SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:52 P.M. ET:

IT'S COME TO THIS – FROM FOX:   You’re a racist man, Charlie Brown!  Critics are slamming ABC’s “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” for seating its only black character, Franklin, alone on one side of the holiday table — in a rickety old lawn chair.  Meanwhile, white friends — including Peppermint Patty, Charlie Brown, Sally and even Snoopy — were all seated across from him in real chairs as they feasted, Twitter users pointed out.  The special, which debuted Nov. 20, 1973, aired again on Wednesday — prompting social media outrage over the gang’s highly unwoke picnic table arrangement.  “Why is Franklin in Charlie Brown Thanksgiving sitting all by himself at the table. Man. Things that I did not notice as a child,” @Asharp52 blasted on Twitter.  Others said good grief over a seating chart that would have thrilled George Wallace.  “Not watching Charlie Brown Thanksgiving anymore, until they sit some people on the same side of the table as Franklin,” another critic tweeted, along with two black power-style fist emojis.
The scene in question centers on an impromptu holiday feast — of toast, jelly beans and ice cream — in Charlie Brown’s backyard.  I would suggest that critics concentrate on more significant social issues than chair placement in a cartoon.

WORD OF THE YEAR – FROM DAILYWIRE.COM:   Merriam's-Webster's dictionary says the word means:  1. containing or being poisonous material especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation  2: exhibiting symptoms of infection...  3: extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful  4: relating to or being an asset that has lost so much value that it cannot be sold on the market...So, with the way liberals and the mainstream media hate President Trump, it's not surprising that The Oxford Dictionaries has picked the Word of the Year: "Toxic."  "The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year, and have lasting potential as a term of cultural significance," Oxford Dictionaries said.  Good choice.  Do our readers have other suggestions?  I'll publish them.

PROGRESS – FROM DAILY MAIL:    A medical scanner can take 3D images of the entire body at once for the first time ever.   A combination of two commonly-used scanners - positron emission tomography (PET) and X-ray computed tomography (CT) - the EXPLORER scanner offers a fascinating insight to the inner workings of the human body.    The machine produces a 3D video that could help diagnose disease, track the spread of cancer or infections, and develop new medicines by creating a whole-body diagnostic scan in 20-30 seconds.  Professors Simon Cherry and Ramsey Badawi, from the University of California, Davis, have spent millions of dollars and more than a decade building the machine.  'While I had imagined what the images would look like for years, nothing prepared me for the incredible detail we could see on that first scan,' Professor Cherry said.  The EXPLORER works using radiation, and is a combination of a PET scan and CT scan, both of which are used every day in healthcare around the world.  If only it could produce a 3D image of the inner workings of the Clinton Foundation.  We await that.

November 24, 2018