Willpower is the key to much that's good in life. Willpower is what makes us save for the future rather than splurge now. It helps us to keep our heads down, studying and working when we really don't feel like it, to earn that degree or promotion. Willpower allows us...

Valentine's Day is for many just a cruel reminder that they have not yet found the love of their life, their soul mate, their life partner. And let's face it: finding that special person can be tough in 21st-century America. The village matchmakers are long gone, along with the villages...

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

These are the first lines of what's known as the Serenity Prayer, which is well-known to many recovering alcoholics. It's often recited in...

Mr. Magoo, a cartoon regular of early TV, was notorious for his hazardous driving. He was a retiree, befuddled and extremely nearsighted, yet he continued to drive despite these obvious failings. In the opening sequence to his long-running show, he has run-ins with a railroad train, a haystack and several...

Check out this photograph. That's aurora borealis, or the northern lights, as seen from the upper regions of Norway earlier this week. This spectacular display was fueled by one of the most potent solar storms in a decade. One can...

Scientists and doctors have been studying placebos for more than half a century. These inert "sugar pills" remain highly controversial, yet they are widely used in clinical treatment today -- especially in the area of pain management. So-called "placebo analgesia" has been observed again and again not only in the...

The year 2011 was a dismal time in American public life. The nation came close to defaulting, and lost its AAA credit rating for the first time ever. The do-nothing Congress did -- well, nothing. The GOP seriously offered up the likes of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain as its...

At 9:45 p.m. on Nov. 10, 1984, 16-year-old Theresa Fusco finished up her shift at the roller skating rink in the Long Island village of Lynbrook. She never made it home that night. She was reported missing, but nearly a month passed before her body was found, naked, in a...

Scientific "facts" often take on a life of their own. Scientists make legitimate and exciting new discoveries, with the best tools available to them in their time, and these findings get verified and modified and cited and, eventually, repeated without question. Over time, insights get simplified for non-scientists, and translated...

I remember my retirement like it was yesterday. As I recall it, I am still working, though not as hard as I do now. My wife and I still live in the city, where we bicycle a fair amount, and stay fit. We have a favorite coffee shop where we...

New Yorker essayist Atul Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a prestigious teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School. A couple years ago, he wrote a profile of his hospital's infection control team, whose full-time job is to control the spread of infectious...

Dieting and weight control are really pretty simple. We gain weight and have trouble losing it because we eat too much and move too little. If we can switch that around, most of us should be able to maintain a sensible weight without resorting to unhealthy gimmicks.

But that's just...

It's hoary December, so happy hols!
Wreaths of holly for decking the halls.
The end of 2011 is nigh,
So let's take a peek at the year gone by.
The USA's not AAA anymore,
(Thank our do-nothing Congress, let's show them the door.)
...

I don't see myself as especially materialistic, and you probably don't see yourself that way either. The fact is, I don't know anyone who actually takes pride in acquiring more and more stuff, and many of my friends decry the commercialization of the holiday season. That's a good thing, because...

I tried not to breathe too much on the elevator this morning. I was trying to avoid the germs of a fellow who clearly had the flu -- or at least a really nasty cold. There seems to be a lot of sickness going around right now, and I'm just...

Imagine it's time for your annual physical. You visit your family doctor, and along with all the usual probes and tests and queries, your doctor tells you about a disease you've never heard of before. Called thioamine acetlyase, or TAA, deficiency, it affects the body's normal ability to process nutrients,...

Despite our national holiday's links to gluttony, drunkenness and simmering family resentments, it is first and foremost a time to count our blessings. We shouldn't have to be reminded about the importance of routinely expressing our gratitude to others, but it doesn't hurt. After all, words of gratitude are an...

The vast majority of the world's 7 billion people practice some kind of religion, ranging from massive worldwide churches to obscure spiritual traditions and local sects. Nobody really knows how many religions there are on the planet, but whatever the number, there are at least that many theories about why...

I like Facebook. I've been signing into the site fairly regularly for a couple years now, and it has become my large extended family's primary form of communication. It also keeps me connected with friends and former colleagues -- people I like a lot but would never stay in touch...

When Hollywood producer Steven Spielberg was working on his 1977 hit movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," he spent long hours puzzling over the artistic texture of the film, trying to get just the right feel. Late one night, he decided to put his work aside and take a...