In troubled times it’s important to pace yourself. There’s only so much you can worry about at once, and we’ve already got Egypt, the weird weather, rising food prices and unemployment. Plus, the secretary of homeland security says the terror threat is really high. It would be at least reddish-orange...

Our Father, who art in pixels, linked be Thy name, Thy Web site come, Thy Net be done, on Explorer as it is on Firefox. Give us this day our daily app, and forgive us our spam, as we forgive those who spam against us, and lead us not into aggregation, but deliver us from e-vil. Amen. Nothing is sacred...

“If Jesus Christ were alive today,” minister Norman Vincent Peale said in 1974, “he’d be at the Super Bowl.” The comment was audacious then, but it seems almost self-evident now. Pro football is perhaps the last of the great mass entertainments in America, and the Super...

Encyclopedic in breadth but compact enough for the vest pocket of a 19th-century gentleman on the go, the book was an insider’s guide to Manhattan, easily picked up at the newsstand before a night on the town, much the way tourists and local residents now consult a guidebook when they are in the...

IN January 1986, Basit and Amjad Alvi, sibling programmers living near the main train station in Lahore, Pakistan, wrote a piece of code to safeguard the latest version of their heart-monitoring software from piracy. They called it Brain, and it was basically a wheel-clamp for PCs. Computers that...

In an age of commemorating birthdays, weddings and anniversaries on Facebook and Twitter, it was perhaps inevitable that live Web-streaming funerals for friends and loved ones would be next. It is no surprise that the deaths of celebrities, like Michael Jackson, or honored political figures, like the...

Under criticism that her political rhetoric had helped create a climate for political violence, Sarah Palin addressed the issue in trademark fashion: via e-mail to the conservative commentator Glenn Beck. “Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying...

When we cry, we may be doing more than expressing emotion. Our tears, according to striking new research, may be sending chemical signals that influence the behavior of other people. The research, published on Thursday in the journal Science, could begin to explain something that has baffled scientists...

América Latina cierra un buen año, uno de los menos malos en mucho tiempo. Nos tocó un Premio Nobel de Literatura; elecciones equitativas, detalles más detalles menos, en varios países; mineros rescatados; una recuperación económica más vigorosa que la esperada, y ningún gran contratiempo...

Leo en el último número de The New York Times Book Review (diciembre 19) una reseña de Michael Kinsley al libro de George W. Bush, Decision Points (2010), que apareció hace poco y ocupa un sitio preponderante entre los más vendidos de la temporada. Se trata de un libro de memorias sobre las...