Every week I get an email with a summary of news. It's far from dry and boring but it certainly doesn't cover everything and it misses things I would like to know about or that I'd find interesting. So, this is my own round-up. It might not be every week, it might be more than once a week, it might turn out to be monthly. It might not interest you, it might bore you to death, it might be all repetitive. But it's the news that interests me and I'd like to keep a kind of "newspaper clippings" blog that might be fun to browse through again in the future. Plus, I don't read the news anywhere near as much as I feel like I should to be an informed citizen so this is an added incentive.
Moscow hit 100 degrees F yesterday - for the first time in the 130 years of record-keeping. I'm surprised they're managing to deal with the heat wave at all. While it is sad that there are any death, I'm surprised only 25 have died so far. I have trouble beginning to fathom just how much land has been destroyed with wildfires - 25.5 million acres? Searching for equivalence shows that's almost 11 Yellowstones. Okay, so big. It is the size of developed land in the U.S.A in 1960. A better comparison perhaps, but our developed land has more than doubled since then and I wasn't around in 1960. "The land area of the lower 48 states is approximately 1.9 billion acres. To put things in perspective, keep in mind that California is 103 million acres, Montana 94 million acres, Oregon 60 million acres and Maine 20 million acres." The commonly used yardstick of Rhode Island is tricky, for the exact same reason that measuring coastlines technically lead to infinity. But, like the guy says, the smallest state with no coast line is Vermont, which is 9,249.56 square miles, or 5,919,718.4 acres. Okay so 4 and just under 1/3 Vermonts. Not sure I'm any closer to understanding how big the area is beyond "like, whoa, a lot." A bit more detailed search about land size than I'd intended. Moving on ...
Heaviest hailstone recorded in the United States! Okay, maybe not the world's largest or even the nation's largest in circumference ever recorded. And it may have been smaller than it originally was since the farmer kept opening the freezer to show it to people before the official measurement. But it's big and makes me wonder whether how much damage it could have done if it hadn't simply landed on the lawn but, say, a cow or his house.
As someone who holds a library science degree, I am supportive of embracing new technologies and cheer when I hear people mention their ebook readers have led them to read a lot more than they would have otherwise. As a backpacker, I am fascinated by the idea of how many books you can cram on one of them and thus (hypothetically) freeing up space. But as a reader? Nope, just not interested. So darn expensive, would probably keep the tree versions, would get them from the library if I can, wouldn't want my books "accidentally" deleted, needs to be charged, wouldn't take it backpacking anyway, and sometimes - shock! - I am weary of using electronic devices. However, I keep a tab on ebook readers and this idea of lower prices is definitely of interest to me. I think if they went low enough I would get one to see how it went - they can be handy and I don't think they're going away anytime soon. It's good to keep in touch with what people use that libraries might need to pick up on.
Six hours of taunting in front of 400 important people?? Improvement because they used to be sent to prison camps if they performed badly? And this is after the government had banned live broadcasting of the games in North Korea because they knew they were going to do badly. And then they decided it wasn't humiliating after all after they lost 2-1 in their second game so they lifted the ban. Good grief. Oh, and I like this part:
"Also, coach Kim Jong-hun reportedly has been relegated to a construction job and expelled from the Workers' Party of Korea. (They make him a blue collar guy, but won't let him be in the Workers' Party? Go figure.)"
I really want to get my hands on a translated copy of this book. I would read it with criticism but it's got to be extremely interesting to read. The reason for the confiscation of the biography of Kim Jong-Il? "The embassy officials said it contained false information because it made references to other texts published in North America about Kim, son of North Korea's late founder, Kim Il-sung, the country's "eternal" president."
Someone needs to finally figure this out. It doesn't seem like that complicated of a whodunnit, but then you add the words "nuclear bombs" and "world politics" to the picture and it's impossible to solve.
Did the president make a bad move showing up on "The View?" Well, I'm unfamiliar with the show and I haven't watched the particular episode but I think it's a lot of hullabaloo over what should just be a way for citizens to connect with the president and hear what he has to say. Katie Couric is right to say "it's not beneath him" but I think I agree that instead of reaching out to people who need to hear from him, it might have been a bit more like preaching to the choir. It is true that his rankings have been declining so he might have needed to bolster the spirits of his supporters. Also, it didn't hurt the show any since they were being considered for termination.
Well, that's enough for "News Roundup #1." Let me know if you liked/disliked it.
