Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
An interesting exchange between Sean Illing of Vox and Steven Brill yields this: Sean Illing The story of decline you tell really begins about 50 years ago, so is this basically a story of how a subset of the baby boomer generation drove the country off a cliff? Steven Brill That may be too much …
Continue reading "The Boomers (or at Least Some of Them) Really Did Tank This Country"
A British couple has won a course case based on the obvious, which is very difficult in the United States: A heterosexual couple who were denied the right to enter into a civil partnership have won their claim at the UK’s highest court that they have suffered discrimination. Justices at the supreme court unanimously found …
Continue reading "At Last, Some Good News on the (Non-)Marriage Front"
One, at least: Confidence is not something the 22-year-old Parker lacks. She’s the only student at UTC with Down syndrome, but its limitations are simply things for her to overcome, not hold her back. Although she usually has someone with her while she’s on campus, she’s unafraid to go it alone. Friends, family and teachers …
Continue reading "Yes, Down’s Syndrome Children can Go to College"
He's back in the saddle in Iraq, or at least working on it: On May 12, when Iraqis voted in the country’s latest parliamentary elections 15 years after the U.S. invasion, a new image of Sadr emerged: a smiling cleric with a snowy beard, holding up his ink-stained index finger after casting his ballot in …
Continue reading "Muqtada al-Sadr: Not a Reinvention After All"
Matthew Stewart's account of his holidays certainly resonates with some of us: For about a week every year in my childhood, I was a member of one of America’s fading aristocracies. Sometimes around Christmas, more often on the Fourth of July, my family would take up residence at one of my grandparents’ country clubs in …
Continue reading "Laying Out American Inequality: The View from the Top"
Ryan Cooper at The Week is looking for a rehabilitation: Happy birthday to Karl Marx, who was born 200 years ago on May 5. He was the most astute and influential critic of capitalism in history — and also the most misunderstood. It is long since time that Marx re-joined the community of ordinary intellectuals, …
Continue reading "Karl Marx: Maybe too Cynical to be Demonized?"
In the Balearic Islands, along with other parts of Spain, the locals have had enough: More than 500 people have taken to the streets to protest against the impact of overtourism in Ibiza – the first rally of its kind on the Balearic island famed for its hedonistic 24-hour lifestyle. The rally, organised by local …
Continue reading "Ibiza Isn’t the Only Place Where the Tourists are Hated"
The Daily Beast correctly notes the achievement of Southwest pilot Tammy Jo Shults but with the usual caveat: Just how masterfully Tammie Jo Shults, the pilot of the badly crippled Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, handled the problem of an engine exploding at 30,000 feet is winning admiration from thousands of her fellow pilots—and should finally …
Continue reading "The Matter of Women Pilots Should Have Been Settled in the 1930’s"
It took long enough: President Donald Trump is poised to pardon Scooter J. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, according to sources familiar with the president’s thinking. The president has already signed off on the pardon, which is something he has been considering for several months, sources told ABC News. …
Continue reading "At Last, the Best Solution for Scooter Libby"
The history of the Twentieth Century is one written in blood. Between two world wars, the procession of genocides from Armenia to Stalin to the Holocaust, China and the Killing Fields, millions seemed to vanish for causes that are better hated than understood. Is there one conflict that we can look at than encapsulates the …
Continue reading "Why the Spanish Civil War is Still Important"
Positive Infinity 