​Earlier today China released a white paper regarding its position on the trade frictions with the United States.   The Information Office of the State Council for the People's Republic of China released the report In order to clarify the facts about China-US economic and trade relations, clarify China’s stance on trade friction with the US, and pursue reasonable solutions.

With America and China having the largest economies in the world and with China’s Economy on pace to pass the American Economy in the next 10 to 15 years what we are seeing could be a structural realignment of global markets.  During this episode of Lessons from the Screen we will look at this report, what does it say, and what does it potentially mean.

​Earlier this month a new documentary appeared on Netflix entitled Reversing Roe.  Having seen a slew of documentaries on abortion I went into it very sarcastically expecting to be bombarded with pro-life rhetoric and biblical messages.  I hadn’t heard of the documentary and judging from the title I fully expected it to be a pro-life endeavor.  What followed in the next hour and a half is what we are going to spend the next half hour talking about.  In this episode of Lessons from the Screen we are going to be looking at the documentary by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg entitled, Reversing Roe. 

​Here in North Carolina, we are continuing to recover from Hurricane Florence.  A 400-mile wide behemoth that crawled across the Carolinas at a whopping 10 miles per hour.  The storm dropped records amounts of rain and here in Charlotte we experienced rain fail for nearly 30 hours straight, people died and the flooding is catastrophic.  Not to be outdone by Americans, China and Hong Kong experienced even more brutality at the hands of the weather over the same period as Typhoon Mangkhut ripped through Asia (Typhoons, hurricanes, and cyclones are all the same thing receiving their label based on where they originate).

But the commonality of both of these storms besides them both being the same thing was how we heard about them and how much stock we placed in the person delivering the news.  Meteorologists are the scientist involved in weather forecasting and understanding, they are also tasked with delivering the bad news about a 400-mile wide force of nature carrying 150+ mph winds and tons of gallons of water directly towards you and your family.  But they aren’t always accurate according to many and things are almost never as bad as they make them out to be, again, according to many.  In this episode of Lessons from the Screen we are going to take a look at weather forecasting, when did it start, how did it become a part of the news, what they are actually doing, and why they seem to be hyped for nothing.

With the hurricane pending here.  We are preparing to evacuate and as such there will not be a show this week from Lessons from the Screen.  Thank you for your listener-ship and support.  Keep us in your prayers and we look forward to returning next week. 

​Congress has a duty to advice and consent.  This duty of Congress to Advice and Consent has been and will probably continue to be under the limelight with every appointment made by a president following President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  A nomination that the Senate simply refused to Advice and Consent on leading to him not even getting a hearing.  Today on lessons from the screen we are going to be looking at Advice and Consent and the history of confirmation hearings in the United States.  Which is again creating interest with the fast-moving appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court by Donald Trump.

Since 2013 Ipsos has been releasing a yearly report on how well informed people are about the societies they live in.  It’s a yearly survey of over 50,000 people from 38 different countries being asked to give their opinions on various issues and situations within their country.  The last one was done in November of 2017 and a composite book being released about the surveys and the data that is due to come out September 6, 2018, which would be Thursday.  But we thought it would be a good time to just look at the survey from last year and talk about the questions and where America stood in understanding the realities of the societies we live in.  In this episode of Lessons from the Screen, we will look at the Ipsos Ignorance Index.