Palestinians win historic UN vote "The General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to grant Palestinians limited recognition of statehood, prompting exuberant celebrations across the West Bank and Gaza Strip and immediate condemnations from the United States and Israel."
Leveson enquiry: Cameron refuses to write press law "Cameron found himself accused of betrayal by the victims of phone hacking and isolated from his coalition partners when he took the gamble of opposing Lord Justice Leveson's proposal to underpin a new independent press regulator with legislation."
The next global hotspot to worry about "If you're worn out worrying about Syria, Gaza, Iran, you name it, I give you: the announcement today by police on China's large southern island of Hainan that, starting on January 1, they will assert a right to stop and board any vessel they consider to have violated China's very expansive claim of territorial waters in the South China Sea." (James Fallows)
The autism advantage "To his father, Lars seemed less defined by deficits than by his unusual skills ... Watching Lars — and hearing similar stories from parents he met — he slowly conceived a business plan: many companies struggle to find workers who can perform specific, often tedious tasks, like data entry or software testing; some autistic people would be exceptionally good at those tasks."
A dispatch from the 2012 Boring Conference "The young lady at the welcome table informed me, with an air of genuine sympathy, that I’d missed some very boring stuff already. The day had kicked off with conference organizer James Ward’s keynote on supermarket self-service checkouts (with an emphasis on the phenomenon of 'unexpected items in the bagging area')."
