Jesse Ellison

Two men. Two different approaches to violence prevention. And one small pool of funding dollars.

The current cost to station 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan: just over $65 billion—or, to quote a figure politicians have extrapolated, about $1 million a soldier. (Obama's budget director has cited this ratio in estimating surge costs.) Why so much?

There will be no climate treaty to emerge from the conference in Copenhagen this month, global leaders now concede. But there may be alternative ways to help combat global warming.

  I was among the 7.4 million Americans who tuned in on Wednesday to watch Oprah Winfrey interview Charla Nash, the woman tragically attacked by her friend's pet chimpanzee back in February.

You've done it so many times, at so many sites across the Internet, that chances are you don't even think about it anymore: deciphering and typing in a "CAPTCHA," those squiggly, mucked-up words presented each time you buy tickets online, write a blog comment, or join a social network.

My grandmother lived a full life and sought a quiet death. America's health-care system had a different idea of what was best.

Director Quentin Tarantino has said that he was motivated to make his new film, the brutal revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds, in part by a frustration with the standard Holocaust narrative presenting Jews as victims.

Stereotypes are reality television's bread and butter. We know that. But Top Chef, we thought you were different. We thought you were special! The show returns for its sixth season tonight, and if the first episode is any indication, many of the contestants this time around seem, well, scripted.

Yes, there is such a thing as a great commencement speech.

We love our animal companions, but does that really justify thousands of dollars in care and an entire airline devoted to our furry friends?

In short video clips, the new web site Sputnik Observatory seamlessly links disparate ideas into cohesive, connected trains of thought. One thread—the site prefers the term "pathway"—begins with an elderly physicist speculating about whether humans might have dormant capabilities, like being able to fly, and ends with a neurologist explaining why some brains turn sounds into mental paintings.

A young pediatrician turned entrepreneur says he's got a plan to save America's failing primary-care system. But critics say putting medicine online is only part of the solution.

There's a scene early in the gorgeous new documentary "Earth" in which a wolf stalks a caribou calf through the grasslands of northern Canada. The chase, filmed in slow motion, feels epic.

History repeats itself, but not without a few wrinkles. We make the comparisons, then pick them apart.

"A Pint Of Plain" author Bill Barich moved to Dublin after falling for an Irish lass. There he started searching for a sense of community, which morphed into a quest for the quintessential Irish pub—and then for the essence of Ireland itself.

When ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" resumes this week, former New York Giant Lawrence Taylor will be in the starting lineup, making him the fifth NFL legend to appear on the reality megahit.

Begun in 1966, the rebuttal to the State of the Union (and other major presidential addresses) has evolved into a high-profile audition for a rising star from the opposing party. But it's a dubious honor, says historian Richard Norton Smith, and "can either be a springboard or a trapdoor."

There was a time, believe it or not, when our bodies worked for us, instead of the other way around. In her new book, "Bodies," British author and psychologist Susie Orbach examines how science, culture and globalization have upended our relationships to our corporeal selves, turning us from master into slave.

The idea of little piglets living out their days in a darkened factory until they're fat enough to be sliced, diced and smoked is, well, uncomfortable. How surprising, then, that discomfort plays only a minor role in the experience of watching "Our Daily Bread." This 2006 German documentary about industrial food production, recently released on DVD, is astonishingly pretty for a film about the journey from farm to fork.

The first eureka moment in "The Linguists," a PBS documentary airing on Feb. 26, comes from an unexpected source. Our scientist heroes are in a remote Siberian village, searching for speakers of a dying language called Chulym.

When Tyrome Sams turned 18 two years ago, he engaged in a modern rite of passage: he applied for a credit card. Credit wasn't hard to come by then, yet Sams was refused again and again.

Say you wrote a book. You agonized for years over every word, each character. Say your book did quite well, received glowing reviews from big-shot critics, became a bestseller—and then, four years later, say you start getting phone calls from friends complaining about a film in the works starring two of Hollywood's biggest stars that has a story just like your book—a film that goes on to be nominated for 13 Oscars.

Love and heartbreak are typically the stuff of lengthy conversations, hours of analysis and reams of paper. But hot on the heels of their first bestselling compilation, "Not Quite What I Was Expecting: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure,"the editors of Smith Magazine have turned their attenuated attention to matters of love, asking contributors to distill their love lives into six precious words.

A dying Maine mill town gets a fresh burst of energy.

More than 200 years after America's founding, the principal characters and their roles have been largely assigned. But in "The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America," author Steven Johnson argues that a key player has been all but forgotten.

For soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq, a prosthetic arm inspired by 'Star Wars' and other bionic ideas.

In the new PBS documentary "Lioness," Specialist Shannon Morgan, a brawny, tattooed Army vet, conveys the anguish of post-traumatic stress disorder in one simple line.

John McCain is the candidate most associated with military veterans, but a new report by the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gives him a weak grade on his support for vet issues.

Historian Sarah Vowell has earned a following with her particular blend of irreverence and patriotism. In her new book, "The Wordy Shipmates," she profiles the Puritans who fought America's original battle between church and state.

In the mass-media age, news stories captivate us, then vanish. We revisit those stories to bring you the next chapter. STARTING POINTON Sept. 3, 2007, record-setting adventurer Steve Fossett, 63, takes off from a Nevada ranch for a short pleasure trip in a single-engine plane and never returns.