December 21, 2011: Afternoon
- Mexican cartels and Colombian cocaine suppliers drawn to Costa Rica's openness to outsiders.
- Chart finds poverty continuing to fall in Latin America.
- Wendy’s to overtake Burger King as America's second-largest fast-food chain in sales—first shuffle in the top trio since 1969.
- A study in hype versus reality in mail-order offers from the back of comic books.
- Writer behind Shit My Dad Says explains what it's like to write for television shows that get cancelled.
- How YouTube's viral celebrities/Google employees are pioneering a new kind of stardom: by making it small.
- First Earth-size planets found around distant star, in a solar system that baffles scientists.
- Alan Lightman on the possibility of the multiverse and intelligent fish.
- Interesting story of Indian sanitary napkin producer shows grassroots innovation at its best.
- Fifty-nine-year-old Brenda Hewlett wins truck at recent Akwesasne Warriors' Federal Hockey League game.
- If poetry editors don't actually edit the poems they publish, what do they do?
- Lorin Stein on how to apologize when you're also trying to prove a point.
- Christmas waste: 744 million holiday cards + 8,000 tons of wrapping paper used on presents = 50,000 trees.
- Woody Guthrie's resolutions for 1942.
- Free Christmas song from Johnny Marr.