iAlertU is like a car alarm for your MacBook Pro. No, I mean it’s exactly like a car alarm for your MacBook Pro. Check out the video to see what I mean.

Rana Dasgupta asks and eloquently answers the question why is the industrialized West suddently so fascinated with third world megacities? I must admit that there is something immensely fascinating and very futurismic about the exuberantly chaotic and creative centers in places like Mumbai or Rio de Janeiro.

Seymour Hersh lays out the Bush administration’s plans for Iran, as described by his sources, in the New Yorker. From everything I’ve read I believe that the current leaders in Iran (unlike Saddam Hussein four years ago) are a genuine threat to the United States, and I fear that a military approach may be the only way to prevent a mushroom cloud from rising over an American city. What form that military approach takes, and when it’s undertaken, will make all the difference in the result. Hersh does a good job of laying out the risks of a number of approaches to containing Iran.

Ooops, looks like this one managed to slip by under the radar. Still well worth a mention though; Iain Emsley (fellow reviewer for Interzone) interviews David Marusek, author of ‘Counting Heads’, the SF novel whose NYT review caused such a furore in the genre.

You’ve probably read by now that the Gospel of Judas has been found, authenticated and translated. It’s one of several Gnostic texts to be discovered in the last several decades. What’s fascinating to me, with my pseudo-Catholic background, is the way it gives historical insights into a time I’ve always considerd walled off by theology.