Intel unveils new 3D transistor structure

Intel unveils new 3D transistor structure: New chips based on the 22-nanometer designs will run at a lower voltage and with lower power leakage, in an effort to improve both performance and energy efficiency.

When George W. Bush killed bin Laden: An alternate history

When George W. Bush killed bin Laden: An alternate history: President Bush announces the news to the nation on May 24, 2006, immediately following the East Coast airing of the finale of "American Idol." He appears in military fatigues and, for some reason, spurs. Behind him, an oversize Osama bin Laden "Wanted" poster, with the word "LIQUIDATED" stamped on the terrorist mastermind's face. The camera pulls back to reveal that the president's East Room audience is in fact made up entirely of firefighters. The Marine band plays "Stars and Stripes Forever" as the president speaks, forcing Bush to address the room, and the nation, through a bullhorn.

AppleInsider | Teardown of Apple's 21.5-inch Thunderbolt iMac finds removable graphics board

AppleInsider | Teardown of Apple's 21.5-inch Thunderbolt iMac finds removable graphics board:

The illogic of the torture debate

The illogic of the torture debate: The killing of Osama bin Laden has, as The New York Times notes, reignited the debate over "brutal interrogations" -- by which it's meant that Republicans are now attempting to exploit the emotions generated by the killing to retroactively justify the torture regime they implemented. The factual assertions on which this attempt is based -- that waterboarding and other "harsh interrogation methods" produced evidence crucial to locating bin Laden -- are dubious in the extreme, for reasons Andrew Sullivan and Marcy Wheeler document. So fictitious are these claims that even Donald Rumsfeld has repudiated them.

Apple Announces New iMac

Apple Announces New iMac: Apple today updated its signature all-in-one iMac with quad-core processors, powerful new graphics, high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology, and a new FaceTime HD camera. Starting at $1199, the new iMac is up to 70 percent faster and offers up to three times faster graphics performance than the previous generation.

'Star Wars' promises big reveal tomorrow

'Star Wars' promises big reveal tomorrow: With the phrase "May the 4th be with you" emblazoned across the top of the page, a "Star Wars" Web site promises: "All will be revealed."

Same Old New Atheism: On Sam Harris | The Nation

Same Old New Atheism: On Sam Harris | The Nation: Though they often softened their claims with Christian rhetoric, positivists assumed that science was also the only sure guide to morality, and the only firm basis for civilization. As their critics began to realize, positivists had abandoned the provisionality of science’s experimental outlook by transforming science from a method into a metaphysic, a source of absolute certainty. Positivist assumptions provided the epistemological foundations for Social Darwinism and pop-evolutionary notions of progress, as well as for scientific racism and imperialism. These tendencies coalesced in eugenics, the doctrine that human well-being could be improved and eventually perfected through the selective breeding of the “fit” and the sterilization or elimination of the “unfit.”

Every schoolkid knows about what happened next: the catastrophic twentieth century. Two world wars, the systematic slaughter of innocents on an unprecedented scale, the proliferation of unimaginably destructive weapons, brushfire wars on the periphery of empire—all these events involved, in various degrees, the application of scientific research to advanced technology. All showed that science could not be elevated above the agendas of the nation-state: the best scientists were as corruptible by money, power or ideology as anyone else, and their research could as easily be bent toward mass murder as toward the progress of humankind. Science was not merely science. The crowning irony was that eugenics, far from “perfecting the race,” as some American progressives had hoped early in the twentieth century, was used by the Nazis to eliminate those they deemed undesirable. Eugenics had become another tool in the hands of unrestrained state power. As Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued near the end of World War II in Dialectic of Enlightenment, the rise of scientific racism betrayed the demonic undercurrents of the positivist faith in progress. Zygmunt Bauman refined the argument forty-two years later in Modernity and the Holocaust: the detached positivist worldview could be pressed into the service of mass extermination. The dream of reason bred real monsters.

Apple refreshes iMac line with faster CPUs, Thunderbolt ports | Crave - CNET

Apple refreshes iMac line with faster CPUs, Thunderbolt ports | Crave - CNET: Apple announced updated iMac all-in-one desktops this morning, adding Intel's second-generation quad-core Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs and Thunderbolt data ports. The new models are available for purchase immediately from Apple's Web site and its retail stores, with prices ranging from $1,199 for the 21.5-inch iMac, and scaling up to $1,999 for the 27-inch model.

Aside from the updated CPUs and the new high-speed data port, the new iMacs sport faster AMD graphics than their predecessors and integrated Facetime HD video cameras. Otherwise, little else about the iMac has changed from the previous models that debuted in June of 2010 (that includes external design--the 2011 and 2010 models look all but identical).

Sticky Film Makes Nonslip Ladders, Wall-Climbing Robots

Sticky Film Makes Nonslip Ladders, Wall-Climbing Robots: Scientists at SRI International have figured out how to make a plastic film that can stick to walls when you apply a small electric current -- then peel off effortlessly when you turn the current off.

Why was bin Laden buried at sea?

Why was bin Laden buried at sea?:

The news that Osama bin Laden has been buried at sea is likely to be a talking point in the coming weeks and months. U.S. officials most likely chose a sea burial in order to prevent followers from creating a shrine at the site of the dead terrorist leader's remains, but a sea burial was probably not the only, or even the first, option explored; CBS is now reporting that Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's birth country, refused to take his body.

App Guide: Hotel reservation apps

App Guide: Hotel reservation apps: No reservations? No problem. These iOS apps can help you find a last-minute hotel room on the fly.

Video: Inside Bin Laden’s Drone-Proof Compound | Danger Room | Wired.com

Video: Inside Bin Laden’s Drone-Proof Compound | Danger Room | Wired.com: That’s ironic. One of the most important security measures the two brothers who hid bin Laden in the compound took was to take it off the grid. A senior intelligence official told reporters that it had “no telephone or internet service,” an anomaly for the area. (Residents even burned their trash instead of leaving it for the garbage man.) That attracted the attention of the satellite imagery sleuths of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the communications interceptions specialists of the National Security Agency and the spy-runners of the CIA — even if the latter couldn’t launch any drone strikes.

Five instances of Osama bin Laden hiding out in pop culture

Five instances of Osama bin Laden hiding out in pop culture: In the past decade, Osama bin Laden invaded our sense of safety, but also our pop culture. Here's a look at the top five most memorable appearances by the slain al-Qaeda terrorist in TV and film, from the irreverent to the bizarre.

Simon Blackburn Reviews Stanley Fish's "How To Write A Sentence" | The New Republic

Simon Blackburn Reviews Stanley Fish's "How To Write A Sentence" | The New Republic: It is wrong to think that the sentence is a mere slave, whose function is to bear content, which, while being the really important thing, is also something that could equally have been borne by another. Change the shape and ring, and you change everything. The balance, the alliterations, the variation, the melody, the lights glimmering in the words, can work together to transform even an ugly thought into something iridescent, as when Eli Wallach in The Magnificent Seven expressed his character’s indifference to the suffering he brings the peasants in one perfect, albeit perfectly brutal, sentence: “If God didn’t want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.” As Fish says in his analysis of this example, here the “air of finality and certainty” is clinched by “the parallelism of clauses that also feature the patterned repetition of consonants and vowels” and then, of course the inevitability of that last dismissive word. If the devil has the best tunes, sometimes the bandits have the best sentences.

Five common HDTV questions answered | HDTV | Playlist | Macworld

Five common HDTV questions answered | HDTV | Playlist | Macworld: Browse to your HDTV’s video settings and choose either ‘movie’ or ‘film’ mode. In most instances that option provides you with the closest-to-optimal setting for your HDTV. If you like the way that setting looks, keep it there and don’t make any tweaks. But if you think it needs a little something, start modifying some of the individual picture settings, such as brightness, sharpness, and contrast.

Brightness is perhaps better described as “black level.” You’ll want to adjust the brightness on your set until something black on your display has a nice, deep, inky look to it.

Sharpness tends to create odd halos around objects that aren’t coming from the video source. Since you want to create an accurate picture as quickly as possible, it’s generally best to turn sharpness down to zero.

Then, go to the contrast settings (sometimes called “picture”) and turn it down so that white objects on the screen look sharp, have detail, and don’t appear odd. At this point you might also have to return to the brightness setting to ensure that blacks aren’t too dark and you haven’t lost some detail along the way.

You may also find a ‘color’ setting on your HDTV. Since you’re not using any calibration aids, it’s best for now to leave that alone, since most HDTVs deliver relatively accurate color out of the box.

Is this what closure feels like? - Joan Walsh - Salon.com

Is this what closure feels like? - Joan Walsh - Salon.com: Eight years to the day after President Bush stood before a banner announcing "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, prematurely declaring the end of combat operations there, President Obama announced Sunday night that an operation he authorized had killed al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The spoiled son of privilege, who thought it his birthright to dispatch thousands of innocents to their death for the crime of not sharing his twisted vision of Islam, is dead.

The contrast between the general idiocy of 24/7 American politics, and what's really at stake in all of Obama's decisions, had never been so stark.

Twitter delivers news of bin Laden's death first

Twitter delivers news of bin Laden's death first: Sure, there was lots of erroneous speculation on Twitter, but posted to the micro-blogging site was a message from a former assistant to former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld that said: "they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn."

"Dorian Gray" as Wilde actually wrote it - Fiction - Salon.com

"Dorian Gray" as Wilde actually wrote it - Fiction - Salon.com: Nowadays, the knowledge of Wilde's poignant subsequent history casts a shadow over "Dorian Gray." Married since 1884 to a beauty, Constance Lloyd, Wilde had been secretly leading a homosexual life at least since 1886 and probably much longer. ("The one charm of marriage," Lord Henry quips in "Dorian Gray," "is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties.") In 1889 Wilde began courting a beautiful young poet named John Gray, the probable model for Dorian. (At least Gray himself believed this to be so, and the name would seem to be a clincher.) After the novel was published, Wilde began his disastrous affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. His feud with his lover's violent father, the marquess of Queensberry, resulted in one of the most famous lawsuits in history, Wilde's eventual arrest on charges of sodomy, and his sentencing to two years' hard labor. The most celebrated playwright and wit in England had become its most despised pariah. He never saw his two sons again; Constance changed their name, and hers, to "Holland," and taught the boys "to forget that we had ever borne the name of Wilde and never to mention it to anyone." After his release from prison, Wilde went into exile in France, where he assumed the name "Sebastian Melmoth" and died, in penury, in 1900. "I will never outlive the century," he had predicted. "The English people would not stand for it."

And now, at last, I finally know why the section of Dave Simm's Cerebus dealing with Oscar Wilde is titled "Melmoth."

How the "Lost Cause" poisoned our history books - War Room - Salon.com

How the "Lost Cause" poisoned our history books - War Room - Salon.com: Indeed, few major figures in American history have been so denigrated and disgraced as Grant. How did this happen? A big part of the answer can be found in the successful campaign by historians sympathetic to the Confederacy’s "Lost Cause." Led by William A. Dunning of Columbia University, they portrayed Grant wrongly as only a drunken butcher general and as an enfeebled president who pandered to Radical Republicans, presiding over, as Dunning contended, "the darkest page in the saga of American history." These distortions still thrive in countless history textbooks and classrooms, in movies and on television shows, as well as on popular websites.

"The Floor of Heaven": True crime in the Klondike - Laura Miller - Salon.com

"The Floor of Heaven": True crime in the Klondike - Laura Miller - Salon.com: Howard Blum's highly enjoyable "The Floor of Heaven: A True Tale of the American West and the Yukon Gold Rush" is a narrative history set before, during and just after the rush. Blum traces the lives of three storied men -- a prospector, a cowboy turned Pinkerton detective and a notorious conman -- whose fates intersected in an armed confrontation over a stash of gold in 1898. That incident comes fairly late in the book and could even be viewed as somewhat anticlimactic, but getting there is so much fun that it hardly matters. The face-off between Blum's three principals in the harbor of Skagway, Alaska, is really just a pretext for spinning yarns about three remarkable American characters.