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Heated political rhetoric is everywhere. It sets us apart from one another and erodes what's left of civil discourse. It grinds the worthy concept of "logic" into dust. Not any more. Not when we fight back with an open source game I'm calling Logic Shrink. I'm not selling a thing. You don't need an app, a console, even a board. It's entirely your game. Play a solitary version. Play it during a get-together with your extended family. Play it with kids, especially teens. Bring it to the classroom, community center, or secret Super PAC meeting. It will entertain. Afterwards, when the lively score-keeping has ended there will be something new in the room. It may be unfamiliar at first. It's a state of being that requires no name calling, no slippery slope. It's logical thinking.

Bruce Schneier was invited to testify about the TSA to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, but at the last minute he was disinvited, after the TSA objected to having him in the room.

Star Trek: The Next Generation may be coming to your living rooms soon courtesy of some hot new Blu-ray pressing, but one of the most compelling pieces of the technology shown on that series still remains elusive: the holodeck. Don't get down, sunshine, because we might soon be making our first, tentative steps into a virtual courtesy of Project Holodeck. It's underway at USC's School of Cinematic Arts as well as the Viterbi School of Engineering and starts out with a pair of Project Oculus glasses. These glasses, which were shown off at E3 by none other than John Carmack, cram a 1,280 x 800 display into a pair of glasses that present a wide, truly immersive field of view. Pair that with a PlayStation Move for head tracking and a Razer Hydra controller and you have the beginnings of a proper virtual reality environment.

Joey Hudy, a young "maker" from Phoenix went to the White House this week to show off his project, the "Extreme Marshmallow Cannon." When President Obama saw it, he told Joey: "Let's try it." Joey set up the air cannon, which uses a bicycle pump to build up air pressure, and put a marshmallow down the barrel. When he pressed the trigger, a single marshmallow was shot out across the room to the delight of everyone, but especially the president.