How you feel about Kim Clijsters doing a split in a frilly orange skirt probably depends on your reaction to a well-oiled Caroline Wozniacki serving a tennis ball into a wind machine. Then again, these provocative scenarios, which form part of the Women's Tennis Association's new "Strong is Beautiful" advertising campaign, seem tame compared to the spot starring Belarusian tennis ace Victoria Azarenka. "I like to hit the ball hard. Crush it," the 2011 Wimbledon semi-finalist says ...

When you hear the word intern, you probably don't think of people like Kristina Shands. For starters, she's 38. And she had notched 10 years of experience as a fundraiser at a nonprofit in Tennessee before she was laid off last year. But now that Shands is considering moving into sports management, she's interning with the Knoxville Ice Bears hockey team, writing game summaries and handing out stats on game day. She devotes about 10 hours a week to the ...

In a barebones basement office in Buffalo, New York, Katie Campos, an education activist, is plotting a revolution. She and her miniscule staff of the education reform advocacy group, Buffalo ReformED, are against incredible odds. In less than a week they are trying to get a controversial law through the New York State Legislature that is known as the Parent Trigger. It's a powerful nickname for game-changing legislation that would enable parents at any persistently failing school ...

Ever since Yoon Hyuk-joo, a 16-year-old in Seoul, started playing the popular computer game StarCraft eight years ago, studying has taken the backseat. For six hours every day in dim, smoky Internet cafs known in the South Korean capital as "PC Bangs," Yoon leads a squad of soldiers in Battlefield Online and then maims the undead in Counter-Strike: Zombies. His idols aren't your usual baseball players or pop-music stars: the high school student looks to inspiration from ...

During the real estate boom, new home construction became a game of ever increasing square-footage. That had a certain logic to it: If you saw your house as an investment to make you rich, bigger could only mean better, right? Now that the economy has unfurled and people are realizing that prices don't always go up, houses are getting smaller — and more practical. Instead of feeding the desire for flash, architects and homebuilders are responding ...

Anaheim, Dallas, Raleigh, Tampa: To the 34 million citizens of Canada, the country that invented the game of hockey, the Stanley Cup belongs in these cities about as much as tropical beaches belong in Saskatoon. Yet, in the almost two decades since the last time a Canadian team won the Cup — Montreal defeated Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings in the 1993 Finals — these southern and western American cities have all hoisted the Cup ...

Human failure is inevitable. Mechanical failure is unexpected. What makes Tiger Woods' story so compelling is that it's a case of both. Nowhere was that clearer than in his press conference on Friday. Woods' brand and golf game were built on his machine-like qualities. He was the guy who delivered the same result over and over. At his sport and in his business dealings, he was flawless, unfailing, programmable. So when his private behavior proved that he had ...

Americans are forever grumbling about government gridlock. But the whole game changes when a credit-rating agency begins to echo them. On April 18, Standard & Poor's, one of those mysteriously powerful firms that grade the financial strength of bond issuers, announced that it was starting to wonder whether the mighty U.S. government could be counted on to repay its creditors. It was a big moment: the first time in seven decades of monitoring Uncle Sam that S&P had sounded such a warning. "The ...

King Robert Baratheon of Westeros enjoyed winning his crown more than he does wearing it. When he was young and strong, he overthrew the sadistic regime of Aerys Targaryen, "the Mad King." Now he's middle-aged and fat; married in a loveless political alliance to Queen Cersei , daughter of the wealthy, cunning Lannister family; and sitting on the Iron Throne, forged from the swords of vanquished foes and literally painful to occupy. Embittered by success, Robert passes an afternoon ...

Four years ago, when releases for other home consoles trended toward ever more elaborate graphics and cutthroat multiplayer game designs, Nintendo unleashed the cartoony avatars and easy-to-understand motion control of the Wii. Its user-friendliness managed to ensnare a new generation of gamers — i.e., parents and retirees — and make the Wii one of the best-selling game machines of all time. Now the Japanese corporation is aiming for another surprising success story with a handheld gaming device that offers ...