October 17, 2013: Afternoon
- Collected from the shutdown: Guess the political grimace.
- Biden welcomes EPA workers with muffins and hugs.
- Also for your afternoon break: The National Zoo animal cams are back.
- The "best" moments from the shutdown.
- The craft beer craze hits Paris—enough to coin a new term, bièrologues, aka beer sommeliers.
- Starbucks creates robot baristas to fight the "inconsistent" coffee experience.
- A tour of Chile's nitrate towns, destined for commercial disaster and abandoned since 1960.
- Group estimates nearly 30 million people currently are enslaved worldwide.
- Burka Avenger—Pakistan's first animated series—confronts women's rights and girls' education.
- Soccer's comeback in Kabul.
- Related: Soccer, money, and what New York City's new team can learn from the London club that lost its soul.
- Why so many children are getting myopia today may be due mostly to spending too much time indoors.
- Did our daughter need what sounded like a paperweight for her young body in order to succeed at her job as a second-grader?
- A new study finds evaluations can help all teachers improve—and predict who's going to quit.
- See also: A day in the life of a first-grade teacher in Brooklyn.
- Philip Graham raises a reader.
- Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson on licensing, Calvin stickers, and the possibility for an animated series.