Props to NPR for a punny title.

Almost all of the $162 billion in the supplemental spending bill signed by President Bush on Monday will go to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it did contain $150 million for the National Institutes of Health, and $62.5 million each for NASA, the Na

Great memorial of Tim Russert, a man who died too many years before he should have.

Kiran Kedlaya is an associate math professor at MIT.

In his last annual speech to Congress, the president used Osama bin Laden to justify Iraq, bravely denounced pork-barrel spending and waxed amnesiac about Iran.

A person's preference for being a "lark" or a "night-owl" is largely determined by genes, a study suggests.

Seeking to mollify an angry girlfriend, Sammy Zabib of New York drove to Atlantic City to buy her the designer jeans she had spotted earlier. While waiting for the store to open, he played some slots -- and hit for $800,000. Then he bought the jeans.

On September 8th, two million people in two hundred and twenty cities across Italy celebrated V-Day, an unofficial new national holiday, the “V” signifying victory, vendetta, and, especially, “Vaffanculo” (“Fuck off”).

Harley Spiller has about a million objects crammed into his small apartment, including a world-record 10,000 Chinese takeout menus. He also collects bottle caps, packs of gum, and other odds and ends. He thinks he's got his hobby under control.

Over the weekend, officials at the French bank Societe Generale uncovered a massive trading fraud that is one of history's biggest -- more than $7 billion. A 31-year-old trader is the reported mastermind behind the scheme of fictitious transactions.

The Academy Awards shortlist is to be revealed, with stars uncertain whether there will be a ceremony to attend.

The use of modern lighting has made people "chronically sleep deprived," one doctor says.

Study paper.

A new study arrives at the counter-intuitive conclusion that violent films may reduce crime rates. Economist and co-author Gordon Dahl explains.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee makes a tongue-in-cheek vice-presidential offer to Steven Colbert, whose TV character lampoons right-wing talk-show hosts.

According to Joseph Kinney, the chief engineer and unofficial archivist of the New Yorker Hotel (an ancillary enterprise not of this magazine but of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church), three types of inquisitive visitors regularly make pi

In June, 2006, Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google, went to Washington, D.C., hoping to create a little good will. Google was something of a Washington oddity then.

The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday. An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps.

Over the last century, the 1,300-year-old island-city of Venice has been subject to a growing number of high-water tides, due to climate change. The city's graceful buildings are threatened. Now an ambitious project to block the tides is under way.

McDonald's plans to set up coffee bars in its 14,000 locations. The Wall Street Journal reports details of the plan, which involves hiring "baristas" and selling espresso drinks like lattes -- or McLatte's -- perhaps at a lower price than Starbucks.

The Consumer Electronics Show opens in Las Vegas with some 140,000 people in attendance. They will be able to get a glimpse of the world's biggest TV screen, the smallest computer and solar batteries. And they will review a lot of things that connect to e

Actors are refusing to cross picket lines to attend the Golden Globes, which could derail the awards show. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are going back on the air without writers. And now there's news of a deal between United Artists and the write

Two men were arrested on Tuesday after pushing a corpse, seated in an office chair, along the sidewalk to a check-cashing store to cash the dead man’s Social Security check.

The Obama revolution arrived like a balmy promise, propelled by a visceral desire among Americans to feel American again.

She says the hosts were anything but smooth. CBS' David Letterman looks scruffy compared with the polish of NBC's Jay Leno. But Leno didn't have writers -- and it shows.

Hundreds of people have died in post-election ethnic violence in Kenya.

The UK is the country most attached to fast food, closely followed by the US, a global survey suggests.

The New York mayor has two years left in office, and he says he plans to spend his retirement as a philanthropist, doling out the billions he made as a tech executive. But he might have another job in mind, too.

He's also author of The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics.

A gemologist told The Palm Beach Post the pearl could be worth thousands of dollars.

The New Oxford American Dictionary chose "locavore" as its 2007 Word of the Year.

Maybe it's not such a good idea for Bloomberg to run after all.

We hope that American voters will have the wisdom to grant the powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity and principle to use them honorably.