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"What is the greatest possible area for a sofa <B>S</B> that can be moved around a right-angled corner in a hallway of unit width? It's assumed only that <B>S</B> is a connected region of the plane."

The law of unintended consequences, that is. It seems that, as the Mega Lo Marts introduce auto-scanning checkout kiosks to feed customers through more "efficiently," people are buying fewer of those impulsive point-of-purchase items.

Up at 9am. No shower, no shave. Coffee. I sat down on my orange couch, opened the laptop and got to it. One more day of "Recommended Components."

Fans of <I>Sandman</I> will recognize this outbreak as one of the points of departure for the story arc begun in issue #1. What they may not realize is that Neil Gaiman wasn't making up the Sleeping Sickness: there really was an outbreak of <I>Encephalitis lethargica</I> from 1916 through the '20s.

George Saunders checks out the motherland.

<I>The Register</I> reports that scientists have developed a material with a negative refractive index, which means it causes light to bounce off it "backwards" at speeds that "appear faster than the speed of light."

Over at <I>Home Theater</I>'s website, Fleischmann's arch blend of understatement and geekiness is the sort of stuff I wish I could write consistently. A recommended daily read. Yes, I know him, and yes, I share an employer with him, but this encomium comes from the heart.

The competition's fierce, but KFC's new Famous Bowls just might take the, um, cake, according to Dan Neil.

Let's say you're having an audio party, or just wanting to tweak your audio system. Which <I>Stereophile</I> writer would you want to have over for an evening and why?

In May, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/news/052206xmtrials/">sued</A&gt; XM Satellite Radio over the <A HREF="http://www.xm-radio-satellite.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=… Inno</A> portable player, which has a 1GB recording capacity, but no way of porting the recordings outside the player.