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We may be recalling the Los Angeles riots of 1992 but others are looking further back. Picture it: 387 AD. "In response to an unwanted tax imposed by the Emperor Theodosius, a mob of citizens and local officials of Antioch tore down painted wooden panels and bronze statues of the imperial family and dragged the loot through the streets. After setting fire to a house and attempting to ignite more buildings, the riot was finally quelled by law enforcement." Hey, let's not forget Constantinople in 388! And then in 532! The Nika Riots were half soccer hooligans at work, a quarter anti-tax zealots and a quarter paid agitators, basically. Only 30,000 people were killed! And then nobody got to have nice things (chariot races mostly) for a long time. Mm hmm. READ MORE

Today, London is tearing itself apart again—in Parliament, where they are talking, essentially, about how to reconfigure society. Prime Minister David Cameron would like, among other things, the ability to assess whether the state has the "right to stop people communicating via these websites and services." You know: by using, like, PHONES and stuff. Meanwhile, a man has been charged with "riot incitement" for his Facebook messages. My favorite bit of his speech: "Cameron said he would encourage people to shop their neighbours if they have mysteriously acquired a new plasma TV screen." (Yes: "shop" is "English" for "narc.")

And yes, why not, Newt Gingrich? Giuliani Partners already had a $4.3 million contract with Mexico City and another with Citgo Petroleum, AKA Hugo Chavez's oil company. (And see also: New York City, 1998, as Giuliani began bleeding millions in settlements for victims of his law and order.) So you know he knows the ins and outs of helping to form a restrictive state.

April of 1992 seems like paradise now, in certain ways. The economy was bouncing back nicely, thank you, even if it wasn't yet fully obvious. We users of Prodigy, Compuserve and AOL were all yapping incessantly on our BBSes, and we were about to try out that newfangled "e-mail" thing. "Are you on e-mail?" people would soon be saying. Bill Clinton had only just clinched the Democratic nomination. (That Arkansas governor! Did you know he was a Rhodes Scholar, too?) READ MORE

Tonight, at PowerHouse Arena, it is the Brooklyn Launch Party for Tom Scocca's Beijing Welcomes You, a nonfiction chronicle of what Beijing has so recently become. As China is now (well, as usual) so much in the news, we asked him some questions! READ MORE

After Mark Duggan was shot by police in North London, in Tottenham, four days ago, the family conducted a peaceful vigil and march to the police station (as one does in black communities around the world; standard practice in Oakland, East New York, etc.). There were discrepancies in the account of Duggan's death, as usual. (Police said he'd shot an officer; instead, as usual, an officer apparently shot an officer.) Family and friends waited outside the police station for hours and were ignored. Later that night, a different kind of demonstration emerged, and 26 police were injured in what ensued. Over the weekend, riots and mini-riots "broke out" from Tottenham to Brixton all the way down to Oxford Circus. "Most of the looters were young teenagers, many of them girls," says the Telegraph—interesting: how many looters were there? How many of them were girls?—and here it's helpful to note that Tottenham has the highest unemployment rate in London. Local businesses were trashed; in pictures, demonstrators seem nearly all young and of all races. Like many episodes of unrest, this is a fairly inarticulate class uprising, with a few goons and a lot of people without jobs who are pissed off about the police shooting people. And the further you get from London, it seems, the more the riots are treated as some act of chav hooliganry; it's paragraph 13 in the Times where Tottenham is described as a place where "a large Afro-Caribbean population has felt singled out by the police for abuse"—and Mark Duggan's name doesn't make an appearance until paragraph 15. Unfortunately, we don't get many good accounts of what's really happening, or why people are furious enough to put themselves in harm's way, at least in part because most members of the media didn't feel safe reporting from the area, and as well a few were attacked. (Photo by Tom Kay.)

Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton goes to London and what is there to eat at the hottest places in town? DISHES OF HORROR MOSTLY. A textural nightmare. A heart-stopping pile of Englishisms. READ MORE

The city of London, which is the capital of a country called England and also of a semi-unified archipelago called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is located on an island called Great Britain, and is in the grip of a gay panic. Earlier this week, two hot guys in glasses were bounced from a pub, the John Snow, for kissing, and now the pub is beset by both controversy and more kissing gays. And a Guardian liveblog! The "MASSIVE SAME-SEX SNOGATHON" begins in a few hours. It's all so very 80s! And so two boys (Jonathan Williams and his buddy have a first date that goes down in... well, "history" would be a little extreme, but. Good news, too! They've elected to go on a second date. (Would be awkward otherwise, right?) Judging by the Facebook RSVP list, this is going to be a terrific place to meet boys. And also probably a great place to get glassed.

If I had $29 million, I would fly to London and go to next week's Sotheby's auction and buy Picasso's "La Lecture," the 1932 painting that first depicted the face of his young muse Marie-Therese Walter, and take it home and hang it on the wall and just stare at it and stare at it until it struck me that I could make something so beautiful, too, and I would. And if I was in London already, I would go to the place and just snap a quick pic with my cellphone and do it that way.

Earlier this month, students across the UK began protesting against planned increases in tuition fees and the cutting of university services. Today, students have been occupying buildings in Birmingham and hurling snowballs in Edinburgh and marching in London. All of this thoughtful demonstrating—which is winding down in arrests and some clubbings and the offering of mince pies to politicians—takes place against the dramatic backdrop of the first demonstrations on November 10th, when tens of thousands of young people stormed London. At the end, in Millbank, in central London, some demonstrators smashed windows; fires were set; and an occupation of Conservative headquarters by a few hundred ensued (from that building, an 18-year-old threw a fire extinguisher off the roof). Further, the second wave of demonstrations, on November 24, went off with some hitches when some small violence against property ensued and the police cornered and arrested a number of marchers. READ MORE