Ready, Aim, Fire?
Short-range missiles were reportedly fired from North Korea on Wednesday and Thursday this week, according to South Korean media in a report in the New York Times. Even though South Korean government officials have refused to comment on the accuracy of the reports, the news has stirred new speculation about the military capabilities of North Korea. North Korean officials have announced that the country will conduct military exercises in celebration of the 100th birthday of Kim Il-Sung and that one of the operations will be the launch of a satellite. But this has obviously done little to assuage the fears of the international community, especially countries that identify North Korea as a national security threat. For instance, Japanese government officials have approved an order enabling the country to destroy a North Korean rocket that is deemed to be a...
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Hungry for a Story: the Hunger Games
The release of the first movie in the Hunger Games trilogy made a huge splash on the big screens. After its first weekend, Hunger Games had the third best opening of all time only behind Harry Potter: the Deathly Hallows Part II and The Dark Knight. The film adaptation stars twenty-year old Jennifer Lawrence, an Oscar nominee. The three part book series, written by Suzanne Collins, is a story of a girl, Katniss Everdeen, as she volunteers to take her sister’s place in a life and death reality show in a futuristic world. Although it has been compared to Twilight, the Hunger Games tells more than just the story of a love struck girl dealing with a plethora of teenage emotions. In fact, multiple ways of analyzing the film have come to fruition. First, Katniss’s story is a parallel...
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Occupy WallsTweet
Twitter has often been renowned as one of the best tools for protestors of the modern era. It allows large groups to coordinate, spread information and ideas, and get a message out to a vast number of people very quickly. It was credited with helping Arab Spring protests in Egypt[1] and Tunisia[2], and was even used to assess the effect of NATO airstrikes in Libya.[3] When Occupy Wall Street first started up, Twitter was once again used to coordinate protests and spread information—though not, to the best of my knowledge, to coordinate any airstrikes. Several months afterward, however, the beast that is Twitter seems to have turned on its masters. The NYPD is using protestors’ tweets in order to prove that they had an intention to break the law.[4] Whereas a case might previously have been thrown out...
Read MoreUEFA Champions League Quarterfinal Preview
We’re getting to the business end of the European football season now, with the first legs of the quarterfinals of the Champions League starting tomorrow. Here’s how the bracket stacks up: APOEL Nicosia v. Real Madrid Marseille v. Bayern Munich Benfica v. Chelsea AC Milan v. Barcelona APOEL v. Real Madrid APOEL Nicosia have been the underdog story of the season, being the first Cypriot side to qualify for the knockout stages after surprisingly winning a group including European regulars Porto, Shakhtar Donetsk, and Zenit St. Petersburg. In the round of 16, APOEL knocked out Lyon on penalties after two rather pragmatic performances. However, you’ve got to think their luck has just about run out – as they’ve run into one of the joint favorites for the tournament along with Barcelona. APOEL have been underestimated this season,...
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Censored China crumbling?
Censorship increased on social-networking websites in China in the wake of the fall of Bo Xilai and the torrent of rumors about his decline. On popular Chinese websites like Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, words relevant to the political incident and any conspiracies surrounding it were banned after speculative discussions had surfaced among bloggers. The recent escalation in online censorship reveals the distrust between the Chinese government and Chinese citizens. The censors indicate that government officials do not trust the masses to disregard the rumors and remain unquestioningly loyal to the regime. The people, on the other hand, have become more speculative as censors foster the impression that the government has hidden certain details of the incident from being publicized. The censors also reveal disconnection between the two parties. The censors abridged or distorted the information available to...
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