Happy Labor Day
Labor Day is a three-day-weekend, but today is the actual Labor Day. What are you going to do? I’ve got a $25 credit at a store that expires after today, and it’s burning a hole in my pocket. So I’m … Continue reading →
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Infighting on the right
Oh, why rehash the bitter disputes that led us to where we are right now in September of 2016? Sometimes I think it’s impossible—or at least highly unlikely—for people to learn from their errors, or even pay attention to them. … Continue reading →
Philae: like finding a needle in a haystack
Every now and then I lose something and can’t find it, or it takes me a long time to find it. My favorite earring fell off in my car, and seemed to completely disappear. Several years later I found it … Continue reading →
Happy Labor Day weekend
Are you planning to have fun this weekend? I am. Of course, my idea of fun is pretty sedate: going out with friends for a meal, going to a dance performance, going out for a walk and enjoying the fine … Continue reading →
Georgetown University tries to expiate its guilt over slavery
Georgetown is a Jesuit school trying to atone for an episode in its past: In an effort to acknowledge its ties to slavery, Georgetown University will offer the descendants of nearly 300 slaves preferential treatment in its admissions process. In … Continue reading →
Convincing reluctant Trump supporters to vote for him
For a long time I’ve conceptualized Trump voters as falling into two camps: the enthusiastic and the reluctant. No doubt there are some who fall in between, too, but I think that mainly there are those two categories. The first … Continue reading →
Tolstoy post du jour: the voice
More Tolstoy! Just can’t get enough of that Tolstoy!! Seriously, though, I came across something extraordinary yesterday. It’s a recording of Tolstoy himself reading an English translation of a book of quotations from other writers (The Thoughts of Wise Men, … Continue reading →
Hillary Clinton, fast and loose with security
It certainly seems that way: Earlier today, the FBI released its investigative notes on the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal, including its notes on their interview of Hillary in June. It makes for an interesting read, and a couple of eye-popping … Continue reading →
“We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”
The Soviets were known for their revisionary history, a situation Orwell fictionalized in Nineteen Eighty-Four and immortalized in the quote with which I’ve titled this post. But it goes on in post-Soviet Russia today, as this ruling indicates: Russia’s Supreme … Continue reading →
Eliminating the mosquito: is it nice to fool Mother Nature?
Apparently we have the ability to completely eliminate that very common pest, the mosquito, through genetic engineering: Powerful new gene-editing technologies could allow scientists to program mosquito populations to gradually shrink and die off. Some efforts have gained enough momentum … Continue reading →
Trump’s latest speech on immigration
Byron York discusses it here. The major points, as he sees them: First, Trump announced that he will aggressively move to deport criminal illegal immigrants – that is, immigrants who have committed crimes beyond the act of entering the country … Continue reading →
Your tax dollars, working for you…
…and for the Clintons: Bill Clinton’s staff used a decades-old federal government program, originally created to keep former presidents out of the poorhouse, to subsidize his family’s foundation and an associated business, and to support his wife’s private email server, … Continue reading →