Avoiding the toxic wasteland

Barely a minute on the Wired website unearthed the little-known US government specific version of Google. Depending on your perspective, this could limit your search to just what the government wants you to read - or save time by avoiding what The Register (who are these guys?) calls a toxic wasteland of real-time noise.

United States to appeal WTO gambling report

The World Trade Organization has ruled against the United States in a cross-border gambling dispute brought by Antigua & Barbuda. The U.S. Trade Representative spokesman immediately issued a statement announcing the United States' intention to refer the "deeply flawed" decision to the WTO's Appellate Body.

The law of unintended consequences

Wired magazine on the world's biggest desalination plant, built to treat more than 35 billion gallons of cruddy, high-saline agricultural runoff per year. But the first step was to placate the Mexican farmers, whose crops were being poisoned by Colorado River water contaminated with runoff from Arizona farms. The fix: Keep the offending runoff out of the river, diverting it from the US side through a 53-mile canal into the Mexican desert. This took care of Mexico's complaints and ended up giving the country a free nature preserve - a wetland habitat now championed by environmental activists.

Technology doesn't make you less stupid...

...it just makes you stupid faster. In How Technology Failed in Iraq, the November issue of MIT's Technology Review recounts how even against a conventional enemy, the info wasn't getting to the people on the ground.