Read this and you'll look smart. You don't have to be intelligent to impress people -- you just have to fake it. Here's a daily list of fascinating articles that will wow your friends, surprise your co-workers and make you seem sharp at a cocktail party or over the lunch counter....
- The Italian government is buying 100,000 wheels of Parmigiano cheese and donating them to charity in an effort to help bolster sales for the country's struggling cheese producers. The cheese bailout is being financed in part by a European Union fund meant to feed the needy.
- The strongest evidence yet that a monstrous black hole is at the center of the Milky Way galaxy can be found in research that maps and details stars and their orbits in the galaxy.
- The Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy Tuesday. So how did Chicago-based real estate investor Sam Zell run it into the ground? He bought into the idea embraced by hedge-fund managers and asset-flippers: they could use their smarts to revive industries in which they had little or no expertise.
- A Lebanese farmer declared he had grown the world's heaviest potato -- displaying in photos a massive 25-pound spud that dwarfed the eight-pound Manx Potato that held the title previous. But some contend the potato is a case of mistaken identity.
- Maximizing fuel economy has never been this fun. Literally. New model Honda and Ford hybrids will treat hypermiling as a video game, with instruments that increase or decrease the number of leaves on a vine, for example, with the touch of the accelerator or break.
- Congress' draft rescue plan for Detroit includes provisions to create a car czar. If the position were to come to fruition, the car czar would be the world's most powerful marketing exec and would control $7.3 billion in marketing spending in the U.S.