Each week, in collaboration with The Washington Post Magazine, we debate a new question. This week: When do you get your most competitive?

Hanna Rosin: When I play soccer, I tap into a kind of competitive energy that has no outlet in my regular life. It's a combination of blind rage and focused destructiveness. I would mow down anything to keep the opposing player away from my goal. Once, that "anything" was my then-6-year-old daughter and the goal was two trees in my in-laws' back yard. So I suppose, given the stakes involved, that's unhealthy.

Dahlia Lithwick: Seven years ago I went on a five-day silent yoga/mediation retreat with my husband. I was immensely pregnant and on the fourth day my husband spoke aloud for the first time to ask if I was warm enough. I promptly pulled out a pad and pen and wrote, "I won I won I won the silent retreat." Now he won't take me on silent yoga/meditation retreats any more.

Ellen Tarlin: I am extremely competitive about being completely noncompetitive, or so one of my high school English teachers told me. Sometimes I think I need to be the funniest person in the room. If my husband doesn't laugh hard enough at one of my jokes, I'll be sure to tell him: "Hey, that was funny. Wasn't that funny? I'm hilarious, aren't I?" Also, I suppose I am competitive about who does more around the house. I'll say something like, "Why are you completely incapable of putting things in the dishwasher?" and he will say, "Because you are a better person than me." Touché.

Emily Bazelon: In my sport, tennis, I am not competitive enough. Which is a nice way of saying that I choke. I blow it on the big points. I've been playing almost entirely with men for the last several years (not on purpose), and I notice that they tend to focus better on big points. But so do my sisters, so I think this is just my own demon. Good thing it only whispers in my ear on the tennis court. If I lived my life the way I compete in sports, I'd be a basket case.

KJ Dell'Antonia: I "coach" both nordic and alpine skiing at the lowest possible level in our pretty serious ski town (which is to say I supervise and occasionally offer advice to first- and second-graders), and I am much too cool to compete with my fellow coaches, especially since they're prone to casually revealing that they competed in the Winter Olympics twice in the '90s. I'm not competing at all. Really. I'm only concentrating on my form and speed to set a good example for the kids.

Photograph by Photodisc/Getty Images.

Tags: competitive, female athletes, women and competition

Henrietta Lacks is everywhere. And not just because the nation's critics have slathered their publications with praise for Rebecca Skloot's biography of the impoverished tobacco farmer. Fifty million metric tons of cells derived from the cervical tumor that killed Lacks in 1951 survive in test tubes at virtually every cell-growing laboratory in the world.

Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks provides a fascinating glimpse of the science that those cells, the first human tissue to replicate indefinitely outside a body, made possible. Among them: the polio vaccine, early cancer drugs, and the discovery that human cells typically contain 46 chromosomes. Driving the book, however, is an impassioned meditation (not an oxymoron when it comes to Skloot's persistent but fair prodding) on medical ethics. Lacks was never told that her tumor samples were being used for research. (Even today, doctors would not be required to tell her.) Her family discovered their matriarch's contribution decades after she died because of a medical-privacy lapse. As vials of the HeLa cells have sold for up to $10,000 apiece, the Lackses have struggled to pay for health insurance. And though a few conscientious scientists have attempted to organize formal celebrations of Lacks' contributions, The Immortal Life is the first to commemorate them on any large scale.

Pleasingly, Skloot doesn't try to answer all the questions her book raises (the most unanswerable of which is at what point an agglomeration of your cells becomes or ceases to be you). She saves the academic ethical debates for a just-long-enough afterword, but engages with the Lackses' grievances—and the relevant objections at a steady clip throughout the book. Skloot's quest to gain the cooperation of the family, in what she portrays as a genuine if naive manner, is as memorable as the story she initially set out to tell.

Tags: book of the week, rebecca skloot, the immortal life of henrietta lacks

Jess, I agree that watching the face of Tiger’s mother as he delivered his mea culpa was one of the most riveting parts of this strange drama. There she was, arms across her chest, mostly not making eye contact, but occasionally shooting him the kind of look parents have on their faces when their kids say, “I wasn’t the one who bought beer!” Through most of the speech I wondered if he’d actually acknowledge the nature of what he did. There was a lot of “my behavior,” “what I’ve done,” “these things,” and “issues I’m facing.” Finally he did say, “I was unfaithful,” “I had affairs,” and “I cheated.” And while Elin hasn’t left him, neither is it clear she’s going to stay. He has become versed in the tenets of celebrity-entitlement therapy. (Remember John Edwards’ “I’m a narcissist” interview?) Tiger said he’s come to realize that the rules of normal, human decency do apply to him (even if the world acknowledges he’s so much better than normal people). And when he mentioned that he’s worked so hard all his life that he thought he should be able to do whatever he wanted, I remembered watching him when he was 4,  showing off his golf skills on The Mike Douglas Show. He was astounding, but at the time I also felt a little sorry for this little prodigy, with all the pressue to perform he must be under—which doesn't mean I'm excusing his grotesque behavior. But this latest chapter again makes me wonder: If he liked the fact that endless, siliconed women wanted to throw themselves at him, why did he decide to get married?

Photograph of Tiger and Kultida Woods by Pool/Getty Images Sport.

Tags: tiger woods, Tiger Woods speech and apology

Tiger Woods seemed genuinely contrite at his press conference this morning—and notably, wife Elin was not at his side, nor was she in the room. Tiger was careful to say, as he was apparently holding back tears, that Elin had never been violent toward him, despite tabloid reports of her coming at him with a golf club the night of Thanksgiving. He spoke in the language of the 12-step sex-rehab program he is reportedly attending: He made reference to making amends repeatedly and spoke of his renewed committment to the Buddhism his mother taught him as a child.

And speaking of Tiger Woods' momma, Kultida, she was sitting front and center watching her son at the presser, and boy, did she look pissed. Her lips were in a tight line—one can only imagine what she was thinking while listening to her son talk about his bimbo transgressions. She did, however, hug Tiger and appear visibly warmer by the end of the speech. In terms of PR, I think this conference was a smart move: He really did seem sorry and deeply unhappy. It was hard not to feel some sympathy for him, even though he brought all this scrutiny on himself. If the emotion behind the speech was not genuine, Tiger should look into coming back as an actor, because the performance rang true.

Tags: Elin Nordegren, kultida woods, press conference, tiger woods

—Tiger Woods will speak publicly for the first time about his extramarital affairs, then scurry off to therapy for sex addiction. [The Daily Beast]

—Discussing her signature issue with urban communities, Michelle Obama talks openly about “food deserts” and the relationship between race and obesity. [Politico]

—American figure skater Evan Lysacek executes a stunning performance and takes home the gold at Vancouver. [New York Times]

—This season, modesty rules the runway. [New York Times]

—“Mengagement” rings join manscara and meggings as the new must-have women’s product repackaged for men. [Salon]

—Betty White is aware of the Internet and its predilection for old ladies. [New York Times]

Photograph of Evan Lysacek by Yuri Kadobnov/Getty Images.

Tags: betty white, celebrities, childhood obesity, fashion, figure skating, men's fashion, Michelle Obama, olympics, tiger woods

I just came across this statistic in the February Redbook: 27 percent of women report that their husband "rules the remote." It's a number so high it makes me question the wording of the survey—even assuming that more than one in four women really lets their husband make all of the couch-potato calls, is it really possible that that many women are willing to admit it? And yet there it is. Only 4 percent of women claim to be the one with the finger on the button (other options appear to have included taking turns and always agreeing on what to watch). So: another area of complete gender inequity and the explanation for the stunningly long run of Two and a Half Men.

Photograph by Stockbyte/Getty Images.

Tags: marriage, Television