Los Angeles Times

Are you feeling lonely, disconnected or alienated? It could be making you sick, and, ironically, you're not alone.

In 1985, when researchers asked a cross-section of Americans how many confidants they had, the most common response was three. When they asked again in 2004, the most common answer -- from 25% of respondents -- was zero, nil, nada.

In 1950, only 9.3% of American households consisted of people living alone. By 2000, that percentage had jumped to a whopping 26%.

Nearly two years before we learn the results of the 2010 governor's race, the identity of the likely winner is clear: Northern California. More than half of California's population may live south of the Tehachapi Mountains, but the state -- in matters of politics, governance and civic engagement -- is tilting decidedly north. Just look at the race to succeed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

State Sen. Abel Maldonado, a Republican legislator from the Central Coast, had the Democrats over a budget barrel and extracted from them the ultimate insider's deal -- they would put three of his pet ideas on the 2010 ballot (as constitutional amendments) in return for his deciding vote on the budget. You have to admire Maldonado's moxie even as you're appalled at this latest example of how broken the legislative process in Sacramento has become.

Michael Phelps smokes pot. A-Rod took steroids. What's next? Will US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger get busted too?

Americans love to put their heroes on pedestals almost as much as they enjoy tearing them down. We trot out the outrage when they're disgraced. We wring our hands over what it'll do to the poor kids who look up to them. But if, as the ancient Greeks said, people are known by the heroes they crown, then Americans' penchant for exalting and denouncing says a whole… more

Only 4.7% of eligible voters showed up, according to the New America Foundation's Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) project. The cost of holding the election ...

Steven C. Clemons, a foreign policy specialist at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank, described the job scramble as a game of musical ...

If a 10-year-old boy in Benin, in West Africa, wants to describe someone he doesn’t trust, he’s likely to use one of these two roughly translated phrases: “He will sell you and enjoy it” or “He can make you disappear.”

Such phrases are not uncommon in the languages of West Africa, which for four centuries was the epicenter of the continent’s slave trade, and their presence in contemporary speech poignantly suggests that slavery’s legacy lingers on in profound ways.

In 1930, even as the world was mired in the Depression, John Maynard Keynes published a jaunty little essay that predicted the emergence of post-materialist angst. In a piece titled "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," the world-renowned damn-the-deficit interventionist economist, whose star has been rising again along with that of the Obama administration, wondered how humans of the future would react once they had transcended the "struggle for subsistence."

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said the Mitchell announcement was intended to stress that he is speaking for Obama and to push back against ...

My buddy Kenny Yee wants to be the Barack Obama of the Chinese food industry -- purveying fortune cookies you can believe in. Last week, in anticipation of the Chinese New Year (which is today), I sat down with Yee and some other friends at the Hop Woo Restaurant on Broadway, got hopped up on tea and started the grueling process of figuring out the ingredients of a good contemporary fortune.