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Emily and Willa, I completely agree with you that it’s time to get serious about cell phone use while driving—and I think there’s an interesting generational angle to consider as a crusade, I hope, gets under way ... (Read more in Double X.)

It’s a catchy, catty angle, that’s for sure: An article in today’s New York Times about a recent study of potential gender bias in Broadway theater opens by suggesting that women playwrights do indeed have more trouble getting their work produced than men do—and that female artistic directors, producers, and literary managers “are the ones to ...

Tonight you can see the finals of the National Spelling Bee on television and watch as the kids contort under the mounting pressure. They “tug at their hair and display preadolescent tics that are hard enough to manage in front of malicious middle-school classmates, let alone... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

Can this marriage be saved? Yes, it can—through letters. Check out yesterday’s Op Ed in the Times by a military wife facing marital strains, who turned to an old-fashioned remedy... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

Forget your budding little artists’ portraits of Obama, and check out Michelangelo’s “Torment of St. Anthony.” There’s a fascinating—and somewhat frustrating—article in the New York Times today about the debate over whether he did, as a 12- or 13-year-old, in fact paint the portrait, based on an engraving. The controversy has been raging for ...

While Bristol Palin was enjoying another prime time moment making her ambassadorial debut as the Candie's Foundation's abstinence spokesperson—Meghan, you're right, what dizzy come-hither-hypocrisy is at work there!—you probably missed... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

The spectacle of Senator Arlen Specter surely had nothing to do with Justice David Souter's timing—if indeed reports of his retirement plans are true. But it's a pointed, and also rather poignant, contrast. The almost-80-year-old guy who's got every reason to hang it up just can't let go—and hogs the spotlight by grabbing the chance to shift the ...

If I were an Adderall popper, I probably wouldn't have veered from my Slate tasks today to read Margaret Talbot's fascinating piece about neuroenhancers in the latest New Yorker. But I'll please my employers by turning an afternoon distraction to good use: a blog post! Margaret points out that ''every era, it seems, has its own defining drug,'' ...

Communicating with boys is the theme of the day in the New York Times, which has a front-page article on how market researchers are communing with young guys to help Disney carve out a boys' entertainment niche, as well as the Science section column on how pediatricians tackle the sex talk with boys. Like you, Jessica, I like the basically ...

Primed by a bunch of reading I've been doing about the vogue in bad-mommy confessionals (here's an interesting piece in the American Prospect on the topic), I misread this tagline—''Broadway Star Now Runs Downtown Mommy Group''—as I skimmed through the XX morning memo highlighting assorted articles. I read ''Runs Down Mommy Group.'' So I hurried ...