Poignant Struggle For ‘Life’ Among Illegal Immigrants

Making a virtue of simplicity and a vice of melodrama, A Better Life is a well-intentioned stab at something we rarely see in American movie theaters: the low-income family drama. This is a genre in which work — exhausting, repetitive, unreliable — is the story’s engine and the characters’ sole means of survival. For the [...]

Dive Into Fiction: Five Picks From Alan Cheuse

It’s summertime, that time out of time, when the heat, the air and the stillness at certain good times of day makes for easy reading. With a little luck and perseverance you might carve out some hours to keep company with some new books. Whether you approach summer reading as a picnic, barbecue, smorgasbord, buffet [...]

Pottermore Brings Harry Potter To The Digital World

Starting this fall, for the first time, the Harry Potter novels will be available as e-books. Since the series began its cultural ascent in the late 1990s, its fans — adults, children, and those who have grown up in the 14 years since the first novel was released — have created thousands of fan sites [...]

Ron Paul, Barney Frank To Introduce Bill That Would End Pot Prohibition

Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Barney Frank (D-MA) are set to introduce a bipartisan bill today that would remove the federal prohibition on marijuana. The bill would instead let states legalize, regulate and tax marijuana. The USA Today reports the bill is being championed by a legalization advocacy group: The Marijuana Policy Project highlights that [...]

Math Videos Go From YouTube Hit To Classroom Tool

Part 2 of a two-part report A lot of struggling math students have found comfort in the mathematical stylings of Salman Khan. A few years back, Khan started creating videos to help tutor his cousin in math. Those videos became so popular, he quit his job with a hedge fund to work on them full [...]

A Squash’s Journey: From The Shelf To The Hungry

Americans waste an estimated 150 billion pounds of food a year. A lot of it comes from grocery stores and other retailers. Food banks increasingly are trying to get their hands on some of that food to help feed the hungry. The big challenge is time. It’s a race to get the groceries off the [...]

Obama To Troops: Afghan Withdrawal To Be Gradual

President Obama on Thursday told U.S. troops who have fought in Afghanistan that the U.S. has turned a corner after nearly 10 years of war, and it’s time for their comrades still in that country to start coming home. Speaking to soldiers at Fort Drum, N.Y., the president defended drawdown plans designed to have 33,000 [...]

Supreme Court Rules For Drugmakers In Two Cases

Sorry, docs in Vermont. The U.S. Supreme Court says the prescriptions you write can’t be hidden away from drug companies that use the information to guide their salesmen. In a 6-3 decision, the court lowered the boom on a Vermont law that requires doctors to agree ahead of time for the info to be sold [...]

‘Compass Of Pleasure’: Why Some Things Feel So Good

What does it really mean for the brain to experience pleasure? That’s the question neuroscientist David Linden asks in his new book The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good. In it, he traces the origins of pleasure in the human brain [...]

Pottermore A Reprieve For Harry Potter’s Bereaved

For the past several months, I’ve been preparing myself for the end of my childhood. It’s not only my 21st birthday, the end of college or the prospect of the real world. In fact, more than anything, it’s the end of the Harry Potter franchise as I’ve always known and loved it. I’m a member [...]