The recession is hurting U.S. cities at "radically varying levels," which will lead to an uneven economic recovery, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution. "This is not one national recession. It's felt barely at all in some parts of the country, and it's felt deeply and significantly in others," said the Brookings Institution's Alan Berube, co-author of the report, in an interview with the Huffington Post. "For the next several months we'll have to pay attention to several places that look like they're not poised to recover anytime soon."

Remember how we found out that there's a difference between the Google-branded Android firmware and its HTC-modified equivalent, and the latter isn't allowed to feature the silkscreened Google logo? The HTC version is way cooler on account of its Exchange ActiveSync support and the much-improved camera app; the only downside is that you can't flaunt that logo on the case, which -- let's be honest -- is totally meaningless to an end user

Aeries are cropping up on America’s skylines, filled with the promise of juicy tomatoes, tiny Alpine strawberries and the heady perfume of basil and lavender. High above the noise and grime of urban streets, gardeners are raising fruits and vegetables. Some are simply finding the joys of backyard gardens several stories up, others are doing it for the environment and some because they know local food sells well. City dwellers have long cultivated pots of tomatoes on top of their buildings. But farming in the sky is a fairly recent development in the green roof movement, in which owners have been encouraged to replace blacktop with plants, often just carpets of succulents, to cut down on storm runoff, insulate buildings and moderate urban heat.

Inspired by his example, I propose curbing gun violence not by further restricting the availability of guns but by expanding and reorienting it. Men would still be forbidden to walk the streets armed, in accordance with current laws, but women would be required to carry pistols in plain sight whenever they are out and about. Were I to board the subway late at night, around Lincoln Center perhaps, and find it filled with women openly carrying Metropolitan Opera programs and Glock automatics, I’d feel snug and secure. A train packed with armed men would not produce the same comforting sensation. Maybe that’s because men have a disconcerting tendency to shoot people, while women display admirable restraint. Department of Justice figures show that between 1976 and 2005, 91.3 percent of gun homicides were committed by men, 8.7 percent by women.

Psychologist Richard Weissbourd contends that parents who are obsessed with their children's happiness are ignoring other important values — like goodness, empathy, appreciation and caring — that are necessary to a well-rounded personality. Weissbourd is the author of The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development. A lecturer in education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Kennedy School of Government, Weissbourd has founded several interventions for at-risk children, including ReadBoston, WriteBoston and Project ASPIRE.

I recently attended the WTIA Fast Pitch Forum & Technology Showcase. The conference featured two dozen of the of the hottest technology companies in Washington presenting their business in a competition for "Best In Show". I Can Haz Cheezburger is well-known online for their hilarious LOLCat pictures.

After a decade of earnest immersion in parenting, though, the times are ripe for a change. The first sign was the wave of confessionals — from anonymous Web sites like truumomconfessions​.com (where mothers admit to transgressions like feigning stomach cramps to steal quiet time hiding in the bathroom) to bylined blogs like the wildly popular dooce.com (where Heather B. Armstrong chronicled her postpartum depression and continues to write about her struggles as the mother of a charming but somewhat high-strung 5-year-old) to memoirs like Ayelet Waldman’s (in which she cops to such “sins” as using disposable diapers and loving her husband more than her children). But in the past few months, a second wave has taken hold — writers are moving past merely venting and are trying to gather the like-minded into a new movement. Carl Honoré is one. He calls it “slow parenting” — no more rushing around physically and metaphorically, no more racing kids from soccer to Suzuki. Lenore Skenazy is an

At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, Berkeley's Judy Scotchmoor introduced a new web resource called Understanding Science that's intended to change the way that the nature and process of science are presented to students.

Policy makers need to better understand the networks they regulate, but academic network research can be a tough task. Google, New America, and PlanetLab have created Measurement Lab, an open group of distributed servers meant to make research into Internet speeds, latency, jitter, and BitTorrent-blocking easier.

The lure of Asian authenticity is part of the appeal. Some American consumers believe sriracha (properly pronounced SIR-rotch-ah) to be a Thai sauce. Others think it is Vietnamese. The truth is that sriracha, as manufactured by Huy Fong Foods, may be best understood as an American sauce, a polyglot purée with roots in different places and peoples.