Alec Baldwin, 53, might just be NBC’s hardest-working employee: He appears in his Emmy-winning role as the bombastic network executive Jack Donaghy on “30 Rock,” which returns with new episodes in January (and can be seen in syndication beginning Monday); he’s also gearing up for another stint as…

In the few years since I’ve graduated from medical school, there has been enough time to go back to medical practice in some form, but I haven’t and don’t intend to, so quit yer askin’ already. But of course, people keep on asking. Their comments range from the curious — “Why don’t you practice?” —…

Delta Airlines They may be fine for reading, but the upright seats in coach make it hard to sleep — or to get quality sleep, anyway. Have trouble sleeping on overnight flights in coach? Then apparently you weren’t on TAM airline’s Flight 8082 from São Paulo to New York a couple of weeks ago. I…

#2. You Think Originality is Dead The complaint is the same on every gaming message board: "Every goddamn game on the planet is a first person shooter." They're all Call of Duty (or before that, Halo ) clones -- same mechanics, different outfits. Every sports game is exactly the same as the 15…

Silly me. I thought flying on 9/11 would be easy. I figured most people would choose not to fly that day so lines would be short, planes would be lightly filled and though security might be ratcheted up, we’d all feel safer knowing we had come a long way since that dreadful Tuesday morning 10 years…

With QNX now firmly roadmapped at RIM and Android spreading among vendors like a virus, I wanted to point out that these operating systems share one ancestor: Unix. A technical triumph Technically Linux, which underlies Android, among others, is walled off from Unix from an IP point of view, but the…

First impressions … commenting immediately on their appearance tells girls that looks are more important than anything. Photo: Getty Images From Sunday Life I went to a dinner party at a friend's home last weekend, and met her five-year-old daughter for the first time. Little Maya was all curly…

I was struck by a passage in David Brooks’s column today: But, over the years, government has grown and undermined these virtues. Wall Street financiers no longer have to behave prudently because they know government will bail them out. Middle-class families no longer have to practice thrift because…

I’m not big on the favorite Beltway gotcha, which takes the form of “you once said A, now you say B, so how can you explain that, huh?” As I see it, it’s all too often a substitute for actually talking about substance. Never mind what somebody said in 2004, or 1994, since circumstances are rarely…

Maybe it's your brother-in-law, who has a new Mercedes and likes to quip that only fools pay all their taxes. Or else a contractor who overcharged for a home renovation and then demanded you make the check payable to "cash." Or perhaps your company's chief tax accountant, who is cutting corners to…

Saturday, 03 September 2011 11:09 By Mike Lofgren , Truthout | News Analysis (Photo: Carolyn Tiry / Flickr ) Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!" Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944) Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state…

COLUMN ONE A fungus is attacking the plane trees along the Canal du Midi, a waterway in southeast France so picturesque that UNESCO called it a 'work of art' and declared it a World Heritage Site. Boats cruise along the Canal du Midi in southeastern France. A fungus is… (Guillaume Horcajuelo,…)…

Smoke in the cabin? Just open the window After Ann Romney's plane made an emergency landing, the pilot explains to Mitt the mysteries of pressurization Behind the underwear bomb The latest airplane terror plot wouldn't have been foiled without airport security -- but not the kind we all know Letter…

Smoke in the cabin? Just open the window After Ann Romney's plane made an emergency landing, the pilot explains to Mitt the mysteries of pressurization Behind the underwear bomb The latest airplane terror plot wouldn't have been foiled without airport security -- but not the kind we all know Letter…

A new drama tells the story of a Jewish lawyer who confronted Hitler 80 years ago - earning the dictator's life-long hatred. So who was Hans Litten? In the Berlin courtroom, Adolf Hitler's face burned a deep, furious red. The future dictator was not accustomed to this kind of scrutiny. But here he…

BOOSTER SHOTS: Oddities, musings and news from the health world Bill Clinton talks about being a vegan Former President Bill Clinton during a recent visit to Haiti. Clinton says… (EPA / Andres Martinez Casares ) Former President Bill Clinton is speaking out about his plant-based, heart-healthy diet,…

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Omaha OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched. While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans…

Our next iteration was an improvement in automation, but not really in architecture. We created a web based tool that would handle the process of stopping and starting things as well as copying into place and extracting the new code. This meant that people could push to a number of servers at once…

Sad, sad, sad. The world’s best deal in TV and movies has just gone away. I refer, of course, to Netflix’s $10-a-month deal: unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming TV shows and movies. Paul Sakuma/Associated Press Netflix says its new pricing structure will “ensure a long life for our DVDs…

CHILDHOOD RELIC Jungle gyms, like this one in Riverside Park in Manhattan, have disappeared from most American playgrounds in recent decades. Dith Pran/The New York Times When seesaws and tall slides and other perils were disappearing from New York’s playgrounds, Henry Stern drew a line in the…

Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system. And no, I don’t mean…

I hesitate to write this, because I am still in shock. People in shock often do or say things they would not do or say were they calm and collected. But I feel a need to write something about this weekend of horror, and to do so in English in order to communicate with my friends and unknown friends…

LONDON — Soon after I was born my father moved our family from Britain back to his native South Africa to become dean of the school for black medical students at the University of the Witwatersrand. Blacks were obliged to live separately from whites, a principal reason for his having left…