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Number of Black Acts That Have Topped The Billboard Hot 100 This Year: 0

Chris Molanphy Slate
Also -- Not a single living person of color got into the Rock Hall this year. Among the Class of 2014, only the late Clarence Clemons—inducted as a sideman with the E Street Band—is black. (For the record, this has happened only once before in the Hall’s 28-year history: In 2003, the only black inductee was deceased sideman Benny Benjamin.)

Young Jews Debate Israel and Judaism

John Judis The New Republic
America's most important Israel argument is happening on campuses. How Hillel conducts itself has a great deal of influence on how American Jews debate their country's policy toward Israel. The rift within Hillel also bears on what it means to be Jewish, suggesting a growing rift among younger Jews over American policy toward Israel that anticipates divisions just appearing among Jewish adults. It touches on the question of what it means to be Jewish in America.

David Brooks, His "Higher Pleasures" and the Kids in Jail

Carl Bloice Black Commentator
I always find it amazing that whether it be in the bedroom or the den, “conservatives” like Brooks so often want to use the law to enforce their own perception of what is morally correct, what are “satisfying pleasures” and what they deem “lesser pleasures.”

About that consensus on global warming: 9136 to 1

Ashutosh Jogalekar Scientific American
Those who think scientists keep silent on global warming presumably because they fear the barbs of the world demonstrate a peculiar kind of paranoia, especially since what they fear largely does not exist.

Big Data + Big Pharma = Big Money

Charles Ornstein ProPublica
Drug company sales representatives, using data from companies that sweep up information from pharmacies, can know before entering a doctor’s office if he or she favors their products or those of a competitor.

Chris Christie's Not in the Clear Yet. These Text Messages Show Why.

Andy Kroll and David Corn Mother Jones
Text messages turned over to investigators raise the possibility that months before the disclosure this week of Christie aide's bombshell email—"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee"—other senior Christie aides knew the traffic study excuse wasn't true