Or, Everything You Need To Know About Last Week’s News
In reverse order of importance:
Anderson Cooper is gay. Andy Griffith is dead. Justin Bieber got a speeding ticket. It’s probably the hottest and driest in most of the US since the 1930’s. Some think climate change is more to blame for this time than the last time. Some don’t.
The irrelevant celebrity campaign coverage continued. Obama is complaining about being outspent in campaigns. Conservatives are convinced he’s lying. Romney seems to have changed his mind about whether or not the “mandate” is a “tax.” (I guess both candidates have now argued it both ways?)
Scientists discovered and/or proved the Higgs boson (badly nicknamed “God particle.”) It seems they measured stuff with newer levels of precision, crossing some arbitrary line of confidence that made it worth announcing as a Really Big Deal for Science.
June’s unemployment report was expectedly not-terrible-but-not-good. The right muttered about “Obama’s failed policies” and the left screamed that Congress and/or the Federal Reserve need to “do something.”
The euro laid low in the headlines, vaguely staggering on with more meetings and dealings. There’s supposed to be another Last Chance to Fix Everything meeting on July 9.
Libya held elections following their dictator’s demise last year. Meanwhile, more important military officials are defecting from Syria’s government. This could be awesome. It’s hard to sustain totalitarian rule when your minions keep joining the other side. Modern technology like the Internet has made it easier to see the coolness of non-dictatorship, encouraging civilian resistance. I wonder if it’s also encouraging internal implosion. (More hope for North Korea?) For now, though, it’s just getting messier in Syria, with Turkey and Lebanon starting to get caught in the fray.