Polar Vortex hits U.S. with dangerously low temperatures

A cyclone of arctic air known as a polar vortex stretched from the Dakotas to the deep South, bringing wind chill warnings on the heels of near-blizzard conditions in some regions. Several Midwest states shut schools and urged everyone to stay inside, while airlines canceled thousands of flights. Gwen Ifill reports.

Christopher Hitchens on the Writing of Saul Bellow and Race Relations (2007)

Saul Bellow (June 10, 1915 -- April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times and he received the Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990.

In the words of the Swedish Nobel Committee, his writing exhibited "the mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and that can be called the dilemma of our age."[5] His best-known works include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldt's Gift and Ravelstein. Widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest authors, Bellow has had a "huge literary influence."[6]

Bellow said that of all his characters Eugene Henderson, of "Henderson the Rain King," was the one most like himself.[7] Bellow grew up as an insolent slum kid, a "thick-necked" rowdy, and an immigrant from Quebec. As Christopher Hitchens describes it, Bellow's fiction and principal characters reflect his own yearning for transcendence, a battle "to overcome not just ghetto conditions but also ghetto psychoses." [8] [9]Bellow's protagonists, in one shape or another, all wrestle with what Corde (Albert Corde, the dean in "The Dean's December") called "the big-scale insanities of the 20th century." This transcendence of the "unutterably dismal" (a phrase from Dangling Man) is achieved, if it can be achieved at all, through a "ferocious assimilation of learning" (Hitchens) and an emphasis on nobility.

In 1989, Bellow received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The Helmerich Award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bellow

Facebook can track your un-posted thoughts

If you have a Facebook account, then you've probably found yourself typing out a status update that you delete last-minute, just before posting. Maybe it's too personal or controversial. But for whatever reason, you delete it, feeling a sense of relief that no one will ever be able to see those words. But thanks to a new report, we now know that's not necessarily the case. The study shows Facebook has the technological ability to see the information you were hoping to keep private. RT's Ameera David reports.