Forget the cloak and dagger. You want to be at the forefront of the spy game? Just load up Google Earth. A couple of days ago, the Federation of American Scientists posted images and an interesting analysis of a new kind of Chinese nuclear-propelled ballistic missile submarine, the picture of which cropped up in late 2006 on Google Earth. Check out the pictures and proposed layout of the so-called Jin-Class sub, and revel in the irony: people used to get thrown in jail for looking at this kind of data without a security clearance. Progress, indeed. —Martha Harbison

Later this year, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee hope to take a big step toward solving America's nuclear-waste woes. Pending clearance from the Department of Energy, they will demonstrate a new toxic-waste recycling process.

Although experts debate the ease of building a crude nuclear bomb, no one disputes that it is far easier to build a simpler weapon known as a dirty bomb—a conventional bomb that scatters radioactive material. A dirty bomb produces no nuclear chain reaction, no mushroom cloud. Yet its aftereffects could be devastating. In a 2002 computer simulation run by the Federation of American Scientists, a single foot-long piece of radioactive cobalt of the type commonly used in food-irradiation plants was blown up with TNT in lower Manhattan.

Apparently, a few people at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory forgot to turn on their crackpot detectors. The lab-commissioned “Teleportation Physics Study,” which was recently released on the Federation of American Scientists Web site, makes for some of the most inane and entertaining

Dick Armey, retiring majority leader of the House of Representatives, created such a stir recently with comments about liberal and conservative Jews (the latter have all the brains, Armey said), that another aspect of his comments attracted less notice: Science, according to Armey, is the stomping ground of conservatives. "Conservatives," said the Texas Republican, "have a deeper intellect and tend to have occupations of the brain in fields like engineering, science and economics. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to flock to occupations of the heart."