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Summary:  How can we reclaim and reform America?  Here is a five-step program.  All it requires is time and effort.  This is a content-free path.  I do not know where this will take us.  Only that if widely followed America will become what we wish it to be.  No matter what the outcome, we will meet the future as citizens.  Not sheep.

""MY, WHAT a big mouth you have, Grandma," says Little Red Riding Hood, with just a hint of suspicion. The wolf sneezes. "Bless you," says the little girl. Sound odd? That's because this snippet of Little Red Riding Hood was written not by a person but by a piece of software called Xapagy. It may not seem like much, but it demonstrates a first step towards computers that can invent stories. It also signals a new approach to designing a more human-like artificial intelligence."

It's easy to get lost in CAVE2. The next-generation virtual reality platform is one of the most advanced visualization environments on Earth. It combines 320 degrees of panoramic, floor-to-ceiling LCD displays with an optical tracking interface that gives rise to a "hybrid reality system" capable of rendering remarkably immersive 3D environments - whether you wish to explore the labyrinthine vasculature of the human brain, or soar swiftly over the vast canyons of Mars.

Summary:  A series of Executive Orders during the past century has slowly expanded the authority of the Executive Branch.  Now President Hope and Change takes a large step forward toward a new order, issuing a blueprint for tyranny.  Don't worry, it will be implemented slowly.  One cannot boil a frog slowly (it jumps out), but one can bake a Republic.

As a child, I always looked up at the stars and wondered how I could make it into space. Hopefully, I will live to see that day, but for now, a homemade satellite will have to do. The Nanosatisfi team has made it their mission "to provide affordable space exploration for everyone!," and with ArduSat, they move one step closer to reality. ArduSat is a Arduino-controlled miniature 10cm cubic satellite, weighing 1 kg, which is roughly equivalent to half a store bought loaf of bread. Its size might not be impressive, but it packs over 25 sensors including: Myspectral's open source spectrometer, inertial measurement unit, magnetometer, along the standard set, and many others. This impressive little machine boasts a camera to take photographs, it could send messages back to earth, or it can run your space experiments. With the ability to upload code directly to the ArduSat while in space, the possibilities are virtually limitless.

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.

Developer kit for the Oculus Rift - the first truly immersive virtual reality headset for video games.

Last week, the Iranian government apparently started a new censorship program that blocks encrypted Internet traffic. Even Iranians who had taken steps to evade government firewalls were being stymied-and the immediate impact can be seen in usage of the Tor network.

A lot of us stare at a computer monitor for the bulk of our day and reading long articles or books is rarely a comfortable experience. With that in mind, here's a few steps you can take to make you reading experience less terrible.

"Are more people doing wrong or are more people speaking up? Retractions of scientific papers have increased about tenfold during the past decade, with many studies crumbling in cases of high-profile research misconduct that ranges from plagiarism to image manipulation to outright data fabrication. When worries about somebody's work reach a critical point, it falls to a peer, supervisor, junior partner or uninvolved bystander to decide whether to keep mum or step up and blow the whistle. Doing the latter comes at significant risk, and the path is rarely simple. Some make their case and move on; others never give up. And in what seems to be a growing trend, anonymous watchdogs are airing their concerns through e-mail and public forums. Here, Nature profiles three markedly different stories of individuals who acted on their suspicions. Successful or otherwise, each case offers lessons for would-be tipsters."

"The Open Data Institute (ODI) officially opens this week and it is "a collaboration between businesses, entrepreneurs, researchers, government and society to unlock enterprise and social value from the vast amount of open government data now being made available". That's quite a mouthful - put plainly, there's a truck load of open data around, so let's have at it and see what we can do."