Assorted links

1. The vote to defund political science: how it went.

2. Jason Kottke doesn't read books anymore.

3. "Food rewards obsessiveness," the best eater in the United States.  The full article is gated (the link offers only an excerpt), so buy the 9 November New Yorker.  I don't usually link to gated material of this kind, but this was one of the three or four best magazine pieces I'll read in a year.

4. Why Buffett bought that railroad.

5. Weird stuff McDonald's sells around the world.  In the Philippines it is "spaghetti soaked in sugar."

6. Fruitless endeavors, or not?: translating works of literature into games of chess against each other, using a computer program.

7. Were the Neanderthals just unlucky?

8. Françoise Sagan: an appreciation.