Employees revolt as Microsoft nears the battlefield
What responsibility do tech companies have when they start making weapons of war? We say farewell to the Seattle Weekly, and hello to the possibility of mandatory sex ed in Washington schools. Lastly: what do you do when someone is being harassed in public? And could that change?
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Microsoft Hololens
On Friday, a group of Microsoft employees signed an open letter, asking the company to cancel a contract with the US Army. The technology in question is a controversial augmented reality headset called Hololens. We asked the project’s former creative director Monte Michaelis and Wendell Wallach, scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, how the Hololens could be used in war and what Microsoft’s responsibility is.
Seattle Weekly stops the presses
This week we learned that another pillar of journalism had fallen. As of tomorrow, the print edition of the Seattle Weekly is no more. It’s been billed as the loss of the last weekly newspaper in the city. We spoke to Tracy Record of the West Seattle Blog and Justin Carder of the blog CHS, which covers Capitol Hill.
Mandatory sex ed
Should sex ed be mandatory in public schools across our state? Right now it’s up to local school districts. But a bill in Olympia would require all districts to teach an extensive sex education curriculum. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal is in favor of the move, while Richland Superintendent Rick Schulte has some concerns.
Bystander intervention facilitator
This has happened to almost all of us. You’re in a public space, maybe a bus – and someone nearby starts harassing a fellow passenger. You freeze up, not knowing what to do, and try to keep your head down. The target person, or the harasser, gets off the bus. No one intervened. According to CAIR-WA bystander intervention facilitator Amina Ibrahim, that was a missed opportunity to provide community support to the person who was targeted, and to empower yourself to make a change.
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Bill Radke
Host
Bill hosts Week In Review and Words in Review. After starting with KUOW as a University of Washington student in 1985, Bill was KUOW's morning host in the '90s and the creator of past show, Rewind, a news-satire show heard on KUOW and nationwide on NPR. Bill moved away to Southern California to host American Public Media's Weekend America and Marketplace Morning Report and returned to KUOW in 2012.
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