A Declaration of Cyber-War
Last summer, the world’s top software-security experts were panicked by the discovery of a drone-like computer virus, radically different from and far more sophisticated than any they’d seen. The race was on to figure out its payload, its purpose, and who was behind it. As the world now knows, the Stuxnet worm appears to have attacked Iran’s nuclear program. And while its source remains something of a mystery, Stuxnet is the new face of 21st-century warfare: invisible, anonymous, and devastating.
Hate Man
From the time he was young boy, Mark Hawthorne understood the power of words. His father was a reporter for the Associated Press and his mother was a school teacher. So when Hawthorne landed his dream job and became a reporter for The New York Times, everything seemed to fall into place. Except that it all fell apart. These days, Hawthorne uses the power of words in a different way. Mostly, it’s to say, “fuck you” or “I hate you.” For the past 25 years, Hawthorne has lived on the streets of Berkeley, where he’s developed a following and is known by the moniker “Hate Man.”
The Liberation of Lori Berenson: Life After 15 Years in a Peruvian Prison
Such an outpouring of rage at a 40-year-old woman, mother to a toddler, who was convicted in her mid-20s of abetting a terrorist plot that never took place, is a measure of the degree to which Peruvians are still traumatized by the violence that convulsed their country during the years when the Shining Path warred with the military and nearly 70,000 Peruvians were killed. It also underscores the fact that terrorism, all but defunct in Peru for more than a decade, is still a hot political issue.
Passing Through: Why the Open Internet Is Worth Saving
One could also read ‘The Master Switch’ as a much bolder attempt to influence the future of the information economy, not just net neutrality. In the book and in recent public appearances, Wu has focused on the growing power of Apple, Facebook, and Twitter—not the usual contestants in net neutrality debates. He believes that some of these companies exhibit features of earlier information empires and may be hurting innovation. The separations principle is clearly meant to apply to them, and to the information industry as a whole, not just to network operators such as Comcast and Verizon. The merits and implications of Wu’s position, therefore, need to be assessed in a much broader context than net neutrality alone.
On Military Life and Sacrifice
Before he addressed the crowd that had assembled in the St. Louis Hyatt Regency ballroom last November, Lt. Gen. John F. Kelly had one request. “Please don’t mention my son,” he asked the Marine Corps officer introducing him. Four days earlier, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Kelly , 29, had stepped on a land mine while leading a platoon of Marines in southern Afghanistan. He was killed instantly. Without once referring to his son’s death, the general delivered a passionate and at times angry speech about the military’s sacrifices and its troops’ growing sense of isolation from society.
The Unsung Hero of the Nuclear Age
I went ahead and dedicated my new book to Maj. Harold Hering because Maj. Hering sacrificed his military career to ask a Forbidden Question about launching nuclear missiles. A question that exposed the comforting illusions of the so called fail-safe system designed to prevent “unauthorized” nuclear missile launches. How can any missile crewman know that an order to twist his launch key in its slot and send a thermonuclear missile rocketing out of its silo—a nuke capable of killing millions of civilians—is lawful, legitimate, and comes from a sane president?
Blood Brothers
In 1984 two soldiers, an Iranian and an Iraqi, meet on the battlefield. Amazingly, 20 years later, in Vancouver, they meet again. “Haftlang’s orders were to kill any surviving Iraqi or deliver him to his almost-certain death at the hands of others. Hoping he wouldn’t find anyone alive, Haftlang began moving through the bunkers. In the third one he entered-grimacing against the pressing smell of corpses bubbling from decomposition, his small flashlight held aloft for its meagre light-Haftlang heard a voice. It cried out. It cried out for mercy. It was a man. He spoke Arabic words Haftlang couldn’t understand but could intuit. The man said: ‘Brother, brother, we are both Muslim.'”
Hiding Out
The child of an outspoken Libyan dissident on attending boarding school in England. “I was to pretend that my mother was Egyptian and my father American. It was thought that this would explain, to any Arabs in the school, why my Arabic was Egyptian and why my English was American. My first name was Bob. Ziad chose it because both he and I were fans of Bob Marley and Bob Dylan.”
53.1% of You Already Know What This Story’s About. Or Do You? Need a Hint?
It’s about Professor Daryl Bem and his cheerful case for ESP. “Over seven years, Bem measured what he considers statistically significant results in eight of his nine studies. In the experiment I tried, the average hit rate among 100 Cornell undergraduates for erotic photos was 53.1 percent. (Neutral photos showed no effect.) That doesn’t seem like much, but as Bem points out, it’s about the same as the house’s advantage in roulette.”
What Made This University Scientist Snap?
What makes a smart, well-educated mother of four go on a killing spree? In the more than 12 months since Amy Bishop became the first academic in US history to be accused of gunning down fellow professors, many theories have been offered up. One is that she’s a lunatic. That suggestion came from her attorney.
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