John McCain has a problem --- and you can help.

The problem is money. He's tapped out. Barack Obama isn't. He can spend as much as those pesky 632.000 new donors will give him.

So Obama has TV commercials.

McCain has...robocalls.

Robocalls are cheap. They're also inefficient....

Stop anyone on the street, and they'll know of Arianna Huffington --- and she's glad they do. But the Left's second most influential blogger prefers anonymity.

"Digby" prolifically pumps out her dispatches from the People's Republic of Santa Monica, a few miles from Huffington's West Coast office. Her writing gives...

Yom Kippur, 5769
New York City

Rabbi Daniel Cohen
Congregation Agudath Sholom
Stamford, Connecticut

Rabbi Barry Freundel
Kesher Israel Congregation
Washington, D.C.

Dear Rabbis Cohen and Freundel,

Please forgive the presumption -- not only don't we know one another, I'm the kind of "cultural...

Someday Bob Dylan's going to die -- probably in a hotel room in a two-bit city, after playing his 300th concert of the year on his endless "I don't wanna go home" tour -- and then everybody will suddenly realize he was America's Picasso. (Or is it Shakespeare?)

For...

October 2, 2008
New York City

Peggy ---

You've been even busier than usual these last few days, so we haven't run into one another at the market. And I don't feel like shoveling a long thought into a box on a web site you may never look at....

There was some consternation when the moderators for the presidential debates were announced and we learned that Jim Lehrer, Tom Brokaw and Bob Schieffer would referee. For Lehrer -- who hosts the first debate, if it goes forward -- this will be his 11th appearance. Brokaw has covered presidential elections...

It used to be, when a ship was sinking, that men stayed behind until the lifeboats were filled with kids and the "weaker" sex --- thus the cry "women and children first."

In the banking crisis, Wall Streeters and the politicians they own have reversed that order. Bankers come...

Videos
Flume
Skinny Love

The creation story is already a legend.

As winter descended, Justin Vernon moved to his father's cabin in the woods of Northwestern Wisconsin. He was "60 miles away from anyone I love, sometimes more like 1500." But he was "about...

Ever since women got the right to vote in 1920, they've been on the march. In less than a century, they've muscled their way into the same jobs traditionally reserved for men -- and they're already earning 70% of a man's salary.

Why, at this rate, they'll.....

Stop! Hold the...

I went downtown to a recording studio to watch Susan Sarandon tape voice-overs for some public service announcements not because I have a shallow male appreciation for her -- ok, that too -- but because I didn't believe she'd show up.

She wouldn't have been the first to bail.

The...

The AAA endorses me.

So does the U.S. government.

Even NASCAR rolls with me.

And on this, McCain and Obama (sorta) agree.

Why? Because I save you money the minute you start using me. And I go on saving you money every time you remember to use...

When the head of a respected cancer research institute warns his faculty and staff to limit their time on cell phones, I take notice.

Please note: I do not jump to the conclusion that cell phones cause brain cancer. But as Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, the director of...

With energy costs spiking higher than Lou Dobbs' blood pressure, it's shrewd to find ways to save money where you can.

Start by using less electricity.

It's not just a matter of using compact fluorescent bulbs and turning lights off when you leave the room. It may be just as...

I was too good for ABBA.

I thought they were a manufactured group that some cynical producer invented to counter the dirty fun of late '70s disco.

When they called it quits, I believed they would package their Greatest Hits and vanish into Classic Radio, a...

The trailer's been on YouTube since December, 2007.

Disney ran a commercial for it during the Super Bowl

A bunch of previews followed, including one shown during the last game of the pro basketball finals.

And yet I knew nothing about WALL-E until it opened...

In the winter of 2008, when all was politics, my non-political friends kept sending me the video of Jill Bolte Taylor's 18-minute talk at the TED Conference. That audience swooned; two million online viewers and instant fame followed. Dr. Taylor was named to Time Magazine's list of the...

If you're going to only one conference a year, you might as well go to the best. For me, that's D: All Things Digital, masterminded by Wall Street Journal personal technology columnist Walt Mossberg and the scourge of Silicon Valley, Kara Swisher. They put on a great show,...

Self-help books are like diet books -- the people who mostly get helped are their authors and publishers.

But I hope that Steven Pressfield and his editors at Grand Central Books are drinking Petrus tonight, because The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner...

At a publishing party, I was chatting with a literary agent who's one of the titans of this troubled business.

"In the last year, can you name a new novel you couldn't put down?" I asked.

Long pause. He couldn't. Nor could I. My Amazon.com account has become a blur...

John McCain is very unhappy about the North Carolina commercial that connects Barack Obama with Rev Wright's "God bless America? God damn America" sermon. [See it here. ]

Indeed, he sent a letter to the North Carolina Republican Party leadership:

"This ad does not live up to the...