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Wired: Top Stories
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The best of Wired.com, as it happens.
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Supremes Mull Whether Bad Databases Make for Illegal Searches
If a false entry in a database leads to an unconstitutional police search that reveals illegal drugs, does the government get to hold it against you? That's the question the Supreme Court will tackle on Tuesday.
Wired.com
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Air Force's New 'Killer Zombie' Drone
Armed Predator and Reaper drones have become the primary weapons in the fight against Pakistani militants. But they can be pricey, which is why the Air Force is working on a cheaper option: killer zombies.
Wired.com
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The Project That Tracks Big Projects
The Human Genome Project isn't the only spendy endeavor that aims to significantly expand the scope of humankind's knowledge. Ambitious and obsessive researchers in a handful of fields aspire to do the same. Unfortunately, none of them used their funding to buy a thesaurus: Tracking the projects labeled project is a project in itself. Here are our fave five.
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Project
Budget
What It Is
The ITER Project
$14.7 billion
Gorbachev helped thaw the Cold War by pitching Reagan a superpower collaboration to suss out fusion energy. The 180,000,000°F temperature requirement has been a significant stumbling block.
The Music Genome Project
$23.3 million
Every tune has hundreds of building blocks — from syncopation to harmony. Pandora's analysts are sequencing these "genes" by ear (up to 10 million a month) to create its proprietary database.
The Milky Way Mapping Project
$2 million
Using the Very Long Baseline Array — radio wave telescopes with 100 times Hubble's accuracy — astronomers are seeking ultraprescise measurements of the distances between us and 100...
Wired.com
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Instant Suburb of Prefabs Hits New York
Tourists press up against the construction fence on the corner of 53rd and Sixth, staring speechless as a giant crane lifts an entire bathroom into the air and deposits it in what will be a master bedroom. Cellophane House is five stories tall, with floor-to-ceiling windows, translucent polycarbonate steps embedded with LEDs, and exterior walls made of NextGen SmartWrap, an experimental plastic laminated with photovoltaic cells. Its aluminum frame was cut from off-the-shelf components in Europe, assembled in New Jersey, then snapped together in 16 days on a vacant lot next to the Museum of Modern Art — joining four other full-size houses onsite through October as part of the exhibit Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. It looks as if a suburban cul-de-sac took a wrong turn at the Holland Tunnel.
Prefab is "modernism's oldest dream," curator Barry Bergdoll says. Since the industrial revolution, architects have been in thrall of the idea that houses could be built in factories, like any kind of widget. But reality hasn't been extremely cooperative. Whether because of conservative public tastes, unachievable economies of scale, or designers' less-than-stellar business acumen, their utopian visions have mostly remained fantasies.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller, and Charles and Ray Eames each had compelling concepts of housing for all, most of which turned out to be housing for a few. Modernist masters Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier were among...
Wired.com
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Review: 'Clone Wars' TV Series Packs Action, Kiddy Humor
Much like this summer's animated Star Wars movie, the Cartoon Network show serves up loads of blaster fights and light laughs. Your reaction to the new show will probably depend a lot on your age and your state of mind.
Wired.com
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