Der Spiegel — The Nobel Literature Debate: Big Sam Has Bigger Problems

French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio may have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but Americans are still smarting over the comments made by Horace Engdahl. The permanent secretary of the award’s committee infamously remarked that US writers are too “insular” and “insensitive” to produce anything of literary merit. It is ridiculously easy to refute such claims, says writer Ulrich Baron, suggesting that Engdahl’s vinegary comments may come from sour grapes: “Engdahl’s collection of somewhat pompous works never quite made it to the best-seller list of the New York Times. After one well-meaning critic called the work “airy”, could the sledge hammer now be falling?”

www.improbable.com — Annals of Improbable Research

Discoveries that promise to unveil the secrets of the universe and life-saving medical research are all very well, but there are smaller mysteries that are equally worthy of attention. And the bi-monthly Annals of Improbable Research in the article “Research that makes people laugh and then think”, applauds those who plumb the depths of the irrelevant with the Ig Nobel Awards. This year’s winners include discoveries of use to pet lovers (fleas on dogs jump higher than on cats); hypochondriacs (expensive fake medicines work better than cheap ones); and the experimentally inclined (one winner said cola is a spermicide, another discovered the opposite, the rest is up to you).