MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables -- cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too. Is this the next thing in hands-on learning?

Before he was a legend, architect Frank Gehry takes a whistlestop tour of his early work, from his house in Venice Beach to the American Center in Paris, which was under construction (and much on his mind) when he gave this talk.

In some contexts there is a kind of 'apartheid' separating natural and 'chemical' products. The argument is tautological: natural products are good because they're natural. And chemical products are bad because they're chemical. And, as in all good stories, the good guys solve the problems created by the villains. The first idea to enable making...