The United States has only five percent of the world’s population, but somewhere between 35 and 50 percent of the world’s privately owned guns. Is it a surprise, then, that we have significantly higher rates of gun violence?
According to research published by the National Institutes of Health, homicide rates in the U.S. are 6.

In the early ’90s, the so-called “Iron Archives” of Russian political documents from the Cold War era opened up to historians, shedding light on the earliest days of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin’s diplomatic alliance.
But not all of the Russian documents were declassified at that time.

This week, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about gay rights in America. And, no matter how the court decides, these cases will enter the history books.

Drones over America –they’re a high tech assault on American constitutional rights, and they deserve to be met with a modern form of dissent, something more than a cranky op-ed in the pages of The New York Times. In this case, animated satire feels just about right.

Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement of his retirement yesterday morning sent the internet into a tizzy, not to mention the thousands of Catholic institutions across the world. The first question on everyone’s lips seemed to be “can he do that?” And since no pope has in 600 years, there doesn’t seem to be much precedent for it.

After half a century of war, the people of southern Sudan voted in early 2011 to break away from the Sudan and create their own independent state. The Republic of South Sudan, formed in July of 2011, has its work cut out for it.

Internet trolls are very touchy people. Sometimes their rage is targeted at public figures, institutions, or groups who do and say horrible things (the Westboro Baptist Church comes to mind). More often, the phenomenon of “trolling” is a free-for-all of absurdist online pranks or verbal abuse directed at anyone and everyone.

In April 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and one teacher in Columbine, Colorado, while injuring 21 others. Michael Moore documented the tragedy in his 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine, which sits on YouTube, available for everyone to see.

How can we all survive the apocalypse predicted by the Mayan calendar and make it to the other side of December 21?  John Hodgman (you know him from The Daily Show and Apple TV ads) has it all figured out. Hopefully it’s not too much of a spoiler to say load up on mayo and urine while you still have time….

Somehow this one slipped by me, and perhaps by you too. In recent weeks, Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei posted a video parodying Gangnam Style, the unexpectedly massive hit recorded by the South Korean rapper Psy. To date, the music video for Gangnam Style has been viewed 792 million times on YouTube. That has to be some kind of record.