It is half an hour before showtime, and Oprah Winfrey is a lake of calm amid the gusts of activity around her. While a hairdresser and a makeup man are fussing over her, an Oprah Winfrey Show producer, Dianne Hudson, is giving her a ten-minute prep session for this morning's show. The subject is B.S. -- people who use it, people who hate it -- and the topic is giving the host some trouble. "I'm trying to relate to it," ...

Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed that every profession is great that is greatly pursued. Boxing in the early '60s, largely controlled by the Mob, was in a moribund state until Muhammad Ali--Cassius Clay, in those days--appeared on the scene. "Just when the sweet science appears to lie like a painted ship upon a painted ocean," wrote A.J. Liebling, "a new Hero...comes along like a Moran tug to pull it out of the ocean." Though Ali won the gold medal at ...

PRO Absolutely. Government has no business interfering with what you eat By RADLEY BALKO Nutrition activists are agitating for a panoply of initiatives that would bring the government between you and your waistline. President Bush earmarked $125 million in his budget for the encouragement of healthy lifestyles. State legislatures and school boards have begun banning snacks and soda from school campuses and vending machines. Several state legislators and Oakland, Calif., Mayor Jerry Brown, among others, have called for a ...

PC or Mac? It's the longest-running question in personal technology — along with the Mac itself, the debate turns 27 next month — and probably the most contentious one. A small but noisy percentage of computer owners consist of people who aren't content to pick a computing platform and leave it at that. Instead, they question the IQ and/or taste of anyone who makes a buying decision different from their own. Hence the classic stereotypes: the Windows ...

THE troubled and troublesome college Class of 1968 tends to have a sober, even tragic view of life. They were high school seniors in the year that John Kennedy, a politician who gained their trust and inspired their ambitions, was shot to death in Dallas. They were college seniors in the year that Martin Luther King, the Negro leader who tapped their idealism and drew them into social protest, was murdered in Memphis. Throughout all of their college careers, the ...

In the play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, you're the tiger, who becomes a ghost. How does one prepare to play that? A little pacing, biting whenever possible. I'm basically playing the soul of a tiger, so I don't have to do a lot of tiger behavior. The play's about the war in Iraq. Does your appearance in it reflect any personal feelings you have about the war? The last time I was [in Iraq] I stayed in ...

In 1985, when the first rumblings of Gorbachev's thunder disturbed the moldy Soviet silence, the holy fools on the street--the people who always gather at flea markets and around churches--predicted that the new Czar would rule seven years. They assured anyone interested in listening that Gorbachev was "foretold in the Bible," that he was an apocalyptic figure: he had a mark on his forehead. Everyone had searched for signs in previous leaders as well, but Lenin's speech defect, Stalin's mustache, ...

A testament of prophecy, true belief, go-getting and megabucks Stop. Before proceeding: a test. A kind of measured mile on the long road to high-tech heaven. There are only a couple of questions. Either: a> "What will a computer do for me?"; b> "Do I really need a personal computer?"; or c>—the beginner's question—"What are these things anyway?" A bonus: there are no penalties for wrong answers. The weight of the argument and the heat of the debate are what ...

With 85 million baby boomers and 50 million Gen Xers, there is already a yawning generation gap among American workers--particularly in their ideas of work-life balance. For baby boomers, it's the juggling act between job and family. For Gen X, it means moving in and out of the workforce to accommodate kids and outside interests. Now along come the 76 million members of Generation Y. For these new 20-something workers, the line between work and home doesn't really exist. They ...

Cars, trucks, and vans stacked with families and their personal belongings had poured out of Benghazi on for most of Saturday, heading toward the eastern city of Beida, about 125 miles away. Many of the Libyans said they would continue on to Tobruk and even Egypt. "We are fleeing Benghazi, and we are going to Egypt," said one man driving a large van with his and his neighbor's family packed into it. Like many others reaching ...