In an episode of the 1950s TV show Superman, a school bus full of kids is threatened with disaster as it nearly topples over a cliff, when — whoosh — the Man of Steel flies in and pushes the bus to safety. That was the fantasy that Geoffrey Canada, the South Bronx–bred boy who became a Harvard-trained education entrepreneur, hoped for as a child. All it would take to save schoolkids was muscle and a miracle. But ...

You would not think that TV would be a sphere of life where men feel endangered. Katie Couric is being replaced by a dude. Men host every late-night show outside cable. Entourage has somehow managed to run for more seasons than Sex and the City. But at May's upfronts — where networks announce their fall schedules to advertisers — there was a pattern: sitcom after sitcom about how today's men are besieged and need to rediscover their masculinity. ...

If anyone harbored any doubts that hybrid cars are hot, last week the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show put them to rest. Carmakers practically ran over one another promoting their versions in attempts to catch up with Honda and Toyota, the technology's pioneers. Companies such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Mazda, Mitsubishi, GM, Volkswagen and Porsche showed new models or talked about plans to sell them by the end of the decade at the latest. On display were not only regular hybrids, the kind powered by ...

It may be the ultimate instance of American mixed feelings. Our popular culture? Spiffy, spectacular: Billie Holiday songs, Krazy Kat, Preston Sturges movies, Ernie Kovacs, the Four Tops, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bob Dylan, E.T., even blue jeans, Whoppers and soda pop. But ask again, on a dull, gray, Spenglerian day, and the view is altogether different. Alarming, appalling, totally awesome. The critic Dwight Macdonald called pop culture a spreading ooze back in the 1950s, when Sylvester Stallone was ...

On Feb. 15, 1965, a diffident but self-possessed high school student named Raymond Kurzweil appeared as a guest on a game show called I've Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and the panelists — they included a comedian and a former Miss America — had to guess what it was. On the show ...

It's Art Bell month at the movies. Bell, who in the '90s made his late-night show Coast to Coast AM home for believers in all manner of paranormal activity — a kind of true-life radio version of The X Files — must be tickled to see the November lineup at the multiplex. He and his guests talked about the psychic phenomenon known as remote viewing, which is the subject of this week's George Clooney semicomedy, The Men Who Stare ...

Even after his death, Michael Jackson is breaking records."It wasn't really like going to the movies, it was more of going to a V.I.P. behind the scenes Michael Jackson concert," Gross said in his review. "There really is nothing to compare this to!" The film will show in 99 countries, and early reports from overseas territories show strong late show and early matinee attendance, Elzer said. Another iReport reviewer, FabTab, watched the movie in Beijing, China, and also said the ...

The Internet's most popular search engine should get smarter about music, as Google updates the algorithms that power its searches this week, a company spokesman said."It wasn't really like going to the movies, it was more of going to a V.I.P. behind the scenes Michael Jackson concert," Gross said in his review. "There really is nothing to compare this to!" The film will show in 99 countries, and early reports from overseas territories show strong late show and early matinee ...

When I try to explain my ardor for HBO's trashy-fabulous soap opera "True Blood" to my dude friends, they either shrug and change the topic, or question whether I've been writing for ladyblogs for too long and am suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome.

A Saudi court that sentenced a journalist to 60 lashes for her work on a controversial television show has summoned a second woman affiliated with the TV station.