Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Jeet Heer thinks that the right has given up on democracy: Public-opinion polling shows that Trump’s low opinion of American elections has practically become Republican Party orthodoxy. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, Republicans have an “unprecedented” level of “concern and mistrust in the system.” Roughly 70 percent of Republican voters believe that …
Continue reading "Maybe No One in the U.S. Really Likes Democracy Anymore"
Donald Trump's mushy statement about his acceptance of the outcome of the Presidential election has many up in the air. Such a knee-jerk reaction--driven by a system which has been so successful for so long that people take it for granted--needs to be tempered by a reality check. First: it's not the first time the …
Continue reading "We Should Challenge the Legitimacy of Our System's Outcome"
It's scary, all right: Gov. Pat McCrory Sunday called the weekend firebombing of a North Carolina Republican headquarters “an attack on our democracy,” while one GOP official called it an act of “political terrorism.” In a tweet, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump blamed “Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina.” Hillsborough police said …
Continue reading "NC Political Firebombing Not a Recent First"
One of pot shots that Hillary Clinton and her operatives made at conservative Catholics is that they used terms like “subsidiarity” that no one understood. Since they may be right about that, I think an illustration is in order. Many of you know that I teach Civil Engineering. Six years ago, my department head (who …
All of the blubbering and whining going on about how Americans (and especially Christians) are somehow criminal to vote for a certain candidate needs to be put in this perspective, from a 2013 post: A few months ago, when the Iranians elected themselves a new president, I asked an Iranian friend what he thought of …
Continue reading "Americans Aren't the Only Ones to Choose Between "Bad" and "Really Bad""
Wikileaks' revelations that Hillary Clinton and her operatives take a dim view of social conservatives--following her characterization of large portions of the population as "deplorables"--has ignited a great deal of anger. As someone who started out life growing up with the elites, I think some perspective is in order. Let me start by putting up …
Continue reading "Our Elites' Snotty Attitudes, Then and Now"
Note: this post has moved and has been updated extensively. You can go to the new post by clicking here.
Which is what some of it, at least, has done: A similar crisis has shaken the philosophical estate within the church. Before 1970 philosophy enjoyed an enviable prominence in the curriculum of Catholic colleges. This Neo-Scholastic philosophy was certainly structured around the perennial questions—Does God exist? What is virtue?—but it was an odd, manual Thomism …
Continue reading "When Catholic Academia Bails on Philosophy, We're All in Trouble"
It's not the closest thing, but... Bishop Audrey Scanlan of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania yesterday removed the Rev. Howard White from the priesthood. White, 75, was among several adults who sexually abused students at St. George's School in Middleton, Rhode Island in the 1970s and 80s, according to a report released recently by …
Continue reading "Getting Closer on the St. Andrew's Sex Scandal?"
Abstract Mohr's Circle-or more generally the stress equilibrium in solids-is a well known method to analyse the stress state of a two- or three-dimensional solid. Most engineers are exposed to its derivation using ordinary algebra, especially as it relates to the determination of principal stresses and invariants for comparison with failure criteria. In this presentation, …
Continue reading "Mohr’s Circle Analysis Using Linear Algebra and Numerical Methods"
Positive Infinity 