7 stories to read this weekend

October is over and so is baseball. That means weekends can be devoted to the other leisurely activity — reading! And here are seven stories that should get you started.

• The colonel and his labyrinth: A fascinating story of Col. Edward Topps, leaders of a mysterious Air Force agency called Big Safari. Hint: It has helped perfect killer drones.
• Confessions of a drone warrior: A story of 21st century American killing machine that makes for a good follow-up read to the prior story.
• The Penitent Warlord: Joshua Milton Blahyi aka General Butt Naked was a fearsome warlord in Liberia. He is trying to atone for 20,000 war crimes.
• All Can Be lost: The risk of putting our knowledge in the hands of machines is immense, argues author Nicholas Carr.
• Are we puppets in a wired world? A question worth pondering!
• Meet Marty Sullivan, who figured out how the world’s biggest companies avoided billions in taxes. This story explains how he wants to stop them.
• Have we reached the “end of antibiotics” period? CDC, a social directory argues yes in this PBS special, Hunting the nightmare bacteria.

This is the weekend before Roadmap, a conference I have been working with my colleague Katie Fehrenbacher for past 12 months. Our view is that technology is not just about speeds and feeds anymore, it is about creating an experience that can mean many things to many people. From folks like ex-Facebook CTO Bret Taylor we will learn about data density and experience, and from the brains behind Google Maps we will learn about the confluence of digital and physical. The role of typography, the future of retail and communicating visually are other themes of our experience design conclave. I hope you are going to join us — November 5th and 6th in San Francisco. All details are here.