19 May 2009: Afternoon By The Morning News — 19 May 2009 It's the first car I've ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose. Review of the new Honda Insight. Day in the life of Rotus, the receptionist of the entire United States. Op: Successful people make lousy commencement speakers, so do politicians. And never let your passport expire. The TMN writers create the ultimate commencement speech. Audio: Updike on the importance of fiction and democracy on "This I Believe." Controversy over whether Pope Benedict XVI will beatify Hitler-era Pope Pius XII. Lovely new Niemann blog post for the Times about the Berlin Wall, then and now. Lars von Trier can still shock at Cannes--especially when he calls himself an Antichrist, and then films like one. Evolutionary psychologist urges advertisers to replace focus groups with calibrated intelligence tests. Mathematical model of medical quackery finds snake oil spreads precisely because it's useless. Sex researchers want less science in bed, and fewer feelings of deficiency. Study of inter-species recognition finds mockingbirds dive-bomb people who have threatened them in the past. Easter eggs to be found in the new Wolfram Alpha search engine. Video: Unearthed commercial for Plymouth Duster renders all '80s parody irrelevant.
