Near the end of 2016, Last Week Tonight ran a bit where they commented on how bad the previous year had been. The video compounded with difficulties Lauren and I had experienced that year and left us both in agreement—yeah, 2016 had been a bad year.
The last couple years since then, I’ve found myself reflecting on the pros and cons of the previous twelve months. I found 2017 to be slightly better than 2016, though I imagine the #MeToo movement will be recognized by later generations as a central feature of this decade. That year also had some good movies, which counts for a lot in my book. More recently, I’ve begun to reflect on 2018 as it reaches completion, and since this will likely be the last post of the year, I thought I’d share some highlights:
- SpaceX successfully conducted its maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy, a milestone in private space travel
- The Parkland Shooting leaves 17 dead and 17 injured
- Vladimir Putin is elected for a fourth term
- Jeff Bezos is confirmed as the wealthiest man in the world with $125 billion (worth almost 50% more than Bill Gates)
- “March For Our Lives” brings massive crowds together in response to gun violence
- North Korea and South Korea make steps towards reconciliation
- The U.S. opts out of the Iranian nuclear agreement
- Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are married in a delightful royal wedding
- The U.S.’s announcement of steel and aluminum tariffs leads to a trade war
- France wins the World Cup
- Saudi Arabia allows women to drive
- Eritrea and Ethiopia officially declare an end to their twenty-year conflict
- The EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement is signed, the world’s largest bilateral free trade deal, creating an open trade zone covering nearly one-third of global GDP
- Apple Inc. becomes the world’s first public company to achieve a market capitalization of $1 trillion
- Fires spread across California, the deadliest and most destructive in the state’s history
- 700,000 people march through central London demanding a second referendum on Brexit; the event is the second most attended protest of the 21st century in the United Kingdom
- Canada legalizes the sale and use of cannabis
- Brett Kavanaugh is called before a congregational hearing
- Facebook is accused of unfair censorship and political ties
- France experiences its worst civil unrest in 50 years due to the yellow vests movement
- Over half of the world’s population is now using the Internet
- The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou, and Donna Strickland for their revolutionary work in laser physics
- The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Frances H. Arnold for her work with enzymes and the to George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter for their work with peptides and antibodies
- The Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation
- The Nobel Prize in Economics is awarded to William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer for their work addressing how we create long-term sustained and sustainable economic growth
- The Nobel Prize in Peace is awarded to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad for their crucial contributions to focusing attention on and combating war crimes
- The Nobel Prize in Literature is not awarded this year due to a scandal involving sexual assault
- 2018 is on track to be the highest grossing year at the box office with movies like Black Panther and Avengers and help from MoviePass—most of that money is going to Disney
As with every year, there’s a lot of good and lot of bad. But the optimism of youth and the hope of faith is that the good outweighs the bad by more and more each year.