Some disturbing news of the front page of the Washington Post this morning: SAT reading scores have hit a 40-year low. Experts say the downward trend may have something to do with the growing number of students taking the test, many of whom are from lower-income backgrounds. Apparently, family income is strongly correlated with a student’s performance on the test. All in all, fifty-seven percent of test takers didn’t score high enough “to indicate likely success in college.”

J.K. Rowling has gone from “Potter to much hotter” says the New York Daily News this morning. Her first book for adults, “Casual Vacancy,” is hitting shelves today and apparently it’s all “sex, drugs and grownup language.” In anticipation of the book’s release, Rowling gave the New Yorker a rare interview, in which she said, “I had a lot of real-world material in me.”

Location is everything—especially when you’re honoring the center of the earth.  Ecuador’s Middle of the Earth monument was supposed to be built at 0 degrees latitude, 0 minutes, 0 seconds. But the New York Times says it isn’t. The actual center of the earth is a few hundred feet away but it sits on a ravine and officials thought the location was unsuitable for a monument.

“You can add the Seattle Hail Mary to the Green Bay Packers’ list of crushing last-second defeats,” writes Pete Dougherty in the Green Bay Press-Gazette this morning after a controversial call at the end of last night’s game against the Seattle Seahawks. The Seattle Times writes that their opponents “left town steaming, [while] the rest of the country was debating the validity of that final call on Tate’s touchdown and Seattle was pinching itself.”

I seem to be seeing kale everywhere. But experts say there can be too much of a healthy thing. The Washington Post says the trendy vegetable has a large concentration of Vitamin K, which can be dangerous for people on blood thinners. It also contains oxalates, which have been correlated to kidney stones. In general, kale is a great source of anti-oxidants and vitamins—just don’t overdo it.

The New York Times writes off Mitt Romney in an editorial this morning. Romney’s comments this weekend about the state of his campaign prompted the Times to write: “Mr. Romney has routinely shown toward non-Americans or the nonrich. Now even long-undecided voters are starting to catch on and dismiss him.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Jerry Seib says “don’t count Mitt Romney out yet” because the GOP candidate has got three big things in his favor: highly motivated voters, strong conservative support and “grouchy undecided voters.” Of the latter, Seib says: “[Voters] that are still unattached tend to be more unhappy with the current state of the country than are other voters, which ought to mean they’re available to Mr. Romney.”