Sean, so I hope this reaches you. Today of all days, I know you deserve some privacy, a cloak of silence between you and the people and the paparazzi that I'm certain are milling several stories below, just outside...

Right this minute, the bigwigs at the “paper of record” are breathing a sight of relief. Miller’s farewell letter was a concession, a metaphorical smoothing of her oh-so-ruffled feathers, but some at the Times may still see this as a triumph. They have, after all, cut their losses and rid...

Bill Keller's Friday e-mail to the Times staff shows that he's reluctantly bitten the bullet; Maureen Dowd's Saturday column in the Times has endowed Judith Miller with another epic nickname. Almost everyone who's anyone has joined in the fray, and the demise of Miller's career (and, incidentally, what little credibility...

It's a story that Bob Kane and Stan Lee would have loved: a reporter who is more than she appears to be uses her fantastic powers to uncover a conspiracy, expose a threat, and unmask an enemy. The legions of evil (or the undead, take your pick) pursue her. She...