What if we could stop aggressive behavior with a smile?

Researchers at the University of Bristol found that people prone to violence tend to view those around them as angry, too—thus provoking more violence. But the vicious cycle can potentially be broken if the first group is able to see happiness in others’ expressions. 

On Saturday morning, Secretary of State John Kerry telephoned the parents of a 25-year-old Foreign Service officer who had been so uncommonly upbeat and manifestly idealistic amid pervasive gloom and cynicism when she helped coordinate his visit to Afghanistan two weeks before.

Anne Smedinghoff had seemed to embody the spirit of America at its very best, and she had been determined to venture out and demonstrate a greatness of heart even as our military withdrawal was making that continually more dangerous.

Kerry was now calling to tell Tom and Mary Beth Smedinghoff that their brave and buoyant daughter had been killed by a bomb-laden vehicle while she was riding in a convoy to deliver donated schoolbooks in Zabul province.

Cablegate: Part II?

WikiLeaks released on Monday a search engine that allows readers to scour through a trove of more than 1.7 million diplomatic cables. Branded the "Kissinger Cables," they run from 1973-1976 and focus on the tenure of controversial Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The searchable database, dubbed "PlusD" (#PlusD on Twitter), also contains the 250,000 diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks released in November 2010, known collectively as "Cablegate."

America’s urban landscape is changing, but in ways not always predicted or much admired by our media, planners, and pundits. The real trend-setters of the future—judged by both population and job growth—are not in the oft-praised great “legacy” cities like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, but a crop of newer, more sprawling urban regions primarily located in the Sun Belt and, surprisingly, the resurgent Great Plains.

While Gotham and the Windy City have experienced modest growth and significant net domestic out-migration, burgeoning if often disdained urban regions such as Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Charlotte, and Oklahoma City have expanded rapidly. These low-density, car-dominated, heavily suburbanized areas with small central cores likely represent the next wave of great American cities.

Here it is again. The yoga sex-scandal: too clichéd for fiction, too outlandish to be ignored, leaping from whispered locker-room conversations into garish SEO-ready headlines on CNN. If only repetition led to farce. The latest scandal involves yogi Bikram Choudhury, the already cartoonishly overdrawn guru from Calcutta, lord over an empire of hot yoga studios, now accused by former senior instructor Sarah Baughn of soliciting sex from his female students, punishing them when they refused his advances, rewarding male teachers who brought him willing consorts, and bragging during lectures of his “72-hour marathon sex sessions.”

For those who don’t know him, Bikram Choudhury has long operated as something of a dark prince of America yoga. Beginning his yogic studies at the age three in India, he arrived in America a virgin, teaching free of charge in the basement of a bank. Now, at 67 years old, he parades on his teaching dais in Speedo and Rolex, barking orders at his following of millions (19 studios in New York City alone) as they struggle to contort to his demands. Celebrities like Jeff Bridges, Madonna, and George Clooney have reportedly sought him out. Charlie Sheen—cue curious brow wrinkle—called him guru. He charges upward of $11,000 to attend his trainings. He has 40 Rolls-Royces in his garage.

To be sure, he is also a master healer. The number of people who credit him with saving their lives is legion. And most of the students in those 19 New York City yoga studios probably don’t even know there is a Bikram, the man. They know only his yoga practice and the benefits it has brought them.

“What would Ronald Reagan do?”—the crucial question Republican true believers endlessly ask themselves—is finally being brought to bear on same-sex marriage, courtesy of two of the 40th president’s children.

Patti Davis, the conservative icon’s daughter with former first lady Nancy Reagan, insists her father, who died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2004 at age 93, would definitely have supported the right of gays and lesbians to sanctify committed relationships with officially recognized marriage vows.

They’re ready for your close-up, Mr. Adelson.

Gaming billionaire and Republican Party underwriter Sheldon Adelson went to great lengths this week to keep cameras out of the courtroom during the retrial of a civil case involving the licensing of his casino in Macau.

Ebert Comes to Television

After 15 years in print, Ebert teamed up with the Chicago Tribune’s Gene Siskel to bring his unique blend of insight, candor, and humor to TV, though Ebert didn’t exactly have a refined screen presence from the beginning. “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You” launched in 1975, the same year that he won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, and he never looked back. Eventually, he ditched the plaid blazer.