This week The New Yorker has an essay by Malcolm Gladwell in which he argues that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are not nearly as powerful tools of political activism as they’ve been hyped to be.  (See Moldova and Iran for the main examples.)  It’s a great piece, and I highly recommend reading [...]

Okay, so Americans are fat: we know this already. It’s about time we do something about it rather than repeatedly restating the obvious. Luckily, many employers are finally beginning a movement to improve the health of their workers. Even if their intentions are more selfish (like hoping to lower the charges from their employees’ health benefits), the results of these [...]

I just read Obama’s most recent interview with Rolling Stone, and though a lot of it was standard Obama, one thing that really struck me was how his rhetoric toward Republicans has changed.  When he took office, Obama was extremely deferential toward the GOP, constantly seeking bipartisanship and cooperation, but now he doesn’t hesitate to [...]

Enter The Playbook, a challenger to Steve Jobs’s iPad empire. The Playbook is made by the guys who make the Blackberry, so consider this a pretty serious bid for a slice of the e-reader market pie. But Research in Motion, the company that makes The Playbook, isn’t challenging iPad’s angle in the market; instead it’s catering [...]

Wuzzles Located on the back of the May “Hooking up: worth it?” issue. *****SPOILER ALERT***** 1. Words of wisdom 2. All dressed up and no place to go 3. Split two ways 4. Laid Back 5. Tennis Shoes 6. Teeny Bopper 7. School’s Out 8. Blank Look 9. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

“The ban on the burqa is a symbolic attack on Muslims…”
“… [the] burqa should be outlawed in any society that values the citizenship of women”