| | | | No, Smart Tech Can't Save Us from Mass Shootings | | So-called smart firearm technology can help make guns safer. But don't expect it to prevent incidents like Sunday night's mass shooting in Las Vegas, writes Lily Hay Newman in Wired.
"It's clear that the smart gun, lock, and safe technologies that could genuinely save thousands of lives in the United States every year—by preventing accidental deaths, or the resale of stolen weapons—won't magically reduce mass shootings," Newman writes. "And given the permissiveness of US gun laws, the inability to use a stolen gun seems more likely to slow, rather than stop, that sort of attack. And absent any other substantive gun security technology in development, the industry has no tech-forward solution to try to stop attacks like Las Vegas."
"Smart guns have extensive demonstrable value. But a solution to the mass shooting epidemic in the U.S. appears to rest in the political and regulatory arena—a place that has shown as little eagerness to embrace gun safety advancement as the industry itself. - Australia to America: Please, learn from our experience. "It is incomprehensible to us, as Australians, that a country so proud and great can allow itself to be savaged again and again by its own citizens," The Sydney Morning Herald editorializes.
"We point over and over to our own success with gun control in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, that Australia has not seen a mass shooting since and that we are still a free and open society. We have not bought our security at the price of liberty; we have instead consented to a social contract that states lives are precious, and not to be casually ended by lone madmen. But it is a message that means nothing to those whose ideology is impervious to evidence." The study adds: "It has been estimated that, collectively, fatal and nonfatal firearm-related injuries resulted in more than $700 million in annual inpatient costs between 2006 and 2014, and an annual cost of $174 billion related to lost work, health care costs, criminal justice claims, and decreased quality of life in 2010." "Those living in an area where a mass shooting occurred had a 20 per cent increase in the probability of supporting stricter gun control compared to those living furthest away."
| | Germany Gets (Really) Tough on Hate Speech | | Sharing hate speech online in Germany is poised to be a lot tougher after a new law went into effect Sunday that imposes fines of up to €50 million ($59 million) on tech companies that "consistently fail to remove illegal content from their digital platforms within 24 hours," Politico EU reports. But not everyone is happy about Germany's trailblazing.
"The law—known locally as NetzDG—has caused deep divisions within Germany between advocates that want West Coast U.S. tech companies to take more responsibility over what is published online and free speech campaigners who argue the legislation goes too far in policing the digital world," Politico EU says.
"It also has raised hackles within the European Commission and with American policymakers about Germany's crackdown on hate speech. The country's proposed fines represent the largest financial penalties for such activities anywhere in the Western world."
| | How to Understand China's President | | | Chinese President Xi Jinping's personality dominates the life of his country like no leader since Mao. To understand where that personality might take China during his next five years in office, look no further than the makeover Beijing is getting ahead of this month's Communist Party congress, argues Andrew Browne in the Wall Street Journal.
"Authorities call it 'beautification.' In reality, it is population control on an almost unimaginable scale: An overcrowded city is being thinned out and reimagined as the cultural hub of a megalopolis, a series of cities linked by rail, subway and highways that will eventually embrace 130 million people," Browne writes.
"In the face of bulldozers, tens of thousands of migrants—second-class citizens in the capital, many of them denied access to schools and medical services—are fleeing outward. Central Beijing will be for the elites, with gleaming convenience stores where migrants had peddled steamed dumplings and bicycle-repair services.
"This is Mr. Xi's signature domestic project. It is an exercise in gigantism that requires centralized, top-down control." | | To Beat Separatists, Get Boring | | Spain should take a leaf out of the playbook Canada used when dealing with its own separatists, argues David Frum in The Atlantic. The key to seeing off Quebec nationalism? Making the public see just how complicated, expensive—and dull—separation would be.
"Just one problem: Spain owes about a trillion euros in debt. How is that to be apportioned? Does Catalonia owe its 16 percent population share or its 19 percent economic share? And what about all the pensions?" Frum writes.
"But the precondition for this kind of 'make it boring' strategy against secession is that it requires an absolute prohibition on state repression or violence against secessionists. Canada recognized that truth. So did the United Kingdom in its dealings with the Scottish Nationalists. Violence inflames passions—and passion is exactly what is wanted by those with the weaker argument. In a modern democratic welfare state, the secessionists almost always have the weaker argument, because the costs and risks of change are certainly higher than those of a decent and reasonable status quo. So the secessionists seek to incite. In Catalonia, they succeeded, and all of Europe and Europe's allies has to worry about the consequences that will follow."
| | Is that a Grain of Salt? Or a Quintillion Nanorobots? | | Movies like Innerspace and Ant-Man are at least a step closer to reality now that British scientists have created the world's first molecular robot—with "an arm which can manipulate individual molecules," writes Philip Perry for Big Think.
"Imagine self-healing materials. Tear your jacket? No problem. It just grows back. In the realm of energy, nanotech could be used to improve solar cells and develop ultra-capacitors for energy storage, which could help us embrace green energy and jettison fossil fuels. In total, scientists believe nanotech can help us to develop multi-component systems that are smart, autonomous, and adapt to the environment or changing circumstances." | | | | | | |
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