16 April 2009: Afternoon
- Black carbon--soot--held responsible for 18 percent of the planet's warming.
- China plays the long game by stepping vigorously into financing South American development, as it has in Asia and Africa.
- The pirates could only lament their littleness before the vast number of dolphins. Chinese news agency says dolphins saved merchant ship.
- TMN's Paul Ford interviews a mine-sweeping dolphin.
- Using E.M. Forster's account of the 1825 London banking crisis to view today's turmoil.
- Reminder of the real horror of H.P. Lovecraft's life: his proud racism.
- Part of what's driving the current gun-shopping craze is people investing in weapons like they're stocks.
- When elected representatives and TV pundits warn citizens to take up arms, citizens cannot really be faulted for taking up arms in response.
- Photos documenting the return of U.S. war dead.
- Considering Gary Locke's role in administering the decennial census in light of his family's remarkable history.
- I like slow food, but I am incredibly fast. Interview with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor.
- Reasons why people and cities like streetcars.
- Attention, home cooks: TV cooking is a charade, so don't fret if your chopping skills leave onions destroyed.
- Gallery of amusingly defaced street signs.
- Italian scholar finds portrait of Da Vinci in cathedral window; story of how the Mona Lisa was stolen (and later recovered) in 1911.
- Collection of school portraits with laser backdrops.