The Jefferson County sheriff has released 900 pages of documents zeized from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's houses. The release includes includes school papers, report cards, love letters, poems, drawings, to-do lists, journals and chat-logs. The papers indicate that the two seniors dropped several hints about their plans in advance--but not enough to prompt intervention. From the Harris's writings:

"I hate you people for leaving me out of so many things. You had my phone #, and I asked you and all, but no, no no don't let that weird looking Eric kid come along.... I HATE PEOPLE and they better [expletive] fear me."

According to the CSMonitor, Japan, Russia, and Europe are monitoring the Discovery closely to see if NASA can live up to its promises. It turns out, only NASA is capable of delivering certain critical parts to the International Space Station. Failure could doom the ISS to irrelevance.

However, NASA is planning to scrap the engineering-marvel that is the Space Shuttle in favor of the rocket and space capsule--a technique that the Russians and Europeans have honed over the past 20 years. The author worries that the U.S. is falling behind in its efforts to explore and develop space. From the article:

"The US already is saying to our international partners: Look, give us a little time and we'll come up with a suggested program for cooperation on exploring space and sending humans beyond Earth orbit," says Dr. Williamson. "We will not be credible in that unless we can at least make the attempt to carry out obligations under agreements" such as those governing the space station.

Slate features a discussion of possible internet operating systems, a Google OS foremost amongst the potential contenders. The author views the fledgling YouOS as a proof-of-concept that an internet OS is feasible. He dismisses the idea of a Google-built thin client, arguing that Google would rather build a service available from any internet-capable device. Google's already fast service would theoretically translate easily to other web-based applications. From the article:

Dollar for dollar, network-based computers are faster. Unless you're playing Grand Theft Auto or watching HDTV, your network isn't the slowest part of your setup. It's the consumer-grade Pentium and disk drive on your Dell, and the wimpy home data bus that connects them. Home computers are marketed with slogans like "Ultimate Performance," but the truth is they're engineered to run cool, quiet, and slow compared to commercial servers.

The author compares Eric Schmidt's denials of a Google OS to Steve Jobs's denials of a video iPod. However, he notes that potential obstacles to a Google OS adoption include: the desire to own things; the requirement for fast, flawless networks; and, the trust-deficit when putting personal information on web-based applications.

Director of the Information Office of the State Council, Cai Wu, has announced that new internet control measures are needed. New initiatives include monitoring blogs and search engines, as well as mandatory cellphone and website registration. With 16 million bloggers and 97 million search engine users, the Chinese authorities see search engines as the "choke point" for information. From the article:

The potential new regulations, which are still in the discussion stage, are being considered at a time of exploding Internet and cellphone use that has created the freest atmosphere of communication this country has known under Communist rule, despite strenuous government efforts to contain it.

The New York Times questions whether science can or will move past the Standard Model. Physicists hope that the new CERN Large Hadron Collider will begin to reveal new aspects of the law of physics when it begins tests in 2007. Currently, the Standard Model remains unable to gracefully integrate many aspects of our universe, such as gravity, matter/anti-matter, or space-time. From the article:

So, yes, there is new physics out there. The question is whether it will ever be put it together into the neat mathematical package that would have impressed Einstein.

The coal in the ground in Illinois alone has more energy than all the oil in Saudi Arabia.

The New York Times reports that coal has returned to the fore of efforts to wean the world from oil dependency. There are huge coal reserves that dwarf known oil reserves, and transforming oil into fuels for cars, homes, and factories uses proven technologies. Despite the higher carbon-emissions of coal, it is currently far cheaper than natural gas. From the article:

Most of the interest is in making diesel using a technology known as Fischer-Tropsch, for the German chemists who demonstrated it in the 1920's... The gasoline market is more than twice as large, but if companies like Rentech sated the demand for diesel, the process could be adapted to make gasoline. The technology was used during World War II in Germany and then during the 1980's by South Africa when the world shunned the apartheid regime there.

The Financial Times (subscription required) is carrying a story on the role of blogs in spurring political reform in Kuwait. From the article:

What started off last year as just another site among proliferating blogs discussing social and political affairs in the Arab world, has become a thorn in the side of less reform-minded politicians and royals. The young graduate founders of Kuwaitjunior have morphed into a movement calling itself Kuwait5, complete with orange flags and badges.

The CSMonitor asks if the ascendance of the digital age is the effective end of privacy as we know it. Following ChoicePoint, U.S. military veterans, U.S. Dep. of Agriculture, and Hotels.com leaks, as well as the NSA wiretapping and banks monitoring scandals, there are stronger calls for a federal role in protecting privacy. While Congress seems unready to address government national security snooping, it is looking at safeguards against ordinary criminals. Meanwhile, businesses are frustrated by the "crazy quilt" of state and local privacy regulations they must know and observe.

A new service, pioneered by three Japanese firms working in combination with a small American firm (GeoVector), allows Japanese cellphone users to gather point-and-click information about their surroundings. The technology uses satellite-based GPS, accurate within 30 feet, and an electronic compass linked to the internet. Firms in the United States currently cannot offer such a service, because U.S cellphone towers are accurate only to 100 yards, and only Verizon and SprintNextel offer GPS. From the article:

In addition to a built-in high-tech compass, the service requires pinpoint accuracy available in urban areas only when satellite-based G.P.S. is augmented with terrestrial radio. The new Japanese systems are routinely able to offer accuracy of better than 30 feet even in urban areas where tall buildings frequently obstruct a direct view of the satellites, Mr. Ellenby said. In trials in Tokyo, he said, he had seen accuracies as precise as six feet.

The New York Times reports that DaimlerChrysler, which had previously shelved plans to sell their Smart Car in the United States, has now decided to introduce the two-seat vehicle to the U.S. auto market. With gas prices remaining high, fears of global warming spreading, and SUV sales falling, the company calculates that there will be demand for the mini-car. The Smart Car has been relatively successful in Canada, selling 4,000 models which was twice the expected number.

The Washington Post examines a new study conducted by cybersecurity experts testing electronic voting machines, showing that it requires only one person with sophisticated technical knowledge to compromise the election outcome. All three major electronic voting systems have major security flaws, according to the researchers. However, they suggested that these flaws can be overcome by an audit of printed records produced by voting machines. Critics charge that the report's conclusions about security are entirely hypothetical. From the article:

"This report is based on speculation rather than an examination of the record. To date, voting systems have not been successfully attacked in a live election," said Bob Cohen, a spokesman for the Election Technology Council, a voting machine vendors' trade group.

The Localist is running a story on U.S soldiers in Iraq who have set up their own troop-owned ISPs, termed "hajjinets". From the article:

Since the military provides just 6 to 12 computers for every 1,000 or so troops, time limits of 10 to 15 minutes per day are often enforced at military internet cafes... [By contrast], a typical Hajjinet is built and maintained by one or two soldiers and can provide nearly 24-hour internet access... Most Hajjinets are small, serving between 20 and 30 troops, but ISPs serving as many as 300 are known to exist.

Iron-producing plankton? An earth-sheilding mirror? Algae infestations? Man-made clouds? These are a just a few of the formely fringe-science ideas for cooling the planet. From the article:

The study of futuristic countermeasures began quietly in the 1960's, as scientists theorized that global warming caused by human-generated emissions might one day pose a serious threat. But little happened until the 1980's, when global temperatures started to rise.

The New York Times reports that, in a major reversal, some of the world's most prominent scientists say the proposals deserve a serious look.

The Washington Post features an story describing the defeat of a bipartisan immigrant-amnesty bill 20 years ago that included language allowing the president to institute a national identification system. Thirty minutes before the vote, Mexican-American Rep. Edward Roybal made a speech likening a national ID to the violation of rights found in Nazi Germany. No congressmen took the occasion to invoke Godwin's Law, and subsequently the national identification system was removed from the amnesty bill. Since then the number of illegal immigrants has soared from 3 million to 12 million, with supporters of national identification blaming the skyrocketing figure on the bill's defeat. Still, opponents of national ID in the United States find broad support across ideological and party lines.

The Washington Post recounts the story of CIA officer Tyler Drumheller, chief of European operations until last year, who questioned the veracity of the claims that Saddam had mobile biological weapons laboratories. Drumheller recognized the source of the claims when he saw them in a draft text for Sec. Powell's speech to the UN: an Iraqi defector codenamed "Curveball." From the article:

Curveball described himself as a chemical engineer who had worked inside an unusual kind of laboratory, one that was built on a trailer bed and produced weapons for germ warfare. He furnished detailed, technically complex descriptions of mobile labs and even described an industrial accident that he said killed a dozen people.

Following a CIA investigation, the Agency "acknowledged that Curveball was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bioweapons factories on wheels."