Our Great City

Everybody knows the classic winter holiday movies, from older ones like It's a Wonderful Life to newer ones like A Christmas Story. Admit: it does get repetitive watching the same stories over and over again. Here, then, are ten holiday movies (in no particular order) that aren't on most people's list to watch with the family (some of them for very good reasons).

Apple late Thursday night released a major software update for its iPhone operating system, introducing features such as remote podcast downloading and Google Street View. Remote podcast downloading enables users to download audio and video podcasts onto their iPhones with the iTunes app over a wireless connection.

The young woman who typed the final, cruel message to 13-year-old Megan Meier the day she killed herself took seemed to undermine a key government point while testifying for the prosecution: it was her idea, not defendant Lori Drew's, to create a fake MySpace account to befriend Megan, and it was she who opened the account and clicked through the MySpace terms of service at the core of the case.

Submariners and landlubbers will love this easy-to-handle, waterproof Pentax. The 10-megapixel cam is built for abuse, is good in the water down to 13 feet and has a wide-angle zoom lens.

1968: Karen Schroeder, a second-generation resident of the Love Canal neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, gives birth to an infant girl with multiple birth defects. The enormity of the neighborhood's affliction will take a few more years to come to light.

Love Canal was a never-used, late 19th-century hydroelectric channel that was sold to the Hooker Chemical company in 1942. Between then and 1953, Hooker used the site to bury 22,000 tons of chemical wastes in barrels.

Hooker sold the site to the Niagara Falls School Board for $1, and the board built an elementary school there in 1955. A blue-collar suburban neighborhood flourished around the disused industrial site.

Flourished is probably the wrong word. Schroeder's parents found black sludge seeping through the walls of their basement starting in the late 1950s. A woman who ran a beauty parlor in her basement developed a debilitating weakness and had to give up working. Trees and shrubs died. Noxious chemical smells hung over the neighborhood.

Schoolchildren developed strange rashes and vague, unexplained allergies. Sometimes, they played with phosphorus-laden dirt that exploded with a crackle when lumps of it were thrown to the ground.

Baby Sheri Schroeder was born with an irregular heart beat and a hole in the heart wall, nasal bone blockages, partial deafness, deformed ears and a cleft palate. As she grew, her family realized she was mentally retarded. Her teeth arrived in a double row on her lower jaw, and she suffered from an enlarged liver.

Heavy rains in the mid-1970s caused groundwater levels to rise. Swimming pools lifted up out of the ground. The buried waste rose closer to the surface.

The Niagara Gazette began reporting in October 1976 about chemicals seeping into basements in the Love Canal neighborhood, with stories of harm to humans, pets and plant life. Chemical analyses showed 15 organic chemicals, including three toxic chlorinated hydrocarbons.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state and county health departments began to take notice, testing the neighborhood's soil, water and air, as well as blood samples from residents. Still, it was August 1978 before the state health commissioner declared a state of emergency, closed the school and ordered an evacuation ... but only of pregnant women and children under age 2.

Soon it was learned that Hooker had buried 200 tons of dioxin at Love Canal, that residents suffered a high rate of miscarriages, birth defects and chromosomal damage, and that 10 percent could develop cancer.

U.S. Rep. Al Gore (D-Tennessee) charged in 1979 that the tragedy had been avoidable. He publicized a 1958 internal Hooker Chemical memo, describing three or four kids burned by materials at the Love Canal waste site. The first lawsuits were filed in 1979.

Early amelioration work released noxious smells in the neighborhood, and the evacuation area was widened. More schools were shut down. Government programs bought condemned homes and tore them down. Hundreds of families evacuated, but 60 families remained behind. Cleanup costs have been estimated at $250 million.

A federal judge eventually found Hooker Chemical negligent but not reckless, and parent company Occidental Petroleum settled with the EPA for $129 million.

An EPA regional administrator called Love Canal "one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history."

The core area around the dump is still off-limits, but new buildings have been built nearby. The neighborhood is now called Black Creek Village.

Source: Various

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Oh sure, we're all for alt-fuel green cars. Hybrids? Love 'em. EVs? We'll take two. Hydrogen? Show us where to get the stuff, and we're there. But there's something to be said for being pushed back into butter-soft, hand-stitched leather as you hurtle toward the horizon at absurd velocity. Here then are our picks for the 10 cars at the Los Angeles Auto Show that will do just that.

Left: Gumpert Apollo
If "limited edition" isn't limited enough, Gumpert has the car for you. The boutique supercar maker is sending just 10 of the race-ready rides to America next year. They start at $485,000, but we'll take the top-of-the-line $850,000 model, because why wouldn't you want every one of the 850 horsepower you get with it?

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

If you have to ask, you'll never understand.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

It's not the flashiest car around. The doors don't flip upward. It isn't covered in carbon fiber. And most people won't have any idea what it is. But the DBS is just so quintessentially British that way. It's got a 6.0-liter V12, it'll hit 60 mph in 4.3 seconds, and it tops out at 191 mph. When you're that good, you can afford to be understated.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

It's got more scoops than Baskin-Robbins and more bling than Flavor Flav, so you'd be forgiven for thinking it's something of a joke. But this Dutch rocket with a racing pedigree produces 400 horsepower, does 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds and has a top speed of 187 mph. So the joke's on you.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Lotus is one of the most-storied names in sports cars, and those who have driven them love them. If you haven't driven one, now's the time to start.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Eeenie, meenie, miney, mo … oh, just pick one. You can't go wrong.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

From the gleaming chrome hood ornament and 500-horsepower twin-turbo V8 to the diamond-quilted leather interior (choose from one of 25 different kinds) and jeweled fuel cap, everything about the Azure T is decadently, sensuously luxurious. And for $350,000, it damn well better be.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Yes, there are faster Porsches. Yes, there are more-expensive Porsches. And yes, there are Porsches that will run circles around the Boxster. But we just love this scene.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

The R8 is stereotypically German — beautifully engineered, ruthlessly efficient and exceptionally quick. It isn't as good as you've heard; it's better. Everyone should have one.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

For burning rubber, doing donuts and blowing the doors off anything short of a Gumpert Apollo, nothing beats the 638-horsepower Corvette ZR1. It's a muscle car on steroids and the best 'Vette ever. Dollar for dollar, pound for pound, nothing beats it.

Pembroke Pines police in Florida are investigating the apparent suicide death of a 19-year-old teenager whose death was seen on a live Justin.tv feed

Mocked-up photos of models of the moon's surface in the 19th century were widely acclaimed for their authenticity, and inspired astronomers to do better with the real thing.

An iPhone app developer appears to be using bribes to get better reviews in order to boost his sales.

Yucca Mountain can hold millions of pounds of nuclear waste, but if an artist gets his way, it would also be home to what he calls a quantum "universe generator."

What to give? What to get? See what would go in our perfect holiday gift bag. Then sign up to win it all.

Poor Mac users just can't get a decent virus that's on par with the threats Windows users face. Because yes, there's a new Mac virus lurking, but unless you're incredibly stupid, there's no need to worry.

Data-mining companies have no free-speech right to buy and analyze prescription data in order to market drugs to doctors, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The ruling clears the way for other states to mimic New Hampshire's landmark law prohibiting the widespread practice of buying and selling prescription information.

Pixar moviemakers turn to the space agency's experts for pointers on how to make animated characters more "lifelike."

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You will never catch us yawning at an airport gate. You won't find us desperately rereading the in-flight magazine, and we never ... ever ... cross the thresholds of hotel business centers. We are the quartermasters in the battle to stay connected, productive, and entertained — and we do not travel unprepared. As wired gadget editors, we make it our mission to see every new product. As avid gadget-fiends, we make damn sure that the best of them end up in our personal arsenals. This is our current must-have list, the gear we reach for whenever an eticket pops into our remotely accessible inbox.

Left: Tod's Cartella computer bag $1,600

Enter for a chance to win the Wired Wish List Bag (yes, Tod's Cartella tote, pictured), filled with today's hottest technology and products on the cutting edge of design.

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Check out eight examples of how you can use CSS and little else to make beautiful data visualizations: bar charts, scatter plots and even standards-based sparklines.

Buried glaciers discovered on Mars are closer to the planet's equator than any previously known water ice on the planet. The glaciers could be a source of drinking water for future astronauts.

Criminals better watch their steps, as a Univerisity of Buffalo computer science professor develops a search engine for shoe prints left at crime scenes. With funding from the Justice Department, professor Sargur Srihari hopes his computational forensics will make life easier for shoe-identification experts, and harder for criminals.

If the auto industry is tanking, the venerable British carmaker either didn't get the memo or doesn't care. With a perfectly straight face, Bentley unveils its $350,000 Azure T at the L.A. Auto Show.

At long last, you can hear what looked like the ultimate rock 'n' roll vaporware. For free.