I told you I'd find it
Challenging the speed of light. Interesting article here.

I can't muster any outrage. I'm all out.
So, the WH wants to give the CIA and Pentagon domestic policing powers? Isn't that...not right? *sigh*

I think I've already said this.
But not as well!

Our problematic experience in the Philippines need not discourage us from taking on greater international responsibilities—or even from giving empire another shot, if necessary, to establish a beneficial Pax Americana. But before we embark on so ambitious a project, it might be useful to make a closer study of our earlier imperial adventure and its unintended consequences, some of which were quite severe.

The Matrix Revisited!
Chris Suellentrop writes an interesting article about The Matrix:

The real source of the fascination with The Matrix is that, despite all appearances, the movie is not a dystopia. Rather, it's a utopia, a geek paradise. The Matrix is a sci-fi John Hughes movie, in which a misfit learns that he's actually cool. (Think Harry Potter with guns.) At the software company where Keanu Reeves works, his boss might as well be the principal castigating Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club when he says: "You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe that you are special. That somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously, you are mistaken." Of course, we learn that the oppressive Figure of Authority is the one who is mistaken. But instead of going to the prom, Keanu gets to pack heat, learn kung fu, wear a black trench coat and sunglasses, and, to top it off, he gets a hot, ass-kicking girlfriend who sports fetish wear. What kind of dystopia is this? No one wants to be Winston Smith in 1984, but everyone wants to be Neo (or Trinity, or Morpheus) in The Matrix.

Read it here! YAY, Slate!

Bonus: The Rich Dialogue of Neo. It ain't Masterpiece Theatre, folks.

Is smoking pot as hazardous to your health as cigarettes?
I've often had arguments concerning this subject with some close friends of mine, often taking the affirmative. If you read the article past the first paragraph, however, you get this...

However, Professor Henry, in an editorial for the British Medical Journal, said that if, as many scientists suspected, regular cannabis smoking was as dangerous as tobacco smoking in the long term, the annual death toll from using the drug could be substantial.

He wrote: "It may be argued that the extrapolation from small numbers of individual studies to potential large scale effects amounts to scaremongering."

This may or may not be true. Keep the science coming folks...

From the Beeb.