A new issue of The Journal of Pan African Studies is out. A new issue of Africa Review of Books is out. Ethel E. Idialu (Ambrose Alli): The Inhuman Treatment of Widows in African Communities. From Inkanyiso, L.E. Mayoyo, P.J. Potgieter, and J.M. Ras (Zululand): Fear of Crime and the Role of the Police. "In 10 years' time, Ghana may not require any aid at all": Ghana is one of Africa's great successes. A revolution deferred: So why did Kinshasa not have its Tahrir moment? How to defuse sub-Saharan Africa's population bomb: The fate of global population growth rests largely on the fortunes of Africa — it's not too late to ensure a stable future. When 25-year-old Valentine Strasser seized power in Sierra Leone in 1992, he became the world’s youngest head of state; today he lives with his mother and spends his days drinking gin by the roadside — what went wrong? A review of African Conflicts and Informal Power: Big Men and Networks. There has never been such a prolific output of books about rock art in southern Africa, both academic and popular, as in the past few years. Kony 2012? Don't worry everyone, Africa has a new hero.

Steffen Bohm and Chris Land (Essex) and Armin Beverungen (Leuphana): The Value of Marx: Free Labour, Rent and “Primitive” Accumulation in Facebook. From Chronicles, should speculative bankers be put to death? Srdja Trifkovic wonders. Want to end partisan politics? Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein on what won’t work — and what will. Joshua E. Keating on the 10 TED Talks they should have censored. Godwin alert: Liberals have been screaming “conspiracy theory” for so long that they can’t recognize a conspiracy even when it’s killing them. Erik Loomis on a typical day in the coal industry. How did genocide denial become a doctrine of the internationalist left? George Monbiot investigates (and more on expert assessments of genocide and more on his correspondence with Noam Chomsky). Yes Virginia, the middle is getting screwed: The conservative meme of the moment on income inequality is that the middle class isn't getting screwed at all. When did my eyebrows go rogue? Scott Feschuk is getting to be middle -aged, but still waiting for the wisdom and insight to kick — first in an occasional series.

Liesbeth Huppes-Cluysenaer (Amsterdam): The Fallacy of Continuity, on the References to Aristotle in Arendt and Agamben. Blair McDonald (TRU): To Do What One Ought to Do: Reconsidering Heidegger's Thesis: "The Animal Is Poor in World". A new issue of Cultural Studies Review is out, including Stephen Muecke (UNSW): Motorcycles, Snails, Latour: Criticism without Judgement; and Timothy Laurie (Sydney) and Hannah Stark (Tasmania): Reconsidering Kinship: Beyond the Nuclear Family with Deleuze and Guattari. From the inaugural issue of Materiali Foucaultiani, Amedeo Policante (London): Foucault, Subjectivity and Flight: Witchcraft, Possession and the Resistance of the Flesh. From Foucault Studies, a special issue on Foucault and race. You can download for free The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault by Mark Kelly. A review of Foucault: His Thought, His Character by Paul Veyne. From the the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, a symposium on Longing for the Other: Levinas and Metaphysical Desire by Drew M. Dalton. A review of Postcolonial Tourism: Literature, Culture, and Environment by Anthony Carrigan.

Anca Croitoru (UAIC): The Informal Side of Mathematics. In a top-secret program, talented, young female mathematicians calculated the artillery and bomb trajectories that American GIs used to win World War II. A review of Math for Life: Crucial Ideas You Didn't Learn in School by Jeffrey Bennett. David McConnell recoiled from maths as a child, but came to love its beauty — as did prisoners in one of America’s toughest jails. A review of Taking Sudoku Seriously: The Math behind the World's Most Popular Pencil Puzzle by Jason Rosenhouse and Laura Taalman. An “irregular mind” is what has won this year’s Abel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in mathematics, for Endre Szemeredi. A straightforward problem in mathematics remains unsolved, even with a $1 million prize for whoever solves it. The introduction to Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative. Is math still relevant? The queen of the sciences may someday lose its royal status. The Aperiodical is a new maths magazine/blog aimed at people interested in mathematics who want to read stuff. Here are 20 things you didn't know about math.

From Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, Jeffrey K. Johnson (JBPHH): Terrified Protectors: The Early Twenty-First Century Fear Narrative in Comic Book Superhero Stories. How reliable are the social sciences? The physical sciences produce detailed and precise predictions, but social sciences do not — policy makers should take heed. Playboy goes west: Is the Midwest’s only great magazine heading into the sunset? Ezra Klein on how the Facebook IPO and U2’s Bono explain income inequality. Facebook's success has the unintended consequence of leading to the demise of Silicon Valley as a place where investors take big risks on advanced science and tech that helps the world. Jacqueline Stevens on citizenship to go: People everywhere should be free to move across borders, as they are in the European Union. Hard pressed for a semiological deciphering of the Romney laugh, Gary Wills turns to Milan Kundera’s aetiology and taxonomy of senseless laughter. A look at why the $60,000 per year housekeeper is a right-wing nightmare. Is Elizabeth Warren Native American or what?

From Rabble, do today’s young people share a zeitgeist, a “spirit”? This is Generation Flux: Meet the pioneers of the new (and chaotic) frontier of business. Thirty more years if hell: The Boomers are ready for us to assert Millennial hegemony and put them out of their collective misery. What does it mean to be a grown-up? The Shrink and The Sage offer guidance on another modern dilemma. Adulthood, delayed: What has the recession done to Millennials? A review of Middle Age: A Natural History by David Bainbridge (and more). Homeward bound: An article on the rise of multigenerational and one-person households. The war against youth: The recession didn't gut the prospects of American young people — the Baby Boomers took care of that (and a response). Coming of age: Growing up, Leigh Stein found solace in these books, the same way she found solace in online communities — as a remedy for adolescent isolation. Are millennials the greatest generation or the most narcissistic? Popular books have argued that today's 20-somethings are more service-oriented than any generation since World War II, but new research suggests the opposite.

Anupam Chander (UC-Davis): Facebookistan. Zsolt Kelemen (Szeged): Becoming the New Socialite? Facebook, Transmedia and Storytelling in the Age of New Media. From Cyberpsychology, Stephan Winter, Nina Haferkamp and Yvonne Stock (Duisburg-Essen) and Nicole C. Kramer (Dresden): The Digital Quest for Love: The Role of Relationship Status in Self-Presentation on Social Networking Sites. Laurie Johnson (USQ): Between Form and Function: History and Identity in the Blogosphere. From Wired, Brian Christian on the A/B Test: Inside the technology that's changing the rules of business. Ryan Tate on Twitter’s secret history as the world’s worst tech or media business. Dmitry Orlov on making the Internet safe for anarchy. The sound of the Internet: If the Internet makes a sound (and it does), are you listening? From Buzzfeed, John Herrman on a human's guide to the tech bubble. Are LOLCats making us smart? Academics are starting to take a hard look at Internet memes and the cultural sensibilities they reflect. Tumblr released statistics that prove what most people could have only guessed: There are a shit ton of “Fuck Yeah” blogs.

Mihaela Morariu (TUIASI): Public and Private in the Anthropology of Hannah Arendt. From feminists@law, a special section on Feminist Engagements with the Return to the Commons. Social criticism in the age of the normalized intellectual: Contrary to repeated claims of the disappearance of the intellectuals, their participation in public discussion has never been livelier than in today’s advanced democracies, Axel Honneth argues. What comes after the hipster? Flavorwire asks the experts. People in Economics: A compilation of interviews published in Finance and Development magazine of Nobel prize winners, policymakers, and intellectual leaders around the world in the fields of finance and economics. Marc Ambinder on ten things he learned during a decade in D.C. Is the filibuster unconstitutional? Ezra Klein wants to know. From Against the Current, Paul Ortiz on C.L.R. James' visionary legacy. The great legal paradox of our time: Jack Goldsmith on how civil libertarians strengthened the National Security State. The business of war: Shane Smith on SOFEX: Experiencing the military-industrial complex trade show.

Stefania Codruta Jucan (UCDC) and Calin-Stefan Georgia Calin (UBBCLUJ): Great Britain’s “Shari’a” Courts: Between Religion and Secularism. Has the OSCE succumbed to shariah? An interview with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff. From National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy on western Sharia: Muslim supremacists partner with the Lawyer Left. From Azure, Islamotopia: Uriya Shavit on why liberty can't withstand the political rule of the Koran. From New English Review, Jerry Gordon on how dialogue with radical Muslims is dangerous for American Jews, and on how American Jews who support Shariah imperil us all. From Moment, Marshall Breger on why Jews can’t criticize sharia law. From First Things, Robert K. Vischer on the dangers of anti-Sharia laws. With his new book, Stefan Weidner would like to straighten out our simplified, cliche-ridden perception of Islam by looking at phenomena such as Sharia from an unusual perspective. From Guernica, an interview with Sadakat Kadri on Muslim and Western ignorance of what Sharia law really means — and the real concerns that should be targeted.

Eli Meyerhoff (Minnesota), Elizabeth Johnson (Wisconsin), and Bruce Braun (Minnesota): Time and the University. Robert Rhoads (UCLA): The U.S. Research University as a Global Model: Some Fundamental Problems to Consider. Study abroad? Why American students head north. What country has the best higher education system? A World Bank study titled The Road to Academic Excellence: The Making of World Class Research Universities finds that new universities can grow into top quality research institutions within two or three decades when academic talent, financial resources and governance — particularly autonomy and academic freedom — are present from the start. From The Guardian, it was meant to bring rigour to the tricky question of who deserves a grant or a post, but is the h-index's numerical score simplistic? From LRB, when what is real, in relation to university education, is student demand and jobs in the future — a pair of premises about as fictional as you can get — what are we to say in favour of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake? A review of What Are Universities For? by Stefan Collini (and more).