Elaine Soloway writes: I have a theory as to why Tommy picked today — eight days after my birthday. I believe he wanted to separate himself from the crowd — make his gift and card more special than the rest. He wanted to let me know he cared more for me than anyone else, more than the first-thing-in-the-morning well wishers or card and gift senders.

"The names Tiepolo, Canaletto, and Guardi are almost synonymous with the time and place, and their paintings and frescoes are the works most commonly associated with the Settecento in Venice. The drawings in this exhibition, chosen entirely from the Morgan’s collection, bring to light the full spirit of eighteenth-century Venetian art and the many extraordinary individuals who participated in the resurgence of cultural activity that characterized the final years of the Republic."

ProPublica reporters, using Medicare's own data, identified scores of doctors whose prescription patterns within the program bore the hallmarks of fraud. The cost of their prescribing spiked dramatically from one year to the next — in some cases by millions of dollars — as they chose brand-name drugs that scammers can easily resell.

Margaret Cullison writes: I suffered from cake envy after attending a friend’s birthday party when I was six or seven years old. She had an April birthday, and her cake that year looked like a lamb with white frosting and coconut curled fur. The cake completely enchanted me. I knew my friend’s mother hadn’t made the cake herself. We always had homemade birthday cakes at home, but that didn’t impress me nearly as much as the magic of Sandy’s lamb cake.

Humans have long marveled at the secrets of poisons and sought to detect their presence and protect against their toxic powers, as many fascinating artifacts on view at the exibition will reveal. Prized objects included celadon dishes, believed to detect poisons; fossilized shark teeth, thought to be dragon tongues that could "purify" food of deadly compounds; and fossilized sea animals called crinoids, believed to be antidotes to common poisons.

Strategies used by other countries include (1) communicating spend-down options to participants in an understandable and timely manner, and (2) helping participants see how their savings would translate into a stream of income in retirement by providing them with projections of retirement income in their annual benefit statements. Currently, 401(k) participants have difficulty predicting how long their savings will last because most benefit statements do not focus on the stream of income it can generate.

Rose Madeline Mula writes: The only scenario that was even more incredible was that the woman on that screen would one day become my friend — we would correspond, chat on the phone, and even visit each other's homes.My fondest memories of my visits include a quiet evening munching sandwiches in her cozy library where we gossiped and laughed until after midnight. Not only was Joan an exceptional chef, she was also a licensed interior decorator, a prize fisherwoman, a hot air balloonist, and a hole-in-one golfer. "When you've had as many husbands as I've had, Love," said she, "you acquire a lot of their hobbies."

The harried cook and shopper will appreciate these verses from a more-than-seasonal contributor to our site. Enjoy first, then suit up with warm attire - tire chains and shovels if needed - and accessorize for the mall encounters with smartphone lists and apps.  

Since 2003, the population of older adults, defined as age 65 and older, has increased by 20 percent and the number of licensed older drivers increased by 21 percent, to 35 million licensed older drivers in 2012. In that year, according to NHTSA's latest issue of Safety in Numbers, 5,560 people over the age of 65 died, and 214,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes.

“Whether a planned pregnancy has gone horribly wrong and a woman needs a medically necessary D & C procedure, or the deplorable and devastating acts of rape or incest have resulted in an unwanted pregnancy, the Senate Republicans’ passage of this cold-hearted rape insurance proposal means Michigan women now have to anticipate the unimaginable and plan to have these unspeakable things happen to them."

The Selfie word popularity has resulted in the creation of related showcasing particular parts of the body like helfie (a photo of one’s hair) and belfie (a photo of one’s posterior); an activity – welfie (workout selfie) and drelfie (drunken selfie), and even items of furniture – shelfie and bookshelfie. The Merriam-Webster results show that words that prompted the most increased interest in 2013 were not new words or words used in headlines, but rather they were the words behind the stories in this year's news.   SPRINGFIELD, MASS., December 3, 2013—Merriam-Webster Inc., America's leading dictionary publisher, has announced its top ten Words of the Year for 2013. This year's list was compiled by analyzing the top lookups in the onli…

It is hard to describe the impact of seeing a tiger in the wild. The animal is big, a housecat on unbelievable steroids. It has authority; the sheer bulk of its muscular body demands attention and caution. In this natural setting, its presence is both stunning and formidable. I felt privileged to have had the chance to see them unburdened by any cage, free in their own environment.

Labor Secretary Perez inducts Esther Peterson into the Labor Hall of Honor on Tuesday, Dec. 10th, and Council of Economic Advisors’ Betsey Stevenson will moderate a panel on the status of women in the 21st century workforce. A live webcast of both events will be available at http://www.dol.gov/dol/media/webcast/live/ and recognize the 50th anniversary of the American Women report produced by JFK's Commission on the Status of Women, of which Peterson was Executive Vice Chairman.

The fundamentals of haute couture in Europe and America — highly sexualized fitted forms, balance, finish, invisible tailoring and complementary color and pattern — are noticeably absent from contemporary Japanese fashion. Instead, imperfection, transience, austerity, asymmetry, roughness, simplicity and subtlety are valued. As designer Yohji Yamamoto affirmed, "I think perfection is ugly. Perfection is a kind of order ... things someone forces onto a thing. A free human being does not desire such things."

The show explores the use of glass beads for fashion and ornament, as traded goods and objects of ritual. Included are Venetian chevron and millefiori beads, Roman mosaic beads, West Africa bodom beads, Egyptian eye beads, Chinese horned eye beads, Japanese magatama beads and Bohemian beads imitating precious stones. North American beadworked garments and contemporary beaded objects by Joyce Scott and David Chatt are on display.

Charles Ornstein writes: Comparison shopping sounds like a no-brainer, but for many reasons, it’s not. It is time consuming and eye glazing even for a health-care journalist to enter in drugs and review the resulting options. A study commissioned by the Kaiser Family Foundation in October found that only 13 percent of Part D enrollees, on average, switched plans each year between 2006 and 2010. Seven out of 10 people continuously enrolled in plans from 2006 to 2010 never switched.

Doris O'Brien writes: So why deny folks that pleasurable opportunity in lieu of staying home with family and friends, watching TV, or maybe even talking to one another? There are lots of movie-goers on Thanksgiving; why not shoppers? But far be it from me to tell business people how to run their enterprises or customers how to spend their time or money. After all, nobody has to shop on Thanksgiving if they don't want to.

This research is the first to investigate associations between sex hormones and cognition in both younger and older postmenopausal women, and to determine whether the hormones affect women differently based on their age and how much time has elapsed since they reached menopause.

In the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, police used license plate reader data to establish where the Tsarnaev brothers had traveled and where they might be headed, based on places they'd already been. Police used license plate readers to track Dzokhar Tsarnaev to Watertown, Mass., where police found him hiding in a boat in a resident's backyard. Even though LPR data was used in that investigation, Watertown's state representative is pursuing legislation to limit license plate readers.

With the amassing of great fortunes came the drive to document the wealthy in portraiture, echoing a cultural pattern reaching back to colonial times. A brilliant generation of American and European artists rose to meet that demand. The exhibit examines those portraits of famous society beauties and powerful titans of business and industry.

Doris O'Brien writes: So what really defines courage? In the case of those chosen by John F. Kennedy for their "acts of bravery and integrity," the common measure lay in the degree of risk to themselves for the bold actions they undertook. In times of crises — whether in war or peace — true heroes are those who put at risk all that they have striven to possess: their reputations, livelihoods, futures — even their very lives.

Tam Gray writes: The holidays may be absorbing our audience but there are readers who may not be gathering, shopping, cooking, conversing and socializing with others during most of these holidays. For you and all those who might be interested in an ancient art easily experimented with from MIT, here's a video and craft books we've selected that can enjoyed as well as considered as gifts.

In many circumstances, consumers also do not have the legal right to control the collection or sharing with third parties of sensitive personal information (such as their shopping habits and health interests) for marketing purposes. As a result, although some industry participants have stated that current privacy laws are adequate – particularly in light of self-regulatory measures under way – GAO found that gaps exist in the current statutory framework for privacy.