Signs of the apocalypse:

1. Cover Girl’s Hunger Games-inspired Capitol Collection, because nothing says murderous exploitation of underprivileged children like Smoochies Sizzle Gloss in Glisten Up!

2. An Alabama woman was charged with shooting to death a fellow football fan for not being upset enough over Alabama’s last-second loss to Auburn.

3. Amazon reveals that the future of package delivery involves drones flying your books to your doorstep. Just kidding; no one buys books anymore. Except ...

Reading materials

To mark Small Business Saturday, President Obama paid a visit to Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C., where his purchases included:

1. Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel, about a family raising a chimp to see if it can learn advanced language skills.

2. Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus, about a shipwrecked Japanese boy in the 1800s who is rescued and brought to America.

3. Journey by Aaron Becker, about a girl who escapes into a wondrous world drawn on her bedroom wall.

Scientifically speaking

Merriam-Webster revealed its word of the year recently, determined not by some general sense of cultural relevance (see Oxford’s word of the year: “selfie”), but by which word saw the greatest increase in online lookups. That makes this year’s winner “science,” looked up 176 percent more year over year. The runners up:

1. cognitive

2. rapport

3. communication

4. niche

5. ethic