The Netflix Blues: Are They About Prices Or Selection?

Netflix is being hammered again today over reports of lost customers and projected losses following price increases over the summer and a quickly canceled plan to separate its streaming video and DVD delivery services into separate businesses. There are some very dire predictions floating around about the ability of the company to sustain the business [...]

Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families

Overview of a three-part investigation. Nearly 700 Native American children in South Dakota are being removed from their homes every year, sometimes in questionable circumstances. An NPR News investigation has found that the state is largely failing to place them according to the law. The vast majority of native kids in foster care in South [...]

High-Deductible Health Plans More Common On Employers’ Menus

Health plan deductibles keep inching up. When employees sign up for coverage this fall during their company’s annual enrollment period, nearly a quarter will face annual deductibles of at least $1,000, according to a recent employer survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) At small companies, the [...]

Bound Together: Breaking Those Toxic Family Ties

I found The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker, sitting on a coffee table at a writers’ colony in 2009. It carried praise from J.M. Coetzee for its “restrained tenderness and laconic humor,” which seemed ample justification for using it to avoid my own writing. I finished it, weeping, a day later, and have been puzzling over [...]

’1Q84′: Murakami’s Orwellian Bestseller Now In U.S.

Do you miss the girl with the dragon tattoo? Do you long for the thrill of following her adventures again through three volumes of exciting, intelligent fiction? If so, I have good news for you. She’s got a sort of soul sister in one of the two main characters in Haruki Murakami’s wonderful novel 1Q84. [...]

Let’s Rush To Judgment!: ‘The Muppets’

For people who love the Muppets, and who love the 1979 classic The Muppet Movie, the idea of a new post-Jim-Henson Muppet film is a cause for nervousness as much as for rejoicing. It’s great to see old friends, but … but … should this be happening? The first hurdle you have to get over [...]

To Save Soggy Grapes, Winemaker Looks To Helicopter

It’s been raining for days and the crop you’re a week away from harvesting is about to mold. If you don’t dry it quickly, you will lose the crop. What do you do? If you’re Bruce Cakebread, you call in a helicopter to be a giant grape dryer. When rain soaked Napa Valley two weeks [...]

Weather Could Drive Deer Collision Increase

Imagine driving home on a dark stretch of highway after a late evening at work. You’re tired, and before you can react, your car–with you and maybe your family inside–hits a deer standing in the road at 70 miles an hour. It’s a scenario that plays out about 1600 times a year in Oklahoma.

My Accidental Masterpiece: The Phantom Tollbooth

Norton Juster is the author of The Phantom Tollbooth. “There was once a boy named Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself — not just sometimes but always. When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in … Nothing really interested him [...]

Gadhafi Buried, Location Kept Secret

The bodies of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and his son Muatassim were buried this morning in a secret location, according to officials of the local military council in Misrata, Libya. Gadhafi was captured and killed last Thursday in his hometown of Sirte. For most of the last four days, his body had been on [...]