Sunday wrapup

Today is the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This retrospective describes how quickly the Wall was erected, and how Berliners were completely caught off guard by its construction: "Berlin's citizens woke up one morning in August 1961 to find coils of barbed wire running down the middle of their streets; the first inkling some people had that anything was amiss was when their subway train didn't stop at certain stations. Later, the first strands of wire were replaced with a cement wall, along with watchtowers, a wide 'death strip,' and an electrified fence."

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Bummed that you're home alone on date night, or stuck in your mom's basement, yet again? Don't worry. A new gadget or some scuba gear could help. Observed on November 11 — or "11.11," for the date with the most 1s — Singles Day, which started out as a joke among a group of male college students attending Nanjing University in the 1990s, has become the world's biggest online shopping day, thanks to the e-commerce prowess of China's Alibaba Group. On this day last year, they sold twice what all US companies sold on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. This year, Alibaba has decided to take its 11.11 promotions worldwide, highlighting global brands including online jewelry store Blue Nile, clothing brand Juicy Couture, and even Costco. Amazon has tried to get a piece of the action. The Seattle-based company launched promotions for the holiday last year on its Chinese site, and it's done so again this year.

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"Government open-records requests can be boring. Government open-records requests made by a man who wants to obtain information about 70 licensed strippers in his town so he can 'pray for them', on the other hand... The godly citizen in question is David Allen Van Vleet of Tacoma, Washington. In September he filed court papers to obtain personal information on 70 government-licensed nude dancers at a nightclub in his area — including their full names, addresses, photos and dates of birth. (Yes, Washington requires nude dancers to pay a $75 a year license fee.) The county auditor granted his request under the state's open-records law - although she also notified area dancers and club managers of her action. On 21 October two licensees sued to block the release of the information. Two days later a county judge issued a temporary order blocking the release, with a final decision scheduled for 15 December."

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