Lindsay Ellis: Death of the Author #movies

Andrew Gaudion: Ranking Every Training Montage in the ‘Rocky’ Franchise

Bruce Springsteen: Tougher Than the Rest #music

Bruce Springsteen: Brilliant Disguise #music

I now think the right dates for the "long" 20th Century are: May 10, 1869-November 8, 2016: Frederick Studemann: The New Year Could Mark the Beginning of a New(ish) Century: "There are those, such as the economic historian Brad DeLong, who wonder whether Hobsbawn may have short-changed the 20th century. Can a case can be made, they ask, for the 20th century to run from 1870, when the wider impact of the industrial revolution became clear, political economics became central and liberal democracy took hold, to just after the global financial crisis?...

Noah Smith: China's Economic Growth at Risk From Reversing Reforms - Bloomberg: "There already are some signs that the country is making mistakes that will hobble economic growth.... By many measures, China is the world’s largest economy. This means a number of benefits will now flow—and indeed are already flowing—to China that used to go to the U.S. and Europe. Chief among these is agglomeration.... But... it might easily make mistakes that would prevent the country from leveraging that size for maximum economic benefit. Chief among these self-inflicted wounds would be closing the country to foreign investment, extending state control of the economy and adopting an adversarial relationship with neighboring nations. Ominously, the country seems to doing all of these now, to one extent on another... #economicgrowth

Richa Gupta and Umang Aggarwal: Is there a “Late Converger Stall” in Economic Development? Can India Escape it?: "A major driver of these good times is 'economic convergence', whereby poorer countries have grown faster than richer countries and closed the gap in standards of living. The convergence process has been broadening and accelerating for the last 20-30 years.... [But] the possibility of... a 'Late Converger Stall'... #economicgrowth #economichistory #globalization

Liz Bruenig: Falwell’s entire view of Christianity and politics... I suspect... stems from a mistaken reading of Augustine, the fourth-century African saint who wrote 'The City of God'... #moralphilosophy

Francis Crick (1967): To James Watson

Guinness: noitulovE

Kate Riga: GOP Senator Calls For End Of Shutdown Without Deal On Trump’s Border Wall: "Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO).... 'I think we should pass a continuing resolution to get the government back open. The Senate has done it last Congress, we should do it again today', Gardner said.... Gardner is up for reelection in 2020 in a purple state...

Yes, it was a mistake for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates last month: Chris Matthews: Dow Tumbles 650 points as Apple News, Manufacturing Data Spark Fears of Global Slowdown: ".S. stock indexes closed sharply lower Thursday, after a survey of American manufacturers showed the sector growing at its slowest pace in two years, and after a sales forecast cut by Apple Inc AAPL, -9.96% intensified fears of a slowing Chinese economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -2.83% fell 661.58 points, or 2.8%, to 22,684.66, the S&P 500 index SPX, -2.48% , shed 62.18 points, or 2.5%, to 2,447.87, while the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -3.04% tumbled 202.43 points, or 3%, to 6,463.50...

Maybe now that Trump has embraced lowering corporate profits as a policy goal, Mike Pence will be willing to invoke Amendment 25: Josh Barro: China Is Losing Trump’s Trade War—and So Are We: "This is the insanity of the president’s trade war policy: it’s negative-sum.... Trump’s own economic adviser is going on television and saying his policy is going to reduce corporate profits. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the strange disconnect between financial markets and economic data.... Well, as Bloomberg put it in a headline this morning, 'Bad Stuff the Stock Market Worried About Is Starting to Happen'.... The economy is weakening, and market participants know it, but the weakened performance has not yet shown up in lagging economic data...