Guilt-Free Gossip for Greens

As I stroll the streets of New York City, I often have cause to question my own sanity as my eyes are drawn, inexorably, to the plethora of gossip magazines on sale in every kiosk andnewspaper shop: People, US Weekly, In Touch, Star, Celebrity Living (which is, apparently, dead), and others too trashy to name. To be sure, there are, ah, solid scientific reasons why this piffle should fascinate me: Cross-cultural research shows that nearly everyone allots between a fifth to two-thirds of their daily conversation to gossip and that the chatter may serve to identify aberrant behavior and bond individual members in a group. But do I really need to know that Britney Spears plans to renew her wedding vows to refute rumors of a marital rift; that the mysteriously concealed Baby Suri, offspring of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, may not actually exist; or that Brad has recently ...