William Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts

At Amazon, William Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor.

First Couple's Official Christmas Portrait

So happy we have the Trumps in the White House. We are blessed.

The first couple's "Official Christmas Portrait" pic.twitter.com/GJsoEIPD0k

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) December 18, 2018

Sue Prideaux, I Am Dynamite!

*BUMPED.*

[I'm currently reading this one, and it's great!]

At Amazon, Sue Prideaux, I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche.

Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

At Amazon, Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore: A Novel.

Roger Scruton, Culture Counts

At Amazon, Roger Scruton, Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged.

Anthony Beevor, The Battle of Arnhem

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Anthony Beevor, The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II.

William T. Vollmann, Europe Central

At Amazon, William T. Vollmann, Europe Central.

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

An American classic, at Amazon, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.

P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, LikeWar

At Amazon, P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.

Kaya Jones Christmas Wishes

She's wonderful.

I just want to wish you all a merry Christmas 🎄🎁 Say it loud say it proud 🙌🏼 hallelujah 😭🙏🏼❤️

— Kaya Jones (@KayaJones) December 15, 2018

🗽NYC - - - - > ✈️ Las Vegas 🎰 Singing this week! Just feeling super blessed 🙏🏼 God you’re my everything. I am so grateful for his grace in my life. #unexpected #letitbelove Grammy Nominated album @JasonCrabbMusic ❤️😭🙏🏼 I keep pinching myself. Wow. Just wow. pic.twitter.com/m9giwhkwoh

— Kaya Jones (@KayaJones) December 15, 2018

Salena Zito and Brad Todd's, The Great Revolt, Has Made Foreign Affair's 2018 List of Top Books

Here's the book, at Amazon, Salena Zito and Brad Todd, The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.

And on Twitter:

The Great Revolt made Best of Books 2018 and I could not be more humbled and honored most of all to have worked with ⁦@BradOnMessage⁩ https://t.co/OCA5yTGJx4

— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) December 15, 2018

Chantel Jeffries at the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball (PHOTOS)

She's nice.

Chantel Jeffries Drops A Megaton Of Braless Cleavage Action https://t.co/MxyxPMbC6B pic.twitter.com/w7qW8ADx4h

— Popoholic (@Popoholic) December 13, 2018

BONUS: At Drunken Stepfather, "CHANTEL JEFFRIES TOPLESS OF THE DAY."

Today's Shopping

At Amazon, Today's Deals. Save on our top deals every day.

And especially, Sun Joe SJFP28-STN-CL Fire Joe 28" Classic Stone Fire Pit, and Sun Joe SJFP35-STN-RWD 35-in. Cast Stone Base, Wood Burning Fire Pit w/Dome Screen and Poker, Rivetted Wood.

Also, Citizen Men's Eco-Drive Titanium Perpetual Chrono Atomic Timekeeping Watch with Date, AT4010-50E.

And, Leather Travel Duffle Bag Gym Overnight Weekend Luggage Carry on Airplane Underseat Bag.

More, Smith & Wesson SWMP4LBS 8.6in Stainless Steel Assisted Folding Knife with 3.6in Clip Point Blade and Aluminum Handle for Outdoor Tactical Survival and Everyday Carry.

Plus, Barnett Whitetail Pro STR Crossbow, 400 Feet Per Second.

Still more, Honeywell HCE200B Uberheat Ceramic Heater, Black.

Here, Samsung QN65Q6F Flat 65” QLED 4K UHD 6 Series Smart TV 2018.

BONUS: Victor Sebestyen, Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

Ukrainian Glamour Model Stefani Kovalyova

She's on social medial, at Twitter.

She says she needs some vitamins.

And her promotion page, Stefani Kovalyova. Kiev, Ukraine.

Checking Robert Mueller

From Kim Strassel, at WSJ:

Robert Mueller has operated for 19 months as a law unto himself, reminding us of the awesome and destructive powers of special counsels. About the only possible check on Mr. Mueller is a judge who is wise to the tricks of prosecutors and investigators. Good news: That’s what we got this week.

Former national security adviser Mike Flynn a year ago pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Mr. Flynn’s defense team this week filed a sentencing memo to Judge Emmet Sullivan that contained explosive new information about the Flynn-FBI meeting in January 2017.

It was arranged by then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who personally called Mr. Flynn on other business, then suggested he sit down with two agents to clear up the Russia question. Mr. McCabe urged Mr. Flynn to conduct the interview with no lawyer present—to make things easier.

The agents (including the infamous Peter Strzok) showed up within two hours. They had already decided not to inform Mr. Flynn that they had transcripts of his conversations or give him the standard warning against lying to the FBI. They wanted him “relaxed” and “unguarded.” Former Director James Comey this weekend bragged on MSNBC that he would never have “gotten away” with such a move in a more “organized” administration.

The whole thing stinks of entrapment, though the curious question was how the Flynn defense team got the details. The court filing refers to a McCabe memo written the day of the 2017 meeting, as well as an FBI summary—known as a 302—of the Flynn interview. These are among documents congressional Republicans have been fighting to obtain for more than a year, only to be stonewalled by the Justice Department. Now we know why the department didn’t want them public.

They have come to light thanks to a man who knows well how men like Messrs. Mueller and Comey operate: Judge Sullivan. He sits on the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, and as he wrote for the Journal last year, he got a “wake-up call” in 2008 while overseeing the trial of then-Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. Judge Sullivan ultimately assigned a lawyer to investigate Justice Department misconduct.

The investigator’s report found prosecutors had engaged in deliberate and repeated ethical violations, withholding key evidence from the defense. It also excoriated the FBI for failing to write up 302s and for omitting key facts from those it did write. The head of the FBI was Mr. Mueller...

Still more.

Kim Strassel's the best. Seriously.

My latest on the Flynn case and Judge Emmet Sullivan---a judge for these prosecutorial times.https://t.co/cVk0aGZQVR via @WSJOpinion

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 14, 2018

1) The information contained in the Flynn defense filing about FBI behavior is pretty concerning, and I encourage folks to read it themselves: https://t.co/hdU7DSx4wv

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

2) Remember, at this time, the FBI's investigation was still secret. Flynn did nothing wrong in contacting the ambassador, and had no reason to believe himself in legal jeopardy. Meanwhile, this was a man with 33 years of exceptional military service.

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

3) A paratrooper, Army Ranger, intelligence officer, three-star-general, and then National Security Adviser. That's a resume that earns you benefit of doubt. FBI had the transcripts of the ambassador conversation and could have just noted that and asked him about it.

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

4) Instead, it looks like they set this up to catch him in a lie. They don't tell him about transcript. They encourage him to do the interview with no lawyer. Also deliberately choose not to give him standard warnings on lying. This is how our law enforcement operates?

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

5) Ask which sounds more likely: That a highly decorated military officer invited FBI officials to his office (with no legal counsel) in order to tell bold-faced lies? Or, as initially reported, he just forgot details of conversation?

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

6) Also worth noting that two FBI officials behind this moment have themselves been fired for misconduct: Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok. Court has cause to throw this whole thing out.

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 12, 2018

This is encouraging news. See our editorial from tonight, The Flynn Entrapment: https://t.co/QvICXkrTnE

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) December 13, 2018

Genevieve Morton Sexy

At Drunken Stepfather, "Genevieve Morton is Naked of the Day."

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

*BUMPED.*

Following-up from last night previously, "New Interview with David Foster Wallace."

At Amazon, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest.

Pauline Ivashevskaya by Olga Mordach (Photos)

At Drunken Stepfather, "Pauline Ivashevkaya Nipples of the Day."

Drug Overdoses Caught on Video

This is a devastating, heart-wrenching piece, at the New York Times, "How Do You Recover After Millions Have Watched You Overdose?" (Via Althouse, "'In October 2016, Ron Hiers and his wife, Carla, feeling despondent after years of addiction, had made a suicide pact to get high until they were dead, and ended up passed out by a bus stop in Memphis'.")

Like Althouse, I'm not embedding videos --- for me, they're just too sad and they seem like things that shouldn't be watched.

From the article:

It's a new genre of horror film — the drive-by video, often taken by a stranger, of someone who has overdosed. What is it like when millions have seen your worst moment? https://t.co/NI8cglsTsD

— NYT National News (@NYTNational) December 12, 2018

In Lawrence, Mass., a former mill town at the heart of New England’s opioid crisis, the police chief released a particularly gut-wrenching video. It showed a mother who had collapsed from a fentanyl overdose sprawled out in the toy aisle of a Family Dollar while her sobbing 2-year-old daughter tugged at her arm.

“It’s heartbreaking,” James Fitzpatrick, who was the Lawrence police chief at the time, told reporters in September 2016. “This is definitely evidence that shows what addiction can do to someone.”

Mandy McGowan, 38, knows that. She was the mother unconscious in that video, the woman who became known as the “Dollar Store Junkie.” But she said the video showed only a few terrible frames of a complicated life.

As a child, she said, she was sexually molested. She survived relationships with men who beat her. She barely graduated from high school.

She said her addiction to opioids began after she had neck surgery in 2006 for a condition that causes spasms and intense pain. Her neurologist prescribed a menu of strong painkillers including OxyContin, Percocet and fentanyl patches.

As a teenager, Ms. McGowan had smoked marijuana and taken mushrooms and ecstasy. But she always steered clear of heroin, she said, thinking it was for junkies, for people living in alleys. But her friends were using it, and over the last decade, she sometimes joined them.

She tried to break her habit by buying Suboxone — a medication used to treat addiction — on the street. But the Suboxone often ran out, and she turned to heroin to tide her over.

On Sept. 18, 2016, a friend came to Ms. McGowan’s house in Salem, N.H., and offered her a hit of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic painkiller 50 times more potent than heroin. They sniffed a line and drove to the Family Dollar across the state line in Lawrence, where Ms. McGowan collapsed with her daughter beside her. At least two people in the store recorded the scene on their cellphones.

Medics revived her and took her to the hospital, where child welfare officials took custody of her daughter, and the police charged Ms. McGowan with child neglect and endangerment. (She eventually pleaded guilty to both and was sentenced to probation.) Two days later, the video of her overdose was published by The Eagle-Tribune and was also released by the Lawrence police.

The video played in a loop on the local news, and vaulted onto CNN and Fox News, ricocheting across the web.

“For someone already dealing with her own demons, she now has to deal with public opinion, too,” said Matt Ganem, the executive director of the Banyan Treatment Center, about 15 miles north of Boston, which gave Ms. McGowan six months of free treatment after being contacted by intermediaries. “You’re a spectacle. Everyone is watching.”

Ms. McGowan had only seen snippets of the video on the news. But two months later, she watched the whole thing. She felt sick with regret.

“I see it, and I’m like, I was a piece of freaking [expletive],” she said. “That was me in active use. It’s not who I am today.”

But she also wondered: Why didn’t anyone help her daughter? She was furious that bystanders seemed to feel they had license to gawk and record instead of comforting her screaming child.

“I know what I did, and I can’t change it,” she said. “I live with that guilt every single day. But it’s also wrong to take video and not help.”

Nobody recorded the chaos that unfolded next. After Ms. McGowan was released from treatment, the father of her daughter died of an overdose. Two months later, that man’s 19-year-old son also died of an overdose.

Reeling, Ms. McGowan had a night of relapse with alcohol. She checked herself into treatment the next day. But at the same time, she had stopped reporting to her probation officer, a violation of parole that led to 64 days in jail. She was kicked out of a halfway house and stayed briefly at a shelter. She said she was raped this year. She checked herself into a hospital psychiatric ward for five weeks.

Ms. McGowan finally felt ready to start actively rebuilding her life. This spring, she moved to a halfway house in Boston, where her days were packed with appointments with counselors and clinicians, and meetings of Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. She had weighed just 90 pounds when she overdosed; now she was happily above 140.

Just after Thanksgiving she moved in with relatives, and now hopes to find a place of her own. Her treatment continues. If she stays sober and shows progress, the charges against her will be dropped in April.

She spends part of her day doing volunteer outreach along the open-air drug market in Boston known as Methadone Mile. One recent drizzly afternoon, as she made her way down the sidewalk, she hugged old friends, asked them whether they had eaten, if they were O.K. On her rounds, she picks up hundreds of used needles that carpet the streets...

RTWT.

This whole epidemic makes me very sad, and fine-grained stories like this are frankly out-of-this-world to me.

There but for the grace of God I go...

Elizabeth Rowe, Star Flutist at Boston Symphony, Files Suit Over Pay Equity

I played trumpet and French horn in junior high school, in both the concert and marching bands.

My dad, I'm sure, would have loved it had I ended up a jazz virtuoso, but that wasn't to be, heh.

In any case, the Boston symphony has an interesting argument about how oboe-ists are essentially unique, and deserve a higher pay level regardless of sex. On the other hand, if modern society is genuine about erasing gender inequality, shouldn't first chairs be paid the same, regardless of the instrument and regardless of the gender.

At WaPo, "A star flutist is paid $64,451 less than her male counterpart. So she’s suing":

A star flutist is paid $64,451 less than her male counterpart. So she’s suing.

Elizabeth Rowe’s case against the Boston Symphony Orchestra could change how orchestras pay men and women. https://t.co/ajHJpOQxl2 pic.twitter.com/BDQRxAX0IC

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 11, 2018

BOSTON — On a winter day 14 years ago, the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced that it had finally found a new principal flutist. The search had not been easy. Two hundred fifty-one players had applied, 59 were called to Symphony Hall to audition, and when it was over, only one remained.

Elizabeth Rowe, just 29, had landed in one of the country’s “big five” orchestras. And as a principal, she occupied a special seat, the classical musical equivalent of cracking the Yankees’ starting rotation.

“If I could have a dream job, this was it,” Rowe says.

To win the slot, Rowe had taken part in the BSO’s blind auditions, playing her flute onstage behind a brown, 33-foot polyester screen. That way, the orchestra’s 12-member selection committee couldn’t see her and it wouldn’t matter whether she were a man or a woman, black or white. But after Rowe had the job, something important changed. That’s when she believes being a woman hurt her in one key way.

In July, Rowe, 44, filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the BSO seeking $200,000 in back pay. Her lawsuit came after years of appealing privately to management about the roughly $70,000 less a year she is paid than John Ferrillo, 63, the orchestra’s principal oboist. Rowe contends that she should make an equal salary and that her gender is the reason she doesn’t.

The BSO, in a statement, defended its pay structure, saying that the flute and oboe are not comparable, in part because the oboe is more difficult to play and there is a larger pool of flutists. Gender, the statement says, “is not one of the factors in the compensation process at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.”

This week, Rowe will enter mediation with the BSO aimed at resolving the conflict before it goes to court.

Speaking publicly for the first time about the lawsuit, Rowe says her case has far-reaching implications. Her lawsuit will be the first against an orchestra to test Massachusetts’s new equal-pay law, its outcome potentially affecting women across the U.S. workforce who are paid less than their male colleagues.

“Money is the one thing that we can look to to measure people’s value in an organization,” Rowe says. “You look at the number of women that graduate from conservatories and then you look at the number of women in the top leadership positions in orchestras, and it’s not 50-50 still. Women need to see equality, and they need to see fairness in order to believe that that’s possible.”

Ferrillo doesn’t just sit next to Rowe in the woodwind section. They’re musically joined at the hip, whether dancing across Debussy or the second movement of Beethoven’s Sixth. They’re also friends and mutual admirers.

They both know what it takes to earn a prominent spot in such a competitive field. Both attended music school, paid their own way to travel to auditions while in their 20s and dealt with rejection. It took Ferrillo 10 years and 22 tries to earn his first symphony position, as second oboe in the San Francisco Symphony in 1985.

But by the time the BSO approached Ferrillo to fill its oboe vacancy, he was a prized member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In 2001, to lure him away, the BSO paid him twice what the orchestra’s rank-and-file make. The BSO and Ferrillo have a nondisclosure agreement in place, which prohibits disclosure of his salary. But the figure, now $314,600, became public as part of the BSO’s tax filing. (Nonprofit organizations are required to list the top five compensated employees earning more than $100,000.)

Coming into the BSO in 2004, Rowe had done her homework. She asked to be paid the same salary Ferrillo had negotiated. The orchestra turned her down. Rowe says management also would not make her “overscale” — the term for what all principals routinely receive over their base pay — a percentage of her base, which would allow her to avoid asking for a raise every year. Instead, the BSO offered her $750 a week over base the first year, $950 the second and $1,100 once she earned tenure.

Rowe accepted the offer but did not forget. Over the next 14 years, she says, she regularly asked to be paid the same as her male colleague.

For someone who considers herself a private person — Rowe doesn’t use social media or even have a website, as many professional musicians do — going public has been trying, she says. Even when she decided to sue, Rowe had hoped that only her bosses would know. Instead, a Boston Herald reporter stumbled upon the case and published an article. Even though the stress prompted her to ask a doctor for sleep medication, Rowe says, she has no regrets about filing her suit. She says the BSO gave her no other choice.

In her suit, Rowe alleges that the orchestra ignored her and retaliated when she continued to demand a raise, even pulling an invitation to be interviewed by Katie Couric for a National Geographic TV special on gender equality.

It is the orchestra’s argument — in a response filed with the court — that “the flute and the oboe are not comparable.” In the statement to The Washington Post, the BSO also said the oboe is “second only to the concertmaster (first chair violin) in its leadership role” and is “responsible for tuning the orchestra.” The limited pool of great oboists, the BSO said, “gives oboists more leverage when negotiating compensation.”

Although four other principal BSO players — all men — earn more than Rowe, the orchestra notes that she is paid more than nine other principals, of which only one, harpist Jessica Zhou, is a woman. Rowe has been given occasional raises, and her current salary is $250,149 a year...

Keep reading.