DealBook: E-Mails Show Alarm at S.&P. as Mortgage Crisis Exploded

10:17 p.m. | Updated The executive at Standard & Poor’s was clear: “This market is a wildly spinning top which is going to end badly.”That sober assessment of certain mortgage-related investments, delivered to colleagues in a confidential memo in December 2006, is now part of a trove of internal e-mails and documents that have come to light in a federal suit against S.& P., the nation’s largest...

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Scientists identify remains as those of King Richard III

LONDON -- More than 500 years after his death in battle, scientists announced Monday that they had definitively identified a...

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Navy's Next-Gen Binoculars Will Recognize Your Face

Take a close look, because the next generation of military binoculars could be doing more than just letting sailors and soldiers see from far away. The Navy now wants binoculars that can scan and recognize your face from 650 feet away.That’s according to a Jan. 16 contract announcement from the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, which is seeking a “Wireless 3D Binocular Face Recognition...

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.How I feared chemo, afraidIt would change me.It did.Something dissolved inside me.Tears began a slow drip;I cried at the news storyOf a lost boy found in the...

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Frequent Flier: An Unhappy Meal and an Aborted Business Trip - Frequent Flier

I WAS going to go into academics, but then decided to serve the marketing machine by going into public relations. A lot of my travel involves conferences, speaking engagements and, of course, pitching new business and meeting with existing clients. Jason Schlossberg, a partner in the public relations agency Kwittken & Company, in Kyoto, Japan, last year. He still looks forward to...

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Ravens win Super Bowl XLVII over the 49ers, 34-31

Ravens 34, 49ers 31 (final)The Baltimore Ravens have defeated the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII.It's the second championship...

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Wheatley Crater on Venus

Magellan radar image of Wheatley crater on Venus. This 72 km diameter crater shows a radar bright ejecta pattern and a generally flat floor with some rough raised areas and faulting. The crater is located in Asteria Regio at 16.6N,267E. Image: NASA/GSFC [high-resolution]Caption: N...

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Beyonce brings electricity at Super Bowl halftime

Lights out? Blame Beyonce‘s electrifying performance.If naysayers still doubted Beyonce‘s singing’s talents — even after her national anthem performance this week at a press conference — the singer proved she is an exceptional performer at the Super Bowl halftime show.Beyonce opened and closed the performance belting songs, and in between she danced hard and heavy — and better than most contemporary...

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Phys Ed: Helmets for Ski and Snowboard Safety

Phys EdGretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed a lengthy personality questionnaire about whether he or she tended to be cautious or a risk taker.The researchers...

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Advertising: Super Bowl Commercials Relied on Outdated Ad Tactics

A mother-in-law joke was the focus of a spot for Century 21. The commercials that CBS broadcast nationally during the game were, by and large, disappointing. They represented a missed opportunity for marketers and agencies to demonstrate that they had at least some understanding of how contemporary consumers think and behave. Alas, the so-called creative minds of Madison Avenue chose once...

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