What makes you angry? What do you choose to talk about?
What happens beyond the wall of screens that takes up half of your waking life?
Technology isn’t inherently good or bad. It simply presents a means to an end, and that end is up to us. Sometimes we choose to go to the moon. Sometimes we create tools that help us breach the barriers that nature has placed in our way.
Most of the time, we use our myriad means of communication to talk about inconsequential events and people. We use our tools to help us build barriers to place in our own way. Here are 10 headlines that were overshadowed by twerking and the VMAs, in no particular order.
10: August 28 was the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech and the March on Washington.
Tens of thousands gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the event. Among the speakers present were presidents Obama, Clinton, and Carter. You can read Obama’s speech here in the New York Times, and Clinton’s and Carter’s here in the Wall Street Journal.
9: In Casper, Wyoming, leaders of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) met with a KKK organizer in what might be a historical first.
The meeting was arranged after an increase in racial violence in the town of Gillette, Wyoming was followed by the appearance of Klan pamphlets in the area. After the meeting, the organizer was asked to join the NAACP. He did, and added a $20 donation to the $30 membership fee. Read more at the Casper Star-Tribune.
8: On August 12, SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk published a white paper for the hyperloop.
credit: Tesla
The hyperloop is proposed as a faster, cheaper replacement for high-speed rail. The vehicle itself amounts to a capsule traveling on a cushion of air in a low pressure tube. There will be solar panels mounted on the outside of the tube to provide power. Musk chose to publish the plans and forgo any patents because his hands are full. Read more at Tesla Motors, and remember not to skip the PDF.
7: The army psychiatrist responsible for the 2009 Fort Hood shootings has been sentenced to death.
In the terrorist attack, 13 people died and 32 people were wounded. According to the LA Times, Major Nidal Malik Hasan has been convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder; his sentence still has to be approved by several entities. His victims have expressed feelings of relief and closure.
6: Tokyo will host the 2020 Olympics despite Fukushima’s growing threat.
It can be difficult to grasp the magnitude of the threat caused by radiation from Japan’s damaged nuclear reactors. Untrustworthy sources of information and incompetence on the part of Tepco are no help. There is an image circulating on Facebook claiming to show radiation spreading throughout the Pacific. The image is in fact a graph of wave heights, issued by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shortly after the 2011 tsunami. Whenever you come across a massively circulated post with suspicious origins, check Snopes.
According to the Guardian, Tepco has admitted that approximately 300 tons of radioactive groundwater is escaping and seeping into the ocean. Efforts to contain the water have been botched so far. Drums that were supposed to hold the water were not riveted and not welded; these drums and the reactor pipes are both leaking.
According to ABC news, the Japanese government is now planning to freeze the ground around the reactors in order to contain the water. This will cost around $300 million.
Despite the hazards, Tokyo will host the 2020 Olympics. According to BBC, the price of restoring or building infrastructure for the Olympics is approximately $8 billion. Meanwhile, Japanese fishermen and farmers in the area closest to the disaster are at a severe loss; according to Al Jazeera, South Korea has banned all fish imported from Japan, and farmers have been relocated from their lands with little hope of long-term compensation.
5: Will the U.S. bomb Syria?
A year ago, President Obama cautioned the Assad regime against using chemical weapons against its own people. Doing so would cross a red line, after which there would be “enormous consequences”. Here’s what he said via the Wall Street Journal. Current evidence suggests that the line has been crossed. Now he is attempting to rally support for a limited military attack. According to the Washington Post, six out of 10 Americans are skeptical of the military’s ability to do any permanent good in the Middle-East. Obtaining the approval of congress will also be an uphill battle for Obama, with majorities from every party opposing military action.
4: The NSA has compromised online security for the sake of national security.
A leaked intelligence budget from Edward Snowden has brought to light the NSA’s ability to circumvent or decrypt the security barriers that are supposed to keep commercial transactions, emails, and data transfers away from prying eyes. In the introduction of the document, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper mentions the NSA’s investment in “groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit internet traffic.” You can read parts of the budget in the Washington Post.
According to the Post, the NSA has been paying large companies for access to their networks. Written in MIT’s Technology Review, if the NSA has installed backdoors that grant it access to our information, other even less scrupulous forces might be able to exploit these vulnerabilities.
3: Egypt’s democracy crumbles away.
The Egyptian military has continued to crack down on Islamist rebels in increasingly violent confrontations. Since the overthrow of the nation’s first democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi, approximately a thousand of his supporters have died, according to the Guardian.
Amid the turmoil, the cult of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is growing. The image of the man who led the army that deposed Morsi is being baked into cakes and other sweets. Additionally, sandwiches have been named after him and local memes have been made, according to Al Arabiya. The Washington Post reported that, Sisi, the most powerful man in Egypt, does not explicitly rule out the possibility of running for president when pressed.
A timeline of Egypt’s recent political history is available on the New York Times website.
2: Voyager 1 has left the solar system.
According to NASA, their researchers have determined that Voyager 1 first entered interstellar space sometime in August last year. The probe is now 19 billion kilometers from Earth. Its twin, Voyager 2, is 15 billion kilometers from Earth. Earlier this February, this image of Voyager 1’s radio signal was captured with the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Baseline Array telescope.
credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF
Listen to the sounds of space here:
And click here for Voyager’s mission page.
1: On September 5, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo completed its second powered flight.
SpaceShipTwo will eventually take tourists 50,000 feet up to experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Tickets will cost you $250,000. Order them here, or watch this footage of the latest test flight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh7HOu5-o10
Head to Wired to read a breakdown of the video. Commercial flights will start sometime next year, launching from Virgin Galactic’s New Mexico spaceport.
credit: Virgin Galactic