If you are an avid sports fan, undoubtedly, you watch ESPN's SportsCenter. Reflecting its primary focus on entertainment, rather than sports, the folks at ESPN are conducting yet another unscientific and haphazard fan voting contest-Title Town, USA.

These videos are largely seen only by the choir. Is that enough? I don’t think so.

Anyone who knows the comic will know about the characters and what they represent: 1) The Joker = chaos, 2) The Batman = order; 3) Two Face = pure chance. There are many lines in the film which "spank your face" with these metaphors, and if the acting was not so good, the joker's lines could have easily been over the top in making the deeper, existential questions within the film too obvious and contrived for most moviegoers.

During this past weekend's (July 17-20) State Farm Classic LPGA Tournament, Michele Wie was disqualified for violating one of golf's inane rules governing when and where the players sign their scorecards. Upon finding out she had been disqualified, Sue Witters, the LPGA's director of tournament competition commented that "She (Wie) was like a little kid after you tell them there's no Santa Claus."  

It's been said that advertising is a form of sorcery. Consider the use of brand logos. Symbols bring reality into being.

Yesterday’s New York Times ran an article titled “Poll Shows Racial Division on Obama’s Candidacy.” The story included several examples of divergence between White and Black Americans’ perceptions of the presidential campaign; for example, more than 80% of Black respondents reported a positive impression of Barack Obama, compared to closer to 30% of Whites. Some of the most interesting findings, however, have nothing to do with presidential politics, but rather speak to the persistent divide in how Americans think about race, a divide that too frequently is only discussed by behavioral researchers.

Satirical images challenge us to engage with the truths and falsehoods in an often confrontational way. What does it take in a mind/brain to make sense of such images? Why do so many viewers, even those from roughly the same political perspective, interpret this New Yorker cover in very different ways.

Will Smith remains as the hero of Fourth of July movie debuts with his most recent film, Hancock. However, in an interesting twist, the superhero Hancock, that Smith portrays, is actually an anti-hero. 

This satirical cover controversy is or appears to be a tempest and another round of bread and circuses for the news media maw.

A month back, an editor at a hip Webzine gave me a copy of Atmospheric Disturbances, by Rivka Galchen. The editor knows I like cutting-edge fiction and novels by doctors; this gift was both.

I can get kind of preachy, I know. Hopefully it amuses you, the reader, as much as it does me. I find it incredibly entertaining that at times I can be so unbearably pompous.  Well, here's a little gem that gets across a number of my points with a much lighter touch.

Responding to an outpouring of letters, the editors of the Nation have restored the Frank W. Lewis cryptic crossword to its every-issue basis.

Japanese game shows have been satirized by a variety of long-running American television shows such as "The Simpsons" and "Saturday Night Live." Americans found these parodies to be amusing despite little knowledge of actual Japanese game shows. Finally, ABC decided to take advantage of this form of popular culture by airing "I Survived a Japanese Game Show." So, what took so long?

Dara Torres broke all stereotypical thinking over the weekend. At 41, she has the world in awe as she beat her own record from only a couple of decades earlier. . . Both men and women look up to her and wonder: she was 17 in her first Olympics and she's ready for the next, 24 years later.

As the calendar turns to July, athletes from around the globe finish their preparations for next month's Summer Olympics, that quadrennial exercise in unabashed jingoism in which fans on every continent tune in to root in unqualified terms for their fellow countrymen and women. What to make, then, of the curious case of the 2004 U.S. men’s basketball team, the team that Americans loved to hate?

Would you feel like you'd still like to be president after you have just been liberated from six years of captivity?

Independence. What a wonderful word. In 1776, the colonies declared their independence from the British Empire. As time progressed, the United States would become a world power.  

Any Sheryl Crow fans out there? If so, you'll no-doubt remember her big breakthrough record, unoriginally called "Sheryl Crow." A few years ago, we noticed something very strange about that record.

I see by the papers that PBS is launching a television cartoon version of “Car Talk.” I have a special attachment to the radio show. It sustained a patient of mine.

The Internet can be lionized or demonized. Some live by it and others die by it? How much time do you spend on it?