Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Joe Bob Briggs: Nina Stirs Things Up in Wisconsin (Taki's Magazine)
Well, the neo-Puritans have struck again. A few weeks ago my old friend Nina Hartley was blogging about how she'd just spent a pleasant couple of days in La Crosse, Wisconsin. She wrote about a little weeknight talk she gave to 70 students at the university there, but mostly her post was about how cute the town was, the perfect weather, the beauty of the Mississippi River, and how the questions from the students were "standard for that age group."
Lionel Shriver: Why do authors have to be 'moral'? Because their publishing contracts tell them so (Spectator)
My compulsion to rub strangers up the wrong way in a political sense grows only more enticing.
Paul Waldman: How the shutdown will make it harder for Trump to win reelection (Washington Post)
It may be only January 2019, but every important political event that happens from this point forward has the potential to affect the 2020 presidential campaign - which is perfectly appropriate. After all, when voters decide whether to let President Trump run the government for another four years, isn't the current government shutdown the kind of thing they should consider?
Jonathan Chait: Trump Didn't Have Secret Contact With Russia - It Was Done in Plain Sight (NY Mag)
In the middle of January, the Russia investigation as we understand it ceased to be merely an inquiry into "collusion." It was revealed as something far more portentous: an inquiry into whether President Trump, as the New York Times put it in one of the more breathtaking clauses it has ever published, "had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests."
Matthew Yglesias: The emoluments clause, explained (Vox)
A guide for William Barr, who claims not to know what it is.
Andrew Tobias: McConnell's Norm
It is a norm, not a law, that only the Majority Leader can bring a bill to the floor for a vote. It's time to suspend that norm and reopen the government.
Rachel Wetzler: Nothing to Do with Art (The Baffler)
Vile Days is a bracing, electric portrait of eighties art as it unfolded against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis and Reaganomics-in Hainley's words, Indiana "turned the art review into chronicle of life under siege"-but it's also a vestige of a time when the importance of cultural criticism was self-evident to any publication that took itself seriously. It's hard to imagine an art critic today getting away with newspaper columns like Indiana's, in part because there are hardly any newspaper critics left.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
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from Bruce
Anecdotes
• William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, won the Noble Prize for Literature for the year 1983. The day after he had learned that he had won, he drove his car into a country town and parked his car illegally so he could run into a shop for a couple of minutes. When he left the shop, he discovered that a meter maid had given him a parking ticket. The meter maid pointed to a sign about parking and asked him, "Can't you read?" He then drove around the corner and saw two policemen, whom he asked if he could go to Town Hall and pay his parking fine immediately. One policeman replied, "No, sir, I'm afraid you can't do that." Mr. Golding felt as if the policeman thought of him as one of "those people who are clearly harmless if a bit silly." The policeman showed him a place on the parking ticket that was marked "name and address of sender" and told him, "You should write your name and address in that place. You make out a cheque for ten pounds, making it payable to the Clerk to the Justices at this address written here. Then you write the same address on the outside of the envelope, stick a sixteen-penny stamp in the top right-hand corner of the envelope, then post it. And may we congratulate you on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature."
• Ray Bradbury remembers being presented with the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters as "a fantastic evening"; however, he did run into a problem. Late in the evening, heading back to his room, he suddenly felt an urgent need to pee. He said, "For God's sake, where's the men's room?" None was handy, but fortunately a woman said, "There's a potted palm over there. Why don't you go use it?" Mr. Bradbury says, "Nobody saw me. At least I don't think so." One of Mr. Bradbury's most famous works is Fahrenheit 451, which is about a fireman who does not put out fires, but instead starts them in order to burn books. Mr. Bradbury, of course, loves books. He says, "I'm completely library educated. I've never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library." He also used to steal magazines from a store, wash his hands, read the magazines, and then sneak them back into the store and put them back where they belonged. By the way, Mr. Bradbury's lifelong credo is this: "Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down."
• As a young man, William Faulkner became friends with Sherwood Anderson. Before noon, Mr. Faulkner would never see Mr. Anderson, but in the afternoon they would walk together around New Orleans and talk to people, and in the evening they would share a bottle or two of an alcoholic beverage and Mr. Faulkner would listen as Mr. Anderson talked. Mr. Faulkner decided that if this was the life of a writer, then the life of a writer was the life for him. He began writing his first novel, and he discovered that he liked writing. After about three weeks of Mr. Faulkner not seeing Mr. Anderson, Mr. Anderson showed up at Mr. Faulkner's home and asked him, "Are you mad at me?" Mr. Faulkner replied that he was writing his first novel. Mr. Anderson said, "My God!" Then he left. Soon Mr. Faulkner finished his first novel, and Mr. Anderson's wife told him, "Sherwood says that he will make a trade with you. If he doesn't have to read your manuscript, he will tell his publisher to accept it."Mr. Faulkner says, "I said, 'Done,' and that's how I became a writer."
• Dorothy Parker was fired from her job as a drama critic at Vanity Fair because she panned the plays of three very powerful men: Dillingham, Ziegfeld, and Belasco. In solidarity with her, Robert Sherwood and Robert Benchley quit. Ms. Parker said, "It was the greatest act of friendship I'd known." They all went to work for Life, where she and Mr. Benchley shared an office of which she famously observed, "He and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery." As you would expect, Ms. Parker was a good interviewee. Marion Capron of The Paris Review asked her, "What, then, would you say is the source of most of your work?" Ms. Parker replied, "Need of money, dear." By the way, Ms. Parker at first wrote in longhand, although she later used a typewriter: "I wrote in longhand at first, but I've lost it. I use two fingers on the typewriter. […] I know so little about the typewriter that once I bought a new one because I couldn't change the ribbon on the one I had."
• In her memoir I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, Maxine Hong Kingston writes that Joseph, her grown son, reads all of her writing and has requested of her, "Don't write about me." She agreed, but later in the book she wrote that once when Joseph was very young she gave him a whole bag of marshmallows so she could write uninterrupted for 20 minutes. She also writes about how she and Alice Walker were arrested while protesting war. The result was that they were both handcuffed and put in jail. Ms. Kingston was forced to ask Ms. Walker to undo her pants for her so she could pee.
• Swedish author Stieg Larsson became internationally famous with the publication of the crime series Millennium Trilogy, of which the title of the first volume was translated as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. His father bought him for his 13thbirthday an expensive typewriter after reading a novel that Stieg had written in a notebook. In addition to being expensive, the typewriter was noisy. Sieg's father saysthat "we had to make space for him in the cellar. He would write in the cellar and come up for meals, but at least we could sleep at night."
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2018 Nominations
Razzie Awards
John Travolta's mob movie flop "Gotti" and President Donald Trump (R-Animated) were nominated on Monday for the Razzie Awards for the worst films of 2018 after a year that organizers called full of disasters - both on and off screen.
The new Sherlock Holmes comedy "Holmes & Watson" garnered six mentions, including for its stars Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, who were cited for "trashing two of literature's most beloved characters."
The tongue-in-cheek Razzies, created in 1980, serve as an antidote to Hollywood's Oscars ceremony. Nominees were announced a day before Tuesday's Academy Awards nominations - the highest honors in the movie industry.
Trump got two worst actor nominations for appearing as himself in the 2018 documentaries "Death of a Nation," from conservative film maker Dinesh D'Souza, and liberal Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 11/9."
Trump previously won a Razzie for his cameo role as a businessman in the 1989 crime comedy "Ghosts Can't Do It," starring Bo Derek.
Razzie Awards
Razzie nominations 2019 full list
Marks Anniversary
Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne has marked the 37th anniversary of his most infamous onstage incident with a new piece of merchandise.
On 20 January, 1982, Osbourne bit the head off a bat during a live show at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa. The creature, thought to be already dead, was thrown on stage by a fan.
The musician only realised afterward that the bat was real and not, in fact, made of rubber, with Osbourne swiftly rushed to hospital after the concert for rabies shots.
Osbourne has now marked the incident's anniversary with a plush toy bat with a detachable head.
On the rocker's official merchandise page, the toy bat is on sale for $40, although the pre-sale has already sold out.
Ozzy Osbourne
Free Meals For Furloughed Workers
Jon Bon Jovi
Furloughed federal workers who've been without pay since the government shutdown will get a helping hand on Monday, thanks to rock legend Jon Bon Jovi and others.
The rocker's JBJ Soul Kitchen, a Red Bank, New Jersey, community restaurant that allows people to pay what they wish for a meal, or volunteer there in exchange for food, is offering free meals for furloughed government workers and their families on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
In partnership with the Murphy Family Foundation, run by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and his wife, the restaurant will be serving the workers from noon to 2 p.m.
All you need to do is bring proof of federal employment.
Jon Bon Jovi and his wife Dorothea established the JBJ Soul Kitchen in 2011.
Jon Bon Jovi
Apologizes For Airing Graphic
'Fux & Friends'
"Fox & Friends" apologized Monday after airing a graphic that incorrectly implied Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died, blaming the mixup on a "technical error."
The image showed the dates "1933-2019" under Ginsburg's name and next to her portrait. It flashed on screen for a few moments before cutting to host Ainsley Earhardt's interview with a college professor about campus culture.
Later in the show, the hosts acknowledged the error.
"We need to apologize," said host Steve Doocy. "A technical error in the control room triggered a graphic of Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a date on it. We don't want to make it seem anything other than ? that was a mistake. That was an accident. We believe she is still at home recovering from surgery. Big mistake."
'Fux & Friends'
Gifts to Doctors
Big Pharma
It's long been known that drug company payments to doctors influence how many opioid prescriptions they write. But a study released Friday offers the first suggestion they also may be linked to overdose tolls in their communities.
Aggressive marketing of prescription narcotics over the past 20 years has been widely blamed for the staggering death toll of the opioid epidemic. But scant research supported that contention.
The new study, published in JAMA Network Open, shows that counties receiving such payments later experience higher overdose death rates - even when researchers controlled for many other possible influences.
The study did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship; the link between the two is an association.
The study also suggests that consistent, trust-building visits - such as periodic lunches sponsored by drug sales reps - do more to promote prescribing of a company's drugs than high-dollar payments to physicians.
Big Pharma
Ice Sheet Is Melting at Astonishing Rate
Greenland
Last week, a cauldron of concerning news articles made two things very clear: The ocean is warming and Antarctica's ice is melting.
Now, a new study shows how much global warming is pounding another area: Greenland.
Greenland's ice sheet is not only melting, but it's melting faster than ever because the area has become more sensitive to natural climate fluctuations, particularly an atmospheric cycle, a group of scientists reported today (Jan. 21) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers found that the ice is vanishing four times faster than it was in 2003 - and a good chunk of that acceleration is happening in southwest Greenland.
This area was previously not considered at as much risk of melting because it doesn't host large glaciers like the southeast and northwest regions do. While glaciers are smaller rivers of ice that creep across the landscape and can break apart and melt from warm ocean water, the actual gigantic ice sheet was thought to be more resistant to that kind of melt.
Greenland
Record Cocaine Levels
Thames
Londoners' cocaine habit may show no signs of lessening, but the high levels of the drug detected in the Thames is not harming its wildlife, an expert has said.
New research by a team from King's College London (KCL) examined the water overflowing into the river from sewers during storms.
They found the class A drug, which was present in users' urine and then flushed into the sewage system, could be easily detected in the Thames in the 24 hours after a sewer overflow.
The levels in London were noticeably higher than other cities which have been tested and a marine wildlife expert said cocaine would have a similar effect on fish as humans.
Eels deliberately exposed to cocaine-infused water by biologists at the University of Naples Federico II not only appeared hyperactive but also saw the drug accumulate in their brains, muscles, gills and skin.
Thames
Shark Named After '80s Arcade Game
'Galagadon'
Sharks have been around for a long, long time, and of all the creatures that roam the Earth today they're one of the few that have remained largely unchanged for tens of millions of years. A newly discovered species of ancient shark which swam the oceans at the same time the mighty T. rex lumbered on land was just given a very nerdy name, and it's all thanks to its teeth.
The new species, named Galagadon nordquistae, is long gone. In fact, there's virtually nothing left of the species at all, and paleontologists are left to guess what the creature looked like based only on its teeth.
The teeth, however, can tell scientists a lot about a shark, and researchers from North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences have determined that the shark was rather small, measuring only about a foot in length or slightly longer.
The teeth discovered by researchers were very, very small. "It amazes me that we can find microscopic shark teeth sitting right beside the bones of the largest predators of all time," NC State's Terry Gates said in a statement. "These teeth are the size of a sand grain. Without a microscope you'd just throw them away."
Its teeth are also the reason the shark carries its retro-inspired scientific name. The "Galaga" in Galagadon is a nod to the incredibly popular arcade shooter from the 1980s. The teeth of the shark are kinda-sorta shaped like the spaceships in Galaga, and that was enough for scientists to give it a game-inspired label.
'Galagadon'
To Placate The Pope
Sugar Pills
For nearly 60 years, women have been taking the birth control pill in a less than ideal way, and weirdly enough, the reason is not scientific - instead, it can be traced back to the Catholic Church.
The seven inactive pills, included in most oral birth control packets, are not there for a medical reason. Each time a woman pops out a sugar pill, it actually represents a futile attempt to placate the Pope.
When the first birth control pill hit the market in the 1960s, it had a profound impact on society, but just like any great medical breakthrough, its creation was shaped by more than just medicine.
One of the gynaecologists working on the pill, John Rock, was Catholic. He knew that in order for the Pill to be accepted by the Catholic Church and its followers, it would have to be sold as a "natural" form of contraception based on hormones already present in the female body.
Their efforts were made in vain. In 1968, years after FDA approval, Pope Paul VI declared all forms of "artificial" contraception to be against church doctrine.
Sugar Pills
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