Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, September 29, 2015.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Ghosts by The Head and the Heart
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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Syria war: 'Assad must go' to ensure IS defeat - Obama
By (BBC)
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US President Barack Obama has said defeating Islamic State in Syria would only be possible if President Bashar al-Assad stepped down, and that the fight against the group will take time.
He pledged to use all possible tools - military, intelligence and economic - to defeat IS, but acknowledged the group was continuing to expand.
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A US Congressional report released on Tuesday says more than 25,000 foreign fighters, including at least 4,500 Westerners, have joined IS and other militant groups in Syria and Iraq.
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The US and Russian leaders have long differed on Syria. The US and France say Syria's President Bashar al-Assad must go, while Russia has been a staunch ally of the regime in Damascus and has recently stepped up military support.
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Drone strikes: Do they actually work?
By (BBC)
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"Over 10 years of drone strikes haven't eliminated al-Qaeda as an organisation - but they have forced its operatives to be on the run, to communicate using extremely inefficient means that make it very difficult to conduct smooth plotting.
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"In some cases, you have seen more radical, mid-level commanders replace what were more pragmatic, cautious commanders who were killed in strikes or raids at times, so it hasn't always had a positive effect.
"[In Yemen,] there have been some cases where very poor intelligence has led to the killing of senior tribesmen, and what that has done is suck new groups into al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, into al-Qaeda's Yemeni branch. So far from diminishing the threat, in places it has also worsened it.
. . . drone strikes on Islamic State leaders who are on the front lines in Syria or Iraq will have much less impact, these are people who are dodging death on a daily basis. So drones might make it slightly more dangerous, but they're not going to fundamentally transform the situation from a safe one to an unsafe one.
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"A much more comprehensive strategy is needed [to win over hearts and minds] both by the Americans and the Pakistanis and the Afghans. And all that is completely missing."
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Large trees -- key climate influencers -- die first in drought
By (ScienceDaily)
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In forests worldwide, drought consistently has had a more detrimental impact on the growth and survival of larger trees, new research shows. In addition, while the death of small trees may affect the dominance of trees in a landscape, the death of large trees has a far worse impact on the ecosystem and climate's health, especially due to the important role that trees play in the carbon cycle.
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Tree death is often unpredictable, and the work by McDowell and colleagues has helped elucidate many processes. Large trees are more vulnerable, in part, due to their physiology: it's harder for them to transport the water and nutrients they need to their leaves and evaporative demands are higher. Additionally, large trees with crowns high in the canopy are exposed to higher solar radiation, and the ability to transport water to their foliage is lower.
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The tree-death percentage increased with increasing trunk diameter, exacerbated by extreme drought events and bark beetle kills. The percentages can misleadingly seem less severe since, under normal conditions, larger trees tend to live longer, therefore skewing the baseline. Drought-related death increased with tree size in 65 percent of the droughts examined.
According to these results and theoretical predictions previously published this year in Nature Climate Change by McDowell, large trees will suffer the most from the triple threat of 1) a warming climate, 2) drier soils and 3) more severe drought stress (intensity or frequency). Researchers note that the global consequences on ecosystem function, biodiversity, and the carbon cycle that begets climate change could be great.
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International |
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New Zealand to turn Kermadec into vast marine reserve
By (BBC)
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Fishing and mining will be banned in what Mr Key called "one of the most geographically and geologically diverse areas in the world."
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It contains the 10-km deep Kermadec trench, one of the deepest ocean trenches in the world, and is rich in sealife including whales, dolphins, endangered turtles and sea birds.
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But the announcement has surprised fishing and mining companies.
George Clement, chairman of Seafood New Zealand, told Reuters news agency they had had "no forewarning from government" and that the industry "needs time to consider the full implications".
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African nations agree to oil and gold tax to pay for food
By (BBC)
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Congo-Brazzaville, Guinea, Mali and Niger have agreed to divert a portion of state revenues from oil, gold, phosphate and uranium to a UN fund to fight childhood malnutrition.
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The scheme called Unitlife, which will be managed by the UN children's agency (Unicef), was announced at the UN's annual gathering of world leaders in New York.
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The UN says it would take around $50bn over the next 10 years to reduce by 40% the number of children under the age of five whose growth is stunted from malnutrition.
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A similar scheme already takes 1 euro ($1.12; £0.74) per air ticket from countries signed up to the it to fund projects fighting HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Bill de Blasio calls on New York pension funds to divest from coal companies
By Ellen Brait
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New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the city’s five pension funds on Tuesday to end their investments in coal companies, demonstrating his commitment to taking on climate change.
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According to the mayor’s office, this proposal will be presented to the five New York City pension boards over the coming months “to examine the specific impact and optimal reallocation of these assets”. The pension funds include the New York City employees’ retirement system, the teachers’ retirement system of the city of New York, the New York City police pension fund, the New York City fire department pension fund, and the New York City board of education retirement system.
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An analysis by the mayor’s office of pensions and investments found that divesting from coal posed little risk to pension fund returns, the mayor’s office said.
The administration’s latest initiative to take on climate change falls in line with the mayor’s plan to cut 80% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and have the cleanest air of any large US city by 2030.
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After Banning Torture, Psychology Association at a Crossroads
By Evelyne Shuste
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The American Psychological Association (APA) voted at its 2015 meeting to ban psychologists from participating in national security interrogation programs, including torture. The policy change was in response to the public outcry over the release of unsettling Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation program and the Hoffman report. The latter was written by former federal prosecutor David Hoffman, who was commissioned by the APA to investigate searing allegations by New York Times reporter James Risen of APA’s collusion with the Department of Defense to shape its ethics rules.
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The Hoffman report highlights the ongoing and unresolved dispute about whether CIA contract-psychologists should have applied to prisoners the concept of “learned helplessness” derived from experiments on dogs. “Learned helplessness” is a phenomenon which demonstrates that manipulation of dogs’ environment can cause dogs to give up trying to adjust to environmental changes and to protect themselves from assaults, and thus to become completely helpless. Applying this technique to CIA-held prisoners ended up to treating humans no better than dogs.
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At the very least, in addition to repudiating human rights violations, the APA leadership should apologize publically to the victims of its misguided and pernicious ethics policies and ask for forgiveness for the harm it caused. The apology, in the form of public admission of wrongdoings, can set the stage for changes in the APA’s culture. At this crossroads, if the APA adopts a philosophy based on universally accepted human rights principles and enforces a dignity-based ethics, it can put psychology back on the right track. But if it still chooses to pay lip service to medical ethics and human dignity, as it has done since 9/11, it will further damage the profession and be unworthy of the public trust.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
The band met and was formed through a series of open mic nights at Seattle's Conor Byrne pub in Ballard. Josiah Johnson had moved to Seattle from Southern California to pursue graduate school, and Jonathan Russell was a recent transfer from Richmond, Virginia. They met keyboardist Kenny Hensley, who had also moved to Seattle to pursue musical score-writing, and Charity Rose Thielen, who had recently returned from a year studying abroad in Paris at the Sciences Po. Drummer Tyler Williams had been in the band Prabir and The Substitutes in Richmond, but then moved to Seattle to be a part of the nascent Head and The Heart, after hearing one demo that Russell sent to him for the song "Down In The Valley". Chris Zasche was bartending at the Conor Byrne, working aftercare shifts at The Perkins School, and playing in Seattle bands The Maldives and Grand Hallway, and was the last to be added to original lineup. In an interview with American Songwriter, Thielen stated that she was asked to join after the band had already considered themselves formed: "I was kind of invited in, when there’s already this wave, there’s already this boat in motion and I didn’t want to re-steer its course." Johnson explained how the name of the band was chosen: "Your head is telling you to be stable and find a good job, you know in your heart that this [the band] is what you're supposed to do even if it's crazy."
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Oil companies are having a tougher time making money
By Mark Schapiro
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Fugere, president of the shareholder activist group As You Sow, pointed out that Chevron — the world’s largest corporate source of carbon dioxide emissions — has spent billions of dollars searching for new, often remote sources of oil that will take years to tap. How, she wondered, can the company remain profitable when it faces plummeting crude oil prices and looming restrictions on fossil fuel use? Rather than funding long-term projects that might never pay off, she argued, Chevron could return the money as dividends or steer it into less risky ventures like renewable energy. “Oil that stays in the ground is valueless,” she said.
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One explanation for falling prices is the glut of cheap domestic oil from the fracking boom. But the industry is also confronting what Bloomberg energy analysts have characterized as a “demand shock.” California’s new regulations on fuels’ carbon intensity and the Obama administration’s aggressive fuel efficiency standards, scheduled to take effect in 2025, are steering carmakers toward designs that use less gasoline. “We’re on the opposite side of the oil companies in the battle over the low-carbon fuel standard,” says General Motors spokesman Shad Balch. “The first company with a no-gas car wins.” Citi’s commodity research team predicts these factors, combined with the rising use of natural gas, will cause the rate of U.S. oil consumption to peak by 2030. In August, the Interior Department reported an almost unprecedented lack of interest in purchasing leases for new wells in the Gulf of Mexico. And the National Bank of Abu Dhabi recently concluded that developing wind or solar capacity in the Middle East would be cheaper than building a new oil-fired power plant, even if the price of oil drops to $30 per barrel.
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The new realities facing the energy sector are reflected in Bloomberg’s 2013 decision to display companies’ fossil-fuel-related risks on the omnipresent terminals that deliver financial data to investors. Such liabilities, however, do not have to be reported in public financial statements. In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission asked publicly traded companies to voluntarily report their financial risks from climate change. So far, not even 15 percent of S&P 500 companies have bothered to do so.
Meanwhile, overseas investors have had more success in prodding the industry to make changes that it has thus far been able to dodge in the United States. In January, Royal Dutch Shell shareholders enlisted management support for unprecedented emissions disclosures and a suggestion that executive compensation be linked with planning for a carbon-constrained energy market. In April, just before Chevron stockholders ignored Fugere, BP’s shareholders agreed to similar policies.
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500 Year Floods Now Coming to New York Every 24 Years
By Maddie Stone
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. . . Modern times are getting weird. Focusing on the neighborhood in Lower Manhattan known as the Battery, the researchers found that while a Sandy-sized storm — which produced 9.2 feet (2.81 meters) of surge — used to be a 3,000 year event, a flood of its magnitude could now occur every 130 years. 500 year floods, which cause 7.4 feet (2.25 meters) of storm surge, are now predicted to smack Manhattan ever 24 years. New Yorkers can thank a combination of sea level rise and more extreme storm events for their flood-filled future.
What’s the city to do about this sorry forecast? First off, New York needs to start investing in storm-proof infrastructure, whether that means higher seawalls, sturdier building foundations or new outflows for waterlogged streets. Second, its 8 million-ish voters could, you know, start using their political weight to help elect candidates who actually want to tackle climate change — which is, of course, the undisputed root of the problem.
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Science and Health |
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Morals, Not Memories, Define Who We Are
By Bobby Azarian
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Determining the factors that define one’s identity is an old philosophical problem that first received serious consideration in the 17th century by the early British empiricist, John Locke. According to Locke’s “memory theory”, a person’s identity only reaches as far as their memory extends into the past. In other words, who one is critically depends upon what one remembers. Thus, as a person’s memory begins to disappear, so does his identity.
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Analysis of the data revealed that participants perceived the greatest disruptions in patients’ identity when they observed changes in moral traits. Other cognitive deficits—like those seen with amnesia—had no measurable effect on the perception of identity. Consequently, those with frontotemporal dementia showed the greatest changes in perceived identity, since it specifically affects the frontal lobe functions underlying moral reasoning and behavior.
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These findings have important implications for patients with neurodegenerative diseases. Efforts aimed at helping sufferers to understand themselves in terms of their moral traits—characteristics like altruism, mercy, and generosity—can restore their sense of identity and control as memory fades or cognition declines. Simply knowing that others continue to perceive them as the same person, even when they feel that their own identity is changing, can allow them to securely protect their sense of self. Additionally, the results highlight the need for future neurological interventions and clinical therapies that specifically focus on maintaining those cognitive faculties involved in moral function in the face of disease.
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Relationship between sympathy, helping others could provide clues to development of altruism
By (ScienceDaily)
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Developmental psychologists long have debated whether individuals volunteer and help others because they are sympathetic or whether they are sympathetic because they are prosocial. Now, new research from the University of Missouri helps clarify some of the confusion, which could lead to better interventions to promote positive behaviors in adolescents and clues as to what makes some individuals altruistic.
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Engaging in prosocial behaviors has a self-reinforcing quality that eventually may become incorporated into how adolescents view their moral selves; this may help explain how some individuals, over time, become more likely to engage in prosocial behaviors and become more sympathetic, Carlo said.
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"Unfortunately, in our society, the pressures for boys to act tough and to not express what's seen as a sign of weakness is suppressing prosocial behaviors," Carlo said. "We need to pay attention to adolescents' contexts and their socialization groups. Prosocial behaviors clearly are natural tendencies, and unfortunately, some cultural contexts make it difficult for adolescents to express those tendencies, which should be signs of strength and not weakness. We need to get that message across and make it easier for kids to express what's innately inside of them."
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Technology |
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Video games aren't anarchic – they treat us like naughty children
By Jonathan Allford
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We all know that video games offer us the chance to do things we’d never dream of doing in real life – robbing banks, slaying dragons, sorting falling shapes into the right position to make them disappear. Crazy stuff.
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A very, very small number will actually let you kill the character and then quietly work out what to do about that. These games don’t so much smack your wrist as breathe a heavy sigh and mutter, “OK, that’s how it’s going to be, is it? Fine, let’s see how you like it now”. My favourite example of this is Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind where you can openly and brazenly slay anyone who is trying to help you. It’s not until after you’ve committed the deed, however, that the game tells you the world is now doomed (oops) and that saving the file will mean you’re unable to complete the adventure. The core narrative is only a comparatively small part of Morrowind though, so you can still enjoy what is now an openly doomed and nihilistic existence.
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Bioware’s role-playing classic Baldur’s Gate allows you to kill your foster father in the prologue. He is far, far stronger than the player character, but it is technically possible and results in bringing the game’s story to an abrupt halt. Unlike in Morrowind, there is no “you’ve just broken the game” warning dialogue box – your character is simply stuck in the prologue forever. That game’s recent spiritual successor, Pillars of Eternity, carries this mechanic to a degree but if you kill a key character, it basically states that, once again, the world is completely doomed – at which point the game ends.
Older titles, particularly point-and-click adventures, carried this feature more prominently in a way that’d be simply untenable with modern-day audiences. Forgetting to pick up an item, or carrying out tasks in the wrong order, wouldn’t only result in a game being impossible to finish, the game also wouldn’t tell you it was impossible to finish. You could make a mistake in the first act, not realise, spend hours getting through the rest of the adventure and then unceremoniously die when you reached a pivotal moment in the story. Kings Quest, a lauded, brilliant series, would spring this on a player quite often and with its inane puzzles and baffling challenges it was easy to miss a mundane item that would turn out to be game-breaking later.
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Tinder and Grindr outraged over STD testing billboards that reference apps
By Ellen Brait
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A recent billboard campaign by the Aids Healthcare Foundation (AHF) encouraging users of dating apps Tinder and Grindr to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases has led to backlash from the two companies.
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The ads, which suggest that users of the apps are at risk for diseases like chlamydia and gonorrhea, show the silhouettes of two couples leaning in. Tinder and Grindr are plastered across two of their faces in large pink letters, while the remaining two silhouettes have the names of STDs on their profiles. To the right of the couples, a website for free STD testing is listed.
“There are consequences to hooking up,” Weinstein told the Guardian. “That’s not a moralistic judgement. It’s just a fact and minimizing that is important.”
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They added: “Rather than trying to chill AHF’s public health message by threatening AHF with frivolous lawsuits, AHF urges Tinder to support its message of sexual health awareness by encouraging Tinder users to get tested for STIs and to get treated promptly if they have an infection.”
Tinder and Grindr did not respond to requests for comment.
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Cultural |
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Report condemns child labour in Philippines gold mines
By (Al Jazeera)
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One of the most dangerous mining practices recorded by the rights group is known as underwater compressor mining. It is a practice in the Philippines, where many of the gold deposits are beneath the water table.
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One of the children working with mercury was 13-year-old Ruth from another village in the island of Catanduanes. She told Human Rights Watch that she processes gold to support her parents. She dropped out of school at nine and started working, processing gold.
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"Child labour is a product of poverty. Therefore, the government should provide poor vulnerable families with support to enable them to send their children to school," said Conde.
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Elmer Billedo, a top official at the Philippines’ Mines and Geosciences Bureau, said it is impossible to monitor all the small-scale gold mining activities in the country, especially those who are employing children.
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Both In Headlines And Quiet, 2 Agencies Fuel American Arts For Decades
By Tom Cole
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There was a time in the 1990s when the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities dominated headlines for funding controversial artworks and what were viewed as exclusive educational programs. Well, on this day, the two endowments were signed into law 50 years ago. And nowadays they're absent from wide public discourse. But they're still at work funding programs and trying to convince Congress and the American people of their value. NPR's Tom Cole reports.
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COLE: The man wrote the legislation was the late Livingston Biddle, who later went on to head the NEA. He had to convince his then boss, Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, to introduce the bill, as Biddle told me in 1995.
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LIVINGSTON BIDDLE: Most members of Congress looked at artists and the arts with considerable suspicion. We weren't all that far from the McCarthy period and artists and Communists were equated, still.
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ADAMS: We are having an argument in this country about the scope of government. But I'm not afraid to say that I think that scope must include this fundamental concern for culture. And the interest is not just financial. It's also symbolic, and I think that's one of the most important aspects of the history of these two agencies. They've been able to represent the public commitment to the historic and cultural legacy of the country.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |