Newsweek 01/25/2019

1965 “Businessmen love it. Workers fear it. The government frets and investigates and wonders what to do about it,” Newsweek said of technology’s swift rise. It left society at an inflection point. For manufacturers, the possibilities in industry seemed boundless, but the fret over joblessness loomed large: 35,000 jobs were vanishing each week in the United States. Some things never change—in fact, they multiply. Over 40 years later and the fretting continues, with now millions of jobs disappearing thanks to automation and artificial intelligence. 1970 An economic and industrial renaissance was causing Americans to begin to “take stock of what full production does to their quality of life.” The big “issue of the ’70s,” the report said, was ushering in the Age of Conservation, where ecology and pollution were “daily headlines.” The ’80s…

Activists burn effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 8, after the country’s lower house of Parliament passed legislation that would grant citizenship to members of certain non-Muslim religious minorities. Ostensibly advanced to protect Hindus, Christians and Sikhs who have settled in the country, the measure has drawn criticism for excluding Muslims—a blatant move, they say, for Modi to grow his Hindu base before May’s general election. The bill now heads to the upper chamber, where it faces resistance from the opposition Congress party. FRANCK FIFE/AFP/GETTY; JASON CONNOLLY/AFP/GETTY; BIJU BORO/AFP/GETTY BIJU BORO…

WHEN REPORTS ARRIVED IN EARLY JANUARY that Jamal al-Badawi, a long-sought Al-Qaeda militant, had been incinerated in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen on New Year’s Day, President Donald Trump let out a whoop. “Our GREAT MILITARY has delivered justice for the heroes lost and wounded in the cowardly attack on the USS Cole,” Trump tweeted on January 6. Badawi, at large for over a decade, had quarterbacked the October 12, 2000, attack on the guided-missile destroyer with an explosives-laden boat as it lay at anchor in the Yemeni port of Aden. The Pentagon had taken nearly a week to verify the news, perhaps keeping in mind that many a top terrorism target, including Osama bin Laden and Islamic State leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, were once declared dead, only to pop up later.…

DEMOCRATS HAVE ENTERED THE Great Expectations era. The 116th Congress, with its diverse, female and feisty class of new House members, is offering up some of the progressive wing’s wildest dreams. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has already broached a crowd-pleasing, eat-the-rich 70 percent tax on multimillionaires to pay for stopping climate change. Others are reveling—profanely—in the possibility of ousting a president. “We’re going to go in there, and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker,” Representative Rashida Tlaib told a crowd. The progressives are unabashedly communitarian and social justice warriors, arriving in D.C. as a new socialism, somewhere to the left of Senator Elizabeth Warren, is ascendant. According to a Gallup poll in August, Americans aged 18 to 29 are as positive about socialism (51 percent) as they are about capitalism (45 percent), a…

Interest in Earth’s only natural satellite is running high now that China’s Chang’e 4 has landed on the far side. China plans a sample-return mission later this year and hopes to put astronauts on the ground by 2036. Many countries and entrepreneurs are interested in mining the moon for helium-3, a potential source of clean energy, and ice that could be converted to rocket fuel for a trip onward to Mars. 220,400 Amount of fuel, in pounds, to power vehicles leaving the lunar surface from a base. 27 → Number of days it takes for the moon to rotate on its axis—the same time it takes to orbit the Earth, which is why we always see the same side. 59% Portion of the moon’s surface we can see from Earth. 1/6 The moon’s gravity,…

IN A WORLD OF POST-TRUTH politics, more and more parents are concerned that the health risks of vaccines outweigh their benefits. Too many people believe, for instance, that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine could be linked with autism, despite numerous scientific studies to the contrary. A growing anti-vaccine movement, in which parents opt out of vaccinations for their children, has led to dangerous outbreaks of whooping cough, measles and other preventable diseases. To counter misleading and outright false information on vaccines, health experts must find better ways to explain to the public why we know that vaccines are relatively safe and helpful to society. At present, pediatricians don’t bring up the topic of childhood immunizations until the first week after childbirth. That’s the worst possible time for new parents, who…