The week's best invented words
John Sakamoto  
BALDERDASH , n.: "a rapidly receding hairline." (cafe-grendel.blogspot.com)

What would FDR do?
Thomas Walkom  
In the face of an accelerating economic crisis, Stephen Harper has vowed not to repeat the mistakes of history.

Want to help? Leave that lunch at home
Daniel Dale  
Barack Obama is planning to spend at least $300 billion to attempt to alleviate the economic crisis. What are you doing to attempt to alleviate the economic crisis?

What to do about a global economic meltdown? ...
Iain Marlow  
The market's invisible hand has materialized pixel by pixel throughout the financial crisis and has of late materialized into an ominous fist looming over several continents, clutching cheques of near-ungraspable ...

Reincarnation in the superhero realm
Brett Popplewell Staff Reporter  
Batman is gone, the victim of a helicopter explosion that has deprived Gotham City of the Caped Crusader for the first time in 69 years.

The case against lending a hand
Francine Kopun  
Televised images of suffering from Sudan, Zimbabwe and Burma cause us to react instinctively, to wonder how we can help families living in ditches, stop child soldiering, bring a measure of the peace and prosperity we take ...

Guilt trips on the road and in the lavatory
Ken Gallinger  
Some people wake in the morning, see the sun shining warmly through their window, and feel guilty because a farmer somewhere needs rain. This week, two questions from people who take to guilt as a duck takes ...

To forgive Lennon is divine
Ron Csillag  
"Good to forgive; best to forget," advised poet Robert Browning in 1878.

It's a rash. Or a flesh-eating microbe
Murray Whyte  

Web searches can 'increase anxieties' especially when "employed as a diagnostic procedure," write researchers from Microsoft in a new study.

More lame duck posturing on climate change
Peter Gorrie  
Expect reports Monday of an electric atmosphere inside the International Fair, the cavernous convention centre in Poznan, Poland.

Books explore the evolution of Sunday
Ryan Bigge  
Two scholarly new books explore the odd evolution of the first day of the week, from Sabbatarianism to shopping - and why there's no such thing as a Wednesday driver.

The enigma of Lake Ontario's 11,000-year-old ...
Leslie Scrivener  
In the fall of 1908, while building a waterworks tunnel east of Hanlan's Point in Toronto Bay, a work crew came across 100 footprints in a layer of blue clay. The prints appeared to have been left by people ...

Picture a universal language
Murray Whyte  
In The Complete Idiot's Guide to Etiquette , authors Mary Mitchell and John Corr offer some helpful, if obvious, travel hints: Calculate your finances, pack well, carry proper documentation. "The pleasant traveler ...

Off the Rack: Ideas
John Sakamoto  
CONSUMER REPORTS: How much should you tip at Christmas?

The week's best invented words
John Sakamoto  
WAISTED , adj.: what overeaters become. Example: "Man, did I ever get waisted at the buffet last night!" (Roy Robertson, Toronto)

Searching the frontiers of science
Peter Calamai  
QUOTE/UNQUOTE: "In any society there are many complicated issues that unfortunately get simplified to the point where short-sightedness wins ... Science teaches us to think more broadly than that." ...

A picture and a thousand words
Christine Sismondo  
A little more than a hundred years ago, Mayor Joseph Oliver was sworn into office at Toronto's Old City Hall, vowing to clean up this burg.