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~ Posted by Robert Butler, December 28th 2011

On Friday the Duke of Edinburgh was helicoptered to Papworth Hospital in Cambridge where he underwent treatment for a blocked coronary artery. It was a minor operation. The next day the news from the hospital was good and the Queen and other members of the Royal Family paid a visit. Four days later Prince Philip rejoined his family at Sandringham in Norfolk. Our sympathies are with the Duke and his family, but we reserve a little sympathy for the reporters who spent their Christmas standing outside Papworth. They had almost nothing to report.

What can happen in a non-news situation is that reporters feel compelled to give us the facts in a tone of disbelief. The news yesterday that the Duke of Edinburgh had been discharged from Papworth was the lead story on the BBC's "World At One". We learnt that his officials said the Prince was "incredibly cheerful". We learnt that he had walked downstairs to his car "unaided". We learnt that he was sitting in the front passenger seat and "seemed alert and interested". Seemed.

As his car approached the exit, it slowed, the Prince wound down the window and waved. After the days of waiting, this emerged as the most notable detail. A friendly wave from the Prince, we were told, is not something the press is accustomed to. But perhaps the Prince was enjoying himself. He had cheated them of a much bigger story.

Matthew Valencia, The Economist's US finance editor, picks his favourite books about Wall Street—its colourful past, troubling present and possible future ...  read more »

For the first time in 60 years, the Palestinians have a presence at the Venice Biennale. Marisa Mazria Katz talks to all the players involved ...  read more »

In response to my post about Radiohead's decision to concentrate on crafting singles over albums ("An epitaph for the album?"), Brett McCallon, our online gaming columnist, e-mailed the following rebuttal:  read more »

On a hot tip from a co-worker I skipped lunch, grabbed the camera bag and rushed the seven blocks from our office to a long fountain in front of the Chase Bank building on Sixth Avenue and 50th Street in midtown Manhattan. No signs were needed to attract the already swollen crowd; everyone seemed to know that this was the place to be.  read more »

Thanks to Lexington for highlighting this article about the relationship between pain and cursing. According to a study published in the current issue of NeuroReport, swearing helps to alleviate pain:

"Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," said Richard Stephens of Keele University in England and one of the authors of the new study. "It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain."

Stephens and his fellow researchers proved the neurological efficacy of swearing with the help of 64 undergraduate volunteers. Amusingly, these undergraduates (lured with pocket-change, surely) had to submerge their hands in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice; they then repeated the experiment without cursing. (It's hard not to giggle at the image of men in labcoats with clipboards monitoring the blue-mouthed pain of financially insolvent students.) When volunteers swore like sailors, they could keep their hands in the frigid water for longer.  read more »

The first video game about the Iraq war provoked a firestorm of its own. A realistic game about the second invasion of Fallujah might be a bit too ambitious, writes Benjamin Pauker ...  read more »

America was smart to include emergency funds for the arts in its big bailout package. But if American writing is to survive, there's one group that needs to put back to work right away: the critics, writes Lorin Stein ...  read more »

Sure, the peaceful transition of power is a hallmark of a democracy. And sure, there was quite a lot of drama around Barack Obama's assumption of the American presidency. But James C Taylor, a theatre critic, found it all a bit ho-hum, frankly ...  read more »

Barack Obama may not be a messiah, but just try telling that to the millions of people who have gathered to celebrate in Washington, DC. A contributor to The Economist observes the gathering hordes ...  read more »