Karen Sloan (Law.com), $30M Gift to Yale Law Is Part of Government Probe Into Foreign Funding:
At Randwick Ritz: Military Wives review – Kristin Scott Thomas helps feelgood Britcom sing 3 / 5 stars 3 out of 5 stars. The true story of the women who gained unlikely fame in 2011 has been turned into a pleasant, if patchy, film from the director of The Full Monty
"This choir isn't about singing for ourselves… it's about being heard." Bleecker Street Films has unveiled an official trailer for a "feel-good crowd-pleaser" film titled Military Wives, the latest film from the British director of The Full Monty. Despite the reality TV-sounding name, this is really a heartfelt dramedy about a group of women whose partners are away serving in the military in the Middle East. They come together and form a choir, and quickly find themselves at the center of a media sensation and global movement. The cast is lead by Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan, with an ensemble including Emma Lowndes,Gaby French, Lara Rossi, Amy James-Kelly, Jason Flemyng, and Greg Wise. This doesn't seem so bad! I was ready to write it off, especially with that title, but it actually has quite a bit of inspiration to offer.
Here's the full official trailer (+ poster) for Peter Cattaneo's Military Wives, direct from YouTube
New York Times, A Rare Trump-Era Climate Policy Hits an Obstacle: The Tax Man:
A rare policy enacted under President Trump to address climate change has run into an unexpected hurdle: the tax man.
In 2018, Congress approved a lucrative tax break for companies that use carbon capture technology to trap carbon dioxide produced by industrial sites before the gas escapes into the atmosphere and heats the planet. The technology is still costly and contentious, but may one day become a valuable tool for slowing global warming. House Republicans are aiming to expand support for carbon capture as part of a broader package of climate bills, the first of which is expected Wednesday.
Mean Streets: The Global Traffic Death Crisis
Some causes of death have little trouble catching the public’s attention. Avian flu, Ebola, and Zika have dominated news cycles and prompted international travel advisories. Plane crashes interrupt broadcasts and lead to thorough government investigations. Cancer, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS now attract billions of dollars of research. But one of the biggest killers of all gets little attention from governments, the media, or the general public. Car crashes killed 1.35 million people in 2016—the last year for which World Health Organization data are available—a grisly 3,698 deaths a day. Traffic injuries are now the top killer of people aged five to 29 globally, outpacing any illness and exceeding the combined annual casualties of all of the world’s armed conflicts. And the toll continues to rise: it grew by 100,000 in just three years, from 2013 to 2016. This does not include the up to 50 million people who are hit and injured by motor vehicles each year, some grievously, but who nonetheless survive. The economic losses are estimated at three percent of global GDP.Our Belligerent Political Process
Brent Simmons writes about the Democratic primaries and keeping our eyes on the real prize:
Odds are that your favorite is not going to be the nominee. And that nominee, whoever it is, needs to not have been already labeled a garbage candidate by you and by everyone whose favorite he or she isn’t.Here’s the thing: we’re fighting to stop the spread of right-wing extremism. It will get so much worse if we reelect the president. It has to be stopped now. No other issue matters, because nothing else can be done without doing this.
I feel like there’s a deep sickness in our culture in how people express solidarity with the side they’ve chosen. It’s most visible in sports and politics and is related to nationalism versus patriotism. Many people tend to root for their preferred team or candidate in a nationalistic way (destructive, antagonistic) rather than a patriotic way (productive, positive) — more “Bernie rules, all the other candidates can suck it” versus “Bernie is my candidate because he supports several issues I care about”. That’s not to say that there isn’t room for strident activism or for criticism addressing real problems with candidates or entire political parties (gestures broadly), but as Simmons notes, this belligerent attitude is counterproductive, no matter how good it might feel personally.
And this bit is sadly true and I have not heard anyone else really talking about it:
I don’t care about any of the wonderful liberal and progressive policies our candidates propose — because they’re not going to get through.(Well, I do care about them, deeply, but the point stands.)It’s not that it would take 60 Democratic senators — it would take more like 65 or even more, and that’s not going to happen. We can elect the most wonderful progressive person ever and they’ll just beat their head against the wall.There’s no magic coming. There’s no amount of will-of-the-people that will move Republican senators. All of the policy we talk about is just fantasy.
Dorothy Parker’s Daring Wit Humanities
The way we read now Spectator USA
Battle between two legal giants escalates as Alan Dershowitz files defamation suit against David Boies AlterNet
Why the Mind Cannot Just Emerge From the Brain Mind Matters