As dancing explodes in popularity on TV, it's harder to find at bars and the average party. What's popular on these shows and clips isn't dancing -- it's second-hand dancing. These people are dancing so we don't have to.

From the archive:

In all his speeches, John McCain urges Americans to make sacrifices for a country that is both “an idea and a cause”. He is not asking them to suffer anything he would not suffer himself. But many voters would rather not suffer at all.

Dance Dance Revolution is firmly entrenched as a college craze.

During the nineteenth century, attempts were made to amalgamate alchemy with the religious and occult philosophies then growing in popularity; and in the twentieth century psychologists--principally Carl Jung--perceived in alchemy a powerful vehicle for aspects of their theories about human nature. At the same time, laboratory scientists continued to experiment in ways very similar to those of their medieval and early modern forebears.

And the beat goes off