Stories about large snakes feed directly into an archetypal fear that humans have of snakes, and stories about a feeding frenzy of snakes wiping out wildlife fuels a feeding frenzy of media coverage that wipes out the truth.

Small-business owners don't think big corporations and the wealthy are paying their fair share of taxes, with nine out of 10 small-business owners saying that big corporations use loopholes to avoid the taxes small businesses have to pay, according to a nationwide survey released Monday by the American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance and Small Business Majority. Ninety-two percent of the small-business owners say corporations using tax loopholes, such as moving U.S. profits to offshore subsidiaries, is a problem, while three out of four say their small business is harmed when big corporations use loopholes to avoid paying taxes.

Sixty-seven percent of small-business owners believe big corporations pay less than their fair share of taxes, while 73 percent believe multinational corporations pay less than their fair share.

"I've been in business 32 years, and I'm appalled at how big corporations and millionaires have shrunk their taxes," Lew Prince, managing partner of Vintage Vinyl, an independent music store in St. Louis, Mo., said in a release from American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance and Small Business Majority. "Ingrates like Amazon wouldn't even exist without the Internet, which grew out of government research. The least that big corporations and their executives could do is pay their fair share for the roads, ports, education, research, public safety and everything else that tax dollars buy."

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While HuffPost Style has been appreciating Harper's Bazaar's new look with cover girl Gwyneth Paltrow, we couldn't help but notice her attitude toward fitness and nutrition.

The movie star has restyled herself as a lifestyle and wellness guru with her website, GOOP (often, to mixed reviews), but she has long focused on nutrition -- famously following a macrobiotic diet back when Atkins and The Zone were fashionable elsewhere in Hollywood. She's also remade herself into something of an athlete, helped along by celebrity trainer Tracey Anderson. Her remarkable fitness wasn't lost on Harper's.

"As she falls naturally into yoga stretches during the course of the conversation, supple as a cat, you realize that this is a woman for whom working out has become essential," writes Justine Picardie in Harper's first cover story since their redesign. "At 39, she looks stronger than she did in her 20s, lean and toned, with the streamlined contours of an athlete."

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As any patient (and their loved ones as well) knows only too well, treatment for cancer is a long and winding road. It is also an emotional roller coaster. From the moment of initial diagnosis it injects a strong element of anxiety into patient and family alike.

Mitt Romney says he's not concerned about the very poor because they have safety nets to protect them. He says he's concerned about the middle class. Romney doesn't seem to realize how much of the middle class is becoming poor.

In honoring Goldman Sachs, HRC is aligning itself with a company that has nearly bankrupted an entire future generation and would do it again. This past Saturday HRC sent the message of "do as I say, not as I do," and that is very sad.

There has been a lot of smoke from the DSM fires. The field trials should help all concerned see through the smoke and into the embers of advancing the complex and continuous process of improving what we know about diagnosis in psychiatry.

When future U.S. historians look back on these times, they will most likely write about the resurgence of American imperialism, the death of neoliberal capitalism and the ascendance of the American television drama.

I get the sense that Jason Sudeikis is just in his own little world on the show these days. Like in a, "Hey, Jason, after Romney, you've got nothing until 'Bongo's Clown Room.' Do you want to be in any other sketches?" "Nah, I'm good," kind of way.

Our Psychometer scientists finally slogged into work in a Super Bowl-induced hangover, and handed over the findings of their weekly report on who went the craziest in the news this week. Do you agree with their findings? Hover over each picture to see an explanation, and let us know what you think.

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Britain is a successful democracy whose journalistic establishment has never, beyond the BBC, pretended any objectivity. Yet they suffer nothing like the polarizing ideological blindness we currently endure.

During Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show, a performer jumping up and down on what appeared to be a tightrope, had the crowd asking, "Who is that guy that looks like Will Ferrell, and what is he doing?" For anyone involved in rock climbing, you already know that it's "Sketchy" Andy Lewis, the slackline king.

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Between 2000 and when he left office last May, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and agencies under his control approved roughly $20 million in payments to an architectural firm co-owned by his cousin's husband.

That cousin -- Theresa Mintle -- now is chief of staff to Daley's successor, Rahm Emanuel.

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RAMALLAH, West Bank — After months of wavering, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas took a decisive step Monday toward reconciliation with the Islamic militant group Hamas, a move Israel promptly warned would close the door to any future peace talks.

In a deal brokered by Qatar, Abbas will head an interim unity government to prepare for general elections in the Palestinian territories in the coming months. The agreement appeared to bring reconciliation – key to any statehood ambitions – within reach for the first time since the two sides set up rival Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza in 2007.

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A normal visit to fried chicken chain KFC turned violent for one British man Friday night, when he was randomly attacked by two men in their late teens or early twenties. At about 11 pm, the 28-year-old was standing in line for food with a male pal, when three men and a woman confronted him. The friends decided the crunchy chicken wasn't worth the hassle of a brawl, so they left without ordering. But two of their harassers followed them out -- and that's when things got ugly.

The two younger men attacked. In the altercation that followed, one of the younger men apparently bit off half of one of the 28-year-old's ears. The attackers fled, and the biting victim was sent to a hospital. He had to undergo surgery to mend the ear.

Police reported that the attack was unprovoked, but say that they have not yet located the assailants.

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