Does Judy Blume Make Abortion Seem Like A Pony Ride?

In an era where the young adult fiction aimed at teen girls concerns itself with such pressing problems as how to dissuade your vampire boyfriend from performing cunnilingus when you’re having your period, it’s difficult to remember that…

“Catcher In The Rye” Sequel

Who’s up for a sequel to The Catcher in the Rye? Well, certainly John David California, the 32-year-old “former gravedigger and Ironman triathlete” who is also the writer of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, an unauthorized follow-up to the classic novel which everyone…

Unemployment Trends Since 1989: Really, Really Bad

New unemployment numbers this morning saw 637,000 new initial jobless claims last week. The number of people collecting unemployment nationally is now at 6.56 million. Disturbing: the number of those who are “long-term” unemployed (perhaps…

Alex Balk’s RSS Remix

We don’t always cover every story that happens during each day’s news cycle, so here’s a capsule summary of what transpired today: It was discovered that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had Xanax in her system when the CIA lied to her about waterboarding. A brief Google outage left millions of…

He Resides In A Subaquatic Tropical Fruit

If you’re like me, one of your favorite ways to unwind in the evening is to get…

The Best Cat In The World: Is He For You?

I can’t believe I am writing this but: If there is anyone out there who would like a cat? I met the best cat! Last night! He is a former deli cat! He is awesome! He has these little blue-green eyes and is a big fella and is all grey-striped and has an old…

Obama’s Photo Strategy

Gawker’s John Cook does an excellent job of explaining President Obama’s decision against releasing the detainee abuse photos. Here’s the short version:

Obama should have wholeheartedly endorsed the release of the photos in question. But it is a practical…

Earnest Straight Man Shares Hugely Important Opinion About Gay Marriage

What’s so vexing about this whole Miss California story is that while it appears to be almost the very definition of “infotainment,” it actually contains within it one of the more important topics in our…

“Nine” And The Persistence Of Memory

Bill Keller Scolds Newsroom About Tweeting

It is shockingly 2002 all up in the newspapers now. People are learning about being discreet with their Internets! Now it is: not putting things about your workplace on your Twitter and your Facebook. It’s the sort of thing many of us learned painfully…