Linton Weeks

Living in Malawi, Rachel Marie Stone — an American teaching in a seminary — has realized that most adhesive bandages are the peachy, apricottish color of her Caucasian skin.

The epiphany came when a little Malawian girl needed first aid for a wounded toe. Rachel fetched a store-bought bandage she ...

The divide between creationists and evolutionists is wide and woolly. But surely there is something the two sides could agree on.

Perhaps they could agree on two sides. Or two entrees. Or two drinks, for that matter.

In an attempt to find commonalities, we are pulling together recipes for The ...

Starter: You know, with all the talk in recent years of "bounty hits" — tackles designed to knock opposing players out of professional football games — among players in the NFL, it may be easy to forget that professional baseball players have a similar system that, in a ...

For $50,000, The Associated Press reports, you can stay for a night in an inflatable hotel room — suspended atop a 22-foot-high scissor lift.

Americans love inflatable objects. From hot air balloons to the suggestion of an inflatable car, the idea of taking something ...

"On the Web, people

don't pay for news and it's too

late for that to change ..."

– Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, new owner of The Washington Post, speaking in 2012 to German paper Berliner Zeitung, and reported by TechCrunch

(If you find examples of ...

The Kickoff

It happens every year — air cools, leaves change, Americans talk about the demise of football. This year there may be more talk than usual, for several reasons, such as:

1^st Down

Both the NCAA and the NFL are under siege because of ...

The streets of America today are lined with — politically incorrectly speaking — hobos, tramps and bums who are out of work, out of luck, out of money, out of hope.

But what exactly is the difference between a hobo, a tramp and a bum?

For one thing: Hobos hold ...

Attempting to put the kibosh on their kerfuffle, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky made a peace offering this week to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The two Republicans have been fussing and fuming over governmental spying and spending.

"Anytime he would like to come down and sit at a pub ...

To find out if you are compatible with the former Democratic congressman from New York and candidate for mayor of New York City, put down your selfie camera and take this simple quiz. If you can pick Weiner's actual quote from the choices given, you two just might get along.

On college campuses in America, switching majors has been standard practice for a long time. Switching genders, not so much. But that's, um, changing.

At Salem College in North Carolina, for example, a female student planning to become a male student hoped to continue living on campus after the operation. ...

Concerned that some professional football players may be sporting gang-related tattoos, the NFL is calling in people who are experts in reading the meanings of body ink, CBS Sports reports.

Tattoos may be skin deep, but their significance sometimes goes deeper. The messages sent by body art are an ...

Springing from affection for the posts of VlogBrothers John and Hank Green — and a love of geekitude in general — the Nerdfighters is an eclectic online community.

Occasionally, local chapters gather in real life to chat about favorite games, movies and TV shows, and superheroes. They give ...

Now THIS Is A Slide Show

For summer planning purposes — and porpoises — we turned to the folks at the World Waterpark Association to give us a list of the Wackiest Water Slides in America. We also asked them to consider geographic diversity. They highlighted seven, and ...

A News Story In Tanka

****

For cypress tree in

Olive Branch, Mississippi,

80 years of age

Someone has a yen to pay

Forty thou — grower says Noh.

****

The Protojournalist is an experiment in reporting. Abstract. Concrete. ...

Sometimes it feels like this country is so torn apart by political partisanship that people from the two major parties just cannot agree on anything — including food.

In an attempt to find commonalities, we are putting together recipes for a Culture War Cookbook. If folks from both sides of ...

America is showing its seams, its disunion.

In the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin case, a long, sweltering summer of protests and protestations is upon us. People with variegated viewpoints have taken to the streets and airwaves to vent. For some, the not guilty verdict for George Zimmerman was the ...

Responding to criticism of putting a photo of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine — a hallowed spot in American culture — the publication's editors posted an explanatory note on the website version of the story. It says: "The cover story ...

The headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington was renamed for former President Bill Clinton this week. "President Clinton not only protected the environment, which saved thousands of lives," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said when she introduced the idea, "he also maintained a strong economy ...

When the annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game is played Tuesday night in New York, it will be a time to:

1) take a breath and celebrate America's dirt-and-grasseous pastime.

2) acknowledge that America has been invaded, infiltrated, overrun and is now overlorded by "statheads" — people who yearn to ...

(STOP) NO REALLY (STOP) WHAT YOU ARE DOING (STOP) AND READ A NEWS STORY THAT SAYS ON JULY 14 THE STATE-RUN TELECOM FIRM BSNL IN INDIA WILL (STOP) SENDING TELEGRAMS, THEREBY HERALDING A (STOP) OF ALL TELEGRAMS ON EARTH. BUT THE ORIGINAL REPORT DID NOT (STOP) TO POINT OUT ...