The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. If we knew as much about Darfur as we do about Michael Jackson, we might be able to stop these things from continuing.

The bulk of the emails tend to come after a column. I can get about 2,000 after a column.

The U.N. Population Fund has a maternal health program in some Cameroon hospitals, but it doesn't operate in this region. It's difficult to expand, because President Bush has cut funding

Look, we'll have to confront the pathologies of poverty at some point. We can deal with them cheaply at the front end, in infancy. Or we can wait and jail a troubled adolescent at the tail end. To some extent, we face a choice between investing in preschools or in prisons.

In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.

Usually people are very much focused on keeping their kids alive.

The trails are a reminder of our insignificance. We come and go, but nature is forever. It puts us in our place, underscoring that we are not lords of the universe but components of it...So when the world seems to be falling apart, when we humans seem to be creating messes everywhere we turn, maybe it's time to rejuvenate in the cathedral of the wilderness - and there, away from humanity, rediscover our own humanity.