Conversation

Whether by necessity or choice, a quarter of Americans take at least one vacation by themselves each year. Some solo travelers are single. Some have partners who dislike travel or have different interests or can't get away. Some just crave freedom. But all face the same question: What's the best trip for the person traveling alone? "The key is to know yourself," said Beth Whitman, author of a guide for women traveling alone and founder of Wanderlustandlipstick.com , a website devoted to advice and tours for women on the go. "There are times when you just need to get away, to recuperate.

Six men and two women sit down to a simple dinner around a rectangular table in a glassed-in upstairs room at Osteria la Buca. It's 7:30 on a Tuesday night in spring, and the sun is just barely sinking into the city haze, leaving Melrose Avenue awash in dirty pink and gold light. The guests - all strangers - have arrived to take part in a new dinner series called the Salon at Osteria la Buca. They have been picked by the restaurant to participate based upon recommendations from previous guests and RSVP letters they composed outlining their professional accomplishments and personal philosophies.

Security researchers Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey have discovered a seven-digit numerical code that can unlock all kinds of secrets about you. It's your phone number. Using relatively simple techniques, this duo can use your cellphone number to figure out your name, where you live and work, where you travel and when you sleep. They could even listen to your voice messages and personal phone calls — if they wanted to. "It's really interesting to watch a phone number turn into a person's life," DePetrillo said.

In 1959, Danish fisherman and woodcutter Thomas Dam couldn't afford to buy Christmas presents for his daughter. So he carved a doll based on the legendary Scandinavian troll. This doll wasn't the scary, somewhat evil troll of Scandinavian lore, but a friendly, welcoming creature, one that would inspire one of the most popular toys of the 1960s. With their shocks of colorful hair and googly eyes -- and the initials DAM stamped onto the bottoms of their feet -- the dolls are still coveted by collectors around the world.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks - a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment - provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns.

Can you hear me now? If you've ever been held captive in a bus or waiting room and been forced to endure a stranger's loud and astonishingly private cellphone conversation, you know how annoying secondhand phone chatter can be. By the same token, you've probably been frustrated by your own inability to ignore the stranger's endless prattle. Like a bad song that gets stuck in your brain, details of the one-sided conversation can echo in your ears for hours afterward. Well, with Americans logging some 2.3 trillion minutes worth of talk time on wireless devices each year, those overheard conversations aren't going away anytime soon.

Curiosity infobox 8/7/11 'Curiosity' Where: Animal Planet; Discovery; TLC When: 8 p.m. Sunday Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children) 'The Creation Question: A Curiosity Conversation' Where: Discovery; TLC When: 9 p.m. Sunday Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

Tiger Woods spent more than three hours playing 11 holes of golf Monday in the delayed final round of the Farmers Insurance Classic, a situation that left him quite unhappy afterward, even though he had won the tournament and its $1.08-million first prize. So how did he spend his time while standing on various tees and fairways, waiting to hit while players in front of him dwaddled along? "We talked a lot about Kobe [Bryant]," said Woods' caddie, Joe LaCava. "He loves Kobe and he couldn't believe he had 14 assists the other night.

Dinner with Phil Jackson here, a huge mistake for the big guy because I know now he's capable of giving more than one-word answers. It's Friday night at a highly recommended Mexican restaurant, 16 regular-season games remaining in the career of the greatest all-time NBA coach, and we're talking Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant . It begins with a question that has nothing to do with either superstar: Is there a chance he might regret...

At 12:59 p.m. Sunday, a dispatcher from the San Diego Fire Department called a dispatcher with the California Department of Forestry in El Cajon to request that aerial tankers be sent to help battle the fire in Normal Heights. This is the text of their 38-second conversation: SD dispatcher (in calm voice): Hi, this is San Diego Fire. CDF dispatcher: Yeah. SD: Ah . . . We are, ah, ah . . . Incident commander calling for air drops on this fire in Mission Valley.

Harry Crane knows how to throw a temper tantrum. He is fearless if sloppy, and through doughy cheeks delivers a toxic barb in Episode 4 that is shocking on its own, but made exponentially so coming from this at-times hapless infant-man who in earlier years ran to his wife for crumbs of resolve. In a pitch for Heinz ketchup, Peggy Olson displays a confidence and salesmanship she could have learned from only one person. Her work is powerful, and all Don Draper can do is listen to his heir even though he hasn't given up the throne.

Festival of Books What: Rob Roberge is on the panel "Fiction: True Grit" in conversation with Frank Bill, James Greer and Joshua Mohr, moderated by Jim Ruland. Where: Annenberg Auditorium, USC When: 2 p.m. Sunday Price: Free. Tickets are available online. There is a $1 service fee applied to each ticket reserved. Information: latimes.com/festivalofbooks

In his new biography, "Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson," Blake Bailey explores the tormented life of the author of "The Lost Weekend" - the once-celebrated 1944 novel that led to the Oscar-winning film - and his plunge into literary obscurity. The Portsmouth, Va.-based biographer has also written extensive books about John Cheever, winning a National Book Critics Circle Award, and of Richard Yates, for which Bailey was a finalist for the honor.

If you're going to talk about a subject most people don't want to talk about, why not do so over tea and cake and cookies? Why not gather in a sunny living room looking out on a lush tangle of green, where you can watch the breeze ruffle the leaves on the trees as you eat forkfuls of blueberry tart? Death comes to each of us, to everyone we love. Couldn't talking about it in a safe, comfy setting make the prospect less frightening? This is what Betsy Trapasso thinks. This is why she's asked friends to come - why on a Sunday afternoon, they've braved Topanga Canyon's twists and turns and climbed the dozens of wooden steps to her end-of-a-rural-road front door.

Dana Delany plays a calculating politician's wife in Beau Willimon's "The Parisian Woman," set in contemporary Washington, "inspired" by Henri Becque's "La Parisienne" of 1885. The world premiere production, co-starring Steven Weber, begins previews Sunday at South Coast Repertory and runs through May 5. The two-time Emmy winner also stars as acerbic medical examiner Dr. Megan Hunt in ABC's procedural "Body of Proof," now in its third season. Beau Willimon has a pretty dim view of people in politics.

A few weeks ago, I visited Rachel Kushner in her Angelino Heights home to talk about her second novel, “The Flamethrowers.” Taking place in lower Manhattan and Italy in the late 1970s, “The Flamethrowers” is an inquiry into art, politics and identity, set against a pair of landscapes defined by turmoil. Kushner is smart and deeply thoughtful; her reflections on the book, and the issues it raises, appear in this Sunday's Arts & Books . Here is more of our conversation.

We smile at each other and I lean back against the wicker couch. How does it feel to be dead? I say. You touch my knees with your blue fingers. And when you open your mouth, a ball of yellow light falls to the floor and burns a hole through it. Don't tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.

The cellphone conversations going on around us — in the grocery store, mall, airport, elevator, on the bus, etc. — are by now ubiquitous. But they still feel intrusive. A new study suggests our brains simply don't like these one-sided chats. Researchers at Cornell University conducted a series of tests to gauge people's reactions when exposed to four background noise settings: silence, a monologue, a conversation between two people and half a conversation (called a halfalogue)

Want to hear more? Join us at 9 a.m. Monday for a conversation with Mariel Hemingway and Bobby Williams. You can watch, listen and ask questions here.

SACRAMENTO - It was the compliment that spawned a million tweets. And before long, President Obama was apologizing for it. On Thursday, Obama said California's Kamala Harris was the "best-looking attorney general," and commentators raced for their keyboards and smartphones to denounce the remark as sexist or defend it as benign. The next day, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the president had called Harris to apologize for the remark and the distraction it caused. The comment, made during a Bay Area fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, had become grist for the nonstop, politically charged news cycle.