Another week of 2013 has passed more or less without major incident. Surprisingly, Congress looks set to avoid a meltdown over the debt ceiling, leading some to declare that the era of crisis is over. If that’s not a contrarian indicator, we don’t know what is. With the VIX at multi-year lows, the stock market creeping slowly upward, and Washington, DC starting to sound like it’s inhabited by responsible adults, “bizarrely calm” doesn’t even begin to describe it. But controversy or no, we’re still stocked up on reading material for the weekend:

• Learning CIA secrets is tough… even when you’re on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (Atlantic)
• Millions of Americans raiding their 401k accounts… this could get ugly (Washington Post)
• The incredible amount of work that goes into a US Presidential inauguration (Today)
• The campaign to change Scrabble letter point values (BBC)
• Some very useful words with no English equivalent (The Week)
• The moon landing couldn’t have been faked – they didn’t have the film technology to do it (Youtube)
• The Empire scoffs at the US’ unwillingness to construct a Death Star (Star Wars Blog)