Security/Insecurity in the News: First Dispatch

New feature time. Again.

Every other Friday we’ll offer a compilation of links and news stories that connect to notions of security and insecurity, our 2013-2014 departmental theme. Some of these connections will be clearer than others  – we’re interpreting the theme very, very broadly. So, have at it, and enjoy!

Comedian Louis C.K. takes on the smart phone and why it makes us feel sad (Big Think)

Louis Menand reviews Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control, a new book on nuclear weapons in America (The New Yorker)

“The importance of the afterlife. Seriously.” Seriously. (The New York Times)

What will 3-D printing actually bring us in the future? “Will it save the world? Will it bring on the apocalypse, with millions manufacturing their own AK-47s? Or is it all an absurd hubbub about a machine that spits out chintzy plastic trinkets?” (The New York Times)

The myth of executive stress: how hard is it, really, to be the boss? (Scientific American)

Guardian editor: NSA surveillance goes beyond Orwell’s imagination (The Guardian)

A moment-by-moment timeline of the immediate aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination. “From noon to dusk on November 22, 1963, history went dark, locked inside the closed and crowded cabin of Air Force One. Fifty years later, what happened after JFK died has fully come to light.” (Esquire)

Are soldiers becoming too emotionally attached to the robots that accompany them in war zones? (Slate)

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