So interesting ... and a bit sad.

Quoted: Cantonese, formerly dominant, is being swept aside by Mandarin, the lingua franca of more recent immigrants.

Ugh, for REAL!

Quoted: BIG cities like New York are both deeply convenient — two steps to the deli for milk in the morning — and deeply inconvenient. It is possible to live in the same city as the person you are dating, and have to travel an hour, or even two, to get together.

This is so nuts!

Quoted: Wintry weather has arrived a little early in some eastern states, with parts of central Pennsylvania getting more than 4 inches of snow.

It's so hard to believe that it's already been 8 years.

Quoted: Children who watched the tragedy unfold are now on the brink of adulthood.

Oh, so sad!

Quoted: The director of 1980s coming-of-age films like “Sixteen Candles” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” has died in Manhattan of a heart attack at 59.

It'd be interesting to see how these families fare once they leave New York City.

Quoted: New York City, which has struggled with a seemingly intractable problem of homelessness for years, has paid families to leave the city as a way of keeping them out of the expensive shelter system.

Are New York drivers angry? Yes. Aggerssive? Definitely. But it's really a function of the amount of traffic. You have to drive aggressively if you're going to get from point A to B. In terms of skill, I'd say if you can drive in N.Y., you can drive anywhere in the U.S.

Quoted: New York has overtaken Miami to be voted the U.S. city with the angriest and most aggressive drivers, according to a survey on road rage released on Tuesday.

What's scary is the extent to which this is affecting fairly young people.

Quoted: Swine flu forced Christina Huitron to make a choice no mother should ever have to make. On Wednesday she told doctors to take her 21-year-old son off life support, making Marcos Sanchez the nation's 10th fatality associated with the new virus.

Scary! The story about the NYC school official is especially sad because he had wanted to close down the school a week before, but was convinced to keep it open by the local health board.

Quoted: The new strain of H1N1 flu is circulating in 48 states, with six deaths and more than 5,000 confirmed cases, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday.