Word of Mouth

Pity the poor maligned typewriter. It was once the axis of a writer’s life. Hemingway packed up his portable Royal in its well-worn leather case and dragged it to Cuba because he couldn’t live without it. ...

The Berlin Wall is making its Los Angeles debut this month. The Wende Museum installed several segments of the original Berlin Wall on Wilshire Boulevard in L.A. They asked artists to paint over a few of the panels with American icons who helped tear down the wall that divided Germany. ...

From the coast of Australia to the shores of the Maldives public officials are looking out at the ocean with increasing alarm.

Writer and columnist Rebecca Lavoie is suffering from what she calls an Oprah-induced injury. Try as she might to engage her eight year-old son in bedtime reading, he’s just not that interested.

A slew of retailers released their October sales numbers this morning. Abercrombie and Fitch is down 5 percent Neiman Marcus is down 6 percent, but Target is inching up to 3 percent growth.

Twenty-three-year old Nathan Williams has had a stressful year. The singer and guitarist records under the name Wavves. And in the past eleven months or so, he’s seen the kind of rise and fall that provided ...

New York City voters gave Michael Bloomberg a narrow win in yesterday’s mayoral election. Bloomberg spent an estimated $100 million to beat Comptroller William Thompson. Much of that money paid for mailers, ads, and robocalls boasting about Bloomberg’s record on crime and education.

In 1985, the world witnessed the first robot-assisted surgery. The PUMA 560 angled its white plastic arm towards the brain of a patient and carefully inserted a biopsy needle. The procedure was a success and the field of medical robotics was born.

Reading, writing and arithmetic are so last century. Today, it’s not enough to just study the core subjects we all learned as kids. Schools are preparing students for college, careers, and a globally competitive workforce. ...

Voters head to the polls today in New York, New Jersey and Virginia for key elections. Political watchers are viewing several races as indicators of how the country feels about President Obama and his ...

Disney is offering refunds to parents who feel duped by its Baby Einstein videos, and parents and researchers alike are questioning brain-boosting tools for kids. So you might be surprised to learn that ...

The textile industry used to be the economic heart of Lowell, Massachusetts. Those massive red-brick factories have long since closed. Now, nearly half the town’s residents are immigrants and refugees from South Asia, Latin America and Africa. ...

Since the 1960s, power companies operating in the four corners area of the U.S. have run power lines over the Navajo and Hopi nations. The transmitters carry electricity to growing sunbelt cities, supplying ...