While the technology isn’t nearly as versatile or as user-friendly as the science fiction dream, the implications include the potential to provide the things we need in much greener, less-centralized, less resource-intensive way. But, as with any new technology, there are also potential negative effects to balance the scales. Over the long run, the human imagination will no doubt concoct new uses that appear grotesque to us now but may make sense as the technology becomes ubiquitous and famiiar.

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Here's how the story got started. Back in October, the FBI announced that it had broken up an international crime ring when it arrested six Estonians in what was then heralded as “the biggest cyber criminal takedown in history.” The Estonians had, over the course of four years, hijacked more than 4 million computers in 100 countries through the use of malware known as DNSChanger. By redirecting the infected browsers of unwitting users, DNSChanger was able to send high volumes of traffic to the criminal ring’s rogue websites and servers, collecting more than $14 million in fraudulent advertising revenue and exposing their victims to information theft in the process.

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And now the same thing may be happening all over again, with Nebraska joining a growing list of unexpected 2012 Senate battlegrounds – at least for the moment.

The impetus is the surprise victory of Deb Fischer, a little-known state legislator, over two seasoned opponents in Tuesday’s Nebraska Republican Senate primary. Fischer’s candidacy seemed dead in the water until about a week ago, when she was endorsed by Sarah Palin. A last-second ad blitz from a super PAC controlled by the founder of Ameritrade added to her momentum, and Fischer ended up beating out state Attorney General Jon Bruning, who had been the favorite, by five points.

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Of course not, but Mitt's not giving up.

In Lansing, Mich. last week, Romney derided Obama as an "old school liberal" compared to Clinton, who he called a "new Democrat." Where Clinton "said the era of big government was over, President Obama brought it back with a vengeance," Romney told a crowd of college students. A campaign official told CNN that Obama "really turned his back" on Clinton's policies, including welfare reform and middle class tax cuts.

Huh? Of course Obama cut taxes for the middle class in the 2009 recovery act, which Republicans consistently lie about, and Clinton controversially raised taxes on high earners (Romney would lower them) to cut the deficit in 1993. Meanwhile, Obama has left President Clinton's welfare reform alone, despite rising rates of poverty and unemployment in the recession.

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Better than talking about these things, she penned an advice column in 2009 with her daughter, Aretha, then 19, for the ladyblog Jezebel. Their answers to questions about everything from porn to Paxil were unflinching but playful, and at times controversial. Now the pair have collected those columns into a new e-book, "Mother/Daughter Sex Advice." Together, they read as an irreverent version of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" for the Internet age. The mother-daughter team also reflect on what the experience of writing the column was like, and it turns out it wasn't as weird as many would think: For the most part, it was just a continuation of conversations they had been having throughout Aretha's life.

I spoke with them both by phone about sex-positive parenting, where they draw the "TMI" line with each other, and their tips for making "the sex talk" less awkward.

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There is a lecturer in my faculty whom I find devastatingly attractive. I find him so attractive that I have to actively control myself in his presence. I think about him nonstop. I am a graduate student and he is a lecturer. He is probably about double my age, and I am 22. I took one of his classes a few semesters back but won't be in any of his classes in the future.

I am sure I have made my attraction as painfully obvious as possible. Should I try to proposition him? What do you think of this sort of age gap? And how do I handle the possible (probable) rejection? I am aware of the imbalances of power, experience and maturity, as well as the conflicts of interest and possible repercussions that may ensue.

Unsure

Dear Unsure,

You may have thought and read about conflicts of interest and imbalances of power but are you ready to find, in the agonizing grip of an affair, a visceral unhappiness unlike anything you have ever known? Can you handle wanting to scream or grab a crowbar while also wanting to weep and beg forgiveness?

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[caption id="attachment_320971" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="A portion of Paul Elliman's Found Fount, at the Museum of Modern Art's "Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language""][/caption]

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The size of the craft was the most significant change made by the FAA in responding to a congressional mandate to integrate unmanned aviation vehicles into domestic airspace. In February, Congress passed legislation calling on the FAA to expedite approval for law enforcement and first responder agencies that want to use drones smaller than 4.4 pounds.

FAA officials decided to boost the size of the largest permissible public safety drone after meeting with federal, state and local law enforcement representatives, a spokesman said. The officials "determined that small unmanned aircraft systems under 25 pounds would be the most cost-effective, easiest to manage and overall most appropriate to carry out the various first responder missions."

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“I’m for Mitt Romney,” Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him, after he gave a speech on human rights a block from his old home — the White House.

The reason for this strange scene is obvious: Romney and his fellow Republicans want absolutely nothing to do with the 43rd president, lest voters connect the epic financial meltdown that played out on his watch to the economic anxiety they’re now feeling. As Jamelle Bouie explained today, the case that Romney is making for voting out President Obama depends on the public downplaying (or forgetting altogether) that he inherited an economy that was in the throes of a crisis not seen in generations:

In this narrative, the GOP didn’t mismanage the economy into the deepest downturn since the Great Depression. Rather, the economic crisis simply happened, ex nihilo, and Obama did nothing to stop or mitigate it. What’s more, he made things worse, with government spending and an explosion of debt.

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Nine tortured days of fruitless talks to build a coalition government led to increasing doubts that Greece can make enough reforms to prevent the world's largest currency union from fracturing.

"We expect the euro to remain under pressure as a result of this, and pressure on the borrowing costs, the bond yields, of countries like Spain and Italy to persist," said John Bowler, director of the Economist Intelligence Unit's Country Risk Service.

No date has been set for the elections, but they will have to be by the middle of June — the month in which Greece must make more spending cuts to ensure it meets the terms of its international bailout. A caretaker government will be appointed until then.

The uncertainty has created alarm across the continent, with key leaders fearing that Greece could be forced out of the euro, triggering shock waves throughout the 17-country Eurozone.

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In a new video, the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly says his caucus wanted to pass a right-to-work bill last year. The video, shot on March 27 of this year by a Democratic Party tracker, who provided the footage to Salon, captures Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald talking at a bar with a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

The reporter asks Fitzgerald whether he was surprised when Walker described his plans to attack public workers’ collective bargaining. “No, it wasn’t a shock to me …” responds Fitzgerald. “My caucus wanted to go further. I had people in my caucus that was, you know, were wondering if we were going to do Right to Work in this state. So to tell you the truth, the collective bargaining, to me, I thought was more of a middle ground if you can believe that.”

Fitzgerald says “a number of people thought” they would push right-to-work, just as Republicans were in Indiana (where it passed this winter) and Minnesota (where it stalled). “When I heard about the collective bargaining,” he says, “it didn’t surprise me at all.” (Fitzgerald did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

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I spent a few days at Landstuhl recently, one of a group of writers from the Writers Guild Initiative, part of the Writers Guild of America, East Foundation (Full disclosure and just to add to the confusion: I’m president of the Writers Guild, East, the union with which the foundation’s affiliated).

For the last four years, the foundation has been conducting writing workshops. The project began with professional writers from stage, TV and movies mentoring veterans from the Iraq and Afghan wars, working with them on writing exercises and projects ranging from memoirs and blogs to children’s books, screenplays and sci-fi novels. Recently, in collaboration with the Wounded Warrior Project, the foundation started similar workshops with caregivers, the loved ones of veterans helping them through the aftermath of catastrophic injuries.

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Rather than merely lamenting her situation, however, she explained to me she was more fortunate than many of her fellow recent graduates: “I know that I am better off than a lot of these younger lawyers. I get job interviews. I can afford the apartment I share with my friend. I have a great resume. I am an excellent researcher and writer. I rarely go to bed hungry anymore.”

That last sentence stayed with me. I have been researching what’s been happening to recent law school graduates, and it’s no exaggeration to describe the situation as a growing catastrophe. The statistics are shocking:

Approximately half of the 45,000 people who will graduate this year from ABA-accredited law schools will never find jobs as lawyers. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that over the next decade 21,000 new jobs for lawyers will become available each year, via growth and outflow from the profession.)

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The reasons are easy enough to explain.  Despite his record as a “warrior-president,” despite the breathless “Obama got Osama” campaign boosterism, common inside-the-Beltway wisdom has it that the president has backed himself into a national security corner.  He must continue to appear strong and uncompromising on defense or else he’ll get the usual Democrat-as-war-wimp label tattooed on his arm by the Republicans.

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Just because Romney is a fan of firemen doesn’t mean that firemen are fans of Romney, however: pick a random donor from the Obama and Romney campaigns, and the Obama donor is 10 times as likely to be a firefighter. How do we know this? From campaign finance disclosure data. As it turns out, campaigns must make “best efforts” to obtain the occupation and employer of anyone who contributes more than $200.

With over 500,000 contributions to the 2012 Romney and Obama campaigns, these contributions represent a lot of money ($177 million, to be exact) and a ton of fascinating data. By counting how often certain job titles appear in these disclosures, we can create a data-driven summary of the degree to which different professions support each candidate. For example, contributions to President Obama’s campaign are 80 percent more likely to be from dancers than those to Gov. Romney’s. And even though Obama enjoys nearly a 30 percent lead with physicians, surgeons favor Romney by almost 200 percent.

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Eight people were arrested Monday during a protest at Obama's 2012 campaign headquarters. The rally, organized by social justice and anti-war group Catholic Workers, was the first organized demonstration -- and the first instance of arrests -- relating to the NATO counter-protests. It was small (just over two dozen participants assailed security and stormed the campaign headquarters and read a statement inside) but set a tone for actions later this week in asserting that the president and Democratic Party are protest targets alongside NATO generals and corporations like Boeing, who receive large government defense contracts.

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On the surface, a sitcom about a young, kooky OB/GYN with a spotty dating history and a penchant for getting falling-down drunk doesn't exactly scream "groundbreaking." But it's the presence of the woman who's given us the fearlessly self-obsessed Kelly Kapoor on "The Office" all these years, who wrote a book called "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?" and who launched her career channeling Ben Affleck in a play, that gives the show the distinct possibility of actually not sucking.

Why is Kaling great? Why does her formulaic show look considerably more promising than the already-canceled-in-my-mind "Guys With Kids"? For starters, she's already been at it for seven years. TV is her zone. She doesn't harbor the affected air of a stand-up comic or a slumming movie star, trying to cram herself into 22 fake-fun minutes. Instead, like "SNL" veterans Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, she's got a natural flair and rhythm for the medium.

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