3 November 2010: Afternoon

Op: If Palin is going to run for President, she should save face by announcing her cabinet at the same time as her candidacy.

Campaign death masks: O'Donnell, Angle.

Berlusconi says "bunga bunga" parties are better than being gay.

Virginia Woolf in blackface helped invent "bunga bunga."

Don't forget: Berlusconi has a marble statue of himself as Superman.

Airborne Parisian baby bounced off café awning into man's arms.

Instapaper for the commute: Gritty, nuanced last patrol with 82nd airborne troops in southern Afghanistan.

Contemporary blog accounts of America's Civil War drawn from the Times archives.

List of America's 10 most obscure wars.

I decided to become a walking, talking anachronism. Life of a 21st-century stoic.

Pregnancy and sexual competition problems projected for astronauts traveling to Mars (see also, daily life above Earth).

Op: From the Walkman to the iPhone, we're still alone with our music, but now we're more lonely.

Primer on Supreme Court's current case about regulating video games.

Steven Johnson on the power of New York's innovative 311 service.

Audio: Studying incentives to encourage good health, vouchers found effective in fighting drug addiction.

Coach on a mission to train the world's fastest men.

Mendelsohn: Oscar Wilde's classics training influenced him for life, in part because of his own "Greekness."