(From Wikipedia) Qian Xuesen, (11 December 1911 – 31 October 2009), was a prominent Chinese aerodynamicist, cyberneticist and politician who contributed to rocket science and established engineering cybernetics. Recruited from MIT, he joined Theodore von Karman’s group at Caltech.[1] Later, he returned to China and made important contributions to China’s missile and space program. During … [Read more…]
USDA orders scientists to say published research is ‘preliminary’ – From the Washington Post, April 19, 2019. Researchers at the Agriculture Department laughed in disbelief last summer when they received a memo about a new requirement: Their finalized, peer-reviewed scientific publications must be labeled “preliminary.” The July 2018 memo from Chavonda Jacobs-Young, the acting USDA … [Read more…]
George Monbiot hits all the right words in his article in todays Guardian: rebellion, ecological and apocalypse. He is as usual, dramatic but what he says is right. It makes me think and that is good. As the author Jeremy Lent points out in a recent essay, it is almost certainly too late to save … [Read more…]
An enlightening essay in the WAPO on what the immigration court system does, how it is administered, and contains some ideas on how to fix it: I’m an immigration judge. Here’s how we can fix our courts.
From the April 4, 2019 New York Times: Part 1: Imperial Reach Part 2: Internal Divisions Part 3: The New Fox Weapon
I was reading an excerpt from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, he writes about advertising here, (where you can read the whole excerpt) and below is the paragraph on glamour evolving to realized man overthrowing capitalism. Quite the leap! Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. The industrial society … [Read more…]
In the September 14, 2017 New Yorker, Adrian Chen wrote an essay on fake news. They use the byline ” Old fights about radio have lessons for new fights about the Internet”. Naturally, this containing some radio history, I was interested in the points made. “The greatest organizers of mass hysterias and the mass delusions … [Read more…]
Love them or hate them, Paint By Numbers were a big hit in the 1950’s – this Washington Post obituary highlights the fad and man who created it, Don Robbins. One woman recalled the enjoyment the kits brought to her mother and other relatives as they struggled with illness. “Today, as I cruise the aisles of … [Read more…]
Again, from the Guardian: US and Saudi Arabia blocking regulation of geoengineering Delegates at UN environment assembly say the oil producers are protecting their industries The United States and Saudi Arabia have hamstrung global efforts to scrutinise climate geoengineering in order to benefit their fossil fuel industries, according to multiple sources at the United Nations … [Read more…]
From the Guardian 03/18/2019 – Fireball over Kamchatka peninsula in December went largely unnoticed at the time A meteor explosion over the Bering Sea late last year unleashed 10 times as much energy as the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, scientists have revealed. The fireball tore across the sky off Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula on 18 … [Read more…]