A History Of Violence Edge Master Class 2011 | Conversation | Edge

A History Of Violence Edge Master Class 2011 | Conversation | Edge: What may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history is that violence has gone down, by dramatic degrees, and in many dimensions all over the world and in many spheres of behavior: genocide, war, human sacrifice, torture, slavery, and the treatment of racial minorities, women, children, and animals.

Galaxy Clusters Back Up Einstein's Theory of Relativity

Galaxy Clusters Back Up Einstein's Theory of Relativity: Researchers have validated general relativity on cosmic scales using data collected from 8,000 galaxy clusters.

Amazon Kindle Fire tablet: $199, 7-inch screen, ships Nov. 15 - latimes.com

Amazon Kindle Fire tablet: $199, 7-inch screen, ships Nov. 15 - latimes.com: A look at the specs of the Kindle Fire reaffirms the idea that the focus of this tablet is consuming media -- and consuming it directly from Amazon.

US cable TV may unbundle to stem tide of Internet video

US cable TV may unbundle to stem tide of Internet video: US cable and satellite providers signaled Tuesday that they wanted to unbundle their channel packages to stave off the incursion of Internet video and a tough economy. DirecTV, Mediacom, Suddenlink, and others are pushing the FCC and others to alter retransmission fee systems and let them sell access by the channel so that they can lower the actual cost of selling TV services. At costs as high as $4 per month just for ESPN and now with normally free-to-air networks charging for access, they argued to Reuters and others that they were forced to charge high prices....

Apple to hold iPhone special event on Oct. 4

Apple to hold iPhone special event on Oct. 4: Apple sent invites to the press on Tuesday, announcing an iPhone-themed special event on October 4, beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific.

The ultimate utility bike? Maybe it's an e-bike | Gaming and Culture - CNET News

The ultimate utility bike? Maybe it's an e-bike | Gaming and Culture - CNET News: A new effort from the Palo Alto, Calif., design consultancy Ideo and Santa Cruz, Calif., bike builder Rock Lobster Custom Cycles may have pushed the industry a step closer to achieving the goal. The team created a bike for the Oregon Manifest 2011 Constructor's Design Challenge, a bike building competition pitting three teams of designers and handcrafted bike builders. Their goal: create the best utility bike for urban living.

Apple's 'Assistant' Seen as Key Feature for New iPhone Hardware

Apple's 'Assistant' Seen as Key Feature for New iPhone Hardware: Assistant will also reportedly integrate a conversational aspect in which the system can ask the user questions to clarify and refine its understanding of what is being requested.
The system will actually speak back and forth with the user to gain the most information in order to provide the best results. The user essentially can hold a conversation with their iPhone like it is another human being.

Assistant is also said to integrate with WolframAlpha, allowing users to obtain answers to factual questions using the service's computational capabilities.

The report notes that the sophisticated voice features will require the new iPhone hardware from Apple, relying on the company's A5 system-on-a-chip and a bump in RAM to 1 GB to support the heavy workload.

CBR Readers Rank "Batwoman" #1 Top Title of the New 52: Wave 2

CBR Readers Rank "Batwoman" #1 Top Title of the New 52: Wave 2: CBR readers overwhelmingly chose "Batwoman" #1 as their favorite title form the second full week of DC Comics' New 52 releases, with "Demon Knights" coming in directly behind the second place "Green Lantern."

Researcher: Facebook's Timeline will be boon for hackers

Researcher: Facebook's Timeline will be boon for hackers: A Sophos security researcher warns thatFacebook's new Timeline will likely make it easier for crooks to mine the social network for personal information they can use to launch malicious attacks and steal passwords.

The American Scholar: Dubya and Me - Walt Harrington

The American Scholar: Dubya and Me - Walt Harrington: So began a long and fascinating acquaintanceship with the man who would become one of the most admired and, later, reviled presidents in U. S. history. Over the next 25 years, our paths crossed again and again, most recently in his Dallas office last April. I had just read Bush’s 2010 memoir Decision Points, and I was struck by his many references to history. In the back of my mind was an article that Karl Rove had written for The Wall Street Journal in 2008, which revealed (much to the consternation of the president’s derisive critics) that Bush had read 186 books for pleasure in the preceding three years, consisting mostly of serious historical nonfiction. Intrigued, I asked Bush whether he would talk to me about how his passion for reading history had shaped his presidency and perspective, and he agreed.

How the two-party duopoly operates

How the two-party duopoly operates:

By now, probably everyone reading this is already sick of America's quadrennial political spectacle -- the one in which politicians and media outlets ask us to believe that there remain vast differences between our two political parties. It's like cheaply staged pornography on a red and blue set, with words like "polarization," "socialist" and "extremist" comprising the breathless dialogue in a wholly unconvincing plot.

Facebook Makeover Reveals New Vision for Sharing | Epicenter | Wired.com

Facebook Makeover Reveals New Vision for Sharing | Epicenter | Wired.com: The grand plan begins visually. The new “Timeline” product is something of an overview of your past Facebook activity in an entirely different visual format. Timeline goes back into your history of status updates, the apps you’ve used and the places you’ve checked into. The information collected in your timeline is dependent on what sort of data about yourself you want collected over time. So in order to, say, begin collecting data about your music listening habits, adding an application to a user’s timeline is a simple, one-click process.

The other half of Facebook’s vision: Apps. Facebook’s new class of social applications include the media-centric — music, movies, news and books — as well as what the company calls “lifestyle apps.” Essentially, instead of just “liking” things, the new class of apps will allow you to “read, watch and listen” to the integrated media services. Lifestyle apps capture most everything else

Apps are the stuff of Timeline. Installing this new class of apps onto your timeline will curate and summarize the history of your life as seen through Facebook — a collection of your activities curated and seen on a single page.

“It’s a container big enough to hold your entire life,” said Facebook vice president of product Chris Cox.

Can Neutrinos Move Faster Than Light? | Wired Science | Wired.com

Can Neutrinos Move Faster Than Light? | Wired Science | Wired.com: Over three years, OPERA researchers timed the roughly 16,000 neutrinos that started at CERN and registered a hit in the detector. They found that, on average, the neutrinos made the 730-kilometer, 2.43-millisecond trip roughly 60 nanoseconds faster than expected if they were traveling at light speed. “It’s a straightforward time-of-flight measurement,” says Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern and spokesperson for the 160-member OPERA collaboration. “We measure the distance and we measure the time, and we take the ratio to get the velocity, just as you learned to do in high school.” Ereditato says the uncertainty in the measurement is 10 nanoseconds.


However, even Ereditato says it’s way too early to declare relativity wrong. “I would never say that,” he says. Rather, OPERA researchers are simply presenting a curious result that they cannot explain and asking the community to scrutinize it. “We are forced to say something,” he says. “We could not sweep it under the carpet because that would be dishonest.” The results will be presented at a seminar tomorrow at CERN.

Can Neutrinos Move Faster Than Light?

Can Neutrinos Move Faster Than Light?: If it's true, it will mark the biggest discovery in physics in the past half-century: Elusive, nearly massive subatomic particles called neutrinos appear to travel just faster than light, a team of physicists in Europe reports. If so, the observation would wreck Einstein's theory of special relativity, which demands that nothing can travel faster than light.

Facebook unveils new version of Open Graph | Geek Gestalt - CNET News

Facebook unveils new version of Open Graph | Geek Gestalt - CNET News: All told, the new feature will allow "frictionless experiences," "real-time serendipity," and finding patterns and activity.

YouTube adds Magisto automatic video editing tool | Digital Media - CNET News

YouTube adds Magisto automatic video editing tool | Digital Media - CNET News: Now any video being uploaded to YouTube can be edited automatically. No manual intervention is needed whatsoever--just one click of a button--and Magisto's tool instantly "finds" the best scenes in your video and cuts out the blurry, bad and boring bits. Music and effects (wipes, transitions, titles, and fades) can also be added with two button clicks. The tool is dead simple to use as it literally walks you through the editing "process" in seconds.

Facebook's enraging status update

Facebook's enraging status update:

Like, oh, around 750 million other users of Facebook, I logged on to the world's biggest social media network this morning and was immediately annoyed. Facebook had changed its user interface, again. Gone was the "Most Recent" button, which allowed users to see what their friends have posted in a simple, straightforward, chronological order. Now Facebook was indulging, again, in outright effrontery: employing its own secret algorithmic sauce to highlight what it considered the most important "top stories," while mixing in other recent posts far below.

Move data from an old Mac to a new Mac | Operating Systems | Working Mac | Macworld

Move data from an old Mac to a new Mac | Operating Systems | Working Mac | Macworld: There are many reasons to get a new Mac—your old one is too slow, too ungainly, or it’s incompatible with the latest version of OS X. Regardless of why you’ve walked a new Mac through your front door, when you do, you face this immediate challenge: Moving the data on your current Mac to the new computer. There are multiple means for doing this. We’ll look at one built into Mac OS X—Migration Assistant.

Dvorak: The serious flaw with Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Metro – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home

Dvorak: The serious flaw with Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Metro – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home: a better-designed UI that doesn’t continuously destroy users’ visual memory

Reel change comes to Roseburg theaters | The News-Review - NRtoday.com

Reel change comes to Roseburg theaters | The News-Review - NRtoday.com: Digital images will take over as crews tear out green metal 35 mm film projectors and replace them with black plastic digital projectors.

Two screens, one in each theater at the Garden Valley Cinema 8 and Harvard Cinema, were changed several years ago to show blockbuster 3-D films such as “Avatar.”

Now, it's time to convert nine remaining screens, said General Manager Nathan Davies.

The Roseburg movie houses will join theaters across the country in a flurry of renovation as Hollywood abandons 35 mm film to adopt the newer medium.

Scott Hicks, whose Portland company, American Cinema Equipment, is installing the digital equipment in Roseburg, said about 60 percent of the U.S. theaters have already converted to digital.

Although the images will be clearer, cleaner and more stable than the 35 mm images, Hicks and Davies agree that moviegoers likely won't notice the change.

Google opens its social network to all

Google opens its social network to all: Just three months after launching Google+, the search giant drops the requirement of receiving an invitation to use the service. It also adds new features to its video Hangouts.

Stubbornness Increases the More People Tell You You're Wrong

Stubbornness Increases the More People Tell You You're Wrong: A group of psychologists working at HP's Social Computing Research Group has found that humans are more likely to change their minds when fewer, rather than more, people disagree with them.

The unrealistic beauty of the Pacific Northwest

The unrealistic beauty of the Pacific Northwest:

The Pacific Northwest is an improbable landscape. When Jonathan Raban first encountered it through the writing of Bernard Malamud -- whose novel about his time in Oregon, "A New Life," is a little-known masterpiece -- he thought Malamud's description of the Willamette Valley must have been the product of an overactive imagination. How could it really be true that the richest farmland in the world would be nestled between two mountain ranges, the Cascades to the east, the Coastal Range to the west, with a desert and an ocean on just the other side of both? "It read like the landscape of allegory," Raban observes in "Driving Home," his new collection of essays -- not a real place, but something out of "the freehand, fantastic tradition of the Jewish folktale." Only years later, when Raban met a professor who knew the area, did he learn that Malamud's novel was actually something of a roman à clef, with real people to match its closed-minded, casually anti-Semitic characters, and a real landscape to match what had seemed too dramatic to be real. "No," he was told, Malamud's novel was not a work of "ambitious fabulism"; rather, "the landscape of the Pacific Northwest was in itself an unrealistic stretch of country -- it was just naturally fabulous."

Wired and Tired: The Long View on the New Netflix

Wired and Tired: The Long View on the New Netflix: When companies I love (as a customer) and admire/enjoy writing about (as a journalist) do something that seems downright crazy to both sides of my brain, like splitting up a well-known brand and its useful and well-loved website, I tend to wonder if I'm missing something.

Meet Qwikster: Netflix Spins Off Discs-By-Mail from Streaming Video

Meet Qwikster: Netflix Spins Off Discs-By-Mail from Streaming Video: In the wake of falling stock prices and customer outrage, Netflix announced it will spin off the DVD by mail service that made the company famous.

Netflix splits off DVD service as Qwikster, adds video games

Netflix splits off DVD service as Qwikster, adds video games: Netflix chief Reed Hastings in a statement late Sunday revealed that the company was forking its traditional physical disc service out under the Qwikster name. All Blu-ray and DVD rentals will now go under the new banner while Netflix is reserved solely for Internet streaming. While the service will give users two account locations, it should also provide a route for significant improvements now that disc rentals have a dedicated team, Hastings said....

What to watch instead of "Conan" - Film Salon - Salon.com

What to watch instead of "Conan" - Film Salon - Salon.com: The world of film distribution can be as cruel as a  gang of bored silver miners who throw a longhorn bull into a deep pit with a grizzly bear just to see which will survive -- and just as senseless. That explains why this year's "Conan the Barbarian" was allowed to stink up 4,500 screens, while 2009's far superior "Solomon Kane" hasn't even been afforded the scant dignity of a U.S. DVD release. At least "Solomon Kane" has now turned up as an offering on Netflix streaming, like note in a bottle tossed adrift by the ghostly hand of author Robert E. Howard, the suicidal Texan who created both Conan and Kane during the pulp fiction heyday of the 1920s and 30s.

Solomon Kane, a grim demon-slaying pilgrim in a slouch hat, is one of Howard's more inspired creations, but the character hasn't exactly launched the careers of any Republican governors, so it's easy to see why the studio bean-counters backed "Conan" over "Kane." This isn't to say that "Solomon Kane" writer/director Michael J. Bassett ("Deathwatch") has delivered a completely faithful adaptation of any of the original Kane stories, but he has crafted a solid sword and sorcery movie built mostly on James Purefoy's (Mark Antony in HBO's "Rome") ability to be totally badassed in the title role while looking like a refugee from a Thanksgiving parade float. Joining Purefoy are the late Pete Postlethwaite ("The Town," "Inception") and Max von Sydow, who would've made an awesome Solomon Kane himself if Ken Russell or Dario Argento had directed this thing in the 1970s.

Once the evildoers kidnap the surviving Puritan girl (Rachel Hurd-Wood), Kane sets off on a horse-drawn carnage spree, cleaving Malachi's followers to the bone in true Howardian fashion. En route to his final confrontation with the forces of Satan, Kane confronts a creepy witch girl, fights his way out of a tomb filled with hissing zombies, and is crucified for added oomph.

The theft of the American pension

The theft of the American pension:

America is in the midst of a retirement crisis. Over the last decade, we've witnessed the wholesale gutting of pension and retiree healthcare in this country. Hundreds of companies have slashed and burned their way through their employees' benefits, leaving former workers either on Social Security or destitute -- and taxpayers with a huge burden that, as the baby boomer generation edges towards retirement, is likely to grow. It's a problem that is already affecting over a million people -- and the most shocking part is, none of this needed to happen.

The collegiate drug hypocrisy - David Sirota - Salon.com

The collegiate drug hypocrisy - David Sirota - Salon.com: Though little noticed for its role in America's selective War on Drugs, the university system has now become a key player shotgunning the oxymoronic "alcohol is acceptable but pot is evil" mentality down the beer-bong-primed throats of America's youth. To see how it all works, consider the University of Colorado.

Both figuratively and literally immersed in alcohol, CU is the higher education gem of a state whose governor famously made his millions on beer breweries. Today, the school’s catering service sells alcohol and university officials license CU's logo for use on beer-drinking merchandise. Meanwhile, every school year, CU forces kids to sit through a convocation in a beer-themed arena -- the Coors Events Center -- to learn about the "meaning and responsibilities" of student life.

Not surprisingly, CU now has a binge-drinking problem, as evidenced by last week's news that another of its students died after a night of heavy imbibing.

Apple Working on Allowing the Merging of Multiple Apple IDs

Apple Working on Allowing the Merging of Multiple Apple IDs: MacRumors has learned that Apple is working on a process to merge multiple Apple IDs into a single login. The issue of juggling multiple Apple ID logins has been a minor inconvenience in the past, but with the early developer testing of iOS 5 and iCloud, users have found it to be a major issue.

A look at Ivy Bridge, Intel's next -gen processor | BappProducts | Macworld

A look at Ivy Bridge, Intel's next -gen processor | BappProducts | Macworld: Much of the Intel Developer Forum's first day on Tuesday was spent talking about Ivy Bridge, Intel's next generation CPU built on the upcoming 22nm tri-gate process technology. Normally, Ivy Bridge would be the "tick" in Intel's "tick-tock" model of processor product development. The "tick" refers to moving to a new, higher density process technology. When Intel does that, the first CPU product it builds on the new manufacturing process, is usually a tweaked and enhanced version of an existing CPU architecture. The "tock" is when Intel, now comfortable with a new process, designs a new architecture, then builds it on the now familiar process.

Djokovic sets ATP mark with over $10.6M (AP)

Djokovic sets ATP mark with over $10.6M (AP): Novak Djokovic's 64-2 record in 2011 has earned him a record amount of prize money. Djokovic's U.S. Open championship -- his third Grand Slam title of the year -- pushed his earnings past $10.6 million, more than anyone ever took home during a full season of men's tennis, according to the ATP World Tour.

Number of U.S. poor hit record 46 million in 2010 | Reuters

Number of U.S. poor hit record 46 million in 2010 | Reuters: The United States has long had one of the highest poverty rates in the developed world. Among 34 countries tracked by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only Chile, Israel and Mexico have higher rates of poverty.

The Other Socrates - The Barnes & Noble Review

The Other Socrates - The Barnes & Noble Review: To capture all the fugitive texts of the ancient world, some of which survived the Dark Ages in just a single moldering copy in some monastic library, and turn them into affordable, clear, sturdy, accurate books, is one of the greatest accomplishments of modern scholarship -- and one of the most democratic.

In many of these dialogues, as Plato recreates them, Socrates does not even have a lesson to teach. His goal was simply to make his interlocutors recognize that their own common-sense ideas, on subjects like virtue and piety and beauty and politics, were hopelessly confused.

Waiting for Thunderbolt--one port to rule them all

Waiting for Thunderbolt--one port to rule them all: What if there was a connectivity standard faster than the fastest version of USB, worked with even more types of devices, and was even compatible with USB itself, via an adapter?

"True Blood" 4x12: A sexy, bloody end to season four

"True Blood" 4x12: A sexy, bloody end to season four:

Season finale! Witch Marnie is dead, but her spirit has invaded Lafayette's body and now she's inside of him, having breakfast with Jesus before work. Jesus apologizes to Lafayette for pushing him into the blood magic before he was ready, but Marnie just twitches Lafayette a little, trying not to betray her possession. Stating the obvious here, but it must really suck to be a medium if you can be snuggled in your animal-print bedding after a long day of slaying necromancers and end up possessed by a crazy witch without so much as a hangnail for a blood offering. How does Lafayette even walk down the street in Bon Temps without being violently overtaken by every tortured sap wandering out of Sam's rental slums? Jesus offers to "lead a magic-free life" if Lafayette wants, but when he goes in for a kiss he can totally taste Marnie's cherry chapstick and he knows. Marnie tsk-tsks him and stabs his hand to the bone with a fork. Real bad things with you! 

How to Beat Terrorism: Refuse to Be Terrorized

How to Beat Terrorism: Refuse to Be Terrorized: Bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida is disrupted ... and resorting to penny-ante plots. It's time to declare victory and move on.

Quick Hits: Helene Grimaud plays live

Quick Hits: Helene Grimaud plays live:

"Cerebral" and "passionate." Words often used by critics to describe pianist Hélène Grimaud and her interpretations of Mozart, Liszt and Bartók. Having met her, we would now add "enchanting." Grimaud looks like a French actress and speaks about her art with an almost childlike wonder. But there's a fierce intelligence at work, and her performances provide "a glimpse of the transcendental," as one London reviewer put it.

OS X Lion: Screen Recording in QuickTime X | TMO Quick Tip | The Mac Observer

OS X Lion: Screen Recording in QuickTime X | TMO Quick Tip | The Mac Observer: You’ll get a little black Screen Recording window from which to control your options and start recording. When you click the drop-down arrow, you’ll see even more stuff you can change, including the location where your movie will be saved.

So drag to select an area that you’d like to record, and then when you release your mouse button, you’ll be able to resize the box you’ve made by dragging the familiar handles around it. You can also click and hold on the interior of the box and drag to adjust its position on your screen.

After you’re finished making an instructional video for your technophobe uncle, click the stop button on the black Screen Recording window. QuickTime will then process your work and save the .mov file to wherever you’ve assigned it to do so. Using the “Share” menu option, you can publish your tutorial to YouTube, send it directly to an e-mail, or even put it on Facebook (if you must).

Corporate America to Microsoft: We’ll pass on Windows 8 – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home

Corporate America to Microsoft: We’ll pass on Windows 8 – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home: Many companies have ‘migration fatigue’ and will skip Windows 8 entirely.

Apple iPads, iPhones get Flash video at last

Apple iPads, iPhones get Flash video at last: Adobe's Flash Media Server 4.5 introduces support for iOS devices, which lets broadcasters stream Flash-based video content in an Apple-derived format, HTTP Live Streaming.

Women's final now Sunday, men's Monday (AP)

Women's final now Sunday, men's Monday (AP): The U.S. Open has changed its schedule, meaning the tournament will end on a Monday for the fourth consecutive year. The new schedule calls for the men's final to be played at 4 p.m. EDT on Monday, instead of its original Sunday slot. And the women's final will be Sunday at 4 p.m., instead of Saturday night.

Sept. 8, 1966: Liftoff for the Starship <cite>Enterprise<cite>

Sept. 8, 1966: Liftoff for the Starship Enterprise: Star Trek makes its network television debut. Given the cultural impact and enormous franchise spawned by the original Star Trek series, it's hard to believe that the show lasted just three seasons and was canceled by NBC in 1969 because of low ratings.

Blu-ray Review: Once Upon a Time in the West – An Artful, Intense and Thrilling Epic | WhatCulture!

Blu-ray Review: Once Upon a Time in the West – An Artful, Intense and Thrilling Epic | WhatCulture!: Released two years after his iconic, Italian-made “Dollars trilogy” – which launched the career of TV actor Clint Eastwood and created the “Spaghetti Western” sub-genre – 1968′s Once Upon a Time in the West is arguably director Sergio Leone’s crowning achievement. The inspired casting of blue-eyed American great Henry Fonda as a cruel villain is matched by the spectacle of Charles Bronson as the mysterious “Harmonica” and Jason Robards as the likeable gun-slinging outlaw, whilst Ennio Morricone’s score – and an ingenious diegetic sound-scape - upstages everyone in a near three-hour epic with less than 15 pages of dialogue.

TiVo quad-tuner Premiere Elite coming soon

TiVo quad-tuner Premiere Elite coming soon: With 2TB of storage, the Elite can hold up to 300 hours of HD programming and record up to four programs simultaneously.

Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck - Wired How-To Wiki

Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck - Wired How-To Wiki: In film and TV, shots can be less than a second long, but you’ll rarely see one running longer than 30 seconds. But because cameras now record hours on a tiny chip we tend to let them run. This makes for deadly dull video. Instead, shoot just until we get the point: “Mom blows out the candles” is a 10 second shot. Once the candles are out, CUT. Shoot in shots and your video will instantly look better.

First Look: Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier in MY WEEK WITH MARILYN | WhatCulture!

First Look: Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier in MY WEEK WITH MARILYN | WhatCulture!: The film is based on the diary written by Monroe’s (Michelle Williams) assistant Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) during the production of the 1957 movie The Prince and the Showgirl. The new movie follows their friendship and Monroe’s turbulent relationship with director and co-star Laurence Olivier with incredibly fun supporting roles for Judi Dench (Dame Sybil Thorndike), Dougary Scott (as Arthur Miller), Julia Ormond (as Vivien Leigh) and Dominic Cooper (Arthur Miller). Emma Watson and Toby Jones also support.

5 September TV Debuts We Can’t Wait To Watch « Spinoff Online – TV, Film and Entertainment News Daily

5 September TV Debuts We Can’t Wait To Watch « Spinoff Online – TV, Film and Entertainment News Daily: Fringe
Talking of JJ Abrams, the third season of this X-Files-gone-weirder show should’ve convinced any doubters that this was a show that demanded to be taken seriously. With the fourth season starting in almost all-new territory (One of the three main characters removed from history, and the two universes now apparently bound together as a result), we have no idea where the series is going to go next… but we can’t wait to find out. (Starting Sept. 23, 9pm on Fox)

The lesson of the Chinese invasion - David Sirota - Salon.com

The lesson of the Chinese invasion - David Sirota - Salon.com: First, in February, ABC News reported that almost every Americana-themed trinket sold in the Smithsonian Institute is made in China. Then news hit that San Francisco is importing its new Bay Bridge from China. Then came the New York Times dispatch about the Big Apple awarding Chinese state-subsidized firms huge taxpayer-funded contracts to "renovate the subway system, refurbish the Alexander Hamilton Bridge over the Harlem River and build a new Metro-North train platform near Yankee Stadium."

Astounding as all of that is, it was quickly topped by news last week reminding us that the new Martin Luther King monument in Washington was designed by a Chinese government sculptor and assembled by low-wage Chinese workers.