Nontroversy: n. A contraction of the term non-controversy; a contrived controversy meant to change a discussion from substantive to petty. Syn. gossip, whining, hackery, petulance, hypocrisy

The debate over the Christmas Mountains in west Texas has a cast of characters that a writer could only dream of concocting: A pistol-packing land commissioner, the Unabomber’s brother, a wealthy philanthropist, the editor of Ronald Reagan’s diaries, a bird named after Satan, narco-traffickers and coyote immigrant smugglers, an errant cartographer, and of course, a big herd of muledeer.

The calendar fight is officially on: last Tuesday, Democratic candidates Obama, Edwards, Richardson, Biden and Kucinich withdrew from Michigan's January 15th Democratic primary. Senators Clinton and Dodd have both announced that they will not campaign in Michigan for the primary with Senator Biden referring to it as a "beauty contest." There has been a similar lack of candidate enthusiasm over Florida's early primary date of January 29th and there were two lawsuits filed in the last two weeks over the DNC's refusal to seat Florida's delegates at the national convention next year due to their early primary date. As they say in sports, game on!

My fourteen month old son Gus loves the ocean. Already he’s gone swimming in the Gulf, the Caribbean and the Pacific, he loves eating fish and watching old Jacques Cousteau submarine adventures, and he just cracks up laughing when his octopus bath toy emerges from the depths of our tub.

But the ocean ain’t what it used to be and if we don’t take action soon, little Gus will have to rely on the My Aquarium application on Facebook to see what sealife used to look like.