We may not have time for exercise, but there's always time to read about exercise. And while the motivation to exercise may not be tops, the motivation to shop for "aids" to exercise seems forever strong.

Both activities offer the gratifying sense that we're getting somewhere, fitness-wise. We know that at some ...

We’re not done with the Yahoo story yet. Much has been said about whether workers produce more at home and whether CEO Marissa Mayer had slowed women's progress by denying working mothers the opportunity to telecommute. That is not today’s topic.

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Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times reporter and columnist who died Monday at the age of 86, shaped the American conscience on a broad range of issues, from civil liberties and civil rights to war and diplomacy, for almost 50 years. During his long career, Lewis won numerous awards and published several important books. ...

Who says American politics is gridlocked? A tidal wave of politicians from both sides of the aisle who just a few years ago opposed same-sex marriage are now coming around to support it. Even if the Supreme Court were decide to do nothing about ...

Sorry to be such a nudge, but as I write this before heading off to yet another in a long lifetime of Passover Seders, I still can’t get my head wrapped around this business of the plagues. Particularly that 10th plague, the one that gave the Passover holiday its name when: “On that night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both ...

What was Michelle Obama thinking? If the card for “Zero Dark Thirty” had been lurking in that best picture envelope Sunday, the gushing first lady would have appeared to the 1 billion people watching to have endorsed the very torture policies that her husband has denounced, at least rhetorically, if not always in ...

The Academy Awards ceremony will make history this year with the first-ever nomination of a feature documentary made by a Palestinian. “5 Broken Cameras” was filmed and directed by Emad Burnat, a resident of the occupied Palestinian West Bank town of Bil’in, along with his Israeli filmmaking partner Guy Davidi. What does a Palestinian farmer wear on ...

The following is a crashing generalization, but here goes: When it comes to how we dress, there are serious gender inequities — in standards of comfort and in body exposure. Valentine's Day underscores a third that rankles just as much: inequality of effort.

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When it comes to sports and taxes, I'm like most Americans. I like downing a beer and watching a good game every now and again, and I'm fine with paying my fair share of taxes for genuine societal necessities. What I'm not OK with is paying a skyrocketing Sports Tax at a time of burgeoning deficits, reduced ...

As President Barack Obama prepared to be sworn in for his second term as the 44th president of the United States, two courageous journalists premiered a documentary at the annual Sundance Film Festival. “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield” reaffirms the critical role played by independent journalists like the film’s director, Rick Rowley, and its ...

Let us now access the state of the free press in this land of ... well, of press freedom. The assessment? Pathetic. Not because of any government clampdown, but because of increasing press pusillanimity.

In recent years, newspaper reporting had already been severely weakened by drastic cutbacks in newsrooms (including the near-abandonment of hard-nosed investigative reporting by conglomerate CEOs and bean-counters more interested in upping the corporate stock price than ...

Gosh, I feel so much safer now that teenage ticket takers at the Regal chain of movie theaters have been directed by corporate chieftains to search the purses of their female customers.

Responding to that horrible mass murder in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, the Regalites say they've begun rummaging through movie-goers' purses to protect us from…well, from what?

The Dark Knight Rises shooter had an armory of ...

Fraternities, sororities and football, along with other outsized athletic programs, have decimated most major American universities. Scholarship, inquiry, self-criticism, moral autonomy and a search for artistic and esoteric forms of expression—in short, the world of ethics, creativity and ideas—are shouted down by the drunken chants of fans in huge stadiums, the pathetic demands of rich alumni for national championships, and the elitism, racism and rigid definition of gender ...

On the HBO series "Girls," Hannah asks her boss at a publishing house for a salary. The 24-year-old has been working as an unpaid intern for over a year, and her parents will no longer support her.

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Public education is under attack around the world, and in response, student protests have recently been held in Britain, Canada, Chile, Taiwan and elsewhere.

California is also a battleground. The Los Angeles Times reports on another chapter in the campaign to destroy what had been the greatest public higher education system in the world: “California State University officials announced plans to freeze enrollment next spring at most campuses and to wait-list all applicants the ...