Is there anything left to say about Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ? That is the question that animates big parts of Andrew Levy's Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain And The Era That Shaped His Masterpiece , a richly researched, copiously annotated, fascinating argument that in all the debates over the…

The old fiction room at my high school was a small box of wonders, and no matter how long I spent investigating its seven and a half overstuffed shelves, I never stopped discovering treasures. When I was sixteen, the shelf which held authors A through D divulged a small, yellowing paperback with a…

People who receive flu vaccines year after year can sometimes show reduced protection, an effect that Canadian infectious disease specialists say muddies public health messages for annual flu vaccine campaigns. During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, researchers at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control…

Is Firefox really the best defense against Google's control of the Internet? Or should Mozilla just clean up its own mistakes rather than throwing stones at competitors? Geek's Guide To NYC Travel: Interop Preview (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) Failure to use Mozilla's Firefox browser…

The Justice Department secretly kept a database of Americans’ calls to foreign countries for more than a decade, according to a new court filing and officials familiar with the program. The revelation of another secret government database storing records of Americans’ calls came in a filing Thursday…

New legislation being pushed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to hike the H-1B visa cap is drawing criticism and warnings that it will lead to an increase in offshoring of tech jobs. IEEE-USA said the legislation, introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Tuesday, will "help destroy" the U.S.…

Getty Images On the first Sunday afternoon of 2015, Elon Musk took to the stage at a closed-door conference at a Puerto Rican resort to discuss an intelligence explosion. This slightly scary theoretical term refers to an uncontrolled hyper-leap in the cognitive ability of AI that Musk and physicist…

It was a one-mile walk home from a Silver Spring park on Georgia Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. But what the parents saw as a moment of independence for their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, they say authorities viewed much differently. Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say they are being…

The Winchester rifle was spotted leaning against a tree in Great Basin National Park. (Courtesy of National Park Service) Archaeologists conducting surveys in Nevada’s Great Basin National Park came upon a gun frozen in time: a .44-40 Winchester rifle manufactured in 1882. It was propped up against…

Just outside Havana, in the childhood bedroom of illustrator Edel Rodriguez, a washing machine engine welded to a boat propeller has become a makeshift fan. This kind of cobbled-together contraption is common in Cuba. So are stoves that run on diesel from trucks, satellite dishes made of garbage can…

"I asked myself, afraid of what? I thought, I'm afraid of rejection." Jason Comely "Just get out there and get rejected, and sometimes it's going to get dirty. But that's OK, 'cause you're going to feel great after, you're going to feel like, 'Wow. I disobeyed fear.' " Jason Comely Fear is one of…

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Matter A dead whale in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 2011. As container ships multiply, more whales are being harmed, a study said. A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the…

Ignaz Semmelweis washing his hands in chlorinated lime water before operating. Bettmann/Corbis This was a revelation — childbed fever wasn't something only women in childbirth got sick from. It was something other people in the hospital could get sick from as well. Semmelweis didn't know anything…

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges. Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began…

Originally posted 2015-01-12 10:37:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter I like to think that I’m a pretty decent human being. Don’t think I didn’t hear that snort of derision…lighten up – I didn’t say “perfect”, I just said “pretty decent”. I think I’m fairly socially conscious. I’m morally aware…

Herds of woolly mammoths could be lumbering across the Canadian tundra in the near future if a Korean company's project works out. Earlier this year, Seoul-based Sooam Biotech took flesh and blood samples from a very well-preserved mammoth . The mammoth, nicknamed "Buttercup," was discovered on an…

What a strange time. Last week I was literally walking the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Michael Mann’s Blackhat , a crime thriller that I had the good fortune to work on as a “hacker adviser” (my actual screen credit). Today, all I’m thinking is, please, God, don’t let anybody in Congress…

The missing Mars robot Beagle2 has been found on the surface of the Red Planet, apparently intact. High-resolution images taken from orbit have identified its landing location, and it looks to be in one piece. The UK-led probe tried to make a soft touchdown on the dusty world on Christmas Day, 2003,…

Runners in Siberia, which experienced record heat in 2014. Last year was the hottest on earth since record-keeping began in 1880, scientists reported on Friday, underscoring warnings about the risks of runaway greenhouse gas emissions and undermining claims by climate change contrarians that global…

Tim Carmody Jan 13, 2015 Each epoch dreams the one to follow. — Jules Michelet Every epoch, in fact, not only dreams the one to follow, but in dreaming, precipitates its awakening. — Walter Benjamin Now that it’s 2015, we have (plus or minus a few months) caught up with the farthest future shown in…

There’s a major disparity lurking in the bedroom. Need proof? In a survey published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine , 15 percent of female participants reported that their latest sexual experience was "not at all pleasurable" or only "a little" pleasurable. Pretty depressing when you compare that…

Gustav Nipe, seen here in this 2006 photo, is the chairman of the Young Pirates. Mathias Heinel The chairman of the youth wing of the Swedish Pirate Party successfully fooled attendees at a major Swedish security and defense conference into connecting to an open Wi-Fi network that he controlled—as a…

The defense team for Ross Ulbricht, the 30-year-old man accused of running the online black market Silk Road under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, just dropped an unexpected new theory: Mark Karpeles, the CEO of failed Bitcoin company Mt. Gox, is the real Dread Pirate Roberts. "We have the name…

[Image Credit: Judit Klein ] For those looking to start doing side work (moonlighting), I have some tips on preparing for and finding the right gig. In my own career, each of these helped me to be successful at working for myself, on my own time. This is the first part of a two part series about how…

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What Happens to a Woman's Brain When She Becomes a Mother

​The trial began this week for Ross Ulbricht, the 30-year-old Texas man accused of being the m​astermind behind the dark net drug market, Silk Road. But as the jury began hearing testimony in the case, it was clear the technological knowledge gap would impede the proceedings. Judge Katherine Forrest…

Wikipedia The five officers involved in the CIA monitoring of computers Senate staffers used while probing the intelligence agency's torture program acted in good faith and committed no wrongdoing. That's according to a Wednesday report from an "accountability board" in which three of its five…

Alfie Photography/ Shutterstock Probably easier to park than whatever you're driving. The Seattle City Council loves car sharing. Without a minute of conflict yesterday, the council’s transportation committee approved a bill expanding these services (through which you pay a membership fee and use a…

I’ve always rather liked that vintage wartime poster ‘ Coughs & sneezes spread diseases ’ – but now it seems as if there probably ought to be one pinned up on the wall of every office. Um, if you can find a wall to pin it to, that is. According to a new study, it’s not being rammed up against fellow…

Official UK government security advice still recommends encryption to protect online data and networks. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian A secret US cybersecurity report warned that government and private computers were being left vulnerable to online attacks from Russia, China and criminal…

All those black boxes … Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Thinkstock. Can a computer program be racist? Imagine this scenario: A program that screens rental applicants is primed with examples of personal history, debt, and the like. The program makes its decision based on lots of signals:…

The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over expecting different results. That's a cliche, but politicians often follow the hoariest routes to power, and attempting to enact change by doing the same thing repeatedly is one of them. When word broke last week that the Cyber…