December 18, 2012: Morning
- Mike Bloomberg's six steps for Obama and Congress to improve gun control.
- Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management to begin selling its investment in gunmaker Freedom Group after Newtown shooting.
- NRA goes silent on social media and appears to have yanked its Facebook page.
- Alan Taylor's "In Focus" photography blog selects pictures of mourning in Newtown and around the world.
- Related: Jason Kottke appears to have dedicated his blog to (excellent) gun-control coverage.
- Incomplete round-up of gun violence that has occurred in America since Newtown.
- Deep investigation finds Wal-Mart has been an aggressive, creative corrupter in Mexico, bribing nearly everyone to get its way.
- A.O. Scott's best films of the year.
- The worst word of 2012, i.e., the word in greatest need of temporary retirement, is "bubble."
- New issue of Lapham's Quarterly features historical essays about intoxication.
- "Mindfulness" tips we can take from the example of Sherlock Holmes.
- Creating a brand new, philosophically precise language is all well and good until the anti-Semites arrive.
- Excerpt of writing from and Q&A with Russian triple-threat author Mikhail Shishkin.
- Man armed with maps from 1901 and many obscure smartphone apps tries to peel back a city's layers.
- Underwater photography during the annual sardine run off the coast of South Africa.
- In case you didn't know, there once was a dog bred specifically for kitchen service: the turnspit dog.
- Tribute to Boston Globe's blind date service and its follow-up accounts of dates gone well, poorly, or all-out awful.
- Popular card-game company reveals how it spent its holiday profits: on fresh boar sperm (sort of).