Rose Madeline Mula writes: Every aspect of life today is characterized by multiple choice. The Bachelor and Bachelorette must decide which of twenty-five suitors would be the best mate. Kindergartners must choose which action hero or Disney princess should decorate their backpacks. Women have to determine which of dozens of costly wrinkle creams will live up to their hype. A far cry from the only skincare choice I had in my youth — Pond's Cold Cream at 25 cents a jar. Unfortunately, I’m a stress eater; so all of the decision-making I face in my day-to-day life inevitably leads me to ice cream — which only compounds the problem. Do you know how many flavors Baskin-Robbins offers these days?!

On 8 September 1944 at the district registrar’s office, Ashfield, Payne-Scott married William Holman Hall, a telephone mechanic. In 1950 CSIRO management officially heard of her marriage. Since public service rules at the time required women to resign upon marriage, she lost her permanent position and became a temporary employee — a loss of status she indignantly protested in keeping with her fearless, unconventional character and passionate commitment to her political views. She left CSIRO and radio astronomy in 1951, when she was expecting her first child.

“In the past few months, [the FBI] has charged people with threatening to bomb a minority commencement ceremony at Harvard, threatening to shoot people at a Second Amendment rally, offering money to anyone who kills a federal agent, and mailing white powder and threatening notes to certain public figures,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling. “Anyone – regardless of political affiliation – who puts others in fear for their lives will be prosecuted by this office. In a time of increasing political polarization, and amid the increasing incidence of mass shootings, members of the public must police their own political rhetoric. Or we will.”  BOSTON – A California man was arrested today and charged with making violent threats against Boston Globe employees in retaliation for the newspaper’s editorial response to political attacks on the media. Robert D. Chain, 68, of Encino, Califo…

More than two in ten report loneliness or social isolation in the U.K. and the U.S., double the share in Japan. More than a fifth of adults in the United States (22 percent) and the United Kingdom (23 percent), as well as one in ten adults (nine percent) in Japan, say they often or always feel lonely, feel that they lack companionship, feel left out, or feel isolated from others, and many of them say their loneliness has had a negative impact on various aspects of their life. For example, across countries, about half or more reporting loneliness say it has had a negative impact on their personal relationships or their physical health. While loneliness is often thought of as a problem mainly affecting the elderly, the majority of people reporting loneliness in each country are under age 50. They’re also much more likely to be single or divorced than others.

"However, by limiting the definition of the student debt problem to those borrowers who are behind or in default, the literature assumes that the remaining thirty-three million borrowers are doing just fine. This perspective is deeply flawed. First, it is certainly not acceptable to write off the financial futures of eleven million people. Second, by defining down what it means to “struggle” to include only those in immediate, documented financial distress, these commentators are ignoring the broader reality of debt-financed higher education. For every borrower who misses a student loan payment or defaults on a debt, there is another borrower who is struggling to buy a home, start a business, or save for retirement due to the burden of their student loans." Seth Frotman, the man who has resigned from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“We’ve created an exhibition from our collection; incorporated a traveling show; and commissioned a contemporary artist to respond to images and events from our community.” The result is a strikingly nuanced exhibition trio with programming which offers ideas for specific local social action, opportunities for an in-depth look the artistic styles represented, and multiple vehicles through which residents can share their stories and recollections. “Our community has been eager to engage in these healing conversations about our challenging past,” says Sam Sweet, Executive Director and CEO, “The Delaware Art Museum is thrilled that this exhibitions-in the works since 2016-have been the catalyst for meaningful dialogue and civic action as Delaware remembers Wilmington 1968.”

“The Midwest is perhaps an unexpected point of departure for an examination of this thoroughly cosmopolitan painter, who made his career in Europe, attracted a transatlantic set of patrons, and cultivated professional ties primarily on the East Coast. Yet Sargent was indeed a fascinating player in the cultural history of Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. This exhibition presents the scope of Sargent’s talents while also recounting the integral narratives of local collectors, exhibitions, and institutions that are part of the artworks’ own histories.” 

The findings could have implications for the treatment of depression and anxiety, which involves prescribing drugs such as Prozac that target the serotonin system – so-called SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). However, these drugs often trigger a host of side effects, some of which are so intolerable that patients stop taking them. “If we can target the relevant pathways of the serotonin system individually, then we may be able to eliminate the unwanted side effects and treat only the disorder,” said the Stanford study's first author Jing Ren, a postdoctoral fellow in Liqun Luo’s lab.

As of 2019, Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Part D prescription drug plans will no longer be exposed to a coverage gap, sometimes called the “donut hole”, when they fill their brand-name medications. The coverage gap was included in the initial design of the Part D drug benefit in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 in order to reduce the total 10-year cost of the benefit. Subsequent legislative changes are phasing out the coverage gap by modifying the share of total costs paid in the gap by Part D enrollees and plans and requiring drug manufacturers to provide a discount on the price of brand-name drugs in the gap.

The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA); the state of California's "mission is to protect and enhance public health and the environment by scientific evaluation of risks posed by hazardous substances." A couple of reports currently on the website: Protecting Public Health from Home and Building Fire Ash and Art and Craft Material Exposures and Impacts to Children's Health; Inorganic Arsenic in White and Brown Rice.

Jo Freeman writes: When Unite the Right announced it would hold another rally on the anniversary of the one it held in Charlottesville in 2017, it caused a great amount of consternation. They received a permit to hold it in Washington, D.C., at Lafayette Square across from the White House, raising specters of carnage in the nation’s capital. Violence had permeated the 2017 event, resulting in the death of a counter-protestor. In their effort to avoid a crisis, DC police spent weeks in planning. The officers turned out in such great numbers that the scene almost resembled a uniform convention. There was only one arrest in DC.

Some Retraction Watch Items: A star may not be quite as bright, but an astronomer deserves a gold star for retracting his findings within 24 hours of posting them and thanking those that helped him find the error. A study “asked whether the top scientific journals, Nature and Science, represented men and women equally as authors, subjects, and objects in photographs. Overwhelmingly, women were underrepresented in these magazines, an effect that was apparent even in advertisements and stock photographs.” “A scientific paper can mislead,” says Andrew Gelman. “People can read a paper, or see later popularizations of the work, and think that ‘science shows’ something that science didn’t show.”

Rose Madeline Mula writes: The mimeograph machine was another diabolic duplicating device. If we didn't want to get purple ink all over ourselves, instead of using a ditto master, we typed a mimeograph stencil. This was a blue sheet over a stiff backing on which we typed without a typewriter ribbon so that the keys cut through the stencil. If we made a mistake, we coated it with a special white glop, waited for it to dry, and then tried to cut the correct symbols through the glop. Good luck. When the typing and glopping were finished, we wrapped the stencil around the black-ink coated drum of the mimeograph machine and cranked out the required copies. The big advantage of this method was no purple-stained clothes and body parts. We did, however, wind up with black-stained clothes and body parts.

Elaine Soloway writes: I have turned to therapy a handful of times. My slim record is not because I disdain the practice or am reluctant to reveal my secrets. Fifty-five minutes focused on me, a sympathetic witness to my angst, a collaborator in my version of the story; who wouldn't relish the experience. Because I had not lived in the same city as my daughters for 25 years, and since I was unfettered in Chicago (no husband, house, dog, car, debt), I thought the time was right to jump into their world. But, instead of considering this decision an abandonment of Los Angeles, I'll add Bi-Coastal to my labels and have the best of both worlds.

The items exploring the vast spectrum of Tolkien's creative and scholarly output range from his early abstract paintings in The Book of Ishness to the tales he wrote for his children. Original manuscripts of his popular classics sit alongside lesser-known and posthumous works and materials, some of which will be on public display for the very first time. The range of objects on display includes Tolkien's creation of language, his childhood and student days, his career as a scholar of literature, and his family life as a husband and father.      

"CBP and U.S. Border Patrol developed a methodology for prioritizing future barrier deployments along the entire southwest border, which included input from Border Patrol officials, data on illegal entry traffic, and analysis of operational and engineering feasibility for each potential location. However, the strategy did not include analysis of the costs associated with deploying barriers in each location or segment, which can vary depending on topography, land ownership, and other factors. Without assessing costs, consistent with leading practices for capital decision making, CBP does not have complete information for prioritizing locations to use its resources in the most cost-effective manner." 

Purdue’s 1996-2002 marketing plans for OxyContin, which Kaiser Health News made public this year for the first time, offer an unprecedented look at how that company spent millions of dollars to push opioids for growing legions of pain sufferers. Some of those drugmakers’ sales promotions downplayed or ignored the risks of taking opioids, or made false claims about their safety, federal regulators have asserted in warning letters to the companies. A wave of lawsuits demanding reimbursement and accountability for the opioid crisis now ravaging communities has heightened awareness about how and when drug makers realized the potential dangers of their products.

Austin, Texas recently took a new tack in the ongoing war between “sanctuary cities" and federal immigration authorities. Declaring itself a “freedom city,” the Texas capital instructed its police officers to arrest fewer people for minor crimes — to prevent their fingerprints from going to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and to inform people that they may refuse a request to present their immigration papers. Though novel, Austin’s gambit fits into a broader pattern: As the Trump administration this year ratcheted up its efforts to curb illegal immigration, cities and states experimented with new ways to resist — or assist — the crackdown.

In 1848 — a year of political revolution across Europe — seven young Englishmen with aspirations to rebel against the art world formed a secret artistic alliance. Calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the artists — including William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais — opposed the Royal Academy of Art’s prevailing aesthetic tenets embodied by its first president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, whom they christened “Sir Sloshua.”

"We’ve recently become aware of a growing number of manufacturers marketing “vaginal rejuvenation” devices to women and claiming these procedures will treat conditions and symptoms related to menopause, urinary incontinence or sexual function. The procedures use lasers and other energy-based devices to destroy or reshape vaginal tissue. These products have serious risks and don’t have adequate evidence to support their use for these purposes. We are deeply concerned women are being harmed."

Earlier this season I had found that a shallot in my fridge had started growing. I took a chance and planted it. Then I forgot about it, never really expecting anything to come of it. Then the garden surprised me. A tall stalk reached out of the dirt. I thought it was a wild onion and left it alone. It continued to shoot up and then there was an intriguing flower at the end of it. When I dug it up to see what was growing, I saw the shallot had grown and multiplied! Not only was the flower beautiful to see but the shallots were delicious to eat.

Few American homeowners were spared from the broad housing collapse a decade ago, but Generation Xers were hit particularly hard. Newer to the housing market, more likely to be buying at peak prices and taking on more mortgage debt to buy their homes, they lost more wealth than other generations. But a new Pew Research Center analysis of Federal Reserve data finds that Gen Xers are the only generation of households to recover the wealth they lost during the Great Recession.

Joan L. Cannon wrote: An editor no longer can browse the slush pile for something that might be to his or her individual taste and take a flier on it. As for fiction: the formulas for success (read enormous sales) have multiplied. Does the story have a thriller pace? Check. Plenty of sex, preferably explicit and at least somewhat unconventional? Check. Violence? Check. Shocking characters, scenes, plots? Check. Or, perhaps to fit into another category, it may need to be gently bland, without a suggestion of the unpleasant realities of life and certainly no more than a hint of sex, and make every character call regularly and verbally on the Almighty. Even the category romances of my day have become less rather than more convincing.