Snowden the whistleblower, live from Moscow

Love him or not, Feb. 14 will be your chance to interact with one of the most well-known people ever to come out of Hawaii.

No, we’re not talking about President Barack Obama, or even Oregon Ducks quarterback Marcus Mariota. It’s Edward Snowden, the government-secrets whistleblower who lived here briefly while working as an intelligence analyst for a company contracted by the National Security Agency. Now living in Moscow, he will appear at the Hawai‘i Convention Center via a video link for an event being sponsored by the ACLU of Hawaii Foundation. He and his attorney, Ben Wizner, will discuss "Can Democracy Survive Secrecy," following a showing of the documentary about Snowden’s activities, "Citizenfour." Tickets are $5; call 522-5906.

STEM jobs in short supply in Honolulu

Here’s hoping more Hawaii students go into the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math). The evidence is pretty clear that the workforce needs more people skilled in these areas to keep the U.S. competitive in the globalized economy.

But it looks like most will need to leave the state to get hired, unless there are big changes. The personal finance social network WalletHub analyzed the 100 largest metro areas in the country for STEM professionals, and Honolulu comes in 79th on the list. The announcement made various observations to drive the point home, including this: "The annual median wage for STEM workers (adjusted for cost of living) is two times higher in Houston than in Honolulu." Ouch.