* Architect Anish Kapoor assesses London's Olympic Tower. * A refreshingly old-fashioned spat between linguists and the New Yorker about the purpose of a dictionary. * Placement explains why Guinness bubbles sink instead of rise. * Clamshell packaging declared worse than NYC parking signs, pull handles on push doors. * Crab-tapping-
* Obama guns for the failures of "Romney economics" in Massachusetts. * Ladies, if you experience discrimination in an "open" or "wild" office, keep quiet and profit. * Elites in Egypt would like this election to be the revolution's end; Tahrir youth see further. * Aaron
* Let's back up a moment to explain why a revolution was even needed: before 1960, the province was basically run by the Catholic Church. * Fugitive porn star wanted by Interpol for mailing a severed foot to Canadian political party headquarters. * Cold War fears spurred the creation of Google
* Palestinian prisoners end mass hunger strike; Israel conditionally agrees not to renew detentions without charge. * "Old people smell" found to exist. * Syria pleads with journalists to ignore recent massacre and wait for its own report to be issued. * Founder of Russia's Facebook tosses $150 paper airplanes
* Scientists observe killer bees evolve to be more gentle than defensive if they live on an island. * Bluefin tuna off California have trace radiation from Fukushima—but it's not as scary as it sounds. * Reluctant suburbanite comes to terms with life outside the city line. * Hague gives Charles
* First self-immolations protesting Chinese rule occur in Lhasa. * Events worsen in Syria for both Assad and the opposition, and the UN is in a do-nothing bind. * Good Morning America headline: "Nicole Kidman Urinates On Zac Efron In The Paperboy." * Kids with active friends more likely to
* Desire to outshine the Soviets may have led to collaborations between the CIA and Paris Review. * Full account of quizzing Americans from Maine to Nevada about the French. * Tuesday poem: "The End and the Beginning," by Szymborska. * Everything that Americans should know before embracing Eurovision. * Related: In case
* Profile of Obama, former liberal law professor, as kill-master leader of the shadow war against al Qaeda. * In Peru, anti-mining protests lead to two deaths and a state of emergency. * Idiot's guide to Egypt's election. * Studies find everybody has the capacity to be dishonest,
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. This week, when we weren’t squeezing every drop from air miles, from life, and from reading too much into the crime statistics, we were finding all
* New research shows Mars "has life's building blocks," though there's still no sign of fossilized SUVs. * The hidden costs of being a New York City cabbie. * After inadvertently transporting shellfish across the ocean, deep-sea scientists warn against removing organisms from their habitats. * Unlike
