Now: May 2010

May

Week 1

sat, may 01
QUESTION
Expo 2010

For this year's world's fair, which runs until October 31, Shanghai has set up a high-tech welcoming committee: an army of 5-foot-tall androids named Haibao ("treasure of the sea"). The 70 million visitors expected in town for the fair can direct questions -- and quirky requests -- to the robots, which will be at the city's two airports and at major venues. Beyond offering event and travel info (via a touch screen), Haibao can take photos, make LCD faces, and greet visitors in six languages. Make nice, and he might dance a jig or sing you a song. Here's hoping it's "Mr. Roboto." -- DAN MACSAI

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sun, may 02
LOCATE
10th Anniversary of GPS's Nonmilitary Expansion

Finding restaurants. Mapping hiking trails. Geo-tagging photos. Playing location-based social-media games. Tracking lost pets. What don't we use GPS for these days? It's hard to believe that just a decade ago the military-designed satellite network was massively opened up, allowing civilian GPS to become 10 times more accurate. Car-navigation device makers TomTom and Garmin have since become billion-dollar-plus companies, and GPS-related apps are now a bazillion times more prevalent. Where to from here? We're recalculating. -- ERICA WESTLY

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Week 2

mon, may 03
LIVE
BIO International Convention

Policy wonks and science wizards unite at this year's big biotech-industry conference in Chicago, where more than 15,000 attendees talk biofuels, health innovation, and superpowered agriculture with former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and former vice president Al Gore. With roughly $250 billion in market cap and influence across a staggering number of sectors, it's no wonder biotech managed to snag a bipartisan clutch of big names to key-note. "We like to invite speakers who challenge our industry and who don't necessarily agree with us," says Robbi Lycett, BIO's VP for conventions and conferences. With an agenda that includes genetically modified crops and stem-cell research, we suspect that stirring debate will not be a problem. -- LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM

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tue, may 04
READ
The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of Our Food Supply

Worst. Company. Ever. That's the inevitable conclusion in documentarian Marie-Monique Robin's perversely fascinating investigation of Monsanto, the chemical company turned $11.7 billion agribusiness giant. She details how the astounding list of controversial products and environmental scandals in Monsanto's history -- PCBs, dioxin, Agent Orange, DDT, bovine growth hormone -- is exacerbated by the company's repeated choice to preserve sales over the public health and employ its outsize influence in government to shirk full responsibility for its actions. Even more disturbing, Robin argues, is the "new Monsanto," which has wielded its global muscle and patent prowess to try and take control over the food supply. Given Monsanto's ugly past, she makes clear that we cannot pretend that we don't know what's possible. -- DAVID LIDSKY

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wed, may 05
SHOUT
Bingo World

Bingo may seem like old news for old people, but when Alabama governor (and lifelong gambling opponent) Bob Riley sent state troopers to shut down more than 30 electronic bingo parlors earlier this year, he brought new life to the issue. Hundreds of casino workers lost their jobs, and now some state representatives -- with the help of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who marched on Montgomery -- are pushing for a statewide vote. Riley's move, which is expected to be hotly dis-cussed at the Bingo World conference in nearby Biloxi, Mississippi, comes near the end of his second term. While he's not up for reelection in November, he has vowed to keep up the bingo fight until his final days. Call it a free space. -- ZACHARY WILSON

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wed, may 05
PRY
Lift

Conventional wisdom -- and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg -- suggests privacy is no longer a social norm. But at last year's Lift, a conference on the social consequences of new technologies that hits Geneva this month, think tanker Daniel Kaplan presented a study showing that most users are actually very conservative online. They will exhibit only as much information as you might "display in your sitting room," he argued. "They are not just throwing out buckets of information without realizing the effect." With nearly one-quarter of the world's 1.7 billion Internet users registered on Facebook, though, perhaps Zuckerberg has the power to draw users from the privacy of their own homes. -- AUSTIN CARR

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