There's a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals, in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig - an animal easily as intelligent as a dog - that becomes the Christmas ham.

The Congressional leaders set the agenda for journalism; it's not the other way around.

I get letters from classes all the time. Say it's assigned in someone's 8th grade class, and the teacher asks everyone to write a letter to me about their impressions and what they learned. So, it's incredibly gratifying to hear.

Don't ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.

If you're a politician it's very useful to say that we can have economic growth and at the same time green the economy, but writers just have to face up to the fact that there are some fundamental tensions between the economic order and the biological order.

There's something magical that happens when people eat from the same pot. The family meal is really the nursery of democracy. It's where we learn to share; it's where we learn to argue without offending. It's just too critical to let go, as we've been so blithely doing.

Don't eat anything your great-great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. There are a great many food-like items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn't recognize as food.. stay away from these