In 2015 the PhD program I was going through nearly collapsed. We lost fifteen faculty members and key staff people in as many months. Needless to say, that produced consternation among the students, most of whom came from outside the United States. They did not understand our system (and honestly until I consulted with some […]The …
Holy Week Wishes, and Some Announcements for This Site
It's been some time since I've had an original post, and posting may be sparse for a while longer. There are some important changes afoot for this site: Two of the features of this site: the Palm Beach Experience and The Island Chronicles--are moving to Chet Aero Marine. The reasoning for this is complicated and …
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The Real Reason Space Colonization Will Fail
Werner Herzog has his idea: It is a utopia, and you do not need to be a scientist or expert researcher [to understand what will pass]. You just sit back, twiddle your thumbs, enjoy your beer, and wait until it fails. [Space colonization] will fail. My explanation is a little more mundane in explanation, if …
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“Getting to Know You”: My Profile for UTC’s College of Engineering and Computer Science
It's not often that someone else does a write-up about me, but where I teach (at the University of Chattanooga's College of Engineering and Computer Science) they did a profile of me in their series "Getting to Know You." You can read it all here.
This is Tolkien’s world
It’s exactly 20 years since I stood in line to see a film I had dreamed about since I was a little boy. Ever since I had first turned the pages of J.…This is Tolkien’s world
Geniuses: From Suicidal to Criminal
Now the latter is under investigation: Dr. James Clinton Oleson, an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Auckland, turned up this fascinating nugget of information after conducting anonymous surveys and interviews with 465 members of a high IQ society, who possessed an average IQ of 149. He compared their levels of self-reported criminality …
Why the elites hate Vaughan Williams
When Marie Hall stepped on to the stage at the Queen’s Hall in London to give the first full performance of a new piece from Ralph Vaughan Williams, few could have imagined that exactly a century later, this apparently unremarkable piece would have turned into a political football. The Lark Ascending; Romance for Violin and…Why …
Who do the English think they are?
In the early 5th century the Roman legions abandoned Britain, and the sceptered isle fell off the pages of history. When it reemerges two centuries later Celtic Britain had become the seedbed for the nation-state of England. The Christian religion, newly-established on the island at the time, had given way once again to paganism. Brythonic …
Tolkien’s mythic plan for England — UnHerd
On a family holiday in Yorkshire in 1925, J. R. R. Tolkien’s young son Michael lost a beloved toy on a large stony beach. A long search by Tolkien, and Michael’s older brother John, proved fruitless; to console the boy, Tolkien made up a story, Roverandom. It’s an odd tale, featuring a small dog, wizards,… via …
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The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power, 1898-1918 by Sean McMeekin — The Logical Place
Originally posted on Books & Boots: Memorandum on revolutionizing the Islamic territories of our enemies (Title of a paper written in October 1914 by German archaeologist and Orientalist Max von Oppenheim which argued for enlisting the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to call on the world’s Muslims to engage in a Holy War or jihad …
Positive Infinity 