Word: virtual
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Buried in Facebook's new payment terms is this gem: if you spend $1 to get 10 credits at Facebook's virtual-gift shop--where you can buy icons of unicorns as well as of sock-draped doorknobs (the universal symbol for "Keep out, we're hooking up")--you have three years to use up your points. After that, Facebook reserves the right to go rogue by "sending virtual gifts to your Facebook friends." This is yet another reason to rethink friending your boss, lest you one day unknowingly send her a (virtual) flaming...
...retrenchment at individual campuses will mean fewer student jobs, fewer teaching assistants, a virtual elimination of lecturers (who often teach up to 30% of undergraduate classes in some departments) and the risk that top faculty will flee for more lucrative - and stable - ivory towers...
...however, would have you believing otherwise. HAPPYneuron, a $100 Web-based brain-training site, entices visitors to "give the gift of brain fitness" and claims that its users saw "16%+ improvement" through exercises such as learning to associate a bird's song with its species and shooting basketballs through virtual hoops. Nintendo's best-selling Brain Age game promises to "give your brain the workout it needs" through exercises like solving math problems and playing rock, paper, scissors on the handheld...
This phenomenon - a growing one, as Facebook's demographic rapidly grows gray - is the subject of the (aptly named) site MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com. The product of two Los Angeles 20-somethings, Erika Brooks Adickman and Jeanne Leitenberg, the site collects the downright awkward things that can happen when parents invade your virtual space. (Become a fan of TIME on Facebook...
...bill - also known as Waxman-Markey after its co-sponsors, the Democratic Congressmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey - is historic is obvious, as it marks the first successful attempt by Congress to address climate change at a national level. But as the bill moves to the Senate, where the virtual requirement for 60 votes means that passage will be even more difficult, it's far less clear that Waxman-Markey is strong enough to meet the long-term threat of global warming. The sheer difficulty of the negotiations that produced this 1,300-page bill - and the fact that despite...