Popular Elsewhere
14:40 UK time, Friday, 12 August 2011
A look at the stories ranking highly on various news sites.
Guilt is the theme of the Guardian's most read story. feels guilty for not being in London, and guilty for not knowing enough about politics to come up with a solution. He even feels guilty he has lots of "blood money from representing corporate interests". As a form of peace brokering with the reader he divulges his own experiences in protests, which turns into another opportunity to berate himself for being a bit of a "twerp".
Guilt is over for people who spoil the end of a story for their friends. As, a popular wired article reports, a University of California study shows a . This could put the end to a myth that we like a good twist. Wired's Jonah Lehrer says the brain doesn't like surprises. "Our first reaction is almost never 'How cool! I never saw that coming!' Instead, we feel embarrassed by our gullibility, the dismay of a prediction error." So the guilt, he suggests should now be taken on by the writers of unpredictable twists.
In among the Daily Mail's most read articles about rioting, from "Middle " to "" is a love story. Spain's 85 year-old Duchess of Alba, according to the paper, is in order to convince them that her suitor a civil servant 15 years her junior - is not after her money. But the article seems equally besotted with the amount of titles the Duchess has - 46. That's more than any other royal in the world.
The Telegraph's readers haven't only been reading about riots either. One of their most read articles over the last month tells the tale of a strange sort of discrimination - . Really. The Hitler cat internet phenomenon, sharing pictures of cats with black fur underneath their noses, has hit a kitten in Godmanchester. The article says a kitten left on the side of the road has been nursed back to health but visitors to Wood Green animal shelter have been ignoring the Kitler "for more conventional looking kittens".
