3 minutes to midnight

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Hey, here's a great way to start your weekend!

According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which each year updates the hands on a clock meant to symbolize how close we are to the annihilation of the human race, or midnight. For the last three years, the world was five minutes from the end. Today, we're three minutes away.

The two-minute move is symbolic, but it gives a sense of how grim the outlook some of the best scientific minds have for humanity. The decision to move the hands forward, said Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists executive director Kennette Benedict, came about largely due to the threats posed by anthropogenic climate change and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

"World leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from catastrophe," Benedict said Thursday at an event held in the auditorium of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "Stunning governmental failures have imperiled civilization on a global scale."

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the clock in 1947 to use "the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet." The closest the hands have ever come to midnight was 11:58, in 1953, after the U.S. and the then-Soviet Union began testing thermonuclear bombs.

Which mirrors the sentiments in an episode on HBO's The Newsroom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534&v=XM0uZ9mfOUI

(no subject)

[k1w11.livejournal.com]

France:
-Student gets arrested for sharing the second cartoon on facebook.
1st cartoon: "The koran sucks" and "Doesn't protect from bullets."
2nd cartoon: "Charlie Hebdo sucks" and "Doesn't protect from bullets."
The second cartoon is a parody of the original cover illustration of Cherlie Hebdo.
Click the pics for full size.


   

-French comedian gets arrested for saying ""As far as I am concerned, I feel I am Charlie Coulibaly." on his facebook.
-15 year old girl gets arrested for saying on twitter that she supports the Kouachi brothers.
-Lots of other people got arrested in the last two weeks for stating their (to some offensive) opinions.
Jail sentences up to 4 years in some cases have already been handed out.

Seems like free speech isn't allowed for everyone.

Bully!

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Good question ...

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]