Compared to, say, the slat-armored fighting vehicles commandeered by the U.S. Army's 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Google's expanding fleet of autonomous Prii and Lexuses hardly seems threatening. (Yes, for the record, Prii is the official plural of the Toyota Prius.) » Read More

While LL Cool J might not be knocking out hits like he did early in his career, the veteran emcee has orchestrated one of the biggest hip-hop shows of the summer concert season with the Kings of the Mic Tour, also featuring Ice Cube, Public Enemy and De La Soul. » Read More

Last year, the music industry reported its highest sales since 1999, driven by digital sales. But even with numbers growing and digital platforms surfacing, live music remains a battlefield when it comes to innovation, especially with live streaming. Bands are spending more time on the road to promote their music, but these efforts remain almost exclusively terrestrial. Most live performances that make it online are shaky and gritty, bootleg shots that show up as YouTube clips. » Read More

ANJELAH JOHNSON would almost always show up late to Bachrodt Elementary School in San Jose even though her house sat literally about 100 feet away. Blame it on Live With Regis and Kelly, which started at 9am, just 15 minutes before the first bell. The second bell would send her shuffling across to school, reluctant to take an early bow from family ritual and the hypnotic pull of her favorite talk-show personalities. » Read More

Tim Slater spent the better part of his career inventing micromachines, like retinal implants that give sight to the blind and thermal switches to control satellite temperatures. The Silicon Valley engineer claims 27 patents, some of which garnered major media attention. But when the dotcom bust in 2003 left him unemployed, he actually welcomed the reprieve. » Read More

All we want is an answer. One way or the other. We'll be fine. But just make a decision already. That bitter beer face you make when one of us asks—you know, the one that looks like an old catcher's mitt wearing a toupee—no longer flies. We've been patient, but now we want an answer from you, the man who leached the sanctity out of our national pastime; a commissioner who sat silent and collected nine figures in salary while team owners made millions and the steroid era rendered all of baseball's records irrelevant. » Read More

When Shane Smith, one of the founders of Vice Media, pitched a television show to MTV in 2010, it seemed unimaginable that the company that came out of Vice magazine could establish itself as a respected informational source about, well, anything (other than how to decorate your heroin stash). And yet the network bit, and The Vice Guide to Everything ran for eight episodes, balancing ridiculous segments against heavier fare. » Read More

While much attention has been focused on admitted gambling addict George Shirakawa Jr.'s flamboyant excesses, questions remain about who knew of, enabled and failed to stop his criminal activity. Interviews and newly uncovered documents show that decisions made by the county's top finance officials were key to facilitating and covering up Shirakawa's misdeeds. » Read More

Take one of the world's greatest concentrations of wealth and brainpower, add in a few hundred ethnic traditions, mix well, bake in 300 days of sunshine a year and you're bound to get something interesting. With some of the country's highest incomes—second only to the nation's capital, thanks to recession-proof Beltway lawyers' salaries-Silicon Valley has bragging rights to great fortunes. » Read More

The one and only time I met Allen Ginsberg, I wasted the moment talking about the 1991 movie of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch. Ginsberg started the conversation, though, by asking me what I thought of David Cronenberg's work. I replied that I thought it was expurgated. Ginsberg responded in about these many words: "The movie didn't ruin the book. The book's still on the shelf. Next customer!" » Read More

Tea is the world's most common beverage after water. Throughout the world, 15,000 cups of tea are consumed every second. On a recent trip to Montreal, it felt like every single one of those cups was following me. Just seconds after confessing to my hosts the muselike nature of tea in my San Jose life, and that I'd like to visit some tea-related places while in Montreal. » Read More

Under the tagline of Commerce and Creativity (C2), the second annual C2-MTL conference unfolded last week in Montreal. Quite a few notable speakers attended the first affair last year—Francis Ford Coppola, Arianna Huffington and Michael Eisner to name but a few—and this year's three-day circus likewise drew a variety of celebs and CEOs waxing poetic on the necessity of creativity at all levels of business. » Read More

In the 10 years since its inception, the phenomenon of PechaKucha 20x20 has gone viral in more than 600 cities around the globe, including San Jose. For the uninitiated, PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where anyone can show 20 images, one after the other, each for 20 seconds, while he or she talks. Pronounced pa-CHOCK-oo-cha, the idea began in Tokyo in 2003, when two architects craved a more informal, cafe-style setting to present their ideas. » Read More

At first, I feel surrounded by wedding rings. They seem to spin in front and on both sides of me, these countless numbers of interlocking ring patterns stitched into quilts. Double wedding ring quilts, it turns out, figure highly in the first room of "Milestones: Textiles of Transition," a new show at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles that explores themes of birth, marriage and death. » Read More

Nolan Bushnell and ZERO1 are putting the "rad" back in radical. So much so that Bushnell has now written a user's guide for conventional Silicon Valley managers hopelessly trying to operate in a rigid and hierarchical structure without creativity. Published via NetMinds, a service empowering authors to publish smarter by building invested, quality teams around their books, Finding the Next Steve Jobs is a glorious, unapologetic paean to creativity and eccentricity in the workplace. » Read More