Can a man with a tiny electronic device hack into the multitude of jumbo screens in Times Square and play videos from his iPhone? Maybe, if you believe a YouTube video that has been watched by more than half a million viewers in the last four days. The video was posted on YouTube on Monday under the...

For most entrepreneurs, running a Web site that is rife with pornography and frequently criticized as a menace to society would not be considered a résumé booster. Many venture capitalists would head in the opposite direction. But Christopher Poole, the 23-year-old founder of 4chan, one of the ...

NOT long ago, clocks were thought to be dangerous. Folklore had it that two of them ticking in the same room could bring “sure death.” It’s easy to see how this belief arose. The clocks were almost certain to disagree, and in the space between two chimings of one hour, uncertainty crept in;...

Over the course of my career, I’ve covered a number of policy failures. When the Soviet Union fell, we sent in teams of economists, oblivious to the lack of social trust that marred that society. While invading Iraq, the nation’s leaders were unprepared for the cultural complexities of the place...

Future historians will long puzzle over how the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, in protest over the confiscation of his fruit stand, managed to trigger popular uprisings across the Arab/Muslim world. We know the big causes — tyranny, rising food prices, youth unemployment...

When an officer was commended to his attention, Napoleon is reported to have inquired: “Is he lucky?” Luck is half the game. It’s no good having it and being incapable of using it. On the other hand, great striving may come to naught without luck. My sense is that President Barack Obama is a...

It has been argued that Ronald Reagan was a myth himself, a construct of his own and other people’s imaginings, rather than an extraordinary American about whom some untruths are told. The sentimental colossus his acolytes are trying to erect today, with gilded pecs, red-painted smile and an...

Today, let’s discuss choices, starting with Barbara Bush raising an alarm and Gov. Rick Perry’s personal experience with sexual abstinence. I did throw in the last one to keep you interested. Sue me. This month, The Houston Chronicle published an opinion piece by the former first lady titled “We...

Who could have guessed that 4.3 billion Internet connections wouldn’t be enough? Certainly not Vint Cerf. In 1976, Mr. Cerf and his colleagues in the R.& D. office of the Defense Department had to make a judgment call: how much network address space should they allocate to an experiment connecting...

THE stock market has been big news in recent days. Last week’s report that Deutsche Börse, a giant German exchange, intends to buy the New York Stock Exchange, creating a company worth some $24 billion, arrived shortly after the Dow broke the 12,000-point barrier for the first time since before...