Scientific American: “When money is on the brain, people become disinclined to ask for help when faced with a difficult or even an impossible puzzle….People who think, even subconsciously, about money are also less helpful than others, the researchers say. After witnessing a pre-arranged accident in which someone walking through the testing area dropped a box of pencils, money-primed participants picked up fewer of the fallen pencils than the other subjects did.”

Forget OJ’s prognostication. Mr. Levi Asher tells the world how he would have carried out the murders. Memo to FOX: if you replaced OJ with random individuals explaining how they would carry out a twin murder, then I think it would probably be a lot more interesting.

I’m waiting for it. Looks like I’m about five minutes ahead of the National Book Foundation site.

HOLY SHIT! Richard Powers has taken the fiction award for The Echo Maker! Hurray!

Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthern