Today the good people at TED posted a video of Philip Zimbardo's talk--brimming with humanity and good will--from the conference earlier this year. Zimbardo is, of course, the psychologist who designed the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971. More recently, he was called upon to be an expert witness at Abu Ghraib trials, an experience that led him to write "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil."

You can buy his book, or better yet, watch the video. (And then buy his book.)

Zimbardo's central theory won't be too surprising to anyone even remotely familiar with his work: Many people who do horrible things are not necessarily born "evil." Determining why good people turn evil, or do evil things, has been his life's work. A lot of it, it turns out, has to do with circumstance. Evil, as Zimbardo sees it, is when power is abused in such a way that it hurts people physically, psychically or emotionally. And "if you give people power without oversight, it's a prescription for abuse," he says.

To illustrate his point he uses the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to examine how ordinary soldiers--who would be called "bad apples" by the government that asked them to oversee prisoners with inadequate training and oversight--did things that were extraordinary for their brutality. (In a somewhat related note, this week the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2006 ruling by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordering the release of the Abu Ghraib pictures to the ACLU.)

With the caveat that "understanding is not excusing" evil, Zimbardo ends on a positive note: sure, the power to commit evil resides dormant in us all. But so does the potential for great heroism.

Context is key. Just ask Wesley Autrey, the New York City subway hero.

Supercollider hip hop! This is, like, nerdcore times a squillion.

"Antimatter is sort of like matter's evil twin,
because except for charge and handedness of spin,
they're the same for the particle and its anti-self.
But you can't store an anti-particle on any shelf,
'cuz when it meets its normal twin they both annihilate:
matter turns to energy and then it dissipates."

Thanks, CERN peoples, that explains everything. Literally.

Now. Must ... own ... MP3 ...

(props to BoingBoing -- and a million other people)

... Or so the BBC reports! Now, tell me that isn't in the running for the headline of the year award. When I first saw it, I thought someone from the BBC had taken it upon themselves to write an investigative profile of my step-mother. But then I remembered that I don't have a step-mother.

No, even better: it turns out the story is about the Malaysian pen-tail tree shrew. This shrew, like my imaginary step-mother, likes its hooch. Apparently the flowers that these little dudes eat produce a foamy beer-like substance with up to 3.8 percent alcohol content!  Score. Guess who's going to do a little gardening this weekend. No, seriously: guess. GUESS ALREADY! That's right me: I'm going to plant me some bertram palm. And drink its flowers. Every day.

Scientists took hair samples from the wee mammals and found that “on any given night, a tree-shrew had a 36 percent chance of being drunk by human standards.” That's funny because there's a 36 percent chance that I'm drunk right now. And it keeps getting better: check out the caption under the video: "Slow loris fancies a tipple." That, as one colleague points out, is "like the best band name ever." (Said colleague is in Seattle, if that explains anything). Not much to add to all this, really. So. Now I'm off to Malaysia to adopt a shrew and pick some beer flowers. Toodles!


(hat-tip: Guy Kawasaki)

Well hello there.

I'm not sure how you found this, but welcome. You are reading this because I pitched a blog to my visionary editors and they, being visionaries, agreed to let me have one. Hopefully you will keep reading because it will grow into something thought-provoking, funny, curious and worthy of your pity. Or, think of it this way: I have two small daughters to support and if you don't come back here often--and click on all the ads--they will be sent to toil in the Peruvian mercury mines to support me. So please, think of my children.

Meanwhile, I'll be curating things on a daily basis around here, trying to put goodies in front of your eyeballs. What exactly that will entail remains to be seen. But here's a little guide to get started with: I am a general editor here at Newsweek, covering technology, popular culture and, my favorite, unpopular culture. Mostly, I freaking love the internets. Every single last one of them. So I spend a lot of time looking at said internets--and as such, I see mountains of mind-blowingly life-changing awesomeness every day. And, you know, funny videos of piano-playing cats. Either way, I come across so much good stuff that may not merit a full-blown Newsweek-style story, but is certainly worthy of a mention. I'm talking about stuff that can only happen online (or, to give myself some wiggle room, anywhere else on earth). Stuff that inhabits that middle ground between high-brow arts, low-brow trash and mono-brow geekery. Stuff I would love to share with you, gentle reader, like the selfless lover that I am. 

Here, for example, are a few things I'd link to RIGHT NOW if I were blogging. Which, uh, I guess I am. So. Let's get started: the webby (in more ways than one) Italian Spiderman, which wrapped its 10th episode this week and is quite possibly the funniest spoof of bad '60s Italian James Bond knockoffs you'll ever see. Or I'd hip you to new rumors of a forthcoming Mac book pro and then drool all over my keyboard so that the spacebarstopsworking. Or maybe you'd find this as interesting as I did: Wil Wheaton crumbling some Webcake at Comic Con this week. Or check out this current debate over the Los Angeles Times' policy regarding blogging about rumors surrounding a certain (probably erstwhile) potential Obama running mate--the comments raise a lot of interesting issues surrounding the role of blogs at a, ahem, mainstream media outlet.

Of course, for each of those, I'd take the time to cook up some deliciously brilliant thoughts and conclusions. Maybe take the initiative to do a little reporting. I'd dazzle you with my unique voice, my counterintuitive take. This will be a two-way street--I encourage your feedback, tips, debate, lunch money. But not right now, OK? It's Saturday. It's nice outside. And you and I will get to know each other as this experiment continues. It is a work in progress. It is an evolution, an exploration of the tubes.

And also there will be haiku.