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""
I was saddened by the news of Glen Campbell's death at 81. Although he had many hits, my favourite was "Arkansas:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eccolhz6Jnc As I've mentioned before, my mother was from there, and I've spent a lot of time in what used to be called the "Land of Opportunity." But now she and her birth family …
Continue reading "My Favourite Glen Campbell Song: Arkansas"
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 …
It seems that it, too, is the residual of a sunken continent: In a paper published in the Geological Society of America’s Journal GSA Today in February, researchers made the case that it should be considered a new continent. They said it was a distinct geological entity that met all the criteria applied to Earth’s …
Continue reading "Another Good Reason Why They Filmed Lord of the Rings in New Zealand"
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"
Archbishop Cranmer relates the following rather odd exchange at the Church of England synod: A few other Synod questions relate to the diversity obsession: Miss Prudence Dailey (Oxford) to ask the Chair of the House of Bishops: Q21 Is the House of Bishops aware of evidence that unconscious bias training is ineffective in increasing the …
Continue reading "The Church of England Plays the Postmodern Card on Bias Training"
Positive Infinity 