3 December 2010: Weekend

  • "Get Your War On" is back, and though war still rages in Afghanistan, now it's time for ska and pesto.
  • Secretly funded anti-piracy force in Somalia nearing readiness, preparing to receive air support.
  • Contrary to popular belief, America's mission in Somalia was a heroic success that saved thousands.
  • Friday comic: "Murder Bullets."
  • Tehran residents granted another holiday to prevent disastrous air pollution.
  • Revisiting brutal Swedish murder that may have inspired Larsson and Mankell.
  • Murakami: Let's call the world Reality A and the world we might have had if 9/11 never happened Reality B.
  • Big Pharma tests overseas--"sick Russians, homeless Poles, slum-dwelling Chinese"--before launching U.S. products.
  • Growing evidence says infants need all the "tummy time" they can get for proper development.
  • Two-part Tony Judt essay on train travel and the long-lasting allure of railways; eight times The Simpsons made me cry.
  • Study: Best "unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of 'writer's block'" ever published, from 1974.
  • Celebrity dish queen Kelley sees herself among Hersh and Caro, insists her books are true.
  • Video: Stephen Fry on Wagner--no, not that Wagner.
  • TMN's Rosecrans Baldwin commenting live today in Layer Tennis; short poems blacked out from newspaper horoscopes.
  • Am I supposed to be impressed? My smoothie / comes with GPS.
  • Carter: Maybe kids who grew up reading online don't mind a world where every book is identical.
  • Video: Hey, kids, learn math from your doodles when your teacher's dull.