Ten years ago this week, in a presentation to the United Nations Security Council that he would later call “one of my momentous failures,”then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made the case for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. “Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world,” Powell said. Six weeks later, on March 20th, the war in Iraq… Read More >>

If you're trying to get pregnant, switch off the television. So say researchers who found a link between sperm count and time spent with the clicker in hand. A study by the Harvard School of Public Healthdiscovered that men who watched 20 hours of TV a week had a 44 percent lower sperm count than those who watched almost no television. Men who exercised for at least 15 hours a week had a sperm… Read More >>

We said it back in our July/August issue when we ran a big excerpt in our pages: Kristen Iversen's Full Body Burden, about nuclear contamination at Rocky Flats in Colorado, is essential reading.  While the subject might sound hard to approach, Iversen's book is anything but clinical: It's a riveting (and well-researched) account of growing up in a place filled with… Read More >>

Planning on watching the big game with pals this Sunday? Read our humor editor Andy's very funny take on the 10 types of people you meet at every Super Bowl party (the Ad Man? the Critic? the Leatherhead?) and let us know which one you are. Read More >>

While Super Bowl Sunday might as well be known as National Nacho Day, the players themselves don't get to chow down on chips and burgers. So while we're eating wings, Ohio Nachos, and everything cheesy, here's what the guys on the field are putting on their plates: The Ravens fill up on a "Power Man Salad"that's packed with things like romaine lettuce, hard boiled eggs, a rainbow of veggies, brown… Read More >>

It's no secret that Super Bowl commercials can be just as rivetingas the glory on the gridiron. A good thing for advertisers, since they’re dropping serious coin on them—roughly 700% the cost of a 30-second spot in the first televised game 45 years ago. Below, the averages in dollars adjusted for inflation (and with the conversion to current dollars in parentheses)… Read More >>

Did you know that hunger is the world's number one health risk? It kills more people each year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. The numbers are startling, with 870 million people worldwide lacking enough food (60 percent of them women) and under-nutrition contributing to the deaths of one third of the globe's children younger than five. But you can help: And… Read More >>

With all the recipes for chicken wings flying around in anticipation of Super Bowl Sunday, our mouths were watering. But for the non-carnivores out there, chips and guac don't sound all that appetizing as alternatives. So we tested out some meat-less game day recipes and meals. Here are our favorites, and the folks we know will love 'em. Happy Food Coma! For the Texas gal who's…: Get your… Read More >>

As someone who buys upwards of 100 tickets a year on Ticketmaster.com, the bane of my existence are CAPTCHAs.  This slick-sounding acronym stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Um, what, you ask?  These nearly impossible to decipher images (sample pictured here) are the code you have to crack before… Read More >>

A year from now, we'll all be caught up in the hype and craziness surrounding the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' arrival in the U.S. in February 1964, highlighted by their legendary appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. But why wait? Over at Slate, they've already started a cool Beatles project that tracks the Mop Tops' career in "real time."  Every week, the site's Brow Beat blog posts an item about the Beatles… Read More >>