Friday, January 5, 2018

In the news, Sunday, December 17, 2017


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DEC 16      INDEX      DEC 18
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Information from some sites may not be reliable, or may not be vetted.
Some sources may require subscription.

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from Clerk of Oxford  (Blog)

The Anglo-Saxon O Antiphons: O Caelorum Domine, Lord of the Heavens
Of all the poetry you might read in Advent, the great season of paradox and interpretative possibility, the very best choice may be some of the poetry inspired by the 'O Antiphons'. The last week of Advent has for centuries belonged to these ancient songs of appeal, which are sung each day at Vespers as Christmas draws closer. You can read about the history of the O Antiphons here; these texts are now best known via J. M. Neale's hymn 'O Come, O Come Emmanuel', but they have inspired poets since the earliest days of poetry in English. In the past I've posted several Middle English poems based on these texts - two poems and two carols - as well as the exquisite Anglo-Saxon poetic meditation inspired by the antiphons, which is known today as the Advent Lyrics or as Christ I.

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from Asia Times Online

To innovate, we need room for bad ideas
It seems easier to accidentally speak heresies in San Francisco every year. Debating a controversial idea, even if you 95% agree with the consensus side, seems ill-advised. This will be very bad for startups in the Bay Area. Restricting speech leads to restricting ideas and therefore restricted innovation – the most successful societies have generally been the most open ones. Usually mainstream ideas are right and heterodox ideas are wrong, but the true and unpopular ideas are what drive the world forward.  Also, smart people tend to have an allergic reaction to the restriction of ideas, and I’m now seeing many of the smartest people I know move elsewhere.

Possible port visits to Taiwan by US warships angers Beijing
The United States may re-establish port-of-call exchanges in Taiwan for warships of both countries, a move that has brought a strong protest from the Chinese government. The controversial idea is contained in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2018, which President Donald Trump signed into law last Tuesday. Congressmen on Capitol Hill called on the commander-in-chief to consider resuming regular port-of-call exchanges between the United States Navy and its Taiwanese counterpart.

Fighting poverty in India and China — a tale of two countries
With one-third of the world’s population living in India and China, the two countries are often compared because of their similar population size and economies having matching potential and global leverage. Initially, both countries were almost at par in terms of economic growth and poverty levels even until the 70s and 80s. In fact, it was India that had a head start until the early 1990s with a higher GDP per capita, while China had a rapidly growing rural income. Initiating anti-poverty reforms in the ’90’s just one decade later than China, India failed to meet the same benchmarks, while in China’s case, results started showing about 25 years ago.

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from Axios
LEFT-CENTER BIAS,  HIGH,  news website

Eric Holder calls for protests if Trump fires Mueller

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from CNSNews.com (& MRC & NewsBusters)
RIGHT BIAS

Knowledgeable Net Neutrality Foe's 'Legalese' Angers MSNBC's Ali Velshi
On Thursday, MSNBC's Ali Velshi interviewed former FCC commissioner Robert McDowell about that agency's move to eliminate the Obama administration's "Open Internet Order," better known as its "net neutrality" regulations. Velshi was in over his head, and as people who find themselves in such a situation often do, he resorted to hostility, bluster, and an accusation of condescension to try to make up for his repeated attempts to make a tired little-guy-versus-big-guy argument against the FCC's action. Velshi's primary problem was that he can't or won't accept the idea that governance over the internet has returned to where it was during the over 20 years before Obama's FCC decided that the internet should be regulated like a century-old public utility monopoly, and that there are plenty of pre-2015 laws in place to prevent the alleged discriminatory disasters he fears.

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from HumanProgress.org
Education Website

Free Markets Increase Trust Among People
Competition is an essential part of a market economy. It drives businesses to innovate and to provide consumers with cheaper and better products. But market exchange is also one the most cooperative of human endeavors.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

State figures show trains carried 56 million barrels of crude across state in a year
Railroads ship more than 1 million barrels of crude oil across Washington each week, according to new information from the state. Most of the oil trains travel through Spokane, entering the state from Idaho and transporting light crude from North Dakota to Washington ports and refineries. About 6 percent of the crude oil originates in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and some of those shipments come south through Bellingham. Railroads shipped nearly 56 million barrels of crude oil across Washington in 82,000 rail cars, according to information from October 2016 through September of this year. That represents about 2.5 trillion gallons of oil.

Local Arby’s feeds 100 Christmas Bureau volunteers every day
It takes about 100 volunteers a day to keep the Christmas Bureau running smoothly, providing food vouchers, toys and books for families who need help at Christmas. Feeding all those volunteers is a big task, one that a local Arby’s is happy to take on.

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