I have been growing this moustache, a budding Burt Reynolds number, for a good cause known as Movember.

Charity fundraisers are nothing new to me. In the past, I have taken part in ski races for hospitals, walks for breast cancer, and long distance bike rides for geriatric care.

Unlike in Europe, where serving is often a career rather than a backup plan, American table-waiting remains a bootstrap business, and some of the biggest skeptics of waiter training courses and schools are seasoned servers themselves.

Nearly every industry in America, from carbon trading to bricklaying, hosts its own back-slapping awards night.

Although I completed two years of internship in various small hospitals, I decided against continuing my medical training. I was much more fascinated by the unsolved problems of medicine than by practicing it.

It's one thing to recognize that the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing like a cancer; it's another thing to come up with useful solutions.

I'm a proponent of single-payer health-care, public education, protecting the environment - all the things Democrats rally around.

I have consistently supported laws ensuring women are able to make their own health care decisions, and I will continue to protect women's access to contraceptives and reproductive health care.