the good, the bad and the ugly

So this was 2017 ...

good

The caliphate of isis no longer exists; Kobane was the turning point and this year Mosul and Raqqa were liberated.

The progress of science and technology continued; with GW170817 and AlphaGo & AlphaZero being highlights.

Economic growth finally improved world wide, above 3% in the US, above 2% in EU and even some growth in Japan. The stock markets had a great run and recently the US tax bill was even more good news for investors in US stocks.
Bitcoin and many other crypto currencies had a much bigger run, which was good news for those who already owned some and it made fools out of many smart people, which I count as even more good news.


bad

The proxy war between Saudi-Arabia and Iran in Yemen continued and killed thousands of civilians including children; but of course it was not the only war.

The hurricanes were especially bad this year and we were lucky that Nassau was not wiped out like some other islands in the Caribbean.

North Korea tested a thermonuclear weapon and significantly improved ICBMs. We will see how bad this will get in 2018.


ugly

Disrespect for the truth is always disgusting and ignorance of facts and reality is always foolish, of course we got plenty of that from the White House.

But there were several other ugly strongmen in politics: Duterte, Erdogan, Maduro, Mohammad bin Salman and of course Putin and Xi.

The economic collapse of Venezuela showed once more how ugly socialism can get.

Unfortunately, we had to learn in 2017 how disgusting some well know men had been, from Bill O'Reilly to Harvey Weinstein, from Charlie Rose to Louis CK, from Al Franken to Roy Moore and the list goes on ...

And of course the internet showed again how stupid it can get, with its flame wars, trolls and sh*tstorms ... and with some people indistinguishable from primitive chatbots.