Opinions: 'Temptation still got a hold on me'
VAIDYANATHAN: It's almost over. For 40 days, I will have forsaken pleasures of the flesh and honed my will down to a keen and razor edge, bleeding away decadence and fighting my predilections.

I have thirsted for the sacred nectars of Coca-Cola, coffee and alcohol like a dehydrated man gasping for water in the desert, agonizingly rejected offers of free pizza and ice cream like a priest turning down a willing woman, and held my libidinal energies in check like a lion tamer trying to hold a dragon at bay with a chair.

Opinions: The bigger they are...
Global warming has become a hot topic in recent months, as demonstrated by the flood of e-mails still coming in from Hilary Wade's column on the topic two weeks ago.

Opinions: Rest of world should pay attention
PATE: China is becoming a world power, and it's starting to throw its weight around. America, and the world at large, should take more notice of this fact.

It's a common trend among nations that their spheres of interest expand with their economic and military power - their "hard power." For example, the America of the 1860s and '70s would never have concerned itself with the political system of a small, unimportant Southeast Asian nation.

But a century later, America fought in Vietnam.

Opinions: Letters to the Editor
I deplore the Recording Industry Association of America and the four major record labels that it represents: Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG.

This collective has been accused of offenses ranging from price-fixing to stifling innovation. Its capital and access to federal legislation grants it unreasonable power in the music industry.