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Hermione is tipsy. Neville is serving drinks. Ron is sipping mead and Harry is partying with his professors. Does Hogwarts have a drinking problem? - Chris Makarsky

"I know there's a story in there somewhere," said Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, referring to Obama's home invasion and execution-style slaying of Jeff and Sue Finowicz on Apr. 8. "Right now though, it's probably best to just sit back and wait for more information to come in. After all, the only thing we know for sure is that our president senselessly murdered two unsuspecting Americans without emotion or hesitation." Added Meacham, "It's not so cut and dried." - Chris Makarsky

Possible side effects of the new birth-control snack item include weight gain, stomach upset and gas, the same as with all other Taco Bell products. - Chris Makarsky

Despite whatever frivolity might attach itself to her, Ms. Mayer, 33, plays a pivotal, serious role at Google. Almost every new feature or design, from the wording on a Google page to the color of a Google toolbar, must pass muster with her or legions of Google users will never see it. She is one of the few Googlers with unfettered access to and influence over Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, and Valley wags wonder whether Google’s familiar white home page will even look the same if she leaves the company. - Chris Makarsky

A generation ago, Americans talked a lot about having to find their true selves. More and more of us, once the financial crisis is over, will be trying to figure out how to keep our multiple selves in one piece. - Chris Makarsky

Trading is a core concept of Pokémon. So when you're trading, you meet with a friend and decide which one you want and which one they want. I would like to emphasize real-world communication. You don't see each other online. - Chris Makarsky

The state of our global economy: foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, layoffs, abandoned projects, and the people and industries caught in the middle. It can be difficult to capture financial pressures in photographs, but here a few recent glimpses into some of the places and lives affected by what some are calling the "Great Recession". - Chris Makarsky

Unlike the tabloid celebrities who are allegedly “just like us”, we don’t really have an audience of spectators for our lives. But having “online presence” in the form of a blog or a MySpace page means that in theory, we could have an audience of millions and that our witty and articulate update on our whereabouts and doings (or our most recent photo of ourselves half undressed) is being eagerly devoured. We can pretend we’re writing personal groupies into existence with each new post. - Chris Makarsky

The designers fixed the problem simply. They took away the Register button. In its place, they put a Continue button with a simple message: "You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout." The results: The number of customers purchasing went up by 45%. The extra purchases resulted in an extra $15 million the first month. For the first year, the site saw an additional $300,000,000. - Chris Makarsky

Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive of Zynga Inc., says his previous company, Tribe.net, “is for sure a failure from the investors’ standpoint.” Tribe.net was an early social networking company that Mr. Pincus says raised $9 million in venture capital before it was liquidated in 2006. Despite this outcome at his previous company, Mr. Pincus has raised $39 million in venture capital for Zynga, which he says is profitable and has eight million daily active users. In part, the support he received from venture capitalists reflects the fact that Mr. Pincus founded two successful companies before Tribe.net. “As an entrepreneur, you have to get used to failure,” he says. “It is just part of the path to success.” - Chris Makarsky

By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. - Chris Makarsky

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead. - Chris Makarsky

Sometimes I wonder if u even need college. Like if ur passionate enough about going viral, u can make n e thing happen. Kinda like the Choco Rain guy. He had a plan and didn’t need a college education to make it happen. - Chris Makarsky

"I'm having a blast," Koning recently said to a friend, oblivious to the next three decades of work stress and financial responsibilities that will one day lead him to resent ever having been this happy. "Work's great, life's great, I'm going out every night—I can't imagine things being better than this." - Chris Makarsky

If there's anything good that has come out of the financial crisis it's the slew of high-quality graphics to help us understand what's going on. - Chris Makarsky

Have you ever wonder how the first Apple logo looks in 30 years back? Did you know Volkswagen was Hitler’s idea? Or how the IBM logo changes over the time? Or where the Mercedes-Benz Brand And The Three-Pointed Star logo came from? - Chris Makarsky

The place of gay people in the church is one of the bitterest disputes in Christianity since the Reformation. The Anglican Church is trying to have it both ways—affirming traditional notions of marriage and family while seeking to adapt its teachings to the experiences of gays and lesbians. Presiding over the debate, gently—too gently?—prodding the communion toward acceptance of gay clergy, is Rowan Williams, the brilliant and beleaguered archbishop of Canterbury. He’s been pilloried from all sides for his handling of these issues, but his distinctive theology and leadership style may offer the only way to open the Anglican Church to gay people without breaking it apart. - Chris Makarsky

Brainwashing doesn't take any sci-fi gadgetry or Manchurian Candidate hypnotism bullshit. There are all sorts of tried-and-true techniques that anyone can use to bypass the thinking part of your brain and flip a switch deep inside that says "OBEY." - Chris Makarsky

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown. - Chris Makarsky

Twitter-like micromessaging is a relatively new communications model, with unique characteristics that affect how we use it and what’s appropriate. It’s an RSS feed for people, a way to directing the attention of audiences, and a means of reaching the famous without burdening them with an obligation to respond. In short, Twitter is a human API. It’s being defined in real time in front of our eyes, through an amazing example of Internet Darwinism. - Chris Makarsky

This is the time for President Obama to take a page from his campaign playbook. Why stop at tapping the grass roots to debate the stimulus? He should seek to fund innovation at the grass-roots level. Obama is familiar with using YouTube and social networks -- products of start-ups and tools of the people. His administration should make it a point not only to avoid propping up failing, overleveraged institutions but to finance new businesses, back promising ventures, welcome the best foreign minds and nurture native talent. By providing incentives to American ingenuity, we can innovate our way out of this recession. - Chris Makarsky

“They have never worked the legislative process,” Emanuel said of critics like the Times columnist Paul Krugman, who argued that Obama’s concessions to Senate Republicans—in particular, the tax cuts, which will do little to stimulate the economy—produced a package that wasn’t large enough to respond to the magnitude of the recession. “How many bills has he passed?” - Chris Makarsky

"It has occurred to me that the superhero really only originates in America. That seems to be the only country that has produced this phenomenon. Yes, we have had knockoffs of American superheroes originating in this country and presumably in other parts of the world, but they're not natural to this environment. They're an alien species. And I've thought about it and wondered why that was. And I wonder—perhaps this is being too simplistic, I don't know, but I wonder if the root of the emergence of the superhero in American culture might have something to do with a kind of an ingrained American reluctance to engage in confrontation without massive tactical superiority." - Chris Makarsky

It's strange, because when Watchmen was out, The Dark Knight Returns was also out, which was Frank Miller's version of a very dark Batman. So you had The Dark Knight and Watchmen together then at that particular point in comic book history. You've now got The Dark Knight and Watchmen together at this particular point in comic movie history, and I think that the moviegoing public is now familiar enough with the superhero movie, indeed has grown up with the superhero movie, to the point that Watchmen can ask the questions and people will understand the resonance of the questions and the kind of the icons that are being smashed. - Chris Makarsky

There is a widespread belief that what we are currently witnessing is an economic crisis resultant from a financial/banking crisis. It may come as a complete surprise to many to find out that what we are witnessing is an economic crisis that has led to a financial crisis. The current problems in the world economy have a different underlying cause to that which is widely discussed. - Chris Makarsky

The tide has gone out and, with a very few exceptions, Britain is swimming naked: almost nobody appears to know what he is talking about. The havoc of the financial crisis has stretched and outstripped even most economists. The British political class is befogged. Ordinary people are overwhelmed. And just as the interaction between banking and economic woes is proving poisonous, so the interplay of public and political ignorance is damaging the country’s prospects. - Chris Makarsky

Back in the early 1980s, Dieter Rams was becoming increasingly concerned by the state of the world around him – “an impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises.” Aware that he was a significant contributor to that world, he asked himself an important question: is my design good design? - Chris Makarsky

Interested in joining a community based site but not sure which one is right for you? There are many different options out there that will cater to your specific interests and demographic. - Chris Makarsky

The good news for Obama is that he needn’t worry about the Republicans. They’re committing suicide. The morning-after conservative rationalization of Jindal’s flop was that his adenoidal delivery, not his words, did him in, and that media coaching could banish his resemblance to Kenneth the Page of “30 Rock.” That’s denial. For Jindal no less than Obama, form followed content. - Chris Makarsky

“There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable. The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics. That seems a less certain outcome. - Chris Makarsky