Short Subjects From My Writer's Notebook

#Joe Kira, "Ageism in the Workplace, AARP Bulletin, January/February 2020.
76 percent of workers see age discrimination as a hurdle to finding a job. Another report found that half of older workers are prematurely pushed out of jobs, and 90 percent never earn as much again.

#Edward Cavanaugh, "Burning Apathy," The Nation, January 27, 2020.
[President Scot Morrison's] "complacency is rooted in an ideology that we might call Australian exceptionalism, that comforting fallacy that Australia is exempt from  globalism on climate because it isn't big enough to make a difference. A reasonable Australian would aspire to limitless  energy, powering industry, and creating high-wage jobs."

#"Australia: a lack of leadership as a nation burns," The Week, January 17, 2020.
" 'What's unfolding right now is really just a taste of the 'new normal,' ' said Australian climate scientist Joelle Gerges in The New Guardian.com. 'I fear that we've reached a tipping point in human-caused climate change and that weather conditions considered extreme by today's standards will seem sedate in the future.' "

#Anne Applebaum, " Admiring a fantasy Russia," The Atlantic. com, in The Week, January 17, 2020.
"Disgusted by multiculturalism, the  decline of religion, and what they believe is the 'degeneracy' of American society, some conservatives and evangelicals now see Russia as 'the shimmering lure' of a unified, homogeneous nation that has resisted change, and political correctness."

#Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordered a NPR reporter off his plane on a foreign trip. The reporter was Michele Kelemen. He claims she abused him. He asked her to identify Ukraine on a map, and she was able to.

#A section of Trump's border wall was blown down by a 37 mph wind. The panels were found leaning against trees adjacent to a Mexicali, Mexico street.

#The GOP floated 29 defenses of Trump during the impeachment hearings.

#Kenneth Star testifying in the Trump impeachment hearings, said we are living in 'The Age of Impeachment.' He also said: "A presidential impeachment is tantamount to domestic war." "It's filled with acrimony and it divides the country, like nothing else." He didn't acknowledge his own role in the acrimony.

#Alan Dershowitz said in the impeachment trial of President Trump that: "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."

#"Anti-Semitism: America's growing crisis," The Week. January 17, 2020.
"America is in the midst of the 'worst wave of sustained anti-Semitism violence in our nation's history,' said Marc Baker, Jeremy Buertin, and Robert Treston, in the Boston Globe. " 'We'd better take the problem seriously,' said Frita Ghtis in CNN.com. 'Throughout history, anti-Semitism has served as the 'canary in the coal mine' for societies that are unraveling. When the benefits and ideals that held a society together crumble, people in different groups start viewing one another not as countrymen, but as rivals traitors, and the other.' "

#"Permafrost in meltdown," The Week, January 17, 2020.
"Permafrost is a layer of frozen soil that encompasses about 25 percent of the land in the Northern Hemisphere. It acts as a massive freezer, locking away up to 1,760 billion tons of organic carbon from dead plants and animals." NOAA estimates that melting permafrost now releases up to 2.2 billion net tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year -- the equivalent of Russia's annual emissions.