All sports are competitive, but they are competitive in very different ways. Team sports pitch two groups of players against each other in direct combat. Racket and fighting sports involve individuals going at it against each other. In racing—whether power-assisted or not—each individual competes against the field. But some sports—target sports such as archery and shooting, ice-skating, bowling, classic ski racing—are different. An individual competitor in these sports can't directly affect how a rival does; he ...

If any pill has been shown undeniably to work in clinical trials, it is the sugar pill, along with its close cousin, the sham treatment. The placebo, as such inert and cost-free remedies are known, can relieve depression as well as Prozac, ease discomfort as well as acupuncture and reduce disability and back pain as well as a widely used vertebral surgery that costs up to $5,000. That the effect of bogus treatments is real has long been known, ...

An online petition demanding a formal apology from the British government for its treatment of World War II code-breaker Alan Turing is gaining momentum. Turing was subjected to chemical castration in 1952 after being found guilty of the charge of gross indecency for having a homosexual relationship, an illegal act at the time. He committed suicide two years later. More than 17,000 people have added their signatures to the petition since it opened three weeks ago, urging the government to ...

Katie Callaway Hall trembled for four hours when she heard Phillip Garrido was arrested. His name sent a flurry of emotion running through her mind. "I screamed," she told CNN's Larry King on Monday night. "I started screaming 'Oh my god, Oh my god, it's him.' " She has thought about him every day since November 22, 1976 when he asked her for a ride at a supermarket in California, before handcuffing her, binding her and taking her to a ...

Phillip Garrido had a story to tell -- about how God helped him overcome the evil inside him. The campus at the University of California at Berkeley was his pulpit and he hoped his neighbors and customers of his printing business would become his flock. He wanted to share his story with anyone who would listen -- including law enforcement. Just days before he was arrested and an 18-year-old kidnap mystery was solved, Garrido walked into an FBI office in ...

The man accused of abducting an 11-year-old girl in 1991 apparently maintained a blog in which he claimed to control sound with his mind. The blog now has profanity-laced responses from people outraged over Phillip Garrido's alleged actions. Police say Garrido confessed to abducting Jaycee Lee Dugard at age 11 and fathering two children with her. Police say Dugard and the children, now 11 and 15, were kept in several enclosures hidden behind his home in Antioch, California. Garrido and ...

Carole Grant doesn't really trust medical doctors. She never has. Whenever she has had a health issue, she has headed straight for an herbalist, acupuncturist or other "natural" healer. A few years ago, her alternative practitioner of choice was a self-described "intuitive healer" in New York, where she lives. The healer put Grant on a regimen of herbs, supplements and vitamins to help her lose weight. A few weeks later, Grant, a geriatric care manager, was closing up an apartment ...

Facebook, for better or worse, is like being at a big party with all your friends, family, acquaintances and co-workers. There are lots of fun, interesting people you're happy to talk to when they stroll up. Then there are the other people, the ones who make you cringe when you see them coming. This article is about those people. Sure, Facebook can be a great tool for keeping up with folks who are important to you. Take the status update, ...

The first time I went jogging in Tehran, I nearly hyperventilated after four blocks, despite wearing the gauziest of head scarves and a decidedly immodest Nike capris. The fabric covering my ears and neck stoked my body temperature unbearably, and the pleasurable strain of running gave way to acute discomfort. "How am I going to stay fit here?" I wailed to my Iranian girlfriends, experts in the dilemma of balancing exercise with Islamic modesty codes. They offered me a ...

While Hurricane Gustav was chewing up Cuba and storming toward Louisiana, the screen of the Venice Film Festival's Sala Grande was showing a very sweet tsunami. In the animated movie Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, the swelling waves take the form of dolphins, and when a Japanese coastal village gets submerged no one is killed or hurt — just amusingly displaced. The rising up of the marine world is not insurrection against humanity but gently cautionary ...