Olga Danglova (SAS): Popular Traditions, Folklore and Politics. Can the Twitterverse perfect the pizza? Walk away from your mortgage: Why should underwater homeowners behave any differently from banks? Only a poltroon despises pedantry: Introducing new words is all very well, but sticklers prefer the traditional approach to language. Are we more rational than our fellow animals? Dan Ariely investigates. More and more and more on Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals (and more at Bookforum). From The Psychologist, a special issue on the power of music. What is the age of responsibility? From sex to driving to juvenile justice to drinking, state and local laws send young people mixed messages about their own maturity — is there a better way? Singularity proponent Ray Kurzweil reinvents the book, again. Let us put aside these noisy resolutions, these petty contractions of the will; let us rather sit in the cold gatehouse of the year and cheerfully contemplate the futility of such efforts. Jagdish Bhagwati reviews Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo. From SCQ, global issues for breakfast: The banana industry and its problems FAQ. O Lucky Man: Sometimes "WTF?" is the only rational response to a situation. From The New York Times, writers consider events large and small that helped shape the last 10 years. Female soldiers in Iraq report an epidemic of sexual assault and harassment — is the military taking them seriously? The lost script: It’s a writing system called Ajami, it’s a thousand years old, and linguistics professor Fallou Ngom thinks it could help unlock the story of a continent.
