Wired (August 26)
In a remote location, China built the Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the world’s largest. To reduce radio-frequency interference (RFI), China “forcibly relocated thousands of villagers who lived nearby, so their modern trappings wouldn’t interfere with the new prized instrument.” Once FAST was completed, the government then built up a tourist mecca “just a few miles from the displaced villagers’ demolished houses” and now “plans to increase the permanent population by hundreds of thousands…. potentially undercutting its own science in an attempt to promote it.”
Tags: China, FAST, Government, Relocated, Remote, RFI, Science, Tourists, Undercutting
Financial Times (August 25)
“The US stock market this week reached twin landmarks: an all-time high, and the longest bull run in history. Yet it is shrinking…. The tally of listed domestic companies in the US has almost halved from 8,090 in 1996 to 4,336 last year.”