Newborn stars? Planets beyond our solar system? Black holes? The annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society has these and every other (it seems) denizen of the universe, but I have to mention three among my favorites of the discoveries being presented:

 

Our Milky Way galaxy is heavier, moving faster and therefore more likely to smack into its nearest neighbor than astronomers thought. Precision measurements of the Milky Way show that the galaxy is rotating about 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously understood, said Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics—so here in our part of the galaxy, our little solar system is moving at about 600,000 miles per hour rather than the previously estimated 500,000 miles per hour.

 

The additional rotational velocity implies that the Milky Way’s mass is half-again as great as what had been thought, making it just about as hefty as the Andromeda Galaxy. “No longer will we think of the Milky Way as the little sister of the Andromeda Galaxy in our Local Group family,” said Reid. That extra mass means the Milky Way exerts a greater gravitational pull, which in turn makes it more likely that we will collide with Andromeda or smaller galaxies.

 

The scientists used the Very Long Baseline Array, a system of 10 radio telescopes stretching from Hawaii to New England to the Virgin Islands, to map the Milky Way in great detail—specifically, the distances to and motions of various regions of it. That brought another surprise: our galaxy probably has four, not two, spiral arms of gas and dust where stars are forming, as you can see in this cool artist’s rendition.

 

A third discovery addresses the conundrum of how young stars manage to exist in the center of the Milky Way. Logically, they either formed there or fell there. Two problems: the black hole at the galactic center produces such strong gravitational tides that any nearby stellar maternity wards (molecular clouds) should be ripped apart, preventing stars from forming. Yet stars falling inward after forming elsewhere is a rare occurrence.

 

Using the Very Large Array of 27 radio telescopes in New Mexico, astronomers led by Elizabeth Humphreys of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics spied two protostars 7 and 10 light-years from the galactic center. That means starscan form there, despite the proximity of a black hole that gobbles everything it can reach. “We literally caught these stars in the act of forming,” said Humphreys.

 

But how? The explanation is probably that molecular gas at the center of our galaxy is denser than astronomers thought. Greater density would give a molecular cloud greater gravity—enough, it seems, to overcome tides from the black hole and hold together sufficiently to form new stars. An artist’s image of what’s going on near the galactic center is here. More

I'm filing this under the heading "e-mails I wished I never opened."

 

Foe decades the innocuous words “artificial colors” or “color added” has been allowed to hide the presence of—sorry, but there’s no way to soften the blow here—insects in foods. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has long allowed food- and cosmetics-manufacturers to use those phrases on their ingredient labels when the ingredient is carmine or cochineal, which are extracted from the dried bodies of the cochineal insect. But in a decision published yesterday, the FDA has ruled that carmine and cochineal have to be named.

 

The action comes 10 years after a consumer group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, petitioned the agency to require the labels.

 

If you want to avoid eating insects because you’re a vegetarian, or because you’re Jewish or Muslim, or . . . well, just because, now the ingredients list will tip you off to what to avoid. (Also, a few people have reported allergic reactions to the ingredients.) Carmine and cochineal tend to be in reddish foods and drinks, including fruit drinks, ice cream, yogurt, and candy. And, yes, we all know that foods from flour to cereals can be contaminated with insect parts, but that's accidental. When the little buggers are in there on purpose, I want to know.

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In this week's magazine, Eve Conant put together a fascinating story about the identification and eventual resting place for the remains of the terrorists from the September 11 attacks. Much of the story focuses on how the remains were untangled using DNA testing. Of course, the majority of the families who lost a loved one in the attacks believe these ashes shouldn't be buried with the innocent. But as they sit in FBI refrigeration waiting for their fate, many readers had their own ideas as to where the ashes should end up. Naturally, toilets, trash heaps and swine fields were among the most popular answers.

But others thought through this a bit more. "Put the remains in the cement of the new towers," suggested one reader. "Let the terrorist see that no matter what they throw at us we will rebuild." Others agreed, more pessimistically: "Perhaps they should be buried under the new Freedom Tower, forever a doormat for those with actual souls." Elsewhere in New York, the reader Capt Maniac suggested that we "just bury them in an unmarked grave with no public attention or religious ceremony." That reader adds: "Destruction isn't the answer. My first instincts were to grind their ashes to dust and throw them on a garbage heap, but that's the terrorist's way of thinking. When we become them, they win."

According to another set of readers, even talking about this issue gives the terrorists more attention than they deserve. Many were unhappy that we paid such attention to the subject, drawing attention to a group of individuals and a day to which many readers would rather not return. "Leave them where they are in some freezer in some undisclosed location for all eternity to be forgotten by both the World & history," offered one commenter. "These cowards do not deserve anything resembling a Christian burial. Maybe the remains (or what is left of them) should be returned to their families so they can face the consequences." That wasn't the only reader who suggested returning the remains to the families. (But as Conant points out, accepting the ashes would be accepting the terrorists' guilt, so no family members have yet come forward). "Yes, they did a horrible thing. However, murderer's remains are handled over to family members daily. If they have the ability to separate out of the innocents, then by all means they should have the ability to turn over those remains to the families. We would expect the same from other countries." Echoed one other: "They should return whatever is left of the hijackers to their families even if they have been too afraid to come forward and ask for them. Their mothers, most likely, were never involved in the fanaticism they believed in." More

By Daniel Lyons

The coverage of Steve Jobs of Apple and his health woes is starting to remind me way too much of the old Generalissimo Francisco Franco jokes on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s. Back then, Chevy Chase would report that “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead” – a dark-humored play on the drawn-out coverage of Franco’s declining health, in which newscasters had solemnly reported that Franco was still alive.

So, we are told, is Steve Jobs. We know this because a terse and somewhat grumpy letter was issued from the Apple mothership in Cupertino, Calif., today, over the signature of Dear Leader himself. In this letter, Jobs acknowledges that he’s lost a great deal of weight in the past year, and says doctors have finally figured out what’s causing it – it’s a hormone imbalance. And now he’s being treated for it, and he should start gaining weight again soon, and he hopes to recover by spring. And, as Jobs finishes up in his letter, “So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.”

Left unaddressed were fears that Jobs has suffered a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer for which he underwent surgery four years ago. Today’s note doesn’t mention cancer at all. From this we are presumably meant to infer that Jobs does not have cancer again. That at least is the message Wall Street took from the news, as Apple shares popped  four bucks today, to $94.

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Even those who hate Twitter tend to like the concept of fake Twitter -- that is, false accounts for real people that come off as absurdly plausible, or plausibly absurd.

The best of these can be great satire. The fake Twitter feed of Michael Bay, for example -- whose approach to directing movies seems to be making everything in them bigger, bigger and bigger -- claims that he has just signed on to direct "Slumdog Billionaire." Back in January 2008, the acid postings of @FakeHillary amused the presidential candidate’s traveling press corps with tweets like, “Apparently there is a limit to how much I can say here (I wonder if the male candidates have the same limit?)” And half the fun of following the Twitter feed of @THE_REAL_SHAQ when it first appeared in November was trying to figure out if its author was the actual Phoenix Suns center or not. (It’s Shaquille.)

But now there’s Twitter hacking, a more malicious version of fake content on the site. Today, the microblogging service announced that 33 bona fide accounts, including those of President-elect Barack Obama, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and singer Britney Spears, had been broken into and defaced with juvenile updates. "i am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today," read the official feed of CNN anchor Rick Sanchez; "Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay," read O'Reilly's page.

Not exactly Jonathan Swift, but the crudeness amused many bloggers, Valleywag among them. Twitter called the matter "a very serious breach of security" and says its support team has identified and disabled the part of its site that failed.

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By Mark Hosenball

In a move apparently designed to sidestep controversy over the CIA’s interrogation and detention practices, President-elect Barack Obama has decided to nominate a nonprofessional, Democratic Party grandee Leon Panetta, as his new director of the agency, Newsweek has learned.

Two well-informed political sources, who both asked for anonymity when discussing personnel matters, said that Obama made known his CIA decision to other officials earlier today. Along with Obama's anticipated decision to appoint retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair as the new Director of National Intelligence -- Panetta's future boss – the CIA nomination is expected to be announced in the near future.

The choice is somewhat surprising in that Panetta has no specific background managing a sprawling and esoteric intelligence bureaucracy like the CIA, or supervising and planning byzantine undercover operations. But he was a senior Democratic congressman for many years and served in the Clinton administration first as director of the Office of Management and Budget and then as White House chief of staff. In the latter post, Panetta sat in on the daily intelligence briefing giving to the President by the CIA -- a task that has now been shifted to the office of the National Intelligence czar, which was created under intelligence reform legislation approved by Congress after 9/11. As Budget director, he had direct involvement in financial issues related to intelligence. Panetta also served on the Iraq Study Group and publicly opposed President Bush's "surge" of troops in 2006.

Among Obama's reasons for choosing Panetta, one of the sources said, were his reputation as a "first rate manager," his White House experience handling issues related to "intelligence support" and his history of being able to establish friendly and cooperative relations between the executive branch and Capitol Hill. While unusual, the Panetta appointment will not come as a complete shock to those who have been following Obama's somewhat fraught efforts to produce a relatively non-controversial but nonetheless highly respected candidate to head the always-controversial CIA.

In the weeks following his election victory, Obama was widely expected to appoint as his CIA chief John Brennan, a former top CIA and counter-terrorism official who is co-chair of the committee reviewing intelligence policy issues for the President-elect's transition team. But Brennan withdrew his name from consideration as CIA chief after he was slammed by bloggers for public statements he made defending the CIA's involvement in controversial counter-terrorism operations, including rough interrogations which Bush Administration critics and human rights advocates described as torture.

The Brennan controversy cast a cloud over Obama's efforts to find a new CIA chief (though sources say that Obama decided some time ago on Adm. Blair, who was not involved with controversial Bush interrogation policies, as his new intelligence czar). The current CIA chief, retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, signaled that he wouldn't mind being asked to stay on for a time. But critics noted that Hayden, like Brennan, had publicly defended the Bush administration’s counter-terror activities, including CIA interrogation policies (which Hayden himself had little to do with) and warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency (a program that Hayden, as NSA director, helped to create after 9/11). Obama had voted as a senator against Hayden's confirmation.

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As a ceremonial and social event, the dedication of the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was an unqualified success. The sun shone on a cool winter day. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani expressed his gratitude for America's sacrifices to drive a despot from his homeland and Ambassador Ryan Crocker pledged his country's continuing support. But the facility itself seemed to dwarf even these grand festivities.

This was my first good inside look at America's largest-ever embassy complex. I'm a mere layman when it comes to architecture, but the place struck me as dismal and defeatist. Maybe I'm missing something, like a new trend in rectangles, sharp corners and cheap metal sheeting. There are plenty other fortress-like embassies, some of which have caused debate in the past. But they at least tried to add an architectural flourish or two. This embassy, visible from large swaths of the capital, evokes rigidity and fear. Many compare it to a prison.

Though badly battered and dilapidated, Baghdad is something of an architectural showcase. Local designers are known for putting modern twists on traditional Arab imagery--pointy arches, trellised balconies and colonnades. Famous European and U.S. designers, drawn by the regime's oil money in the 1950s-70s, built graceful, avant-garde stadiums, universities and government ministries.

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Here's the New York Post's assessment this week:

 "Newsweek sets its sights on Gaza this week, with a big piece that lays out a plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The provisions of the plan -- a return to roughly 1967 borders, sharing of Jerusalem, and halting Israeli settlements on the West Bank -- are all familiar points of discussion. Still, we like the fact that they're being put on the table in such high-profile fashion. If there is any hope of solving the crisis, it's going to requite this level of attention from the US, and it can't wait until the end of the president's term, as it did with Bill Clinton."

We got 2.5 of 4 stars. More

See “Children’s Hospital” (thewb.com), a Web series from former “Daily Show” star Rob Corddry. The free five-minute episodes spoof the melodrama and preposterous plot twists of TV medical shows.

Hear “Music for Abraham Lincoln” ($23.93; amazon.com) by Anne Enslow, a NEWSWEEK correspondent, and Ridley Enslow. Recorded from original sheet music found at the Library of Congress, this meticulously researched album takes listeners back to the heyday of parlor music. Each tune was written for or about the former president, born 200 years ago next month.

Surf Mother Nature Network (mnn.com), an environmental-news site cofounded by Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell. It aims to be the CNN of all things green, featuring breaking stories, celebrity interviews, blogs and video reports from around the country.

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One of the most interesting (social) media ventures of the past couple of years has been San Francisco-based 8020 Publishing. Here's how it worked: anyone could submit pictures and articles via the Internet for the company's two publications (JPG, devoted to photography, and Everywhere, which focused on travel); online readers voted on their favorite submissions; and a small staff of 10 assembled the layouts into a magazine available for free as a downloadable PDF or at newsstands for $6.

Backed by C|Net founder Halsey Minor, the concept of a crowdsourced magazine was so ingenious that University of Mississippi professor and Mr. Magazine blogger Samir Husni told the New York Times in 2007, “You’re going to see more of this....I don’t think it’s just about getting cheap content into a magazine. Seeing their own work in print makes people feel like part of a community.”

Today, it would appear that such a community was not enough. Reporter Brad Stone posted on the New York Times' Bits blog that 8020 publishing is shutting down, taking with it JPG and Everywhere. Stone wrote:

JPG had a circulation of around 50,000 and had recently secured some prominent space on newsstands around the country.

But ultimately the money ran out, and Mr. Minor declined to invest more, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. 8020 was attempting to either raise more money from other investors or to sell itself to big media names, including the Meredith Corporation and Conde Nast, but with no success. Mr. Minor could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

The 18 employees who worked for 8020 were given the holiday week off. On Tuesday, they received individual telephone calls and e-mail messages telling them that the company had exhausted its options and was shutting down.

Given the small size of the magazine's staffs., I'd have to think that it was the economy more than the concept that is to blame for 8020 Publishing's collapse. Regardless, amateur and semi-professional photographers and writers must all be shedding a tear for the untimely passing of these two mags. More

For prospective college students, the interview has long been one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the admissions process. Now, according to a recent Associated Press story, colleges are beginning to bring the admissions interview into the 21st century by conducting them online via webcams. As the story explains:

Wake Forest uses a webcam version of Skype for their online interviews. The technology allowed [Avery] Cullinan and about 30 other hopefuls to use a computer-mounted video camera and microphone to speak with an admissions officer through the Internet, "face to face" on a computer screen.

After a successful round of Web-based interviews in the early admission process, Wake Forest offered the program to its entire undergraduate applicant pool--a decision that doubled the number of requests for such interviews.

"We decided this would be a wonderful alternative to the face-to-face interview," [Wake Forest admissions director Martha] Allman said. "We have to stay attuned to how students receive information and how they communicate."

While this is a new development at the undergraduate level, the story says that a dozen or so graduate programs have already been using webcams to interview prospective students for years. With cameras increasingly becoming a standard component on laptops--to say nothing of how popular online video is among teens--I predict that this practice will become standard within ten years. More

By Jessica Ramirez and Larry Kaplow

There were no American flags in sight on the ugly strip of road near checkpoint two. The cold and bitter air only whipped at Iraqi flags that sat behind a podium where officials shared some final words on the formal transfer of the Green Zone from U.S. to Iraqi forces.

The shift is part of an accord that Iraqi and U.S. governments signed last month. Aside from the Green Zone handover, it requires U.S. troops to withdraw from bases located within Iraqi cities by the end of June and from the country by the end of 2011.

Among those that attended the mid-morning ceremony were Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin III and Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul Qadir, who said in early 2008 that Iraq would not be able to maintain internal security until 2012 and protect its borders until 2018. They sat with other VIPS in a makeshift tent, which bomb-sniffing dogs checked twice before their arrival.

The heightened level of security didn’t end there. There were several additional checkpoints throughout the heavily fortified area amid lingering concerns that it will continue to be a target as it becomes more accessible to Iraqi civilians. “Common sense says they'll probably test the Green Zone,” said U.S. Army Col. Steve Ferrari, who called the area a “symbol of Iraq’s sovereignty.”

As for the Iraqis at the ceremony, they seemed filled with more pride than concern. An Iraqi marching band, dressed in red and blue outfits, played a few tunes on their bagpipes for the audience. They were followed by a group of young Iraqi children, who took turns chanting about their love for their country into a microphone.

The Green Zone, which spans four square miles, is located along the Tigris River in Baghdad. Since 2003, it has served as headquarters to roughly 14,000 coalition forces and contractors and as a home to at least 16,000 Iraqis. For now, Iraqi forces are nominally in charge and learning how to man gates by themselves, but technically, it’s still being protected by U.S. troops and Peruvian contractors.

Many of the largest American compounds, like the ones housing the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers and contractor KBR also remain in the area. According to Ferrari, they have six months to negotiate their status in the country with the Iraqi government.

On working with Iraqi forces, Ferrari says the army will only stay if asked. Until that decision is made, U.S. soldiers like Sgt. Ruben Hernandez, who served his first tour in 2004, says it’s nice just to see what a difference a few years make. “Yeah, they like me now, he says of Iraqis. “I don’t think we could say that then.”

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Back in my DVD buying heyday, scanning The Criterion Collection section of Tower Records (R.I.P.) or the Virgin Megastore was an essential part of movie shopping. Some of the movies I'd already seen ("Dead Ringers") and others I hadn't ("The Seven Samurai"), but the care and dedication of the folks at Criterion always added a little extra something to my viewing experience. So it's welcome news that the company has started streaming some of its movies online. Here's how Laurence Lerman wrote up the news for Video Business:

Titles will be available online as streaming video for $5 for a one-week rental. The rental fee can be applied toward the purchase of that film on DVD or Blu-ray Disc when it is bought online at www.criterion.com. Criterion also initiated a "frequent flyer" program wherein every dollar spent earns the purchaser a point; 500 points yields a $50 gift certificate redeemable at the Web site.

"The rental fee counting toward the purchase of the DVD or Blu-ray was a direct response to the fact that, even though we've spent a huge amount of time developing an encoding workflow and a set of compression standards that we truly believe is the most film-like streaming experience on the Web, we still feel we can't offer video worth buying over the Internet," said Becker. "If you love these movies and really want to see them in high quality versions, you should buy the DVD or the Blu-ray disc."

Kudos to Criterion for implementing a loyalty program that should encourage movie lovers to sample an even broader array of films than they might otherwise. There are presently 26 of the company's 450 titles available for streaming, including such movies as "Solaris," "Au Revoir Les Enfants" and "Lord of the Flies." Criterion has also partnered with The Auteurs, a social network for cinephiles, to offer a monthly free, advertising-supported online film festival. I really don't want to be enticed into buying any more DVDs or Blu-Ray discs, but this is certainly tempting.
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Earlier this week, we posted our take on the ten most overlooked stories of 2008, a melange of stories about wars abroad, health issues at home and other underreported events. We're not oracles, here, so we asked what readers thought their beloved Mainstream Media missed this year; many of you chimed in about the theory that Obama never had his birth certificate, or that his election was everything from a hoax, to a mistake, to "a fraud created and supported by the willing media." The whole Obama thing was covered enough, methinks, but maybe I'm part of the "biased media," another top contender for a story (quite reflexively, I might add) that we missed.

Without turning the lens back on the media or president-elect Obama, there were a bunch of stories out there which were real contenders for NEWSWEEK's list. In reading forward, you'll have to excuse political slants (from both sides) that tend to come from asking people what overlooked news events should have been addressed. "You missed the environmental tragedies that will result from the late year policies of the Bush administration," wrote the aptly named commenter, naturegirl. "They have passed numerous policies benefiting their buddies in the oil and gas industry, and even increased exponentially the number of snowmobiles allowed in Yellowstone" And speaking of George W. Bush, here's this take on America's immigration policy: "According to most analysis, the Administration's recent enforcement efforts have discouraging new illegal crossings and causing some undocumented immigrants already here to return home," writes one commenter. "During the recent presidential campaign, the question that begged to be asked was whether the candidates would continue the enforcement policy irrespective of Congressional action on amnesty legislation. It's a straightforward, yes-or-no question that would have revealed much about the direction of immigration policy under the new administration."

More than a few readers also suggested Hurricane Ike as one story that should have been on our list. "I think one of the most underreported stories by the major American media this year was the tragedy of Hurricane Ike," wrote climatehawk. "While the "official" death toll stands in the low 80s, there are still more than 200 people missing and likely gone. While many of these deaths may have been preventable had people heeded evacuation warnings, that does not diminish the incredible human tragedy of this storm--one of the deadliest and costliest in American history. Yet due to other events in the news at the time, the mainstream media did very little follow-up reporting about the large number of missing people...when did human lives become less important than the economy or politics?"

One final note: many commenters criticized our inclusion of the Democratic Republic of Congo without reflecting on the terrible events that are ongoing in  Sudan. "Wow, the crisis in Darfur was even overlooked by the list," wrote one commenter. "How sad." It's true that Sudanese genocide has been troubling -- and oft overlooked. But in creating this list, we were looking for stories that have taken place, for the most part, in 2008.
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Every December the online intellectual salon called Edge, presided over by literary agent John Brockman, asks a select (virtual) assembly of scientists to ponder a question, such as what they are optimistic about (2007), what “dangerous” ideas they have (2006) and what they believe is true but cannot prove (2005). As the bell tolls on 2008 and rings in 2009, Edge is unveiling this year’s: “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”

 

As usual, the offerings vary as much in quality as a cheap spumante does from Dom Perignon. Predictably, contributors foresee space colonization and the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. More intriguing, there are predictions that a new human species will evolve from Homo sapiens, and that we will discover how to identify the brain pattern that indicates a person is about to commit a violent act (and will also discover how to suppress that pattern).

 

Read them yourself, but here are a handful that will give your brain a good workout to start the New Year:

 

*Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner  foresees a day when it will be possible to “delineate the nature of talent.” Genetics will reveal whether “highly talented individuals have a distinctive, recognizable genetic profile,” while neuroscience will show whether there are “structural or functional neural signatures” of talent. As for the game-changing part (especially in a society where people have the delusion that everyone is equally talented, or can become so), imagine what happens if these signatures can be recognized in infancy.

 

*Physicist Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study imagines the development of “tools to observe and direct the activities of a human brain in detail from the outside,” making possible “observation or control of a brain.” Since microwaves travel through brain tissue, putting a microwave transmitter inside a brain would let its activity be sent to the outside world, making possible what he calls “radiotelepathy, the direct communication of feelings and thoughts from brain to brain.” Change everything? Oh yeah. Radiotelepathy could be used for good or for evil, Dyson writes, “a basis for mutual understanding and peaceful cooperation of humans all over the planet . . . [or] a basis for tyrannical oppression and enforced hatred between one communal society and another. . . . A society bonded together by radiotelepathy would be experiencing human life in a totally new way.”

 

*Neurobiologist Leo Chalupa of UC Davis looks forward to the day when science can restore the plasticity of the adult brain to what it was in early childhood. If “the high degree of brain plasticity normally evident only during early development can now be made to occur throughout the life span,” he writes, it would be “a game changer in the brain sciences. Imagine being able to restore the plasticity of neurons in the language centers of your brain, enabling you to learn any and all languages effortlessly and at a rapid pace. The restoration of neuronal plasticity would also have important clinical implications since unlike in the mature brain, connections in the developing brain are capable of sprouting (i.e. new growth).”

 

*Neurologist Marcel Kinsbourne of The New School foresees the dawning of cosmetic neurology (a term I prefer to his “neurocosmetics”), in which healthy people transform their brains much as people now transform their bodies with cosmetic surgery. “In some form, deep brain stimulation will be used to modify personality so as to optimize professional and social opportunity,” he writes. “Ethicists will deplore this, and so they should. But it will happen nonetheless, and it will change how humans experience the world and how they relate to each other in as yet unimagined ways.” More

Some iPhone apps are useful. Others are entertaining. Over at Ars Technica, Jeff Smykll takes a shot at a series of paid apps whose value is highly questionable: the speed dial apps from JerryBeers.com. Smykll writes:

In what could be considered the least imaginative get-rich scheme in the history of the App Store, developer Jerry Beers of JerryBeers.com has created a slew of speed dial applications that allow users to dial a phone number by touching an icon on the iPhone's Home screen. The catch is that the developer is hard coding names into the apps; so while the number can change, the name cannot, allowing Beers to sell a plethora of applications with the only difference being the name on the icon, as well as a pink or blue icon based on the sex of the name.

Caveat emptor, right? Yes...were it not for the fact that these apps clog up the store, which potentially makes it harder for more dedicated developers to rise to the surface. While I'm sympathetic to Smykll's complaint, I'm not sure that it's really in anyone's interest for Apple to clamp down on such apps. However, it does drive home the point that the App Store is going to become less like a retail outlet and more like the Web. There will be a wide variety of content--some useful, some entertaining, and some whose value is highly questionable--for all of us to choose from. And in time, we'll come to see that diversity as a strength, not a weakness.

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According to Wikipedia, vaporware is "a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product." Every year, the tech industry gets us journalists all wound up about its new products, so we in turn wind you up, but a lot of them don't make it to market; hence the term vaporware. Wired has been handing out its Vaporware Awards for eleven years; you can see its 2008 list here.

My thoughts? While the recently released Home virtual chat room for Playstation 3 is certainly deserving of criticism, its inclusion on the list violates the spirit of the Vaporware Awards. After all, if a released product's beta status were enough to make it eligible, shouldn't Gmail (yup, still officially in beta) get a Lifetime Achievement Award? Other entries, like the Zap-X all-electric SUV (#7), GPS-maker Garmin's Nuvifone mobile phone (#5) and Blizzard's real-time strategy game StarCraft II (#4) are all worthy of the honor. As for the #1 choice--the twelve-years-in-development videogame Duke Nukem Forever (most games are completed in 12-36 months)--all I can say is, hail to the king.

On a more serious note, if I'd had a vote, I would have found a place for Toshiba and Canon's SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Displays) flat screen television technology. Imagine a large TV with the vivid colors and deep blacks of your old 4 by 3 TVs, but only as deep as a plasma televison--while being cheaper than plasma and LCD to boot. That was the promise of SED when Toshiba demonstrated it at the 2006 Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. My fellow journalists and I were blown away, and since then, nada, thanks in part to a lawsuit over patent rights. Now that the lawsuit has been resolved in Canon's favor, I'm hoping that SED sets will finally make it to market next year so that you can see for yourself. More

A good way not to win friends in an immigrant community is to blame its high rate of birth defects on the practice of cousin marriages. That’s what British environment minister Phil Woolas did in February, blaming birth defects in children in the UK’s Pakistani community on marriages between first cousins. “If you have a child with your cousin, the likelihood is there will be a genetic problem,” he told the Sunday Times. (Calls by a Muslim activist group that Woolas be fired went for naught; he was promoted in October to immigration minister.) That belief is reflected in laws in 31 U.S. states that either bar cousin marriage entirely or permit it only if the couple undergoes genetic counseling or cannot have kids.

But in a paper in the journal PLoS Biology, Hamish Spencer of New Zealand’s University of Otago and Diane Paul of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology argue that the genetic risk to children born of cousin marriages is much less than widely believed.

Risk is in the eye of the beholder, of course. But in 2002 an expert panel convened by the National Society of Genetic Counselors found that the risks of a first-cousin marriage are about 1.7% to 2% above the background risk for congenital defects and 4.4% above background (which is vanishingly low to begin with) for dying in childhood.

Whether 2% and 4% seem like a big extra risk or a piddling one probably depends on how much you want to marry your cousin, but Spencer concludes that “neither the scientific nor social assumptions behind [anti-cousin-marriage laws] stand up to close scrutiny. Women over the age of 40 have a similar risk of having children with birth defects and no one is suggesting they should be prevented from reproducing. People with Huntington’s disease or other autosomal dominant disorders have a 50 per cent risk of transmitting the underlying genes to offspring and they are not barred either.”

And what of the belief that humans have an incest-avoidance gene that keeps people from lusting after their cousins? None has ever been found. And if avoiding incest with a cousin is part of human nature, as some evolutionary psychologists contend, then an awful lot of humans haven’t noticed. In Turkey and Morocco, first-cousin marriages account for 22% of all marriages, and second-cousin marriages for another 29%, finds demographer Georges Reniers of the University of Ghent. Cousin marriages are similarly common among China’s majority Han ethnic group and in the Middle East and sub-Sahara Africa.

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The folks over at Technologizer have put together a gallery of images taken from patent applications for electronic gaming systems ranging from the original Television Gaming Apparatus in 1969 to the Nintendo Game Boy in 1989. The text of the applications is rather geeky, but the images therein make for memory-prompting journey through our not-too-long-ago interactive past. Enjoy.

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At a certain age, every boy outgrows his toys and his sandbox. The Central German amusement park Männerspielplatz says no, you just need bigger toys and an even bigger sandbox. For 219 Euros, or around $280, customers can spend and entire day driving front end loaders and backhoes, playing with jackhammers and firing all kinds of weapons. Here's how Andrew Curry described it in Wired (you can also see the magazine's photo slide show here):

The brainchild of Alexander Bammer, a former IT honcho, Männerspielplatz (literally "men's playground") began seven years ago as a one-off corporate promotion with a handful of rented earthmovers at a construction site near Kassel in central Germany. The event struck a chord with pasty execs who loved getting in touch with their inner ditchdigger. "Most men these days don't work on a construction site; they work at a desk," Bammer says. "They dream about experiences like this." So in 2004, he decided to open Männerspielplatz, just outside Kassel, as a 17-acre one-stop shop for man fantasy (slogan: "We fulfill men's dreams!"). Most of the customers, it turns out, are actually women buying tickets as gifts for husbands or boyfriends as an alternative to one more tie--or perhaps something else. After all, Bammer says: "I hear 'It's better than sex' a lot."

Having never been to Männerspielplatz myself, I'll have to refrain from further comment. More

Are reviews primarily a consumer guide, or should they serve another purpose? Do review scores deter intelligent discussion of videogames? Is the presence or absence of a review score the only difference between a reviewer and a critic? What is the role of the reviewer when the Internet is democratizing published opinion? How should reviews and reviewers evolve in light of the emergence and growth of Flash games, small games, indie games and user-generated games?

These questions and more were on the mind of N'Gai Croal, John Davison and Shawn Elliott last summer when they decided to expand their conversation to a number of noted reviewers, writers, bloggers and reporters for a published email symposium on game reviews. (See below for the full list of participants.) The planned list of topics include Review Scores; Review Policy, Practice and Ethics; Reader Backlash; Reviews in the Age of Social media; Reviews in the Mainstream Media; Casual, Indie, and User-Generated Games; Reviews vs. Criticism; and Evolving the Review. The participants are as follows:

Participants

• Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety
• Harry Allen, Media Assassin
• Robert Ashley, freelancer
• Tom Chick, freelancer
• N'Gai Croal, Level Up/Newsweek
• John Davison, What They Play
• Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston
• Jeff Gerstmann, Giant Bomb
• Kieron Gillen, Rock, Paper, Shotgun
• Dan Hsu, Sore Thumbs Blog
• Francesca Reyes, Official Xbox Magazine
• Stephen Totilo, MTV News

The topic for Round 1, which will be published here in installments over the next several days, is Review Scores. Previously, we published Part I, Part II and Part III; today, we conclude the Review Scores portion of our symposium with Part IV. To read today's section in its entirety, click on the link below.

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1. EGO...trip: Our "verbose grandeur" leads to a withering deduction
2. UMM...a blase defense of game violence; a weak dismissal of Manhunt
   
3. ARE...hardcore game reviewers being too hard on noob-friendly PoP?
4. THE...Outsiders, or, how fresh perspectives can help developers stay gold
5. RND...Gym locker violation prompts Xmas reveries of two banjos a-duelling

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On Christmas Eve in the Green Zone, karaoke is blaring into the night from a contractor's villa while U.S. troops use a sniffer dog to check for car bombs just a block away.

This morning saw the start of perhaps the most extensive security operation I've seen in this fortified home to the Iraqi government and U.S. mission. Army engineers came with cranes and blocked side streets in the 4-square-mile district with concrete barriers. Snap checkpoints (in addition to the usual checkpoints) were mobilized to stop cars and check IDs of pedestrians. There's been an obvious reinforcement of troops, crowding the streets with their convoys of enormous MRAP (mine-resistant ambush protected) armored trucks, all causing gossip and speculation among the thousands of American and Iraqi residents who live in the big compounds, apartment blocks and suburban-style streets.

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To be honest, I expected some more commentary on our Global Elite List. After putting 50 thought-leaders on our cover that will be molding the world for the foreseeable future, I thought more of you would chime in about who was missing from our list, who we shouldn’t have included in the first place and where we got the idea in the first place.

On the cover essay about the history of power, written by Jon Meacham, there is a bit of that: “Where is Ahmadinejad?” asks one reader. Others complained of “No Rothschilds or Rockefellers,” or our very “thorough investigation” that forgot “Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, and Elmo.” Of course, Elmo. Even more complained about our inclusion of Oprah Winfrey, adding that “Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown and the Clintons are merely hood ornaments.” Someone’s obviously looking to stir up some controversy so, I say, let’s go for it:

Who would you put in your list of the Global Elite? Who do you think is the most influential, most powerful and most insightful when it comes to government, entertainment, economics, academics and any other discipline you deem important?

Leave your choices in the comments below and – as magazines like ours seem to love to do these days – feel free to rank them. Otherwise, I’m going to have to answer questions like this, from one commenter: “How about Tiger Woods and Rachael Ray?”

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