Negative stories (-12):

• About 7-19% of cancers are caused by chemicals in the environment. (-1)
• Steven Hawking is worried about an artificial intelligence arms race starting “within years, not decades”. (-2)
• The anti-urban attack continues, based on the false idea that crowded, stressful living conditions are the only type of urban living conditions available, and people are being forced into them against their will. This is naked, obvious propaganda that must be rejected. (-1)
• The more ignorant our species is, the more confident we tend to feel. (-3)
• According to Naomi Klein, “Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war.”  In related news, July was the warmest month ever recorded by humans, and carbon dioxide concentrations are the highest seen for millions of years. (-3)
• The media buzz about a worldwide recession seems to be increasing. (-2)

Positive stories (+12):

• The suburban vs. urban culture wars continue. Suburban office parks are tanking as young people prefer more urban job settings. Entrepreneurs are working on the problems of being car-less with children. (+1)
• Steven Hawking has a plan to figure out if there is any intelligent life out there. (+1)
• There are straightforward, practical ideas for dealing with the issues of loading, deliveries, and temporary contractor parking in dense urban areas. (+1)
• Economists have concluded that preventing human extinction may be economical after all, because “reducing an infinite loss is infinitely profitable”. Is this kind of thinking really useful? (+0)
• “gene drive” technology helps make sure that genetically engineered traits are passed along to offspring. (+0)
• Technology marches on – quantum computing is in early emergence, the “internet of things” is arriving at the “peak of inflated expectations”, big data is crashing into the “trough of disillusionment”, virtual reality is beginning its assent to the “plateau of productivity”, and speech recognition is arriving on the plateau. And super-intelligent rodents may be on the way. (+1)
• Honeybees may be in trouble, but they are not the only bees. (+0)
• Robotics may be on the verge of a Cambrian explosion, which will almost certainly be bad for some types of jobs, but will also bring us things like cars that avoid pedestrians and computer chips powered by sweat. I for one am excited to be alive at this moment in history. (+2)
• Dogs can be trained to smell cancer. (+1)
•  There’s promise of a vaccine for MERS. (+1)
• It may be possible to capture atmospheric carbon and turn it into high-strength, valuable carbon fiber. This sounds like a potential game-changer to me, because if carbon fiber were cheap it could be substituted for a lot of heavy, toxic and energy-intensive materials we use now, and open up possibilities for entirely new types of structures and vehicles. (+3)
• Robot deliveries and reusable containers could be a match. (+1)

You might think I rigged that to come out even, but I didn’t.