* In 2011, American households spent more on their pets annually than they spent on alcohol, landline phone bills, or men's and boys' clothing. * Stunning cellphone footage shows Oklahoma tornado beginning to form, starting to wreak havoc. * See also: Time-lapse video of the Moore tornado as seen
* China’s new-home prices rose last month in 68 of 70 cities, with average annual wages for urban private company employees jumping 14 percent. * Japanese researchers figure out why babies respond to patting and being moved: to avoid existential threats. * On the comeback trail, hallucinogens are being tried recreationally
Our current era of on-demand television series does more than facilitate binge-watching—it encourages it. David Foster Wallace already told us what happens next.
* Fashion models are almost twice as likely as computer programmers to get visas to enter the U.S. * Era of private space travel begins within the year, with more than 800 people signed up to blast off from New Mexico. * America's collective sense of shock over Oklahoma'
Small-screen post-“Downton” satisfaction for costume connoisseurs.
* If we take the future at all seriously...then we need to leave a big percentage of the planet's coal and oil and natural gas in the ground. * Working-class white citizens in South Africa face levels of deprivation as bad as black South Africans faced under apartheid.
* After Tennessee Rep. Debra Maggart, a lifelong NRA member, voted against a pro-gun bill, her onetime allies destroyed her. * Vertical timeline of congressional leanings on gun control. * If you have a famous ancestor far enough back that finding out about them is a surprise, you share them with a
From his new solo show in the United States, black-and-white selections from Takuma Nakahira’s “Circulation: Date, Place, Events,” plus a reprint of his 1973 essay, “Looking at the City or the Look From the City.”
* According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit crisis is solved for the next decade, and sequestration is dumb. * If you can't get a cast like that together, you can forget changing anything in a great big way. * Boston Marathon runners—two wheelchair-bound—return to cross the
* Russia ships sophisticated anti-ship missiles to Syria, fulfilling order placed in 2007. * Putin installs helipad at the Kremlin to appease Muscovites' fury over politicians skirting traffic laws. * Business booming in “Gun Valley,” aka "the swath of Western Massachusetts and Connecticut where industrial gun making in America began.
