Photo by Name

In our polarized culture, potential enemies lurk around every ideological corner. Think of the back-and-forth in the comment section of blogs, our deeply entrenched political system that pits Democrats against Republicans, or the on-going mommy wars. Whenever we face someone ...

Have you ever noticed how our discussions of sexual obedience emphasize the negative? I don't mean that they're discouraging or shaming (though that can sometimes be true, too), but that that we focus on prohibitions rather than prescriptions. "Don't" ...

Photo by Name

Rihanna recently confirmed what most of her fans were expecting: Yes, she and ex-boyfriend Chris Brown are back together. Last night, they sat together at the Grammy's.

While celebrity couples frequently make headlines, Rihanna and Brown have garnered special attention ...

Photo by Name

A friend of mine has a theory that every 20-something girl in the city believes she is Liz Lemon. It's hard to argue with his thinking, since Tina Fey's character on 30 Rock demonstrates such an array of awkward vulnerabilities and embarrassing hang-ups that all of ...

Two-thirds of Americans support the recent decision to allow women in combat, according to a Pew Research survey, with nearly identical percentages of men (65 percent) and women (66 percent) in favor of the change. Most say the new policy won't harm military effectiveness ...

A recent New York Times piece lamenting the "end of courtship" mentioned something most of us in the 21st-century dating scene have known for a while: details couples once reserved for first-date conversations can now be unearthed far too easily with a few web searches. ...

A 2008 Pew Research Center survey found that, when it comes to the character traits deemed most important for political and corporate leadership, most people rate women superior to men, surpassing the latter in the areas of intelligence, honesty, creativity, compassion, and ...

Two weeks ago, while getting one of my sons ready for some bedtime reading, the house went dark. I stifled a curse. As I navigated down steps in the pitch black, I didn't stifle my frustration: "Are you kidding me?!" While we were accustomed to losing power during our Midwestern ...

Like many of you, when I heard the weather forecasts before Hurricane Sandy hit, I was worried. While the monster storm neared landfall, I repeatedly telephoned my younger brother in Virginia Beach and checked in via Facebook on a host of friends and former students spanning ...

In Puritan times, citizens who trespassed against the law were subject, among other punishments, to humiliation at the pillory, something Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts memorably in The Scarlet Letter. The pillory was

so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, ...