2020 Current Events Study Guide

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Volante
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2020 Current Events Study Guide

Post by Volante »

New year, new list for news we find that we think has a likely chance of showing up on J! with limited chatter.

Past threads for reference:
2019: https://www.jboard.tv/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5002
2018: https://www.jboard.tv/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4492
2017: https://www.jboard.tv/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3951
2016: https://www.jboard.tv/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3355

Nothing so far; I overslept and haven't caught up
Last edited by Volante on Fri Jan 01, 2021 8:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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triviawayne
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

Post by triviawayne »

Barbet and Dogo Argentino are two new breeds recognized by the AKC as of today, not eligible for Westminster until next year.

https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/dog-b ... zed-breed/
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

Post by MarkBarrett »

Not locked in yet though have it on your radar this year to watch for states gaining/losing congressional seats after the census. If California as expected loses one that would be the first time for a backwards step in state history. Texas looks it will be on the gain side. The J! writers will be paying attention.

As for any year it makes sense to know the current Big 4 sports commissioners (while knowing ones of the past can never hurt) for trivia purposes.

MLB - Rob Manfred
NFL - Roger Goodell
NHL - Gary Bettman
NBA - Adam Silver

Former NBA Commissioner David Stern (77) died today.
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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Don Larsen, who pitched the only World Series perfect game for the Yankees in 1956, has died at 90.
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triviawayne
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

Post by triviawayne »

econgator wrote: Thu Jan 02, 2020 12:33 am Don Larsen, who pitched the only World Series perfect game for the Yankees in 1956, has died at 90.
https://apnews.com/032dd729f85e734d1c58674422bbbcb8
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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The Saga of Carlos Ghosn, former Nissan CEO and chairman:

This is just too nuts. J! likely won't ask for Ghosn, but it's very possible they'll spot him and ask for Nissan. (LL might ask for Ghosn)
Yada, yada, lying about financials, that's the boring part. The plot twist is, after being arrested in Japan for a second time, he was put on house arrest and then escaped to Beirut, Lebanon at the turn of the year. In, allegedly, an instrument case on a private jet.

https://jalopnik.com/interpol-wants-car ... 1840562039
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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All the financial trade papers and NPR's Marketplace have been talking about Ghosn for a couple years, so it wouldn't surprise me if they asked about him in a bottom-slot box or an Evil Daily Double (not Final though). It would be a little mean to ask for Nissan since he's also worked for so many other big companies--Michelin, Renault, Mitsubishi.
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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Robert K S wrote: Thu Jan 02, 2020 5:18 pm All the financial trade papers and NPR's Marketplace have been talking about Ghosn for a couple years, so it wouldn't surprise me if they asked about him in a bottom-slot box or an Evil Daily Double (not Final though). It would be a little mean to ask for Nissan since he's also worked for so many other big companies--Michelin, Renault, Mitsubishi.
The evil would lie in asking people to say his name when nobody knows how to pronounce it. I heard an interviewer and guest pronounce it differently on NPR this morning.
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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Iran's Soleimani and Iraq's Muhandis killed in air strike

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq ... SKBN1Z201C


This after the US embassy in Baghdad was stormed by protesters:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/wor ... 793781001/
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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Technically this is potentially early, but J! loves their religion questions and I stink at them, so any rote learning here can't hurt...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion ... omination/
The United Methodist Church is expected to split into two denominations in an attempt to end a years-long, contentious fight over same-sex marriage, church leaders announced Friday. The historic schism would divide the nation’s third-largest religious denomination.

Leaders of the church said they had agreed to spin off a “traditionalist Methodist” denomination, which would continue to oppose same-sex marriage and to refuse ordination to LGBT clergy, while allowing the remaining portion of the United Methodist Church to permit same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy for the first time in its history.
...
The United Methodist Church is the United States’s largest mainline Protestant denomination.
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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Here is an article about works that entered public domain on January 1, 2020.



https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2020/
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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"All I Want For Christmas Is You" becomes the first song to drop completely off the Hot 100 straight from the Number 1 spot in consecutive weeks, as you might have expected.

I anticipate that The Twist won't be "the only song to chart #1 on 2 separate occasions" for much longer.
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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Sad to report that Jack Sheldon passed away Dec 27, 2019 at the age of 88. (I'm not posting in last year's current events thread since the news didn't break until the new year.) Jazz trumpeter, vocalist, sometime actor. Probably best known to the general public from "The Merv Griffin Show" and "Schoolhouse Rock." (Keep an eye out for him in oddball bit parts on reruns of "Dragnet.") My husband and I made a point of watching early morning reruns of the abysmal early 70's sitcom "The Girl with Something Extra" on one of the retro tv channels solely because Jack Sheldon appeared in a second banana role.
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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MinnesotaMyron wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2020 10:51 pm "All I Want For Christmas Is You" becomes the first song to drop completely off the Hot 100 straight from the Number 1 spot in consecutive weeks, as you might have expected.

I anticipate that The Twist won't be "the only song to chart #1 on 2 separate occasions" for much longer.
For some reason, I thought this had already happened with a song (it hasn't), but went looking and found this. Quite interesting:

https://top40weekly.com/top-20-songs-ch ... me-artist/

We're going to see a lot of weird things with the charts now that streaming is counted. This is why Drake and a few others have so many songs on the charts as people will stream an entire album when it comes out, and each song on that album counts as one play--something that would never happen in the past when radio stations had to play a song for it to count; every album now has maybe ten singles instead of three. This is also why all these Christmas songs are charting so high--even if people just put on a "Christmas station" with their streaming service, you can bet those most popular songs will be played by a lot of people, and that's how they are charting so high these days.
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation, has died

https://jezebel.com/elizabeth-wurtzel-h ... 1840852989
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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triviawayne wrote: Tue Jan 07, 2020 6:45 am
MinnesotaMyron wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2020 10:51 pm "All I Want For Christmas Is You" becomes the first song to drop completely off the Hot 100 straight from the Number 1 spot in consecutive weeks, as you might have expected.

I anticipate that The Twist won't be "the only song to chart #1 on 2 separate occasions" for much longer.
For some reason, I thought this had already happened with a song (it hasn't)....
Just a couple of years ago, I was listening to a rebroadcast of Casey Kasem's "American Top 40" program, in which he counted down the best-selling songs each week according to the Billboard charts and, between records, shared bits of trivia about the songs and their performers, often in answer to listener-submitted questions. This particular episode was from the mid-1970s, though I don't recall the exact date. During this episode, Kasem read a listener question asking which song had the single biggest drop of all time on the Hot 100 chart from one week to the next. Kasem answered this question with "Crystal Blue Persuasion" by Tommy James and the Shondells, which Kasem said dropped straight from #1 to out of the Hot 100 in a single week.

This didn't sound right to me at all, but it's not like I could call the switchboard or hold a seance to ask Casey Kasem whether he'd made a mistake or I had simple misunderstood his statement. I went looking for corroboration on the Internet but was unable to dig up anything to support this unlikely "factoid."

I'm glad that we now have a clear-cut, verifiable answer to the question.
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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According to Wikipedia, it peaked at #2 on the Billboard chart.
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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cinemaniax7 wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 3:43 pmDuring this episode, Kasem read a listener question asking which song had the single biggest drop of all time on the Hot 100 chart from one week to the next. Kasem answered this question with "Crystal Blue Persuasion" by Tommy James and the Shondells, which Kasem said dropped straight from #1 to out of the Hot 100 in a single week.

This didn't sound right to me at all, but it's not like I could call the switchboard or hold a seance to ask Casey Kasem whether he'd made a mistake or I had simple misunderstood his statement. I went looking for corroboration on the Internet but was unable to dig up anything to support this unlikely "factoid."

I'm glad that we now have a clear-cut, verifiable answer to the question.
That is definitely not correct -- for one thing, "Crystal Blue Persuasion" only made it as high as #2.

Google Books has spotty coverage of old issues of Billboard, but here's the relevant portion of the Hot 100 from September 6, 1969, showing "Crystal Blue Persuasion" in its 14th week on the chart, taking a reasonable decline path -- #17 this week, #10 last week, #3 the two weeks before that.

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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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Screenwriter Buck Henry died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on Wednesday. He was 89. Henry was twice nominated for Academy Awards, for writing The Graduate and for co-directing Heaven Can Wait (with Warren Beatty). He co-created the TV show Get Smart with Mel Brooks. He was also the first person to host Saturday Night Live five times (and also the first person to host 10 times). Later in life, he guest-starred as Liz Lemon's father Dick Lemon on 30 Rock.
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Re: 2020 Current Events Study Guide

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Golden Globes wrapup...

Complete list here: https://news.avclub.com/here-are-the-wi ... 1840821845

Selected standouts:
Russell Crowe as Roger Ailes in The Loudest Voice, Best Actor in a Limited Series/Movie
Succession, Best TV Drama. Also Brian Cox, Best TV Actor, Drama
Fleabag, Best TV Musical or Comedy. Also Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Best Actress in TV, Musical or Comedy
Parasite, Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language
Missing Link, Best Motion Picture, Animated. Laika finally picks up some heavy hardware

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood gets Best Screenplay (Tarentino), Best Supporting Actor (Pitt) and Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy
1917, the no* cut wonder, gets Best Director (Mendes) and Best Motion Picture, Drama
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