From Publishers Weekly
If necessity is the mother of invention, then the U.S. government's midwife for much of the Cold War was a small, brilliant and fiercely independent cadre of physicists who assembled each summer to make scientific reality out of pie-in-the-sky ideas. Ingenious problem-solvers to a man (they were, for decades, an all-boys club), "the Jasons" (a nickname of uncertain origin; it's either taken from the Greek myth, Jason and the Argonauts, or an acronym for the months of July through November) agreed to help the government-and cash its checks-on the condition that their work be free from political influence; if the Pentagon or White House proposed a project the group found absurd or ethically reprehensive, they would say so in their typically blunt, intellectually arrogant manner. However, the smartest people in the room weren't always the savviest, and the Jasons found their work manipulated by the military to suit its own purposes. At least that's the story as told by Finkbeiner, who spent two years interviewing dozens of Jasons past and present and doesn't hesitate to give them the benefit of every doubt that's arisen in the group's shadowy, five-decade history, particularly those dealing with the Jasons' involvement in Vietnam. Nonetheless, Finkbeiner offers a rare and valuable look at the intersection of world politics, military strategy and scientific discovery.

There's a recent Wired article about the book. You can read another review at NYSUN.

The Jasons : The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite, by Ann Finkbeiner

If our choice is another Rummy-led operation on Iran or Iran's going nuclear and our deterring it through classic means, I prefer deterrence.

Friedman on Iran

"I'm not addicted or anything. I always come with other people, and we smoke one hookah in an hour. It's just a nice way to relax and be sociable."

Collegians Smoking Hookahs ... Filled With Tobacco

Brutal competition. A stock going nowhere. Microsoft is in crisis, so Bill Gates has unleashed his new hire, software genius Ray Ozzie, to remake the company - and conquer the Web.

FORTUNE: Microsoft's new brain - May 1, 2006

Unfortunately this seems to be Windows-only at the present time.

GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.

FileForum | GMail Drive

Business literature is packed with advice about worker motivation—but sometimes managers are the problem, not the inspiration. Here are practices to fire up the troops.

1. Instill an inspiring purpose.
2. Provide recognition.
3. Be an expediter for your employees.
4. Coach your employees for improvement.
5. Communicate fully.
6. Face up to poor performance.
7. Promote teamwork.
8. Listen and involve.

Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation

Nicholas Wade, science reporter for The New York Times, examines what we've learned about our human ancestors using the latest techniques in DNA analysis in his new book, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors.

The data being analyzed by researchers and detailed in Wade's book has offered clues to such developments as the emergence of language, the development of clothing and domestication of animals.

Using DNA to Plumb Human Ancestry

Rackable Systems built some of Google's first servers and stands out as a rare example of a recent hardware IPO. The company now provides X86 servers, storage platforms, and services to some of the best known companies. Barton shares an amazing accounting of the hardware, space and energy costs involved in running and cooling the millions of servers under the skin of the web. Data centers are expensive to build and operate, and a large internet company's energy bill can approach that of a small city.

Maximizing the computing power per square foot becomes the key to delivering the hardware support companies need. Barton predicts these trends will continue as we move toward more and more internet-style computing. As phones, travel, and multimedia services move on-line, web facing storage will become as important as web facing servers. Price, performance, and watts are now the metrics that companies must watch in order to build and maintain a scalable internet infrastructure.

Tom Barton - High Order Bit

Bob Mondello reviews Hard Candy, a thriller that wraps issues of pedophilia, torture, and vengeance into a slick -- but sick -- little package.

The movie begins with a scenario that may seem familiar to anyone who's read newspapers in the past five years: A girl meets up with a strange adult from an Internet chat room. But Bob Mondello says the film ends up somewhere surprising.

Manohla Dargis found it unwatchable.

'Hard Candy' Indeed: A Dark Thriller

Magnet is the vehicle of Even Johansen, the Norwegian born singer/songwriter who made a name for himself by working with the U.K. bands Libido and Chocolate Overdose.

Even's work as Magnet is a blend of the traditional and the modern, mixing a folk sound with the more surreal electronica.

The second album from Magnet, called The Tourniquet, was produced by American underground pop veteran Jason Falkner, who also appears on several tracks. The album is a quiet, reflective listen, similar to David Gray in White Ladder. The album has achieved gold record sales in Norway.

Magnet's Dreamy, Surreal Pop