Los Angeles police are investigating a teacher aide at Miramonte Elementary School who allegedly sent love letters to an 11-year-old student. The student’s mother discovered the letters in 2009, but she says police and school officials didn’t take the matter seriously until last week, when two other teachers at the same school were arrested for sexually abusing students in separate cases. Is sexual abuse in schools really as common as these reports make it seem?

Like an amputee who can still feel his missing leg, I felt the tingle of my childhood fandom when Big Blue simultaneously shut up Belichick and wound up Gisele on Sunday. And now, in the afterglow of the Giants’ victory, the talk has been about dynasties and Hall of Fame busts and whether so-and-so and so-and-so are the best coach-quarterback combo in history. (When that last item became a measure of anything more than fortuitous timing, stable ownership, and at least modest success, I have no idea. Donovan McNabb and Andy Reid are No. 5 on this list. How important can it be?)

Political reporters make for lousy gravediggers. Find a primary, pick a day, and I can point you to a story pronouncing the campaign “over” or “almost over” or over, pending the judgment of a proverbial Fat Lady.

America is fat, but Americans disagree about what this means. Either the country’s obesity rates—one third of all adults are obese—are a dangerous health crisis, or they show that the nation is healthier and wealthier than ever. Either the government must act immediately to curb our waistlines, or we must act to curb our bloated government. These were the questions debated in NYU’s Skirball Center last night at the Slate/Intelligence Squared live debate, in which four health and policy experts argued the motion that “Obesity is the government’s business.”

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 177 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, Seth Stevenson, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below or opening this player in another tab:

Check out our Spotify playlist of the Leonard Cohen songs discussed in this essay.

Leonard Cohen has a new album out: Old Ideas, his 12th, and his first in seven years. He's 77 now, and if you know Cohen you know his age will get its due in the new songs. The title, of course, has a double meaning, the second being that these songs are ideas about getting old. His life is his wellspring, and life has amounted to a long and singularly winding road for this troubadour.

It’s impossible to talk about the NBA this season without talking about the impact of the lockout-induced shortening of the season. Right now, the no-star Denver Nuggets have a better record than the storied Lakers? Must be because the dense schedule rewards deep teams with young legs. The equally lackluster Philadelphia 76ers going toe-to-toe with Miami and Chicago? Thank roster continuity, surely a strong source of advantage in a season without training camp. But what about the quality of play writ large? Is Charles Barkley right to think the league needs to apologize to its fans? How would we even know?

Is it egomaniacal to say that I not only loved The Miseducation of Cameron Post but that this debut novel, published this week, reminded me of my own first novel, Prep? Here’s why: Cameron is a smart, observant teenager who’s overmatched, as so many of us were, by high school; the novel is set in a distinct place, in this case Miles City, Mont., a town of sandstone and sagebrush and cowgirls who drive pick-ups; over almost 500 pages, author Emily Danforth takes her sweet time telling Cameron’s story; and did I mention that the main character eventually finds herself at boarding school in the form of a de-gaying boot camp?

Mitt Romney sure hopes there's a safety net. His campaign needs it. His cautious and measured run for the presidency has been thrown off stride by Rick Santorum's victories Tuesday in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri.

One morning last fall, Pat Tessier, a marketing director at the electronics giant Honeywell, stopped by my house to show me the company’s high-end thermostat, the Prestige HD. It was an unusual visit. Tessier had flown in from Minnesota, and he’d brought along a P.R. rep, two installation guys, and a big batch of Honeywell products. On the plane over, he had written a one-page dossier documenting all the features that made Honeywell’s thermostat the best on the market. Unprepared for the length and formality of the meeting, I—as usual—was dressed in a pajama shirt and jeans. When I told Tessier that I had only about a half hour to meet, he looked crestfallen. “It’ll take me a half hour just to tell you about the main unit,” he said.