February 17, 2015
- West Virginia declares state of emergency after a train crashes, leaking Bakken crude oil into the Kanawha River.
- Boston's contract prohibits non-union workers; it's instead paying prisoner pennies to shovel record snowfall.
- Citing State Dept. guidelines, UMass is not accepting Iranian students for programs in science and engineering.
- France's real problem.
- Zadie Smith on Key and Peele: "The 'race card' is switched for something more like the whole pack fanned out."
- Hacking group infects tens of thousands of computers around the world, and may have ties to the NSA.
- One of the internet's first images was a promo for a particle physics laboratory's parody pop group.
- Belarus argues against open UN meetings.
- The Washington Monument is actually 10 inches shorter than we thought it was.
- Somehow, LAX public announcer mistakenly tells passengers a shooter is on the loose.
- The Texans who refused fracking fortunes.
- Fashion world rebukes wearable tech: People wear what's cool, not what works.
- For the first time in seven years, flip-phone sales rose in Japan while shipments of smartphones dropped.
- Watergate tapes as poetry.
- A 1979 NORAD computer simulation brought the US perilously close to World War III, a la WarGames.
- An oral history of shoegaze.
- Reviewing unmarked graves.