CNN 10 9/20/2021 ~ 9/24/2021

Go to cnn.com/cnn10 for the latest video 

Monday, September 20, 2021

The US military is apologizing for what it has called a "tragic mistake". On August 26th, a terrorist group called ISIS-K launched a bombing near Kabul airport as the US military completed its rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan. Three days later, they launched a drone strike on a car that was believed to be carrying a terrorist and weapons. However, people nearby said that civilians had been killed, and on Friday, the Pentagon admitted to the mistake, saying an aid worker and 9 children had been killed in the strike due to a fatal miscommunication. We learned that in the minutes before the attack, the CIA warned military officials that children could be in danger. Military officials have said that effective anti-terrorist attacks in Afghanistan are still possible, but infinitely harder without boots on the ground. On the US-Mexico border, a new crisis is unfolding. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are flooding the border after President Biden granted them temporary protected status in the US in light of the recent natural disasters in the country. That order has since been rescinded, and border control agents are now in the process of trying to process all the immigrants for deportation. In the meantime, camps are already going up in Del Rio, Texas, as thousands of migrants await.

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

A volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma had a major eruption on Sunday. This was expected - geologists had seen dozens of small earthquakes around the area beforehand - and several hundred residents and tourists have been evacuated from the area around the volcano. The lava has damaged several homes, but no casualties or injuries have been reported thus far. Eruptions occur because magma, or molten rock, deep within the Earth's core rises and comes to the surface, turning into lava. If the magma is thin and runny, gases can escape easily, leading to slowly flowing lava, like what we have seen in Hawaii and the current eruption. But if it is thick and sticky, that traps gases, leading to bigger explosions. Seahorses are a majestic seawater creature, that, like so many others, is becoming endangered. One of the biggest threats in bottom trawling, where fishers drag nets along the sea bottom, which is an extremely effective way to harvest many popular kinds of seafood but also devastates ecosystems. Project Seahorse is one of the organizations trying to change that through collecting data and spreading awareness about the creatures.

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

In New York City, the 193 member nations of the United Nations are kicking off the 76th UN General Assembly. On Tuesday, the General Debate, where representatives from each country can voice their concerns, began. In his first speech as US President, President Biden talked about the issues of COVID-19, climate change, and human rights. Consumer spending is still down from pre-pandemic levels, and spending wasn't as high as expected over the summer because of the Delta variant, leaving stores and restaurants with even more challenges. Employment did not go up in areas such as leisure and hospitality last month, leaving employers to try new solutions. One of them is robot workers, who assist the human ones. Owners say they aren't taking away anyone's jobs because no one is coming out to work, possibly because of the unemployment benefits from the most recent stimulus bill.

Thursday, September 23, 2021

There are new travel restrictions in place for the United States. The list of banned countries suffering from high levels of COVID-19 was expanded. However, fully vaccinated individuals who provide additional tracing information can now travel to the US as tourists. The new rules are expected to go into effect in early November. Yesterday was the second equinox of the year, the autumnal equinox for those in the Northern Hemisphere and the vernal equinox for those in the south. This means that the lengths of day and night were almost the same at the equator. For those far south and north, this means that they will start seeing daylight extremes soon, such as long daylight or night hours. Up at the North Pole, people will also start to see the northern lights more often. In areas with lots of trees, you may also start seeing the red leaves. This phenomenon occurs because the chlorophyll normally in the leaves that photosynthesize light and produce green colors go away in the winter, allowing red and yellow pigments in the leaves to show.

Friday, September 24, 2021

Congress is in turmoil over the debt ceiling. It was first established in 1939 to set a limit on how much the US Federal Government is allowed to borrow. It has been raised time and again in the past regardless of which party is in power because the government operates on debt. Right now, the debt is at 28.5 trillion dollars, right up near the limit, and if it is not raised, the government could be unable to pay its bills, leading to a shutdown. The Democrats say that Republicans should be "responsible" and support their increases; the Republicans say that the Democrats should do it themselves since they have control of both chambers of Congress and the White House. Neither side wants to look like it is acting unilaterally, but if a resolution is not reached soon, it could have disastrous consequences for the economy. Nigeria is the biggest country in Africa, but many of its inhabitants live in poverty. Around 80 million of its inhabitants live with food insecurity, but at the same time, a lot of the food sold in open-air markets is going to waste because of the Nigerian heat. Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu is trying to solve this problem with coldhubs. These solar-powered, low cost refrigeration units can keep food fresh for several weeks - enabling farmers to maximize profit and making sure people can get food.

CNN 10 8/30/2021 ~ 9/3/2021

Go to cnn.com/cnn10 for the latest video 

Monday, August 30, 2021

Hurricane Ida made landfall in Lousiana on Sunday, devastating many areas. It's near New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina caused levies to fail and catastrophic flooding 2005, but dams have been improved since then and are projected to prevent the worst of the floods. Part of Ida's devastation is the rate at which it worsened. It wasn't even considered a tropical storm on Thursday; it is now a category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds. This is an example of a process known as rapid intensification, where a storm sees an increase in wind speeds by at least 35 mph in 24 hours. This usually occurs in warm waters with no sheer. Sheer is a phenomenon when a bunch of different winds go in many directions at once. This is what occurs in tornadic thunderstorms, but it is bad for hurricanes, which want one strong wind. We are one day away from President Biden's August 31st deadline for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It began a few months ago, and the Taliban has quickly regained power since then, leading to a frenzy of evacuations at the Kabul International Airport. Last week, the ISIS-K terrorist group carried out bombings at the airport, prompting the US to attack several people it says are strategists.

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

After Hurricane Ida passed through Lousiana on Sunday, officials and residents are beginning to get a sense of the damage inflicted by the category 4 hurricane. It took out houses and powerlines and dumped as much as 2 feet of rain on many areas. The hurricane has weakened into a storm system after passing over land, but it is still projected to dump lots and lots of rain over the New England states. Cooling systems use massive amounts of energy and put a lot of strain on the electrical grid, mostly from the process of cooling refrigerants. SkyCool is looking to relieve some of that energy by taking advantage of a natural process called radiative cooling. It occurs in things like grass, which can get cooler than the air around it by releasing infrared heat. Normally, this only works at night, but the material SkyCool has developed can work in direct sunlight, cooling the liquid that passes through it and reducing the need for electric cooling.

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

On Monday night, the last of the US military planes left Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan on the eve of the August 31st deadline for the end of US military involvement in the Asian country. When Biden first announced the US withdrawal, he said that the Afghan military was strong enough to fend off the Taliban, the extremist Islamic group that ruled Afghanistan before the US invasion two decades ago. The Taliban had hosted a terrorist group that carried out the 9/11 attacks. However, the Afghan military fell in a matter of weeks as the Taliban pushed all the way to Kabul airport, the last US-held area in the country, where frantic evacuations took place. After the US left, the Taliban declared victory. The State Department said that a few hundred Americans and allies who had wanted to leave were still in the country after the withdrawal. The last time the Taliban was in power, it ruled oppressively with a strict interpretation of Islam, and though it says it has changed, many are still skeptical. In California, the Caldor Fire in South Lake Tahoe is already the 17th largest fire in state history and the largest current fire in the nation. It has burned dozens of homes and put 7 states under AQI alerts. Calfire says that it is 16% contained as of last night. China has instituted a new law banning online games during the week and restricted them to 1 hour per weekend for minors. It says that gaming is detrimental to young people, and has also cracked down on afterschool tutoring and "celebrity worshipping". It's unclear how this law will be enforced, though the government says it will be through game distributors, and many analysts believe it is just a way for the government to enforce its ideology on the younger generation.

Thursday, September 2, 2021

After Hurricane Ida made landfall as a category 4 storm on Sunday, it has left many parts of Louisiana in shambles. There are still many people trapped by floodwaters, supply shortages are common in many areas, and gasoline is in high demand because people need them to power generators. On top of that, the temperature is expected to be extremely high this weekend, and most people don't have air conditioners or electricity to power them. Another dilemma facing many residents who had their homes destroyed - will they rebuild or move away? The hardest-hit areas are still under floodwaters and have seen damage far beyond what even Katrina had, and they face a tough decision of whether to continue living on the vulnerable gulf coast. FPV (first-person view) drones are allowing filmmakers to capture scenes like never before, those shots of diving down cliffs and moving right along the ground. But a lot more work goes in behind the scenes than one would expect. The controller, who is receiving a live feed of the drone's view, has to be within radio range, and it's nerve-wracking every single time, wondering if you can get the dive right, whether the drone will come back. Thousands of hours of practice are needed to get everything just right. 

Friday, September 3, 2021

The remnants of Hurricane Ida continue up the East Coast, dumping rain and flooding areas as far up as New York. Even though it is no longer classified as a hurricane, it is still dumping inches of rain, filling up New York subways and causing governors to declare states of emergency. Sequoia trees, which are only found in California's Sierra Nevadas, have survived for thousands of years. But the recent droughts, invasive beetles, and wildfires have weakened the almost indestructible species. The wildfires this year killed almost 15% of all the living sequoias. However, fires in and of themselves are not bad for sequoias. In fact, they need fires in order to germinate their seeds and start the next generation of trees.

Crying in H Mart

By Michelle Zauner

    Michelle Zauner was born to a Korean woman and an American man, and for much of her early life she tried to hide her Korean side because in Eugene, Oregon, where she lived, there weren't many Korean people. She also writes about her changing dynamic with her mother, from childhood, adolescence, and during her mother's years with cancer.

    Her father had a difficult childhood, involving bad parents and drugs. He had managed to break away from the cycle and considered it an achievement that he even had a child, so most of her care was done by her mother.

    Her mother was interesting, not a protective or harsh one, somewhere in between. She was all about keeping things orderly. As a child, Zauner always strived to impress her mother, always doing things she asked for or would want in search of praise. But as she grew up, the classic teenage rift appeared. Her mother focused on her grades and college, while Michelle wanted to become an artist. Eventually, it got so bad, that Michelle left the house for a few weeks and refused to go to school, which ultimately ended up in her coming back when she became a literal "starving artist".

    After college, she spends a few years in a part-time band and other part-time jobs, visiting her mother every so often. Even though they parted in a rough manner, they are inextricably tied together and their visits are always emotional.

    Then comes the calamity that the majority of the book explores. Her mother, who was in great shape, gets cancer. Michelle immediately leaves Philadephia to return to Eugene, where the routine of the past few years is broken. Her mother rapidly declines, and a whole cohort of women try to help her get through. The prospect of her mother dying causes a sort of floodgate to open for Michelle, a new desire to reconnect with her homeland. She tries Korean recipes, visits Korea with her mother for a last time.

    In the end, it is a story of family and culture, how the author was tied to it all, no matter how much she tries to escape it.

The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good

By Michael J. Sandel

The meritocratic model is something that is all around us, even in my own pursuit to vindicate myself in the mad race for college, but something that I never could put a name to. This book helped me understand how this came about and its effects on society.

“The Tyranny of Merit” is like a brilliant response to that misguided but well-meaning math teacher from the viewpoint, as it were, of a kid in some back-row seat of any classroom in a Rust Belt, prairie town or inner-city school in America.

As Hochschild puts so well, Sandel points out the problem with a philosophy ingrained into American society. Every teacher talks about grades and degrees, but people striving toward this only widens the societal divide.

    Today's social model is based on the philosophy of meritocracy - where the successful deserve their success and the poor deserve their poverty. It is based on the idea that you deserve what you get, and it is what Sandel claims were at the heart of Donald Trump's election in 2016 and the populist uprisings around the world.

    The American Dream, the one of rising, has become increasingly less an "American" dream. Today, rich parents can afford to help so much, and poor parents so little, that it's become virtually impossible to move between social classes. But parents still tell their children that if they try their best they will succeed - and when rich children succeed, they look down upon the unsuccessful, and even the poor believe that they deserve their place in life. It inspires hubris in place of humility from a position they were given by luck.

    And this is exactly what Trump took advantage of. The oppressed working class, who lack degrees and struggle to put food on the table, was tired of the Democrat's talk of rising and meritocracy, which politicians had relied on for decades. He utilized this discontent and used it in his favor. Sandel's solution lies in acknowledging the oppressed and empathizing with their pain.

    The true tyranny of globalization and the meritocracy that it brought with it is that it left too many behind in a place where everyone, even they themselves, looked down on them.

One reason, perhaps, is that many of us need what he does so well: help us grapple with the unexpected and uncomfortable questions that history delivers us.

 All of these create controversies that are so important to face in our society but are hard to think about alone. Books like these create good starting points for talking about them.

So you who are highly educated, Sandel concludes, should understand that you’re contributing to a resentment fueling the toxic politics you deplore. Respect the vast diversity of talents and contributions others make to this nation. Empathize with the undeserved shame of the less educated. Eat a little humble pie.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/books/review/the-tyranny-of-merit-michael-j-sandel.html