Let’s cut to the chase here. If you’re pondering buying the Acer Aspire S3, it’s because you desperately want an Apple MacBook Air but are too freaking cheap to pony up the $1,300 (minimum) for the 13-inch model.

The Aspire S3 is a glorious knock-off of the Air — stripped down to the basics and slashed to just $900. Is a 30 percent price cut a compelling enough reason to buy it over its inspiration? That’s debatable, but it’s at least worth a look.

The tale of the tape tells the story the best: The Acer Aspire S3 is...

1945: Klaus Fuchs passes U.S. atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union for the first time.

Between 1945 and 1947, working with a courier code-named Raymond, Fuchs delivered high-level information to Moscow about the atomic bomb, then later the hydrogen bomb.

Fuchs was a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, fleeing to England in 1933, where he completed his doctorate in physics. At the outbreak of World War II, Fuchs, still a German citizen, was interned as an enemy alien but soon released through the intervention of Max Born, a professor at Edinburgh University and another German refugee.

Fuchs was...