Headlines from October 7, 2010

C.I.A. invests in a search engine that mines data to predict the future.
Stephen Elliott, Blake Butler, and Christina Kingston confab on the challenges of intimacy on social networks.
How e-reading changes your attention span; James Bridle explains shared reading through e-books.
Conversations with David Sedaris on house cleaning, and how to make a living writing about living.
After two years of culinary worship, bacon's heyday is finally about to end.
From ca. 1949, a chart that classifies everyday tastes.
With traditional time off to harvest potatoes, students in northern Maine occupy idle hands with video games.
A brief history of André 3000's recent, awesome guest verses.
Chuck Schupp is one of baseball's most important men: the bat designer.
Tennis grunters fare better--possibly because the sound distracts opponents.
Study shows that striking powerful poses makes people feel powerful.
Op: No matter how hard we try to understand, the story of the Titanic will always be the story of human error.
In an age when everyone is a watchdog, journalist checks up on once-iconic consumer reporter David Horowitz.
Anonymous pimp discusses the economics of the job that helped him pay for college.
Frugal engineering--where cheap and simple is good enough--is taking off, with good enough results.
Trial of Russian arms dealer, if he talks, may cause "a new ice age" between U.S. and Russia.
Iran's best-known Holocaust denier seeks to throw a rock at Israel from Lebanon.
Newly discovered language, Koro, found to be spoken by a few hundred Indians.
Op: Five essential novels by the latest Nobel laureate, Mario Vargas Llosa.
Sacks: Sometimes I do regret not having any, but in a way my books are my children.
Used-book salesman Michael Savitz explains why a scanner is necessary to his work.
Art historians trace history of what could be a lost Michelangelo masterpiece.
Thirty-six-hour dinner party with Michael Pollan.
Chili with naga jolokia, one of the world's hottest chiles, helps cook detect cancer.
First openly autistic presidential appointee wants less talk of cures and causation, and no more pity.
Philosophical analysis of who's to blame in cases of suicide.
Legal polemics about "I fart in your general direction" and other censorship issues with regards to Monty Python moviemaking.
Steadicamera inventors offer handheld version for smartphones.
The internet is still available to less than 29% of the global population.
People ask me how ebooks have changed the literary landscape. The short answer is that I drunk-dial Agatha Christie several times a week.