Within a stone's throw* of Ground Zero, Manhattanites are building $50,000 fish tanks so they can watch thousands of dollars worth of fish swim around. This fun 'n' lurid offense against the dignity of hominids and aquatic vertebrate alike is the subject of an adorable story that we should probably designate as When People Have Too Much Inequitably Distributed Wealth Here At The End Of Civilization, Chapter 54. (This is what's often terrific about the Times' "Home & Garden" section, by the way-it adroitly handles rich people topics that Styles too often gets all tangled up in, what with Styles' trademark combination of resentment and lust.) So [...]

Recently, NPR aired the word "goddamned" again, this time in a quote from a Tom Cruise-in-character-as-Les Grossman appearance, and boy howdy is America upset about the taking of the Lord's name in vain. But don't worry, NPR's ombudsman (who is a woman! Which gives me pause that she should be opining on language usage!) is on the case. She writes: "I'm seeing the question through a different lens-one that is not based in the New York-Washington corridor, where this example of offensive language often goes in one ear and out the other." While it's surely true that in "real America" it is sometimes considered offensive to Christians to use [...]