Update on brain-scanning for lie detection. Some interesting tidbits:

Later this year, two startups will launch commercial fMRI lie-detection services, marketed initially to individuals who believe they've been unjustly charged with a crime...

By the end of 2006, two companies, No Lie MRI and Cephos, will bring fMRI's ability to detect deception to market. Both startups originated in the world of medical diagnostics. Cephos founder Steven Laken helped develop the first commercial DNA test for colorectal cancer. "FMRI lie detection is where DNA diagnostics were 10 or 15 years ago," he says. "The biggest challenge is that this is new to a lot of different groups of people. You have to get lawyers and district attorneys to understand this isn't a polygraph. I view it as no different than developing a diagnostic test."

Movie theater economics: Theater owners don't always have the same incentives as the filmmakers/movie studios, especially since they make so much of their money from the concession stand.

Popcorn, for example, because of the immense amount of popped bulk produced from a relatively small amount of kernels -- the ratio is as high as 60:1 -- yields more than 90 cents of profit on every dollar of popcorn sold. It also serves to make customers thirsty for sodas, another high-margin product (supplied to most theater chains by Coca-Cola, which makes lucrative deals with theater owners in return for their exclusive "pouring" of its products).

One theater chain executive went so far as to describe the cup holder mounted on each seat, which allows customers to park their soda while returning to the concession stand for more popcorn, as "the most important technological innovation since sound." He also credited the extra salt added into the buttery topping on popcorn as the "secret" to extending the popcorn-soda-popcorn cycle throughout the movie.

For this type of business, theater owners don't benefit from movies with gripping or complex plots, since that would keep potential popcorn customers in their seats. "We are really in the business of people moving," Thomas W. Stephenson Jr., who then headed Hollywood Theaters, told me. "The more people we move past the popcorn, the more money we make."

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It may not be politically correct, but it's the best blonde joke I've ever heard.