Do elite universities hold Asian-Americans to higher standards than other applicants? Do Ivy League schools set caps on the number of high-achieving minority students admitted, comparing Asian-American applicants against one another instead of the rest of the applicant pool? These questions were recently recharged by word that the Education Department will broaden its investigation of Princeton University's admissions process, a probe that began after an applicant filed a federal civil rights complaint saying the school spurned him because of his race.

Knowing that the PS3 games use Blu-ray discs, have you ever wondered about popping in one of your game discs into a Blu-ray drive on your PC to see if you could read it? Since Blu-ray drives are still really expensive, probably not. Even if you did have one it wouldn't do much good, unless you had a Lite-ON DH-401S that is.

Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder. "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave." While political activists on the other side of the spectrum have made similar observations, Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to "the vast right-wing conspiracy."

He said machines and humans would eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health. "It's really part of our civilisation," Mr Kurzweil said. "But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us." Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better, in many different areas, he said.