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Editor's Letter
feature I work in a big city, where the screams of a passing siren barely dent one’s consciousness and only the most sensational crimes make the local papers. Then there is The Gazette, the weekly newspaper that covers the small community in which I live. The vil
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Editor's Letter
feature The world is coming to an end. Chicken Little was correct about this, if a bit premature; the only relevant questions are how, and when. The current conventional wisdom is that Doomsday will occur no later than 2 billion years hence, when the sun expands,
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Editor's Letter
feature When I heard that Charlton Heston had died, I called my younger brother. We talked for several animated minutes about the brawny action star with whom we’d grown up—the jut-jawed monolith who survived an earthquake, single-handedly stood down a planet of
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Editor's Letter
feature Michelle Obama is one accomplished woman. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, she’s worked for a top-notch law firm and for the city of Chicago. Now she’s a high-powered hospital executive, a firebrand on the stu
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Editor's Letter
feature Think about the upcoming Olympic Games in China, and you’re bound to think of Tibet. Pro-Tibetan activists have succeeded in making the Buddhist region, occupied by China since 1950, part of any conversation about the Beijing Olympics. Some of this global
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Editor's Letter
feature As oil coats the coastlines of San Francisco Bay and Russia’s Black Sea, its cost is shooting toward $100 a barrel. Pump prices around the country are heading to new records. Yet even if we end up with $5-a-gallon gas, we’ll still be paying less than peop
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Editor's Letter
feature British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is probably sorry he asked. The British certainly have a glorious history and no shortage of stiff upper lips and other laudable national traits. But it turns out that they lack a national motto. So Brown recently invit
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Editor's Letter
feature When I’m in a masochistic mood, I survey the 8:03 into the city to see how many of my fellow drones are passing the time by reading. Only about half the people have their noses in newspapers, magazines, and (rarely) books. The rest are either dozing or en
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Editor's Letter
feature In a lab in Maryland, genetic scientists have built the first entirely man-made chromosome. Playing God, you might call it: They’ve built the complete DNA for a one-cell organism out of inanimate proteins. Some time in 2008, The Washington Post’s Rick Wei
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Editor's Letter
feature At a Christmas party I attended a year ago, the crowd gathered around the sliced ham started buzzing about Barack Obama. A guest said he’d heard Obama speak and was blown away; he had a spark, a charisma, that he hadn’t seen in a presidential candidate si
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Editor's Letter
feature Forget Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Forget Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee. Right now, the most compelling presidential contender around is Stephen Colbert (see Page 21). It may seem preposterous that a comedian is running for the nation’s highest of
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Editor's Letter
feature Feeling stressed out? You’re in good company. The American Psychological Association released a survey last week showing that nearly a third of American adults suffer from extreme stress, due mostly to money and work pressures, followed closely by the str
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Editor's Letter
feature White House Press Secretary Dana Perino should have gone with “no comment.” Engaging in some good-natured bantering about her job on the NPR news quiz show last week, Perino confessed that when a question about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis came up during
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Editor's Letter
feature When you’re running for president, you’ll take any endorsement you can get—especially if it’s from a celebrity. In his uphill quest to overtake Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama is now stumping through Iowa with Oprah Winfrey, hoping that the queen of daytime
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