NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report join Amna Nawaz to discuss the latest political news, including Pete Buttigieg’s surge in Iowa, former Vice President Joe Biden’s lead in South Carolina polls, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s health care plan update and what another Democratic gubernatorial upset in Louisiana means for President Trump in 2020.
Category Archives: News
Art Of Food: 99-Year Old Painter Wayne Thiebaud Creates Thanksgiving Cover For New Yorker
From New Yorker article:
Since all of my paintings—almost every single one except for the figure paintings—are done from memory, I rely specifically on the memory of working in restaurants, or of visiting farms on which I worked as a young person. I try to recall the look and feel and love of what I have experienced.
At ninety-nine, Wayne Thiebaud—one of America’s greatest painters, and certainly its premier painter of food—is still going strong. This is Thiebaud’s ninth cover for the magazine, and it riffs on one of his previous paintings, an image of a turkey that he started in 2009. A sharp viewer might pick out the added details and embellishments, but more striking, perhaps, are the Thiebaud hallmarks that remain the same: soft light, clear color, a blue shadow pooling around a plate. We recently called Thiebaud at his home, in Sacramento, to talk about his work.
To read more: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2019-11-25
Retirement Planning: Nobel Prize Economist William Sharpe Offers Free E-Book For Retirees
Feom a Barron’s online interview article:
Right now, you tend to have investment advisors for retirees, and insurance advisors or salespersons for retirees, and it’s fairly rare to go to somebody who can sell you annuities or invest your money and has no financial incentive to tilt one way or the other. Ultimately, what I’d like to see are people who have knowledge of both annuities and investments, and who are compensated in a way that doesn’t influence the decision.
The idea is that you segment your money. It’s similar to using “buckets” but with a time component. A retiree might have a box for 2020 and a box for 2021, and 2022, etc.
Nobel Prize–winning economist William Sharpe has spent most of his career thinking about risk. He’s behind the Capital Asset Pricing Model for gauging systemic risk and the eponymous Sharpe ratio, which captures risk-adjusted return.
A few decades ago, Sharpe turned his attention to what may be the biggest risk of all for most Americans—running out of money in retirement. The professor of finance, emeritus, at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business created a computer program that eventually covered 100,000 retirement-income scenarios based on different combinations of life spans and investment returns for a retired couple. Sharpe has made this program available in a free ebook, Retirement Income Scenario Matrices.
To read more: https://www.barrons.com/articles/william-sharpe-how-to-secure-lasting-retirement-income-51573837934
Top Political Podcasts: Mark Shields And David Brooks On The Latest In Washington (PBS)
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including whether public impeachment hearings are making President Trump more or less vulnerable, what stood out about the witnesses who testified so far, whether Trump’s Ukraine dealings are surprising or “in character” and the latest dynamics among 2020 Democrats.
Museum Events: The Huntington Library Builds Centennial Float For 2020 Rose Parade (Timelapse Video)
For the first time in 50 years, The Huntington will join Pasadena’s world-famous Rose Parade® with a spectacular float, themed “Cultivating Curiosity,” to capture the spirit of The Huntington’s Centennial Celebration and highlight the institution’s rare research materials, inspiring art collections, and enchanting botanical gardens that have made it a beloved destination that welcomes 750,000 visitors each year.
Top Science Podcasts: Researchers “Locked In Arctic Ice Flow”, “Spikes Of Plasma” Heating The Sun’s Corona (ScienceMag)
The Polarstern research vessel will spend 1 year locked in an Arctic ice floe. Aboard the ship and on the nearby ice, researchers will take measurements of the ice, air, water, and more in an effort to understand this pristine place. Science journalist Shannon Hall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about her time aboard the Polarstern and how difficult these measurements are, when the researchers’ temporary Arctic home is the noisiest, smokiest, brightest thing around.
After that icy start, Sarah talks also with Tanmoy Samanta, a postdoctoral researcher at Peking University in Beijing, about the source of the extreme temperature of the Sun’s corona, which can be up to 1 million K hotter than the surface of the Sun. His team’s careful measurements of spicules—small, plentiful, short-lived spikes of plasma that constantly ruffle the Sun’s surface—and the magnetic networks that seem to generate these spikes, suggest a solution to the long-standing problem of how spicules arise and, at the same time, their likely role in the heating of the corona.
To read more: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/how-make-arctic-ship-vanish-and-how-fast-moving-spikes-are-heating-sun-s-atmosphere
World Affairs Podcasts: Impeachment, Middle East Conflict And Aircraft Carriers (The Economist)
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, Democrats want impeachment hearings to change the public’s view of Donald Trump. That will be difficult. (10:50) The tangled politics surrounding a killing and its aftermath in Gaza. (16:30) And, for aircraft-carriers, bigger isn’t better.
Senior Housing: Baby Boomers Choosing To Stay In Own Homes Threatens New Facilities
From a Wall Street Journal online article:
The rise of technologies that help the elderly stay in their homes threatens to upend one of commercial real estate’s biggest bets: Aging baby boomers will leave their residences in droves for senior housing.
Developers and senior-housing companies have spent billions of dollars over the past five years to build facilities that provide housing, food, medical care and assistance for the elderly.
While these properties have been filling up with people born during the Depression or World War II era, real-estate investors are eagerly eyeing the massive baby-boomer generation: 72 million people born between 1946 and 1964, or about one in five Americans. Their needs would require hundreds of thousands of new units, if previous demand patterns persist.
But this wager on elderly care is falling short of expectations, and there are concerns that it could become one of the biggest real-estate miscalculations in recent memory, some analysts suggest.
To read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/boomers-want-to-stay-home-senior-housing-now-faces-a-budding-glut-11573554601
Top Political Podcasts: Tamara Keith And Amy Walter On The Latest In Washington (PBS)
NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report join Judy Woodruff to discuss the latest political news, including whether open hearings could change Americans’ minds about impeachment, implications for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, the potential entry of Michael Bloomberg into the Democratic race, Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s comments about standards for female politicians and more.
Consumer Surveys: Only 30% Of Baby Boomers Use Online Grocery Services
From a Chain Store Age online release:
According to a recent survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers from advertising platform Criteo, 48% of millennial and Gen Z respondents use online grocery delivery services, compared to 37% of Gen X respondents and only 30% of baby boomer respondents.
Baby boomers are much less likely than younger consumers to participate in a particular omnichannel grocery activity.
Results for browsing multiple sites to read product reviews are essentially the same across generations. But Gen X consumers are much more likely to browse multiple sites if a product they want is unavailable (37%) than Gen Z/millennial (28%) or baby boomer/silent generation consumers (22%). And more than half (51%) of baby boomer/silent generation consumers will browse multiple sites for none of these reasons, compared to 27% of Gen X and 15% of Gen Z/millennial consumers.
To read more: https://chainstoreage.com/survey-boomers-dont-say-ok-grocery-service
Boomers Daily 