Culture Columns

How do you get to the playoffs without really trying? Lose one regular season game, and then sit at home and watch the conference championship game while resting your legs and preparing for whomever your ultimate opponent is in the playoff semifinals.

This year the Applied Imagination team added the exhibition's first roller coaster, the Coney Island Cyclone. With the Cyclone are the Coney Island Wonder Wheel (complete with LED sign) and the Elephantine Colossus, a gigantic elephant-shaped hotel from the 1890s that burnt down in a fire.

No, you can't blame our picks on pain meds. Last time we checked, caprice wasn't a viable diagnosis. All we know is this: in a season where nothing makes sense, after a while the only thing that does is chaos.

Money and genius grants can't revive the hundreds of languages native to the Americas that have died out over the last few centuries.

This is the way to deal with masks that has worked for me: seek to identify myself as an individual expression of God’s goodness, which strips away masks or false identities.

We're hoping for a fun weekend of great college football – hopefully without serious injuries. And while we'd like to think that CFB officials would get their act together and finally learn how to call a game with equality for all teams and players, we somehow don't think that's likely to happen. Still, we're looking forward to the end of the season.

"Man up." What a curious phrase to use in the context of a wave of accusations of sexual harassment and assault.

The U.S. Marines are teaming with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) to bring emergency relief to Haiti.

Is there anything more senseless than road rage that ends in violence? My heart goes out to anyone connected to such a tragedy, like the family of the father who was recently shot to death after cutting someone off in traffic. What can we do to stop this from happening? …

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But "any other name" just might not do.