December 21, 2012: Afternoon
- Schwarzenegger bicycles Venice Beach just to inhale stray smoke, and other notes on weed in California.
- Overview of "sea change" taking place globally toward gay marriage.
- In case this applies to your late-December plans somehow: Is he cute or is he British?
- French consumer trends of 2012.
- Engineer behind music-recommendation software explains how it does and doesn't work.
- Music critic Alex Ross's annual holiday traditional: listening to "the 'Messiah' on Crack."
- Photographer documents South Africa's "train churches."
- Selected quotes from victims and saviors in this Christmas season's 2,803 cases of baby Jesuses stolen and/or vandalized.
- Photos from around the world of people watching television.
- TMN asks thinkers, writers, and more to address "The Year That Was and Wasn't."
- Miranda Popkey on everything you need to know about football's outdated "icing the kicker" strategy.
- Seinfeld wears hard soles onstage nowadays, and other details from his joke-writing process.
- Mike Nichols and Elaine May give first joint interview since breaking up 51 years ago.
- UPS delivered 28,000,000 packages yesterday, its biggest day on the calendar.
- Wanting and liking are governed by separate circuits in the brain; thus you can get extreme wanting without a corresponding increase in pleasure.
- Consequences of indulgence turned into tabloid/monster-movie deaths.
- Doctor diagnoses injuries experienced by burglars in Home Alone.
- For those who might be keeping score, we just passed the 333rd consecutive month of global temperatures above the 20th-century average.