[Photo credit: Sam UL, Creative Commons.]

Just goes to show that neither $1.8 million chandeliers, nor Crocs have any business existing. [Photo credit: ellenm1, Creative Commons. For illustration.]

Verizon workers called off their strike after the company agreed to temporarily extend their contract and return to the bargaining table. Forty-five thousand workers will return to their jobs on Monday. The workers have been off the job for two weeks. The company tried to crush the union, but ...

Long Beach photographers beware, Police Chief Jim McDonnell is a harsh critic: Long Beach (Calif.) Police Chief Jim McDonnell is defending his officer who detained a Long Beach Post contributor for taking pictures of an oil refinery on June 30. “If an officer sees someone taking pictures of ...

The Sidney Hillman Foundation announced Tuesday that Tom Gogola has won the August Sidney Award for excellence in socially conscious journalism for his story, "Bycatch 22: As a twisted consequence of overfishing regulations, commercial fishermen have no choice but to catch sea bass, flounder ...

Yesterday, TIME named Big Think 2011's top News & Information website! [Photo credit: Lindsay Beyerstein, all rights reserved.]

To be fair, Dan Savage wasn't talking to me. I was just listening in on this fight he's having with some people he calls the "monogamusts." I think a monogamust is someone who champions monogamous marriage as the universal human ideal and condemns all other kinds of intimate relationships. Or maybe ...

From Amanda, I learn that a couple decided--apparently of their own free will--to have a hobo-themed wedding.  Lest you think this post comes from a place of knee-jerk anti-hobo animus, let me assure you that I love Utah Phillips and Ted Conover as much as anyone you will ever meet. I ...

In my Room 101, I am this beluga: Watch. HT: Loren Beyerstein.  

Here's a strange story: Erica Herrera plans to marry Curtis Allgier, even though he's an incarcerated alleged murderer with white supremacist tattoos all over his face and she's not white. (Full-sized image) Herrera attempts to explain her decision to the Associated Press in terms of kind of ...

City investigators have determined that a great horned own found dead in Inwood Hill Park last month succumbed to avian herpes. The virus is not transmissible to humans. [Photo credit: Great horned owl by Vicki's Nature, Creative Commons.]

John Boehner's budget proposal would cause the greatest increase in poverty in U.S. history, according to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: House Speaker John Boehner’s new budget proposal would require deep cuts in the years immediately ahead in Social Security ...

Does this picture of a harmless lotus pod give you the howling fantods? I'll admit, it squicks me a little. Jennifer Abbasi reports on the Popular Science blog that there's something of a grassroots movement afoot to recognize "trypophobia," an irrational aversion to the sight of clustered holes ...

I've been trying to draft the Boss for years. Finally, a survey by Policy Policy Polling shows that New Jerseyans are as likely to support Bruce Springsteen for governor (42%) as they are to back incumbent Republican governor Chris Christie (42%), with 16% undecided. Springsteen isn't even ...

Slate's resident advice columnist recently printed a letter from an adult child with a very unusual problem: Dear Prudence, My mother died a decade ago; neither she nor my father had burial plans, so we scrambled and Dad bought a double plot. A few years later, Dad met a nice woman. They ...