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What is this thing called love?This funny thing called loveMore...

What Is This Thing Called Love?

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Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell are best known for going on the Fox News Channel, where they pretend to be "Democratic strategists."  But unlike virtually every other Democratic strategist in the Western world, the two men show a studied disinterest in and a complete antipathy for any of the policies and philosophies for which the Democratic Party is best known. This is because the two men are disingenuous hacks.  And another well-known forum of disingenuous hackery is the Washington Post editorial page, where today, the two men appear with advice for President Barack Obama.  Naturally, it's terrible advice:

This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.More...

Pretend Democrats Advise Obama Not To Run For Re-Election

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Burlesque artist Dita Von Teese fielded our questions earlier this week and we ended up chatting about everything from old cars to why she abhors stylists to the new coffret she designed for Cointreau.She also revealed to us what she went as for Halloween -- complete with a picture we practically begged her to send. [SCROLL DOWN FOR THAT.]More...

Dita Von Teese: Every Halloween I Dress Up As A Normal Girl (PHOTOS)

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While there are many things in school administration and districts overall that are out of teachers' or students' control, there are still ways to impact students positively through classroom content.Lesson design strategy and creating dynamic, engaging content is key in keeping students engaged in learning. Not only can dynamic content keep them engaged, but it can help create a pattern of learning for students to apply the rest of their lives.More...

In the Classroom You Have to Make Content Dynamic

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Are you one of those "Lord of the Rings" fanatics who greets friends in Elvish, knows the map of Middle Earth by heart and has read the books and seen the movies three times over?We certainly are!More...

15 LOTR Locations In New Zealand (PHOTOS)

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As an infectious disease clinician and also an individual fond of the dramatic arts, I can't help but use a theater metaphor to describe the cyclical nature of our specialty.  As swine flu takes a bow and is swept backstage to join SARS, bird flu and the other actors of times gone by, a new performer seems to be taking the spotlight.  Pertussis (stage name: Whooping Cough) has been drawing quite a bit of attention lately, especially in my home state of California.  Given the fear and anxiety that seems to be surrounding this new production, it is worthwhile to try and demystify things a little.Whooping cough is a very contagious disease caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis.  It is spread from person to person, usually by sneezing or coughing, often at distances of five feet or less.  Once inhaled, it attaches to the small hairs inside your nose and then replicates causing inflammation in your upper airways.  It is not a new disease and medical reports of this infection date back to the 16th century.  Its name, Pertussis, comes from Latin roots meaning "intense cough."More...

Demystifying Medicine: What Is Whooping Cough?

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We don't know about you, but we could barely keep up with First Lady Michelle Obama's outfits in India and Indonesia. So we've rounded up all of her looks, from her button-down gray dress upon arrival in Mumbai to her colorful sheath at the Shangri-La Hotel in Jakarta.Take a look and tell us which of her ensembles is your favorite.More...

Michelle Obama's India & Indonesia Ensembles (PHOTOS, POLL)

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In the last decade, science has made enormous strides in decoding the human genome and finding associations between genetic variants and certain conditions, or diseases and disorders. We owe a lot of our individual characteristics, after all, to minor variations in our DNA. So it seems reasonable that small discrepancies in our genomes can mean the difference between being a routinely sound sleeper and a chronic insomniac.And now we have proof: new research just published in the journal Neurology concludes that people who have a gene variant called DQB1*0602 have a higher chance of developing narcolepsy, a sleep disorder that causes excessive daytime sleepiness. It's not that having this variant dooms a person to narcolepsy. The association is probabilistic, not deterministic, meaning that you might develop narcolepsy if you have the gene, or you might not. Depending on the population, 12 to 38 percent of those with the variant do not have the sleep disorder and are considered healthy sleepers. Also, people without the gene variant can develop narcolepsy, though this is less common.More...

Do Genes Determine Your Sleep Quality?

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This past week, graduate student Emily Ruppel wrote an editorial for the MIT newspaper The Tech that offered a formula even a poet can understand: "MIT - poetry = a travesty." She was lamenting the cancellation of MIT's "Advanced Poetry Workshop" for financial reasons, while the school continued to offer such courses as "Writing for Social Media," "Writing for Games" and "Communicating With Mobile Technology."One can certainly question a school's decision to fund a course on Twitter theory over its only advanced poetry workshop.  But is it fair to question it at MIT, a school with a stated mission of "the advancement of knowledge and education of students in areas that contribute to or prosper in an environment of science and technology?"  Ruppel thinks so:More...

Should MIT Teach Poetry?

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In an extensive story in The New York Times, Ron Leiber explains how Zagat's decision to keep its content behind a paywall has put it far behind in Web traffic and Google search ranking, placing it behind newer competitors such as Yelp.More...

Zagat May Have Lost the Foodie Web War, but Could Win with Apps