Dressed to the nines and trailing media helicopters, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at last paid a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. It was not his first visit there but it was the first by a sitting prime minister since 2006. The shrine, a monument to Japan’s fallen soldiers, is considered a symbol of Japanese wartime aggression by China and South Korea. Abe has repeatedly spoken of his desire to pay his respects at the shrine while in office, and Japan’s most conservative and hawkish prime minister in years finally got his wish today, only days after his government announced hefty upgrades to the country’s armed forces.

Victor Yanukovych has presented his nation as a gift to Vladimir Putin, but the Ukrainian people have gathered in Kiev’s Independence Square to resist this move. Violence is still possible, and more is at stake than just the political future of one country.

It’s been a roller coaster year for MOOCs, but despite some major setbacks over the past few months, the technology is still one of the hottest things going in higher-ed at the moment. In honor of MOOCs’ big year, EdSurge is taking a look at a number of statistics from the past few years which illustrate just how quickly MOOCs have grown.

The situation in South Sudan seems to be going from bad to worse as a proper civil war seems to be in the offing in the world’s newest country. Yet these problems of ethnic identity are far from unique to South Sudan alone.

According to the Centre for Economic and Business Research, the UK will surpass both France and Germany to become the largest economy in Europe in the next 20 years, second only to the United States in the West. It’s an unspeakably horrible thought for some, but the dread Anglo-Saxon capitalism may still have a few things to teach the rest of the world.

The traditional Via Meadia Yule Blog continues today, Boxing Day, with the second of the Thirteen Posts of Christmas. From Christmas Eve through to Twelfth Night, we explore the Christmas story and the ideas behind the celebration.

Merry Christmas and happy holiday to all! Chrismas is a tense morning wherever the Meads gather, as we jump whenever the telephone rings. There’s an old South Carolina custom that when two friends or relations greet one another on Christmas morning, the first one who says “Christmas gift!” gets to select one of the other person’s presents. I’ve never known anybody to actually get an extra present this way, but we are nothing if not determined and we all continue to try. If you call us on Christmas Day, don’t expect anybody here to answer with “Hello?” and give you a chance to say “Christmas gift!” We are onto this trick and to protect our rich hauls of presents we always answer the phone with an aggressive “Christmas gift!” to get in first. So don’t call us unless you are ready to part with a present.

Peter Berger will not post on his blog this week. He will celebrate the Christmas holiday. In fear of ACLU lawsuits, he will carefully restrict the celebration to spaces not supported by the taxpayers. The blog will resume in the New Year.

Wishing all readers of the blog a happy holiday, or non-holy day, as their faith or lack of faith may suggest.

– PLB

It’s Christmas Eve today and time for the oldest tradition at Via Meadia: our annual Yule Blog when we update and present our thirteen posts of Christmas running from the preparatory Advent blog on Christmas Eve through Twelfth Night. During this holiday season in 2013-2014 we will blog on a light holiday schedule through New Year’s Day and on January 2 we will be back at full force.

We have been playing around with the idea of doing a semi-regular link aggregation feature for the site—highlighting articles that are either relevant to themes we regularly cover, or interesting, or just plain amusing to us, but that also don’t require much extra commentary. Here’s our first attempt as we wind down for Chirstmas:

1. Coming soon: clinical trials on the fountain of youth.

2. “Run, she is trying to kill you.”

3. Pope Francis the Radical?

4. What could possibly go wrong…

5. Pakistan’s persecuted Christians.

Readers are encouraged to share their own links in the comments, with our standard decency rules applying: if you wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing the link with Grandma Mead, please don’t bother sharing it with the community here. Let us know what you’re reading.