An essay by Harold Bloom on how American literature can help understand the trajectory of his country.

Naomi Klein commenting on the history of the use of torture by the U.S. .

The publishers Penguin now have podcasts available, I should check them out. By the way, I got this through the Guardian's nice CultureVulture blog.

On the first winner of The Guardian's Book Award: "Stuart, a life backwards" by Alexander Masters, a Cambridge-based writer (by the way, he has a BA in physics and PhD in Maths).

Have a look at a 2m-wide, 200Kg jellyfish. They are infesting Japanese waters - fortunately, they're edible.

A list of relatively cheap Christmas presents for the technologically-driven DIY'ers, from Make Magazine.

The first-ever comic strip in Nature magazine: Adventures in Synthetic Biology.