Digg relaunches on Wednesday. Are you ready?

Last week, JK Rowling announced that, midway through writing the Harry Potter series, she nearly killed off Ron Weasley "out of spite." Ron isn't the first supporting character to narrowly avoid death in an author's rough draft. Here we look at some other close calls—and how those deaths would have affected the culture at large.

Last summer, we checked the price of cigarettes state by state and in D.C. Here's how prices have increased and decreased since then.

51. West Virginia (last year $4.74): $4.84 = +2% 50. New Hampshire ($5.87): $4.86 = -20% 49. Tennessee ($5.56): $4.91 = -13% 48. North Dakota ($4.91): $5.03 = +2% 47. Idaho ($4.99): $5.11 +2% 46. North Carolina ($5.51): $5.14 = -7% 45. Alabama ($5.27): $5.18 = -2% 44. Colorado ($5.96): $5.19 = -15% 43. Wyoming ($5.50): $5.21 = -6% 42. Oklahoma ($6.19): $5.24 = -18% 41. Virginia ($5.55): $5.43 = -2% 40. Mississippi ($5.75): $5.55 = -4%

Last week, it was announced that NASA is partnering with Tor/Forge to put more science in their science fiction. We like the idea of keeping the brilliant NASA engineers busy now that they’re no longer firing shuttles into the cosmos, but we see more than one potential problem with this arrangement.

Do you want to be able to talk knowledgeably at fancy dinner parties with the ruling class about employment in America? Sure you do! So here are just a few simple graphs from our pals at the St. Louis Fed with a longer view—going back to either 2000 or to the early 90s, depending on data available—that explaining the trending in employment, hiring, unemployment and workforce participation in America. Above: what they call the "U6" number. That's the combined percentage of unemployed and underemployed, essentially.

The song of the summer is easy to spot. You hear it in the softer-louder-softer of passing cars, dripping out of clothes stores, wafting up from block parties. It's inescapable. Think of last year's Katy Perry ode to boobs and hatefully nonstandard spelling, "California Gurls." (The Far*East Movement's "Like a G6" would have been the song of last summer, as it was released last April, but the single push didn't happen until late August, and it rode the charts high all through October and November.) Remember Beyonce and Jay-Z's domination of 2004 with their declaration of car-exploding mutual adoration, "Crazy In Love"? And there's the recent mother of them [...]