Catching up on a Decade of Crazy (Science and Society)

A few things of note in the worlds of science and society have happened in the world during the 9 years and 3 months since my blog post post before last.  So, let's recap the most notable events so that blogging of the mundane may recommence:

2005 (post-June)

• August 29.  Hurricane Katrina floods New Orleans. White House largely blamed by Congressional bipartisan committees for the abysmal response of government agencies.
• DECEASED: Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Pryor, Johnny Carson, William Rehnquist.

2006

• August 24.  Pluto no longer a planet, now "dwarf planet", says IAU.
• October 3.  North Korea gets nukes.

Team America.

• December 30.  Saddam Hussein executed.
• DECEASED: Syd Barrett, Steve Irwin and that Iraqi dictator.

2007

• World economy begins to implode as the shit hits the fan over sub-prime mortgage shenanigans (and other financial non-sense).  Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns go under.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nationalized.  AIG and Citigroup bailed out.  Lots of normal people screwed, executives go unpunished.  Thank you, S.E.C. and G.W.B.!
• June 29.  iPhone.

Source: powerbookmedic.com

• DECEASED: Anna Nicole Smith, Kurt Vonnegut, Jerry Falwell, Evel Knievel.

2008

• May 8.  Vladimir Putin appointed Prime Minister of Russia, for the second time.
• August 8. Opening ceremony of 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.

Source: The Telegraph.

• August 8-12. Russia captures much of Georgia, declares South Ossetia and Abkhazia independent states, continues to occupy and build up new borders.
• October 2008.  First Android-powered phone, the HTC Dream, released.

Source: gsmarena.com

• November 4.  Barack Obama elected president of the USA.
• Global financial crisis worsens.
• DECEASED: George Carlin, Arthur C. Clarke, Roy "You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat" Scheider, Heath Ledger, Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Bernie Mac.

George Carlin. Source: Time.

2009

• January 20.  Barack Obama sworn in as 44th president of the USA.
• June 29.  Bernard (Bernie) Madoff sentenced to 150 years in prison for epic ponzi scheme.
• September 24.  Water discovered as ice in south pole of the moon.
• October 9.  Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize.
• DECEASED: Ted Kennedy, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, David Carradine, Patrick Swayze.

2010

• April 3.  iPad.

• April 20. The largest marine oil spill in history.  BP's Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico explodes and sinks.  4.7 million barrels of oil spew from ocean floor over 87 days.
• DECEASED: Gary Coleman, Dennis Hopper, Corey Haim, Leslie Nielsen.

2011

• March 11.  Magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan causes tsunami and meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.  Tons of junk washed out to sea, including one ghost ship.

Japanese ghost ship.

          Google later acquires imagery for Street Views of the ghost town Namie.

• April 8.  Jonathan Chappelow successfully defends doctoral thesis entitled Multimodal image registration using multivariate information theoretic similarity measures.  With a deep sigh of relief, Dr. Chappelow, PhD, starts rest of life in the Silicon Valley, California.
• May 2.  Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. Navy Seals in a raid on his compound in Pakistan.

• October 5.  Steve Jobs dies of pancreatic cancer.
• December 18.  Last U.S. combat troops leave Iraq after nearly 9 years of war.
• DECEASED: Christopher Hitchens (RIP), Kim Jong Il (dear leader succeeded by dear leader Kim Jong Un), Ryan Dunn, Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, Colombo, Muammar Gadaffi.

Kim Jong Il's biomechanical body dies Team America.

2012

• March. Vladimir Putin "elected" president, for the third time.
• August 1.  Windows 8 RTM.
• August.  Voyager 1 enters interstellar space.

• November 5.  Obama reelected president of the USA.
• December 21.  The world does not come to an end.
• DECEASED: Whitney Houston, Neil Armstrong, Dick Clark, Nora Ephron, Ray Bradbury.

2013

• March.  North Korea's third nuclear weapons test.  Kim Jong Un is a big boy supreme leader now.

• November 19.  J.P. Morgan Chase agreed to pay $13 billion penalty to settle civil claims that it sold mortgage-backed bonds based on poor quality loans (or as one Bear Stearns manager put it, "sack of shit" loans).
• DIED:  Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Tom Clancy, James Gandolfini.

2014

• One World Trade Center (a.k.a. Freedom Tower) still not opened, 13 years after 9/11.
• Virgin Galactic begins offering private flights into low earth orbit.
• February 27 - March 22. Russian seizes control of and annexes Ukraine's Crimea region, to... umm... save Crimea?  Russia suspended from the G8.  UN General Assembly approves resolution declaring March 16 referendum illegal.

• August 13.  U.S. troops to return to Iraq, as a small group of Marines and special forces enter to assist Yazidi refugees fleeing the Islamic militant group ISIS/ISIL.
• DECEASED:  Joan Rivers, Robin Williams, Casey Kasem, Maya Angelou, H. R Giger, Fred Phelps (luck for him there's probably no hell), Harold Ramis, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ariel Sharon.

That's about it.  Back to blogging!