David Carr: The News Diet Of A Media Omnivore

David Carr has a cold. On Sunday night, the media columnist for The New York Times tweeted to his 335,012 followers that he realized that he probably had a variation of the common cold — because his drug store was out of his favorite cold remedy. “Sometimes you want to grab what is in the [...]

High-Tech Shoes Aim To Stop Wandering Alzheimer’s Patients

Shoes that make the news often look funny. Whether they’re touting health benefits like those toning shoes that didn’t quite pan out or the glove-like footwear being marketed as the anti-shoe. But some GPS-enabled shoes designed to help keep track of people with Alzheimer’s, look exactly like some shoes already popular with the elderly. And [...]

Who’s The Spookiest Super-Villain? Take The Poll Of Perfidiousness

All Hallows Eve is fast upon us, bringing with it fun-sized eating binges, sullen teens who can’t be bothered to slap together a costume trying to cadge some free Kit Kats, and those fake spider webs that, if we’re honest, really just make your front porch look like somebody unraveled a sweat sock all over [...]

Snuffing Out Snakehead By Putting It On The Plate

If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em. That’s the rallying cry for conservationists who are recruiting cooks — and their filet knives and frying pans — to the fight invasive fish species. The latest target is the snakehead fish, an aggressive animal native to Asia and Africa that has been populating the waterways of Maryland [...]

Woodrell Follows ‘Winter’s Bone’ With Ozark ‘Outlaw’

A great film adaptation is the best kind of publicity for an author, and the prolific Daniel Woodrell has certainly seen his profile rise following the success of last year’s Winter’s Bone, a powerful rendering of his 2006 novel (and a finer interpretation than Ride With the Devil, Ang Lee’s 1999 take on Woodrell’s Woe [...]

Victorian Humor At Its Silliest, Cheesiest Best

If I said I was going to recommend to you the funniest novel ever written, I imagine you’d come over all suspicious. After all, what would I know about making you laugh? I too ignored Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat when my husband pressed it into my hands insisting it was hilarious. [...]

EU Reaches Debt Deal, But Challenges Lie Ahead

European leaders met through the night in Brussels and finally emerged Thursday with a debt deal they say is wide-ranging. They’re hopeful it will guide the continent out of the widening debt crisis that started with Greece. But it’s unclear whether they have the political will and economic flexibility to implement it. As talks began [...]

Protests Pick Up Steam; Will Obama Get Burned?

It’s not clear yet whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will be a good thing or a bad thing for Democrats. That’s why President Obama always treads carefully when asked about them. “People are frustrated, and that frustration has expressed itself in a lot of different ways,” he said Tuesday on The Tonight Show with [...]

Iran’s Largest Banks Swindled Out Of $2.6 Billion

A bank fraud scandal of unprecedented proportions is shaking domestic politics in Iran. Several of Iran’s largest banks have been swindled out of an estimated $2.6 billion. The scandal has sparked a widening investigation with more than 30 arrests so far. It has also led to charges that some of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s closest advisers [...]

From Romney, Perry, Mixed Campaign Messages

It’s been a week of mixed messaging from two of the campaigns on the presidential trail: that of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and current Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Romney revived accusations that he’s a flip-flopper when he waded into a battle over a ballot proposal in Ohio. Perry created his own distraction by revisiting [...]