Peer pressure is a huge part of youth behavior, whether one grows up in Washington, D.C., or Cody, Wyo.

As a lifelong Republican who served in the Army in Germany, I believe it is critical that we review - and overturn - the ban on gay service in the military. I voted for 'don't ask, don't tell.' But much has changed since 1993. My thinking shifted when I read that the military was firing translators because they are gay.

Since 1993, I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that 'gay' is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman's on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person.

The person you are at 13 or 17 is not the person you are at 30, 40, or 50. Everyone old enough to look back on his or her teenage years knows this.

The idea of a computer winning the Nobel Prize for physics is not too unlikely, citing a computer as joint recipient. It's obviously not a huge leap to think of something similar happening in fiction.

The whole of the hydrogen on the earth might be transformed at once and the success of the experiment published at large to the universe as a new star.

I think in national security, the war in Iraq is troublesome and a difficult challenge, but our troops and the military leaders we have are managing that situation, although it continues to be very risky and very dangerous.

Since September 11 2001, editors in America have faced some excruciating choices, as the attempt to wage a war against a new kind of enemy sometimes strained the boundaries of our laws and values.