What’s the solution to America’s crisis in science education? More comic books. In December comes The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA, a remarkably thorough explanation of the science of genetics, from Mendel to Venter, with a strand of social urgency spliced in. “If there was ever a time that we needed a push to make science a priority, it’s now,” says Howard Zimmerman, the book’s editor and, not coincidentally, a former elementary-school science teacher. “Advances in treatments for disease cannot take place in a society that shuns science.” Zimmerman works with the New York literary publishing house Hill and Wang, which discovered Elie Weisel and has been creating a new niche for itself as one of the premiere producers of major graphic “nonfiction novels” like the war on terror primer After 9/11 and the bio-comic Ronald Reagan.

Stuff of Life is the first in a series dedicated to the hard sciences. The author is Mark Schultz, a DC Comics veteran and creator of the postapocalyptic classic Xenozoic Tales. The 160-page work, illustrated by Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon (improbably, no genetic relation), covers the regenerative processes of DNA, human migratory patterns, cloned apples, and stem cells. In a rapidly changing field, it’s as up-to-date and accurate as possible.

How Comics Can Save Us From Scientific Ignorance - Wired

A State Department division that runs public diplomacy programs overseas could prove to be a model to its peers with its use of business intelligence software, popular with the private sector, to demonstrate the return on investment of its expenditures. Its latest project is a pilot program to develop algorithms that better show correlations between the department’s goals and its expenditures, using SAP Business Objects Planning XI software.

The State Department last year spent $357 million on diplomacy programs designed to create a positive image of the United States in other parts of the world. These include summer camp programs for kids in the Middle East, the American Corners information libraries at various U.S. embassies, and speaking engagements by American celebrities.

Government Using BI Software To Measure Public Diplomacy — Government Business Intelligence.

Following a flurry of arguably unwarranted media attention, Apple has removed an online help document that advised customers to use multiple antivirus products to keep their computers secure. However, a company spokesman still sees value in antivirus software for the Mac.

“We have removed the KnowledgeBase article because it was old and inaccurate,” an Apple spokesman said in an e-mailed statement. “The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box. However, since no system can be 100% immune from every threat, running antivirus software may offer additional protection.”

Apple Axes Antivirus Help Page — Apple — InformationWeek.

Last week, Danish Computerworld awarded IT Factory, a provider of CRM, HRM and Business Intelligence add-on solutions based on a SaaS delivery model, with the prestigious “Denmark’s Best IT-company 2008?. This week, the company has been declared bankrupt and its managing director Stein Bagger went missing in Dubai while under scrutiny by the police.

The remarkable story is all over the Danish press but has remained largely unnoticed outside of the country so far.

Stein Bagger apparently got his hands really dirty: he’s wanted by the Danish police for financial fraud and a possible link to an assault on a business man (reportedly executed by members of the Hell’s Angels, a group he was connected to somehow), although charges haven’t been pressed so far. Nobody has seen Bagger since last Thursday, when he disappeared somewhere in Dubai, where he was attending a business conference in the company of his wife and child (his wife is also the one who reported his disappearance).

The Extraordinary Rise And Fall Of Denmark’s IT Factory

When I talk about mobilization, I don’t mean some nebulous mass of people. I mean finding the people who are inclined in the same general direction I want to go and forming them into a cohesive interest group. Even in periods of high mobilization, except maybe during peaks of revolutionary activity, most people are still on the sidelines. Decisions aren’t made by masses- they’re made by organized parties or factions that are able to exert political influence.

Full Story: Dysnomia

The reason I opened this with the Nick Douglas joke — aside from the fact I thought it was funny — is the fact that all of the best content from the Superstruct project grew outside the original petri dish. Most of the best brainfood wound up growing on the Tumblr platform, which makes sense…I would especially recommend The Gupta Option.

In fact, the Superstruct information works so much better on other platforms, I’m kind of confused why they’d take the time to code up a clunky site in the first place. Check out the Reconstruct Ning page — it handles every aspect of usability and information design better than the actual site. Much like the Obama campaign, the best thing to come out of Superstruct is the community that it created. To me, that’s awesome enough to still give Jane McGonigal, Jamais Cascio and the rest of the folks at IFTF credit for a job well done.

Superstruct Review: Unplayable, Unwinnable, Still Awesome // Skilluminati Research.

Daewoo is leasing the vast tract of land - half the size of Belgium - for 99 years and hopes to produce 5 million tonnes of corn a year by 2023.

It will use South African expertise and local labour on the plantations.

Asian countries have been trying to ensure access to food supplies after grain prices soared earlier this year.

Full Story: BBC

Justice Department attorney Carl Nichols didn’t get through his first full sentence defending the constitutionality of retroactive immunity for spying telecom carriers before U.S. district judge Vaughn Walker interrupted to ask about President-elect Barack Obama.

“We are going to have new attorney general,” Walker interjected in Tuesday morning’s hearing in a San Francisco courthouse. “Why shouldn’t the court wait to see what the new attorney general will do?”

At issue in the latest hearing in the EFF’s lawsuit against AT&T for alleged complicity in illegal wiretapping is whether Congress has the right to free the nation’s telecoms from the lawsuits pending against them.

Nichols is arguing that Obama’s Justice Department will continue to defend the immunity statute. (Obama voted for the bill but held his nose on the immunity provisions.)

“The Department of Justice rarely, if ever, declines to defend the constitutionality of a statute,” Nichols said. “It’s very, very unlikely for a future DOJ to decline to defend the constitutionality of this statute.”

Obama Will Fight For Wiretap Immunity, Bush Lawyer Tells Judge | Threat Level from Wired.com.

Apple has always claimed that “Mac OS X isn’t plagued by constant attacks from viruses and malware” because its operating system was “designed with security in mind.”But about two weeks ago, Apple posted a note on its support Web site advising its customers to use more than one antivirus application to make their computers more secure.

“Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult,” the note explained.

Apple suggested three possible options: Intego VirusBarrier X5, McAfee VirusScan for Mac, and Symantec (NSDQ: SYMC) Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh.

Apple Recommends Antivirus Software For Mac OS X — Apple Mac OSX — InformationWeek.

The vulnerability gave him the power to transfer millions out of bank accounts worldwide. He lived in a barren one-bedroom apartment and owned almost nothing. He rented the bed he was lying on as well as the couch and table in the living room. The walls were bare. His refrigerator generally contained little more than a few forgotten slices of processed cheese and a couple of Rockstar energy drinks. Maybe it was time to upgrade his lifestyle.

Or, for the sheer geeky joy of it, he could reroute all of .com into his laptop, the digital equivalent of channeling the Mississippi into a bathtub. It was a moment hackers around the world dream of—a tool that could give them unimaginable power. But maybe it was best simply to close his laptop and forget it. He could pretend he hadn’t just stumbled over a skeleton key to the Net. Life would certainly be less complicated. If he stole money, he’d risk prison. If he told the world, he’d be the messenger of doom, potentially triggering a collapse of Web-based commerce.

But who was he kidding? He was just some guy. The problem had been coded into Internet architecture in 1983. It was 2008. Somebody must have fixed it by now. He typed a quick series of commands and pressed enter. When he tried to access the Fortune 500 company’s Web site, he was redirected to an address he himself had specified.

“Oh shit,” he mumbled. “I just broke the Internet.”

Full Story: Wired