2016 ELECTION: Republican Party now in battle over what it is to be ‘conservative’: ” the Republican Party had finally brought one of its most important internal debates into the open. If a GOP candidate wins the White House next year, there will absolutely be a tension in the next Congress over tax cuts, military spending and the federal debt.” NYT: “Years’ worth of arguments conducted at issues forums and in the pages of policy journals and newspapers are now coming to life. The Republican hopefuls are sparring over such high-fiber fare as tax policy: whether to adhere strictly to the party’s supply-side creed or move at least modestly toward policies aimed at bolstering lesser earners. They are clashing over the role America plays in the world, and whether fiscal conservatism is compatible with a drastically enlarged military.”
TELEVISION: Stephen Colbert wins coveted spot following 2016 Super Bowl. “The network announced on Wednesday that Mr. Colbert’s “The Late Show” would run live with a one hour episode after Super Bowl 50 on Feb. 7, 2016, and that its other late-night host, James Corden, would broadcast his late night show following the local news. ”
MUSIC: Kylie Minogue and her sister Dannii have a new track coming out, “100 Degrees”, and it sounds like a winner:
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SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook launches new app to bring news to your phone’s lock screen: “Notify lets you select from over 70 publishers and customize your alerts to only send you news about specific companies, cities, sports teams, music genres and more. Each is sent as a push notification and shown in the Notify app’s feed for 24 hours, and can be clicked through to read an associated link.”
DAVID GEFFEN: Gay mogul gives another $100 million to UCLA towards the completion of a new university-run secondary school, called the Geffen Academy at UCLA: “With this latest gift, Geffen’s total philanthropic support to UCLA exceeds $400 million, making him the largest individual donor to UCLA. In 2012, he established a $100 million scholarship fund for students at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a decade earlier, he gave the medical school an unrestricted grant of $200 million. ”
SPACE: A new Earth-like world could be the most important planet discovered outside our solar system: “The discovery came as scientists announced they had found the most distant object in the solar system, a frozen body that lies more than 100 times farther from the Sun than Earth does. The object lies beyond the edge of the Kuiper belt, home to the dwarf planet Pluto, and into the realm of space dominated by the so-called Oort cloud, a vast shell of icy objects where comets such as Hale-Bopp are thought to have formed.”
STAR WARS: Leia no longer called princess: “She’s referred to as General,” says director and co-writer J.J. Abrams. “But … there’s a moment in the movie where a character sort of slips and calls her ‘Princess.’”
ADVERTISING: Xbox is making 8 people stand on a billboard for 24 hours while it subjects them to extreme weather: “The eight contestants will have their plight live-streamed on a dedicated website and Twitch from 1pm GMT/8am EST on Thursday. Sadist viewers can vote for the harsh weather conditions inflicted on the competition entrants. The last person standing on the ledge, which is situated on a real billboard in London, will win “a trip inspired by Tomb Raider.”
HEALTH: Death clocks in cells could tell you when you get cancer: “Each tick of these clocks is a DNA mutation, and these build up at a constant rate throughout your life. The discovery will give us a deeper understanding of the causes of cancer, and an insight into healthy ageing. Not only that, but if you could slow the rate at which these clocks tick, it might be possible to alter the rate at which cancer spreads – and even the rate at which we age.”
THURSDAY NAUGHTY THOUGHTS: Manu Gassó.
