Assorted links

All worthy of commentary, glosses, pinches of salt, etc etc, but I'm afraid they will get none from me at this juncture.

1. Israel's best diplomat.

2. Music (and dance) in human evolution. "Seemingly preposterous, but worth taking very seriously."

3. No new runway at Heathrow!

4. Cameron says ministers no longer have to follow international law.

5. Lots of interesting stuff about taste, from Oxford via the New Yorker.

6. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, ain't got no sympathy. (Note that sympathy and empathy are not the same thing. I think this just shows that they are not necessarily correlated either.)

7. The case against Luxembourg.

8. Why you might want to buy lots of sprouts.

9. The American Dream (at least, as revealed by popular culture) and the world. "After 9/11, for example, many studies were done of America’s tarnished image, and one, headed by former U.S. Ambassador Edward Djerejian, quoted an English teacher in Syria asking, “Does Friends show a typical American family?” The question was odd, given that Friends, which ran on NBC from 1994 to 2004, was notable for not showing a family." Hmm. Isn't one way of looking at Friends as being the story of the Gellers, their friends, their relationships? A bit tenuous. But then compare Friends with New Girl: there has been a huge revolution in sexual mores. And then compare New Girl with Modern Family, the source of the most heteronormative homosexual family out there. America is a big place.