My friend Mike, recently retired editor of a major newspaper, writes: Luckily Scalia and his pals were in the Supreme Court minority on the Arizona immigration ruling, but his logic is scary: […]
Bitcoin – and digital currencies – retrace the troubled history of banknotes
Commenting on Thomas Lowenthal’s original article at ArsTechnica on Bitcoin and the dangers involved in introducing a new currency. The closest parallel to a pure digital currency play is the travails of […]
The next plague
It’s not like a major theme, usually, but writers of near future science fiction usually have one or two major disease outbreaks as one of the plot devices, even if it isn’t […]
Kansas rep, a friend of industry, axes product-safety database
A neophyte freshman representative from Kansas who slipped into Congress on the strength of hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations from heavyweight industries does not want you and me to see […]
Nota Bene #109: You Can't Tuna Fish
“It’s absolutely stunning to me, the contempt in which the network holds the audience. The idea that these people have standards is laughable.” Who said it?
Nota Bene #98: A More Glorious Dawn Awaits
“The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled […]
Nota Bene #97: toDwI'ma' qoS yItIvqu'!
“To be truly free, and truly to appreciate its freedom, a society must be literate.”
Nota Bene #96: Saturn's Hexagon and the Bulava Spiral
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
The Weekly Carboholic: Climate disruption will disrupt volcanism too
Climate disruption will disrupt volcanism too EPA Office of Inspector General finds standard gases not so standard after all Driest years in Pacific Northwest drier than expected Northeast Passage opened this year […]
China, Day Two: The business of China is business
Part two in a series From space, the road system around Shanghai must look like a bowl of Chinese noodles. But traveling on the roads themselves feels like traveling the straight and […]
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 