THE POST-HOLIDAY ROUNDUP

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Wielding Claims of ‘Fake News,’ Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media (NYT) "Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online. But conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda. 'Over the years, we’ve effectively brainwashed the core of our audience to distrust anything that they disagree with. And now it’s gone too far,' said John Ziegler, a conservative radio host, who has been critical of what he sees as excessive partisanship by pundits. 'Because the gatekeepers have lost all credibility in the minds of consumers, I don’t see how you reverse it.'"

BUSINESS:

- Ayn Rand and Corporate Tax Cuts Won’t Mend the Economy (New Yorker) "If 'you haven’t read Ayn Rand lately, I suggest that you do as her books pretty well capture the mindset,' Dalio, the founder and chief executive of Bridgewater Associates, wrote. 'This new administration hates weak, unproductive, socialist people and policies, and it admires strong, can-do, profit makers. It wants to, and probably will, shift the environment from one that makes profit makers villains with limited power to one that makes them heroes with significant power.' The final, and perhaps most important, point to note is that the Randian theory now being trumpeted was put to the test, not very long ago, and it failed. In 2004, the Bush Administration introduced a 'tax holiday' for corporations that repatriated profits they were holding abroad, arguing, much as Kudlow, Cohn, and others are now, that it would spur capital investment and job growth. What actually happened, according to a Senate subcommittee that surveyed twenty leading multinational companies, was that 'the 2004 repatriation tax provision was followed by an increase in dollars spent on stock repurchases and executive compensation.' It seems unlikely, therefore, that giving big tax breaks to major corporations will do much to raise capital spending and growth, although it could give another boost to the stock market, in the short term, anyway."

- Free Cash in Finland. Must Be Jobless (NYT) "For laid-off workers from Nokia, simply collecting a guaranteed unemployment check often presents a better financial proposition than taking a leap with a start-up in Finland, where a shaky technology industry is trying to find its footing again. Now, the Finnish government is exploring how to change that calculus, initiating an experiment in a form of social welfare: universal basic income. Early next year, the government plans to randomly select roughly 2,000 unemployed people — from white-collar coders to blue-collar construction workers. It will give them benefits automatically, absent bureaucratic hassle and minus penalties for amassing extra income. In communities around the world, officials are exploring basic income as a way to lessen the vulnerabilities of working people exposed to the vagaries of global trade and automation. While basic income is still an emerging idea, one far from being deployed on a large scale, the growing experimentation underscores the deep need to find effective means to alleviate the perils of globalization."

- The shipping industry is poised for massive upheaval. Can FedEx weather the storm? (WaPo)

ENTERTAINMENT:

- Amazon and Netflix Are Making So Many of Their Own Shows Because That’s How They Rule the World (Wired) "Making your own shows and movies takes money, time, and logistical chops as well, but when you’re done, you’re done. Amazon can show Mozart in the Jungle in 200 countries today without issue. Likewise Netflix and Bojack Horseman. Better still, they’ll retain those rights in perpetuity, obviating another common streaming complaint, that favorite shows and movies disappear. Original content never dies. It doesn’t even fade away."

- How Neil Armstrong Brought NASA Down to Earth (New Yorker) "Even after Armstrong became, in 1962, one of the New Nine astronauts who followed the Original Seven, he saw himself not against some limitless azure sky but over a table of blueprints: 'What I attended to was the progressive development of flight machinery. My exploration came totally as a by-product of that. I flew to the Moon not so much to go there but as part of developing the systems that would allow it to happen.' His life was about means, not ends."

HEALTH:

- What happened in Washington state after voters legalized recreational marijuana (WaPo) "The nation's first recreational marijuana shop opened nearly three years ago in Colorado. Since then, a growing body of research has shown that the availability of recreational marijuana — in Colorado and elsewhere — is having little to no effect on teens' propensity to smoke weed. That's the conclusion, at least, of the official statistics out of Colorado through 2015. It's what federal data shows nationwide through this year. And it's also backed up by other federal surveys of drug use in the states where marijuana is legal.

- You’re an Adult. Your Brain, Not So Much (NYT) "The human brain reaches its adult volume by age 10, but the neurons that make it up continue to change for years after that. The pruning in the occipital lobe, at the back of the brain, tapers off by age 20. In the frontal lobe, in the front of the brain, new links are still forming at age 30, if not beyond."

- New Ebola Vaccine Gives 100 Percent Protection (NYT) "The vaccine has not yet been approved by any regulatory authority, but it is considered so effective that an emergency stockpile of 300,000 doses has already been created for use should an outbreak flare up again."

- Savings, Longevity and the Year in Fitness (NYT) "In other words, exercise science this year taught us that being inactive could potentially cost us years from our lives and many thousands of dollars from our wallets."

- More evidence that we need to stop sitting so much — especially men (WaPo)

NEWS:

- North Korea Will Test Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, Kim Says (NYT) "In his annual New Year’s Day speech, which was broadcast on the North’s state-run KC TV on Sunday, Mr. Kim spoke proudly of the strides he said his country has made in its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. He said that North Korea would continue to bolster its weapons programs as long as the United States remained hostile and continued its joint military exercises with South Korea."

- The world today looks ominously like it did before World War I (WaPo) "But globalization has also hurt some less-skilled workers by exposing them to competition. In addition, globalization may make an easier political scapegoat, says Feinman: It’s easier for politicians to blame foreign countries for their troubles than technology, since technology is often viewed in a positive light."

- How the U.S. came to abstain on a U.N. resolution condemning Israeli settlements (WaPo) "Skeptics, including Vice President Biden, warned of fierce backlash in Congress and in Israel itself. But most agreed that the time had come to take a stand. The rapid increase of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, despite escalating U.S. criticism, could very well close the door to any hope of negotiating side-by-side Israeli and Palestinian states. Pending Israeli legislation would retroactively legalize settlements already constructed on Palestinian land."

- Robert Gates: There’s value in Trump’s ‘disruptive approach’ (WaPo) "'We’ve never had a populist movement or political insurgency quite like this — that actually captured the White House. That means there will be more discontinuities in our foreign policy. I’m telling people: ‘Give us some space here and have some strategic patience. And don’t overreact — even to Trump’s tweets. There will be a rough break-in period,' Gates predicted. Part of the challenge is that Trump believes his success stems from his freewheeling, undisciplined style, and personal messaging through Twitter — which makes him resist limits. Trump, by accident or design, has created a hint of the triangular dynamic among the United States, Russia and China that was a hallmark of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s diplomacy. Ideally, said Gates, the United States could play off Russia and China so that 'they’re both uncertain about where we’re headed.'"

- In Poland, a window on what happens when populists come to power (WaPo) "In merely a year, critics say, the nationalists have transformed Poland into a surreal and insular place — one where state-sponsored conspiracy theories and de facto propaganda distract the public as democracy erodes." and Poland’s Tragic Turn (NYT) "Once the model of post-Communist transition to democracy, Poland has taken a sharp swing backward. The 'reforms' enacted by the nationalist, right-wing Law and Justice Party, which won a majority in Parliament in October 2015, have strengthened the power of the executive branch over the news media, state prosecutors and nongovernmental organizations, and have undermined the independence of the constitutional court. Most recently, the government has cracked down on public gatherings."

- The Man Behind the Most Important Chart of 2016 (Ozy) "The chart lines up all of humanity according to their incomes (at least between 1988 and 2008). The good news: Everyone has gotten richer. The less good news: Some have gotten richer much, much faster than others. They’re the ones on the elephant’s trunk. Those just below them, in the 80th and 90th percentiles of income, have fallen way behind on growth. According to Milanović and his co-author, Cristoph Lakner, this is largely working- and middle-class Americans and Europeans. Over the past year, the chart has gotten much traction, with some arguing it explains the rise of Bernie, Trump, Brexit and all the rest of it."

- Obama Confronts Complexity of Using a Mighty Cyberarsenal Against Russia (NYT) "Those plans could deploy the world-class arsenal of cyberweapons assembled at a cost of billions of dollars during Mr. Obama’s tenure to expose or neutralize some of the hacking tools favored by Russia’s spies — the digital equivalent of a pre-emptive strike. But the selection of targets by Americans and the accuracy of that retaliation could also expose software 'implants' that the United States has patiently inserted and nurtured in Russian networks, in case of future cyberconflicts."

POLITICS:

- Don’t Let Trump’s Win Fool You—America’s Getting More Liberal (Wired) "Fueled by the huge millennial generation, an influx of immigrants, and increases to educational attainment, the U.S. at large is becoming more inclusive and accepting of ideas that would have been utterly taboo not too long ago. Trump’s election may represent the resistance of those who fear this left-leaning future, but it won’t change that future from coming to pass."

SPORTS:

- Sports viewership is changing, but the costs and benefits to fans remain murky (WaPo) "That hunger has grown, and sports teams, leagues and television executives are still trying to figure out the best way to feed the demand — or at least to understand it. A recent survey by CivicScience on behalf of SportsBusiness Journal found that one-third of respondents say they’re watching less sports than one year ago, and 15 percent say they have 'cut the cord' — walked away from traditional cable service — in the past year. Network executives are still trying to process why sports ratings struggled so much over the past 12 months — from the NFL to the costly Summer Olympics to the NCAA men’s basketball championship game."

TECHNOLOGY:

- Automakers Prepare for an America That’s Over the Whole Car Thing (NYT) "One clear sign of the shift is the increasing energy that carmakers are devoting to a design category the auto industry refers to as the 'the first mile/last mile' challenge. It refers to the short distances some people must travel from home or work to a local destination, often a mass transit station. In many ways, the industry’s race to solve the last-mile challenge involves the development of self-driving vehicles, an effort involving various carmakers, technology companies and start-up firms."

- The Energy Department helped start a revolution – and doesn’t know who to hand it off to (WaPo) "'We’re facing a fundamental question in this country,' said Friedman. 'Are we going to invest in the technologies that have been revolutionizing the world of energy, and that other countries are waking up to and investing in, or are we going to let that multi-trillion dollar opportunity slip by? And we’re not going to know the answer until post January 20th.'"

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Two reasons the red Solo Cup is a marvel of modern engineering (WaPo) "But what many take for granted as simply a cheap, disposable beverage holder is the result of careful, beautiful engineering by people such as Robert Hulseman. It's often said, incorrectly, that the lines found on some Solo Cups were intentionally designed to mark appropriate serving sizes for different types of drinks, such as beer, wine and liquor. But this has been debunked by the Solo Cup Co.'s parent company, Dart Container Corp. The lines are meant to enhance 'functional performance' and help keep your fingers from slipping."

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