Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
I was kind of nudged by one of my illustrious relatives (who is now in the Old Country) on the subject of our Confederate ancestors, and this is what I came back with: I think that what's been neglected in this debate is an answer to the simple question "How did the 'Lost Cause' lose?" …
Continue reading "My Facebook Rant re the White "Supremacists""
The Democrats need to weigh their options carefully: “We need to talk about what people think about when they wake up in the morning, and it’s not Russia,” Sragow said. “The more we talk about stuff that voters don’t truly care about in their daily lives … it confirms that the Democratic Party’s brain has …
Continue reading "It Takes More Than the Russian Scandal to Connect With Voters"
It may seem that posts on this blog are slowing down, but elsewhere it's another story. There are actually four sites to this "family" and one of them, vulcanhammer.info, is being moved to WordPress hosting. (The other two, vulcanhammer.net and Chet Aero Marine, were moved around the first of the year.) Moving a site that …
The right to take a vote doesn't make the result meaningful, as one committee at Harvard found out: On Friday, the Crimson reported that the surprising recommendation to ban all social organizations received only 7 votes from the 27-member Committee on the Unrecognized Single-Gender Social Organizations, which had been empaneled to review implementation of last …
Continue reading "Harvard's Clubs: So Much for Faculty Governance"
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's Provost, Jerald Ainsworth, sent out this directive today: Funding for diversity initiatives has transitioned to Academic Affairs as of July 1, 2017; therefore, requests for funding will be received, reviewed, and funded from the Provost's Office. The Office for Equity and Diversity will monitor funding and audit our efforts for …
Most of the attention these days on Congress (the opposite of progress) has centred on the Senate's inability to pass a replacement for the misnamed Affordable Care Act. Let me make my first stipulation: the "repeal and replace" business is pure political theatre, has been from the start, and in a sense Donald Trump has …
Continue reading "If California Can't Pass Single Payer, the Democrats Will Never Really Win"
A editorial from the University of Maryland lays it out: Colleges should “screen” speakers to ensure that they are not giving a platform to “intolerant perspectives,” a University of Maryland student argues in a recent op-ed. “There is nothing inherently wrong with screening speakers, teachers and even students on the campus,” sophomore Moshe Klein declares …
Continue reading "The Campus Corporatists Run Scared on Free Speech"
It really won't: Brutus is a commanding figure in the Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park production of “Julius Caesar.” The wily Mark Antony also looms large. But the most fearsome character in the show isn’t standing on stage — not even in the person of a Donald Trump-like Caesar — but instead storming …
As Nick Park points out in his letter to Ireland's Foreign Minister about the EU's actions about Christian refugees from Eritrea: We are alarmed at report recently from contacts in Brussels that the EU is in the process of signing Compact Agreements with third countries which will mean that members states can send back asylum …
Continue reading "The Undemocratic, Procrustean Experiment Strikes Again"
...just might be facilitated by the policies of the Trump administration: Meanwhile, suspension of U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership is potentially good news for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, offering temporary relief from enhanced global competition with the most competitive products and markets in Asia. Although important from a strategic U.S. perspective in Asia …
Continue reading "That Crazy Concept of Central American Economic Development…"
Positive Infinity 