The drive to destroy the private sphere of consciousness inextricably links Moore's law and Singularity with advances in surveillance, data mining and the systematic destruction of personal privacy. Singularity and privacy will not coexist, although the technology that propels us toward the Singularity needs privacy and its destruction to study human intelligence more acutely. As private consciousness becomes more available for examination and translation, Singularity becomes more realistic. 

On Tuesday, President Obama expressed “disappointment” in the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which all but eviscerated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and called upon Congress “to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls.” Other critics of the ruling, however, were not so temperate in their characterization of what could prove to be a game changer for ongoing efforts to counter voter suppression.

The speculation has been nonstop over whether an all-female jury is a good or bad thing for accused Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman. There is no consensus on this. But the view of women jurors in major case trials is rife with myths, stereotypes, and preconceptions. Researchers have found that in the decades before and even after the Supreme Court ruling in 1979 that knocked out biased exclusions of jurors based on gender, there’s still the deeply embedded notion that women jurors are different than men in that they are more easily swayed by emotions.

Who is mined, who is profiled, and who suffers at the hands of an extensive regime of corporate and government surveillance raises issues of social and racial justice. PRISM, the National Security Agency’s clandestine electronic surveillance program, builds on a history of similar efforts whose impacts have affected racial and ethnic minorities in disproportionate ways. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counter Intelligence Program (“COINTELPRO”), established in 1956, represents one of the forbearers of PRISM. 

According to demographers, more white Americans died last year than were born -- the first time this has occurred in the history of the nation. Even more surprising, the shrinking of the white population has begun more rapidly than previously predicted. The decline of America's white population is being fueled by a variety of factors, among them that white women are having fewer children, and at later ages than other racial groups, and the immigrant population is increasing. 

Saturday's pro-government rally followed a night of violent clashes with protestors in and around Gezi Park, the site of the near three-week long protests that have since spread nationwide. Police used tear gas to drive protestors from the area surrounding the park. Reports put the number of injured at 150, six of them seriously. Five casualties have so far been reported since the unrest began 18 days ago, with thousands injured. Reporter Sean David Hobbs is a long-time resident of Istanbul who has been following the protests since they first began. 

Diabetes-related mortality rates have reached an all-time high in New York City, with people of color hit the hardest, according to a report released this week by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Approximately one person dies of diabetes-related causes every 90 minutes in the city— a mortality rate that has nearly doubled in two decades, from 6 percent in 1990 to 10.8 percent in 2011, says the report.

The Iranian presidential elections did not turn out as expected—happily for many Iranians, and not so happily for Western critics of Iranian society. The victorious Mr. Rowhani, seen as the most moderate of all the six candidates, was not predicted to win by Western pundits, who followed their own ideological bias, predicting that the election would be rigged by ultra-conservative mullahs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to favor the most conservative contender. 

Whether your understanding of mental illness is limited to what you’ve seen on the silver screen, or as intimate as a firsthand struggle, the topic has occupied a continual space in our national discussion, eliciting controversy and fascination. Today, there are nearly 60 million Americans who suffer from a mental illness, and it continues to present a quality of life, household and community issue. 

Wednesday will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, and the timing couldn't be more significant: Any day now, the Supreme Court could strike down a pair of landmark remedies owed in part to Evers' activism. Uncertainty hovers over observances that began at Evers' gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery last week, as the civil rights community warily awaits rulings that might fundamentally change, if not outright limit, minorities' access to college and participation in elections.