A sports bra that can power an iPod? Genius!

Quoted: The idea of an energy-generating bra isn't as crazy as it might sound. A company called Triumph International Japan recently unveiled a solar-powered bra that supposedly will generate enough energy to power an iPod.

Point taken, but I don't know that the One Laptop Per Child initiative is necessarily all about scholastic performance. It's largely about fostering basic computer competency and connecting these children to the rest of the world...

Quoted: New research by economists Ofer Malamud and Cristian Pop-Eleches provides an answer: For many kids, computers are indeed more of a distraction than a learning opportunity.

How weird! These ants detect and are drawn to eletromagnetic fields...

Quoted: Electronic devices near Houston, Texas, are under attack by a species known as the " crazy rasberry ant" ( Paratrechina species near pubens), which is thought to have arrived as a stowaway on a cargo ship in 2002. According to the Associated Press, the ants seem to be attracted to electrical equipment and have been "shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers" wherever they go.

More from Slate's special issue on procrastination! Solitaire truly is a procrastinator's enabler...

Quoted: In a 2000 Wall Street Journal essay, Slate's founding Editor Michael Kinsley wrote that this here magazine once "thought of adopting the slogan 'Slate: The Thinking Person's Solitaire,' but rejected it as too honest."

Hilarious!

Quoted: Already got a dozen Obama headbands? Worn out your " Hot for Hillary" T-shirt? It's time for a new campaign accessory: Slate's political ring tones. Get one of these clips, and you'll hear John McCain say, "My friends," every time you get a call.

A great Slate piece on why you don't find technology (computers, cell phones, etc.) in children's books.

Quoted: Technology, as we well know, has become a ubiquitous part of American children's lives. And yet there is one place—a whole world, actually—where children are safely walled off from wired and wireless devices. That is the world of picture books.

Might be bad for Yahoo, but I'm not sorry the deal fell through...

Quoted: It is axiomatic in the online world that no one knows what anything is truly worth. Yet for practically all of its corporate life, Yahoo has been comfortable with the answer: It's worth more.

Interesting Slate piece on how the E. coli breakouts of 2006 illustrate how hard it actually is to engineer a biological weapon.

Quoted: An outbreak of E. coli isn't usually the stuff of feel-good stories. But a close look at recent outbreaks of E. coli—and a closer look at the bacteria themselves—may help us to put aside our fears for the moment. Engineering plagues is harder than it looks.

I hope China doesn't try to ban cell phones with recording devices after this. It's a fuzzy boundary between the economic opportunism that China champions, and the freedom of speech that it's trying to subdue. This is really one of the most powerful forms of revolt that these people have right now.

Quoted: Cell-phone photographs and videos from Tibet, blurry and amateur, are circulating on the Internet. Some show clouds of tear gas; others burning buildings and shops; still others purple-robed monks, riot police, and confusion.