Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Washington, like old Beijing, has height restrictions on its buildings: An increase in the supply of leasable square footage in the district would solve the problem. But D.C. real-estate developers are constrained by a 113-year-old federal law, the Height of Buildings Act of 1910, under which no city building can be taller than the width …
Continue reading "Will The Chinese Repay the Favour on Height Restrictions?"
Pope Francis' time as Pontiff has been one of misunderstanding, i.e., he says something and everyone takes his words out of context. His latest apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium is no exception to that. This time, however, instead of the usual left-wing leaping to conclusions, the opposite side has gotten into the act based on some …
An interesting analysis of one of Evangelical Christianity's more popular trends: Motivated by both faith and fitness, today many protestant Christians around the country are, like Daniel, occasionally limiting themselves to fruits and vegetables for 21-day increments. Several such believers told The Atlantic that while their intention for the initial fast was simply to enter …
A few months ago, when the Iranians elected themselves a new president, I asked an Iranian friend what he thought of the election. His response was simple: the Iranian people had a choice between bad and really bad in the election and chose only bad. Now that the U.S. and others have chosen to cut …
Would-be White House photographers learn this the hard way: The nation’s largest news organizations lodged a complaint Thursday against the White House for imposing unprecedented limitations on photojournalists covering President Barack Obama, which they say have harmed the public’s ability to monitor its own government. The organizations accuse the White House of banning photojournalists from …
Barack Obama would do well to take a hint from the "Duck Dynasty" candidate's victory: Medicaid expansion is popular, even if Obamacare isn't. Riser was a Jindal acolyte in the state legislature who saw first-hand the governor's approval rating dip as he opposed the expansion of Medicaid. That's the dilemma Republicans face: As unpopular as …
Continue reading "Should Have Nationalised Medicaid to Start With"
I guess it was inevitable sooner or later, but now we're here: last Tuesday, Chattanooga's City Council approved an ordinance to extend employment benefits for the city to domestic partners and not just those joined by civil marriage. As is the case with many unicameral legislatures, it takes two readings to make this official, and …
Continue reading "It's Crunch Time in Chattanooga for Same Sex Benefits"
This piece is, in some sense, obligatory. Just about everyone alive and out of the crib then remembers where he or she was when they learned that Jack Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Although there have been recent potshots at the Boomers’ obsession with the subject, it’s not a bad …
Continue reading "Camelot Not Quite: My Reflections on JFK, Fifty Years After"
What a difference two decades makes: Predicting the imminent collapse of the U.S. dollar, a Russian lawmaker submitted a bill to his country’s parliament Wednesday that would ban the use or possession of the American currency. Mikhail Degtyarev, the lawmaker who proposed the bill, compared the dollar to a Ponzi scheme. He warned that the …
Abraham Lincoln, that is: A public university in President Abraham Lincoln’s home state of Illinois is adorned with a plaque that states Lincoln – arguably the most famous and influential president in American history – was a Democrat. Lincoln was a Republican. History is such a stinker sometimes...
Positive Infinity 