Lest we forget … The night thousands of Nazis packed Madison Square Garden for a rally — and violence erupted from the Washington Post Retropolis column, December 9, 2018. On Feb. 20, 1939, 22,000 members of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi group, took over the venue that stars still consider a peak achievement if … [Read more…]
In a very scary posting, Bernard E. Harcourt writes in the New York Review of Books Daily: President Trump makes constant use of the language and logic of the “new right,” a toxic blend of antebellum white supremacy, twentieth-century fascism, European far-right movements of the 1970s, and today’s self-identified “alt-right.” And his words and deeds … [Read more…]
ex nihilo nihil fit – from nothing comes nothing.
At The LA Daily News an article about the Woolsey Fire in Ventura county focuses on the Rocketdyne Facility, or the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The Woolsey Fire, an out-of-control wildfire that started in Ventura County and moved into Malibu, where it is consuming homes along the coastal community, began as a brush fire near … [Read more…]
In the Guardian News 11/7/2018: Measure known as Initiative 1631 would have put a $15 fee on each ton of carbon dioxide emitted in the state However, voters rejected the initiative because “they understood it was a flawed initiative that would have raised consumer costs substantially while doing very little to meet carbon reduction … [Read more…]
In the San Mateo Daily there is an interesting story on the founding of AMPEX and that their sign has been taken down and is looking for a new home. Recording on discs was standard for the broadcast industry in the United States before Ampex changed the game. Discs were easily subject to shock, vibration … [Read more…]
From The Suffocation of Democracy – Christopher R. Browning If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in … [Read more…]
By Roy Scranton July 16, 2018 NYT Climate Change and Parenting … Take the widely cited 2017 research letter by the geographer Seth Wynes and the environmental scientist Kimberly Nicholas, which argues that the most effective steps any of us can take to decrease carbon emissions are to eat a plant-based diet, avoid flying, live … [Read more…]
In 1982, Jerome Wiesner, of MIT, warned: The weapons that create the threat of annihilation cannot be uninvented. The sad fact of this era is that our populations cannot conceivably be protected except through political skill and courage applied to the task of minimizing the chances that nuclear weapons will ever be used. Jerome Wiesner … [Read more…]
Washington Post Obituary for Jalal Mansur Nuriddin