Photo by Lush.i.ous via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Speaking of that 14-car pile-up this morning on the 101 freeway, how about this fact via the Daily Breeze? There's a near $11-billion price "cost to society" due to car crashes according to a study called "Crashes: What's the Cost to Society?" According to the study -- conducted on behalf of the American Automobile Association by the transportation policy firm Cambridge Systematics --......

After playing Signor Adolfo Pirelli in the recent movie release of "Sweeney Todd", it looks as Sacha Baron Cohen (of Borat fame) might be becoming a choice pick for directors, or maybe just the soup du jour. Steven Spielberg is making an adaptation of the "Trial of the Chicago 7" and Cohen is to be cast as the "self-identified Jewish Road Warrior, communo-anarchist, social and political activist," Abbie Hoffman. The co-founder of the Youth International......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

Tickets go on sale tomorrow, Friday the 13th, for the 2006 installment of AFI Fest, Los Angeles' valiant (read: sometimes comical, sometimes desperate) attempt to mount a world-class film festival, something this city deserves but sorely lacks. This year AFI Fest will screen 147 feature films and 36 shorts including several special screenings and premieres. The festival will host the U.S. premiere of Bobby, the Emilio Estevez-directed drama about the assassination of Robert F.......

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. Ah, Houstonist. They're biking to work, that is, if they can figure out how to get there. That's right, Mapquest says "Houston had the......

Laist finally finished all three of Alexander McCall Smith's short comic novels in the Portugese Irregular Verbs trilogy, just in time to get caught up for the first book in a new series and the latest book in an old one. After a very successful six-book run in a planned eight-book arc about the Botswanan detective Precious Ramotswe, Smith launched a new set of mysteries around Scottish moral philosopher Isabel Dalhousie. The Sunday Philosopher's......