The United States has been moving steadily toward building a new generation of nuclear power plants, with the blessing both of conservatives, liberals and environmentalists, a seemingly happy convergence of interests to generate clean renewable energy. Then the Japanese earthquake and tsunami hit, renewing doubts about nuclear safety that have largely been forgotten as memories [...]

One of the basic sci-fi dystopian plots came true yesterday, as computer -generated trading apparently took control of the stock market and nearly crashed it. More and more trading is done according to complex programs developed for highly sophisticated computers, which can analyze data and make trades faster than we poor, limited humans can. The [...]