* China’s new-home prices rose last month in 68 of 70 cities, with average annual wages for urban private company employees jumping 14 percent. * Japanese researchers figure out why babies respond to patting and being moved: to avoid existential threats. * On the comeback trail, hallucinogens are being tried recreationally
* Fashion models are almost twice as likely as computer programmers to get visas to enter the U.S. * Era of private space travel begins within the year, with more than 800 people signed up to blast off from New Mexico. * America's collective sense of shock over Oklahoma'
* If we take the future at all seriously...then we need to leave a big percentage of the planet's coal and oil and natural gas in the ground. * Working-class white citizens in South Africa face levels of deprivation as bad as black South Africans faced under apartheid.
* After Tennessee Rep. Debra Maggart, a lifelong NRA member, voted against a pro-gun bill, her onetime allies destroyed her. * Vertical timeline of congressional leanings on gun control. * If you have a famous ancestor far enough back that finding out about them is a surprise, you share them with a
* According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit crisis is solved for the next decade, and sequestration is dumb. * If you can't get a cast like that together, you can forget changing anything in a great big way. * Boston Marathon runners—two wheelchair-bound—return to cross the
* Russia ships sophisticated anti-ship missiles to Syria, fulfilling order placed in 2007. * Putin installs helipad at the Kremlin to appease Muscovites' fury over politicians skirting traffic laws. * Business booming in “Gun Valley,” aka "the swath of Western Massachusetts and Connecticut where industrial gun making in America began.
While it’s easy to think of the United States as either New York (urban) or Los Angeles (sprawl) with nothing but Mayberry in between, the truth is that there’s a lot of character to be found between the coasts of these United States. Exhibit No. 1: the Mark
* The New Orleans Mother's Day shooting should be a "national tragedy," except it isn't. * Activist protests Abercrombie CEO's opinion that his brand is not for "unattractive people" by donating its merchandise to the homeless. * Chuck Hagel orders retraining of military
* Dept. of Homeland Security seizes funds from the largest Bitcoin exchange. * Aaron Swartz was not yet a legend when, almost two years ago, I asked him to build an open-source, anonymous in-box. * Pneumatic tubes, and other reasons libraries will fail—from 1864. * The Kepler space telescope's
* Scientists announce $1 vaccine for rotavirus infections—which kill half a million children worldwide every year. * Politicians endlessly debate debts and deficits with little regard for the human costs of their decisions. * Reacting to Time's cover story, discerning whether it's even possible to measure narcissism. * Why
