Everything You Need to Know About Last Week’s News #47

In reverse order of importance:

Scientists have recovered some blood from a frozen woolly mammoth, but it may not get us any closer to cloning one.

A new study says mothers are now the primary breadwinners in 40% of US households with children.

Planetary Resources is using a million dollar Kickstarter campaign to raise public awareness for an orbiting telescope project. Only $25 to “take a selfie in space”!

The USDA implemented new country-of-origin labeling rules for meat sold in the US, illustrating the classic struggle between transparency and excessive regulation.

There are massive anti-government protests in Turkey that started as an attempt to stop a park from being replaced with a shopping mall but apparently became a tipping point for discontent with the growing totalitarianism of the Islamist rulers. Or something like that.

We learned more about the confusing events regarding the FBI killing a suspect related to the Boston marathon bombing.

Another week, another drone strike in Pakistan. This time we got the Taliban’s #2 again.

John McCain sneaked into Syria to meet with some rebels. We also heard talk about Russia trying to supply the Syrian regime with weapons, and how Israel feels about that.

The coronavirus continued to spread.

Everything You Need to Know About Last Week’s News #45

In reverse order of importance:

O. J. Simpson was in the news for some reason or other.

CORRECTION: That one spot on the planet did NOT reach 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide the previous week. Apparently this number is a little more “calculated knowledge” than I thought. No wonder the entire global ecosystem didn’t collapse yet!

Hundreds of women underwent double mastectomies. One of them was named Angelina.

The CDC discovered that over half of public swimming pools have fecal matter in them. Well, duh. You should see what’s in the ocean.

We learned that two months ago NASA spotted the brightest lunar meteor explosion ever recorded. NASA also broke its distance record for off-planet driving, although Curiosity still has about a mile to go to beat the socialists.

A tornado ripped through north central Texas and killed half a dozen people. Fortunately, however, tornado deaths this year are running well below the average of even recent years.

Abortion provider Kermit Gosnell was sentenced to life in prison for killing babies after delivering them alive in extremely unsanitary and dangerous conditions.

North Korea launched some short-range missiles into the sea, which news accounts say is actually “fairly routine” and “not uncommon.” So Kim is still wiling to talk big and waste weapons to keep South Korea and the US on their toes but still not yet willing to actually do anything stupid.

Things are getting worse in socialist Venezuela, what with rampant inflation, violent crime, and shortages of goods. I wonder if the recent plunge in US oil imports isn’t helping.

The federal government took a bigger scandalous beating last week. Apparently the IRS targeting of conservative groups was wider than previously thought, and even involved asking questions about what books people were reading and what kinds of prayers they were praying. Also the person in charge of that division is now in charge of the Obamacare division, which actually kinda justifies conservative fears about the IRS now being involved in healthcare, although on the other hand said person was appointed during Bush’s term, so how anti-conservative can she really be? Anyway, while all this was going on we also learned that the Department of Justice secretly subpoenaed two months of phone records from the Associated Press in response to a whistleblower leak that really did not threaten national security. Good times!