Reading for refreshment
To guide your summer getaway book selections, try this formula: E=FB²
Voices
Andrée Seu Peterson
Pay to play
Philadelphia is a city of culture, no doubt about it. We've got the largest collection of French Impressionists outside of Paris, and more Rodins than anyplace but Rodin's homeland. We've got the ...
Marvin Olasky
Not by bread alone
Will Sudan finally have peace? Years of pressure by American Christians and Jews led to Secretary of State Colin Powell's peacemaking visit to the ravaged country early this month - but any truce ...
Mailbag
The right symbol We were troubled by the cover photo of the girl placing her left hand over her heart ("One nation under God," June 26). This is just one more piece of evidence that America...
Joel Belz
Breaking the (election) cycle
So now, we're told, the race for the presidency is about to begin in earnest. Everything so far has just been a warm-up, a rehearsal for the main event. The millions that have been spent for trave...
Notebook
Business
Business
Cooling homes The government is predicting that U.S. housing prices may follow the same path as salary increases (see "Slower hikes" below), growing at their slowest pace since 1970 over th...
Sports
Sports
Tracked down All six U.S. track athletes who tested positive in drug tests or are charged with doping violations by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency failed to make the U.S. Olympic team. The team won't...
Technology
Technology
Phone home Airplane passengers may soon be able to use cell phones during flights. Qualcomm claims its CDMA wireless phone system will not interfere with navigational equipment, and legal, ...
Culture
Movies & TV
Lifeless Robot
There's great paranoia potential for a movie about a society in which robots have become fully integrated, their ubiquity masking the threat that they might turn on their creators. I, Robot, "sugg...
Movies & TV
Missed target
Cinderella Story (rated PG for mild language and innuendo) offers little that will appeal to its target demographic (primarily 10- to 13-year-old girls), and almost nothing to anyone else. It's a ...
Movies & TV
For the sake of argument
An argument, according to the time-honored art of rhetoric, is a line of thought developed in a logical and persuasive way. A good argument is a thing of beauty, and, since its goal is persuasion,...
Notable CDs
Best-selling CDs
1. THE GORGE -- Dave Matthews Band Weeks on chart: 1 Style: Concert verite jam-band documentary. Objectionable material: "Rapunzel" (double entendres). Worldview: "I am...
Dispatches
The Buzz
The Buzz
9/11 report After 20 months of work, the 9/11 commission on July 22 released its much-anticipated, 567-page critique of the intelligence failures that led to the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S....
Quick Takes
Quick Takes
Beer run Four Hawkins County (Tenn.) Jail inmates broke out of the prison last week, but they weren't trying to get away; they just wanted some beer. The Knoxville Times-News reports that g...
Quotables
Quotables
"I keep hoping that if I'm annoying enough to them, they won't hire me back." Singer Linda Ronstadt in a media interview prior to a July 17 show at the Aladdin hotel-casino in Las Vegas. Du...