Unexplored Opportunity: How to Illiterately Hack Android

Two isolated, rural Ethiopian villages who have never seen road signs or printed material have been visited by alien technology. Taped shut boxes were dropped off in these villages, giving no instructions. The children of these villages quickly discovered the contents of these boxes to be tablet computers equipped with a solar charging system. With no prior knowledge they found the on-off switch, and each were using 47 apps daily within 5 days. The One Laptop Per Student program provided the tablets as part of an observational experiment. The goal? To see if illiterate kids with no exposure to writing could learn to read on their own by playing with multiple medias of preloaded educational programs on the tablet. The results were better than expected from the 40 1st grade aged children. Within two weeks, they were singing their ABC's in the villages,. Within 5 months they had hacked Android, figuring out how to change the frozen desktop settings.
http://mashable.com/2012/10/29/tablets-ethiopian-children/

Miscalculations Cause Manslaughter

An  earthquake in L'Aquila claimed the lives of 309 residents, as well as making an attack on scence. The "victims" of the earthquake supposedly would still be alive had it not been for seven people. Bernardinis, Boschi, Selvaggi, Barberi, Eva, Dolce, and Calvi are local scientists and members of an official risk comity, and are now being accused of playing a role in the deaths of the people who died in the earthquake. L'Aquila has been hit by many small tremors in the past months, so the seven scientist were asked to asses the risk of a dangerous earthquake hitting the town. At a meeting the scientists claimed that the risk was raised, but a more detailed prediction of oncoming earthquakes wasn't possible. The Civil Protection Department then told the public then said that there was no increased risk of a major shock because of the small shocks. The scientists are being persecuted for manslaughter of the people who remained in L'Aquila during the earthquake and were killed in their collapsing homes. They are being sentenced to six years in prison. 
http://www.nature.com/news/shock-and-law-1.11643

The Peril of the Perfect Sandwich

Last Saturday the police department in Palm Bay, Fla., was repeatedly bothered by 911 calls from Christine Lee Brown. In each call, the disputer asked her what the emergency was. Each time, Chris's only response was to continuously talk about the bologna sandwiches she'd been served in prison. Christine, at age 51, has previously been in jail where she experienced these proclaimed sandwiches. She kept thanking the deputy for serving them. During one of the calls, which had been aimed by Christine to be a casual chat, the police came to Christine's home to arrest her while she was still on the phone with the dispatcher.She was charged with six felony accounts of misuse of 911. So at last, Christine got to be reunited with the Bologna Sandwiches in prison that she had been ranting about, in the same place she had been served before!

20 Years of Nostalgia: Cartoon Network's Birthday

October 1, 1992,  a time when cartoon ratings were dropping, is when Ted Turner started his animated entertainment program, Cartoon Network.  His goal was to have programming that could entertain both children and adults, and boy did the network suffice. People were skeptical that the idea of the network would ever be successful. Luckily Ted Turner stuck with his crazy idea, and it took off from there. The network started with shows like "The Flintstones", "The Jetsons", "The Simpsons"; it eventually included the nighttime "trippy" programming Adult Swim, and several shows belonging to Cartoon Network have been largely recognized like the Emmy Award-winning "Regular Show". On October 1, Cartoon Network concluded its birthday celebration of 20 years of animation programming. Cartoon Network is now shown in over 360 million households in 175 countries! For many, these 20 years of entertainment have flourished memories of welcome childhood stories. For these people, Cartoon Network's success story is one we are happy to celebrate with. Classic, hilarious, sometimes even moral cartoons have become a big part of our culture and are definitely worth celebrating. 

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/tv/172327611.html?refer=y