Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
In this interesting piece on how "meritocracy" is killing youth sports, this note: Parenting doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game, but it often is. As Matthew Stewart wrote in an Atlantic cover story this year on the new aristocracy, those in the nation’s upper-middle class have “taken their money out of productive activities and …
Continue reading "Some People Want to “Build the Wall” Anyway"
Amidst all the other election results, this, from Florida: Amendment 13, a highly charged proposal to end greyhound racing in Florida, passed. It means the roughly dozen racing tracks in Florida will have to shutter by 2020. Animal protection groups celebrated the victory, calling the win a “historic effort.” “Tonight, in an historic vote, Florida …
And they're not whom you'd expect either: Donald Trump’s decision to challenge birthright citizenship is earning applause from one corner: “Accidental Americans,” who would rather be unburdened of their citizenship as cheaply as possible. As POLITICO reported in July, “Accidental Americans” — dual nationals who have U.S. citizenship but only loose ties to the country — …
Continue reading "Some People Like the Idea of an End to Birthright Citizenship"
In the middle of a brief recap of the 2005 season of Donald Trump's Apprentice, this sudden revelation: The degree-holders were no richer than the degree-free. In fact, the average net worth of the street-smart team was three times that of the book-smart one. Were the college kids more intelligent? No again. Time after time, …
Continue reading "Maybe There Is Something to Those Cocktail Parties"
Some people evidently work under that assumption, as this ugly event in New York attests: New Yorkers woke up Thursday morning to find colorful new street art popping up on trash cans along the Lower East Side. Their message is clear – Trump and his supporters are "trash." The controversial posters feature images of “Trump …
Continue reading "Getting Rid of the White People Won’t Get Rid of Christianity"
The problem with left-watching is that, if you do it long enough, it will have you scratching your head more than making you angry. Fifty years ago, leftists hated patriotic people. They burned the flag; the courts affirmed their right to do so. They spat on returning veterans from Vietnam. They pushed the sexual revolution …
Continue reading "They Didn’t Like Patriotism, and They Don’t Like Nationalism. That Leaves…"
And no a moment too soon either: this, another journey of the genre: My education required a metaphysical moving away, I learned. A professor who could see me struggling through change asked me what scared me about it. I told her that I worried I would lose something, and she reassured me that I would …
Some think we're on a downturn with coal: Across Europe and the U.S., the decline in coal output recently has averaged close to 5 percent a year. If the world as a whole can reach 7 percent a year, it would be on track to meet the IPCC's 2030 target. The conventional wisdom is that …
Continue reading "The War on–and for–Coal is a Waste of Time"
Well, it's over but the shouting, and there's lots of that: Brett Kavanaugh has become an Associate Justice on SCOTUS, after one of the sorriest episodes in American government since Watergate. (And there are many to choose from...) Conservatives have high hopes for him on the Court, which is why the opposition was so vociferous. …
That was certainly the case in early Byzantium, as recorded by Procopius in his Secret History, 11: After that he (the Emperor Justinian) passed a law forbidding pederasty, not inquiring closely into those acts committed after the passing of the law but seeking out men who had succumbed to this malady some time in the …
Continue reading "Sexual Crimes Seem to Inspire Suspension of Due Process"
Positive Infinity 